Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Comedy of Thirst" by Arthur Rimbaud exposes a deeply unsettling juxtaposition between generations, desires, and the existential dread that hovers beneath the surface of mundane life. The poem engages its readers in a dialectic between the traditional comforts of home and the inescapable thirst for something unattainable-whether it be a spiritual quest, death, or existential fulfillment.

The elders, referred to as "Grand-Parents," represent conventional wisdom and the comforts of home, including drinks like "dry wines," "cider," "milk," "Tea and Coffee." These drinks stand as symbols of life's small, simple pleasures. They contrast sharply with the narrator's solitary cry for something more drastic, more final: "To die among barbarous rivers." While the elders are concerned with the nourishing and preserving aspects of life, the speaker seeks a form of ultimate liberation or transformation, even if it means obliteration.

The elders' association with "the cold sweats of the moon and the greensward" adds an eerie quality to their homely presence. The "moon," often a symbol of change and illusion, coupled with "greensward" or fertile ground, encapsulates a natural but inscrutable wisdom of age. Yet, despite their age and wisdom, they do not understand the narrator's deeper, existential thirst, offering instead more trivial forms of refreshment and comfort. They present an idyllic landscape where "the water lies at the foot of the willows" and invite the narrator into their "storerooms" filled with earthly beverages. However, these storerooms may also symbolize the limitations and enclosures of conventional life.

The elders also suggest a world without deception, saying, "In the sunshine where there is no deception, what does man need? To drink." This straightforward viewpoint starkly contrasts with the narrator's yearning for something far more complicated. For the narrator, the world is not merely a place for simple satisfactions; it's a stage for profound existential drama.

The poem also incorporates images of mortality, most noticeably when the elders state, "We are back from the cemetery." This evokes a cyclical view of life and death, where the thirst is endless and even the cemetery becomes a place of longing rather than finality. The narrator's desire "To drink all urns dry" shows an impulse to absorb or negate all forms of life and death, to transcend earthly limitations altogether.

"Comedy of Thirst" acts as a stark meditation on the difference between physical and existential forms of thirst. While the elders are content with earthly drinks and simple truths, the narrator is gripped by an unquenchable thirst for something beyond-the ineffable, the transcendent, the final. The tragedy of the poem lies in the unbridgeable gap between these forms of thirst, casting both the elders and the narrator in a comedy of misunderstandings and unmet desires.

POEM TEXT:

We are your Grand-Parents, the Grown-Ups!

Covered with the cold sweats of the moon and the greensward.

Our dry wines had heart in them!

In the sunshine where there is no deception,

what does man need? To drink.

Myself: To die among barbarous rivers.

We re your Grand-Parents of the fields.

The water lies at the foot of the willows:

see the flow of the moat round the damp castle.

Let us go down to our storerooms;

afterwards, cider or milk.

Myself: To go where the cows drink.

We are your Grand-Parents; here,

take some of the liqueurs in our cupboards;

Tea and Coffee, so rare, sing in our kettles.

Look at the pictures, the flowers.

We are back from the cemetery.

Myself: Ah! To drink all urns dry!

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