Ada Palmer: Peer Commentary for Jean Otsuki's essay

English 354/Finley: 4 October 1999

Blunden's use of the word "yet" to express impending Armageddon through his

optimistic reminders of remnant pastoral beauty is powerful, but it is important to mark that

it includes two very different uses of the word "yet." The "yet's" in "as yet may not be

flung / The dice that claims you" (4-5), "the house as yet unshattered by a shell" (9) and

"the yet unmurdered tree" (11) are simple "yet's" expressing temporal pessimism,

reminders that the life and beauty from which the soul is encouraged to draw hope exist

now by mere chance and will be destroyed forthwith. However, the "yet" in "yet I see

them not as I would see," (13) is altogether different. Here "yet" functions as a negative

conjunction, like but or however, indicating the failure of the soul to hearken to these cries

of optimism. This "yet", then, as it serves to express the soul's inability to escape from the

trap of its pessimistic visions, simultaneously invokes the functions of the other "yet's",

projecting a temporal aspect onto this line. We wonder, does this "yet" mean that the soul

expects that in the future it will be able to see "as he would see", or does it imply that it will

be the optimistic urgings which cease in the future, once the destruction of the last house

and tree destroys the last sources of desperate encouragement, forcing the self to see the

horror the soul has already grasped? Rather, does it anticipate the death at the end of the

poem, that, like the tree and house, the speaker exists and sees now only by a stay of

execution, and that death will shortly end the grim vision, the optimism and the struggle, as

it will the remnants of the pastoral past? While this "yet" does not expressly imply any of

these possibilities, its juxtaposition to the other "yet's" provide it a very powerful and

disturbing set of meanings, invoking despair, desolation, and warning us of the ultimate

absence of the long-prepared for victory.