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Culture and Anarchy is a famous prose work by Matthew Arnold who distinguished himself both as a poet and critic in the Victorian age. He with Carlyle and Ruskin voiced the idealistic reaction against the materialism of the Victorian age. In this book, Arnold declared that culture is the minister of sweetness and light essential to the perfect character. The preface enunciates Arnold's principle of authority as applied especially to religion. He considers the Established Church of England as a cultural necessity to nourish ample minds. Sweetness and Light take its title from Swift's Battle of the Books. England has a pitiful "faith in machinery" i.e., coal, railroads, wealth, population, freedom. The perfection for which men strive should not be mere machinery but "a harmonious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of human nature". Doing As One Likes sees anarchy if individuals pursue their own selfish interests. Arnold urges that Englishmen should seek their best selves in the total national interest. Barbarians, Philistines, Populace he applies these labels respectively to the aristocracy, the middle class, and the masses. The hope for England lies with the middle class who must be aroused from the provincialism and prejudice to spaciousness and amplitude of cultural vision. Hebraism and Hellenism sum up western culture in these two aspects, both of which seek man's perfection or salvation.
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| Culture and Anarchy |
The subtitle of the volume is An Essay in Political and Social Criticism points to Arnold's intentions, for he said the England of his time as being in political, social and religious ferment, and sought to show that the remedy lay in culture the supreme realisation of the human spirit under reason. The "motto of culture should beto render an intelligent being more intelligent" and "to make reason and the will of God prevail". He shows the imbalances, inequities and confusions of English life that impede the advance of culture. Arnold fears a drift to anarchy through an excess of liberty of freedom unrestrained by any center of authority. The two great traditions of Hellenism, with its 'strictness of conscience' and Hellenism with its 'spontaneity of consciousness' have vied with each other in English life down the centuries instead of being mutually complementary. Arnold pleads that culture is the true saving grace culture with its development of the individual self in the interests of the greater whole, with its aspiration to a fair chance for the growth of moral life and with its constant movement toward perfection.
Arnold is known as 'the apostle of culture': Arnold's prose is elegant and lucid, relieved by a delicate irony, combining polish with veiled satire. He has an extraordinary gift of expressing his ideas in attractive and memorable phrases. He proved a master of English prose style, writing a calm, elegant language of perfect grace and clarity.