Muhammad Dirgantara Esa Valentino Am
The Old Stoic; the concluding poem by Emily Bronte (Ellis Bell) in Poems, has been widely read as a portrait of the consummate attainment of the Stoic virtues. Dodds (9), for example, in 1923 contended that the poem is an unequivocal expression of the stoical mood. O'Neill, meanwhile, in 2012 asserted that in the poem Bronte "attempts and succeeds in sustaining a rhetoric of dauntless courage" (371). Tonussi similarly declared in 2021 that the poem "is a real `cri de coeur for liberty'" (281). "'Courage" and "liberty; need-less to say, are keywords within the ethical framework of Stoicism.' Nevertheless, ahhough the poem makes use of such frameworks, and although it is com-monly asserted that the poet's "verse, like her life, was strongly tinged with Stoicism" (Maison 231), the poem is by no means the perfect embodiment of the Stoic ethics as have been often thought throughout the years. I contend that reading "The Old Stoic" the way philosophical readings usually do dilutes its complexity, petrifies its dynamism, and in effect, turns it into a less accomplished and moving work of poetry? Instead, I propose that this poem—whose placement in Poems signals significance—be read as a poetic drama in minia-ture. Moreover, I demonstrate that by paying proper attention to not only its more "prosaic" features but also to its poetic devices, the speaker's progression from a simple and static declaration of the Stoic faith to a more complex and dynamic position becomes apparent. Aside from its placement at the end of Brontë's works of visionary quest in Poems, misrepresentation of the "The Old Stoic" might stem from its descrip-tive tide and first stanza. With bravado, the lyric speaker declares that she has successfully abjured three worldly attachments, i.e., riches, love, and fame? This might give the impression that she has attained the Stoics' cardinal virtues of justice (in not esteeming riches), temperance (in laughing at passion), and wisdom (in her vanishing dream of fame). This impression is pushed further by the change of tenses from the present (hold and laugh) to the past (was): this temporal contrast relegates the speaker's struggle to the past and foregrounds her present accomplishment. This sense of ethical accomplishment is likewise
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