How to Analyse a Poem Using the Poetry Title
T S Eliot's Animula as a Poem Example of Using Clues in the Title .
Feb 21, 2009
This article will examine the importance of the poem title to a full understanding of the author’s intention. Unravelling the allusions in poem titles is rather like spotting the clues in a mystery novel and can lead to a much more rewarding experience of the poem. T S Eliot’s “Animula” will be used as a poem example.
Title of Poem as Clue to Meaning
Any attempt to interpret or understand a poem should start with the title, which, strangely, is often overlooked as if it were just the price sticker on the can of beans, rather than the very label itself that tells the reader what to expect inside the can.
Poets use language sparsely and precisely: it is as if they take a 3 volume treatise on philosophy, put it through a press, and then screw the lot up into a single handball to toss to the reader. Every word is precious, and often has layers of meaning, as the reader slowly unfolds the ball and ‘gets the message’.
Literary References as Clue to Meaning
Sometimes the word or phrase is a reference to an earlier famous work of fiction, or the Bible, classical mythology b or a famous place or person. For the reader who thoroughly knows the work to which the poet refers, that single word or phrase explodes into an entire world of new meaning.
Even if a reader must research the references and only gains a sketchy overview of meaning, it will nevertheless enrich the poetry reading experience. Such research is simplicity itself today, as a search engine will dredge up numerous relevant pages to the reference in seconds.
T S Eliot “Animula”
As the text of Eliot’s poem, “Animula” is not particularly dense, it is tempting for the reader to ignore the title and any references, and extract what meaning is readily available. This will allow for a perfectly satisfying experience of the poem, but an examination of the title and the reference in the first line will place the entire poem in context and lead to an even richer experience.
The Meaning of the Poetry Title “Animula”
Animula is a Latin word and, in fact, a diminutive of a more common term ‘anima’, meaning soul or spirit.
Its most famous use is in the small poem “Animula Vagula Blandula” which reputedly the great Roman emperor Hadrian muttered on his death bed. How fortunate that someone heard and scribbled it down for posterity!
Latin is notoriously hard to render into English so there are several quite different variations of the poem available. The UK newspaper The Telegraph has published a serviceable one:
Animula vagula blandula
“Little soul, little wanderer, little charmer,
Body’s guest and companion,
To what places will you set out now?
To darkling, cold and gloomy ones –
And you won’t be making your usual jokes.”
Thus, the reader enters the poem knowing that T S Eliot thought Hadrian’s address to his soul so significant and relevant that he offers it as a clue to his reader. By allusion, the reader is offered a poem within a poem.
Hadrian’s words, addressed to his departing soul, are wry, ironic – almost humorous. The soul is reduced and spoken to like a small child. The last line has an overtone of: “You should have thought about this earlier.”
Hadrian, it is to be remembered led a full and active life, was an achiever, an adventurer, someone who dared attempt difficult and dangerous enterprises.
Poem Interpretation
The little soul in Eliot’s poem, however, is stifled and repressed, truly lives for the first time “in the silence after the viaticum” – that is, in the little time left to it after the priest administers the last communion offered the dying. Much of the poem traces the soul’s fall into irresolute lameness, and is a call to embrace life, take some risks and give the soul a chance to expand.
Thus, an understanding of the title of “Animula” clarifies the entire direction of Eliot’s thoughts. When any poem seems obscure, a thorough investigation of the allusions that the title may hold (or any within the body of the poem) is a good way to explore the possibilities and find the likely meaning of the poem.
[There are no references in the text as this interpretation is solely the author's own work. That is not to say that other writers have not arrived at the same interpretation.
The text used is T S Eliot, Collected Poems 1909 - 1962, Faber and Faber, 1963]
