Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In Sylvia Plath's poem "Candles," the very objects that offer illumination are cast as "the last romantics," grounding the work in a paradox that reflects on the dual nature of light-both revealing and distorting. The candles are anthropomorphized, their flames described as "upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers," illustrating their ethereal, almost sentient quality. These 'fingers' of light are "taken in by their own haloes," a line that deftly captures the candles' entrancing luminosity and the idea that light can sometimes be enamored by its own glow, much like human vanity or nostalgia.

The poem suggests a criticism of the selective focus of candlelight, which can "ignore a whole family of prominent objects" to focus on a single eye, giving it an almost divine significance even if the "owner" is past the age of traditional beauty. The mention of "an eye" is an echo of the oft-cited 'window to the soul,' drawing attention to the intimacy and scrutiny that candlelight affords. Yet, daylight is termed "more judicious," hinting at the limitations of a romanticized, narrow focus and offering a counter-argument for the impartial clarity of natural light.

As the poem continues, the act of lighting candles becomes an almost sacred ritual, affecting the speaker's "nostrils" and summoning "false, Edwardian sentiments." Here, Plath addresses the weight of history and memory, mentioning a maternal grandmother who once "gave roses to Franz Josef," evoking an era long past. This familial vignette also includes a grandfather "moping in the Tyrol," contemplating a different life in America. The light of the candles, then, serves as a portal to the past, both collective and personal.

Plath underscores the candles' role as soothing entities; they are "kindly with invalids and mawkish women" and have the power to "mollify the bald moon." Their influence is universal yet intimate, and they carry a monastic purity, being "nun-souled" and "burning heavenward," never entangled in earthly matters like marriage.

The poem shifts its attention to a child the speaker is nursing, whose eyes are "scarcely open." The speaker acknowledges that she, like the candles, will become "retrograde" in two decades. As the candles burn, their "spilt tears cloud and dull to pearls," encapsulating the transience of life and beauty. The speaker grapples with the insurmountable task of conveying any meaning to the infant, who is still caught in the inertia of birth, a state paralleled by the candles' finite lifespan.

The poem concludes with a poetic tableau: the "mild light enfolds" the child, and "the shadows stoop over the guests at a christening," a depiction that captures the mingling of light and darkness, and by extension, life and death. "Candles" is a complex and poignant rumination on the passage of time, the fidelity of memory, and the subjectivity of beauty-all set against the fragile flickering of candlelight that manages, however briefly, to hold the encroaching dark at bay.

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