The Work Of Poet And Philosoher Archibald Lampman

The Work of Poet and Philosoher Archibald Lampman

Poet and philosopher Archibald Lampman (1861-1899) led not a life of his own, but an existance forced upon him by peers and an unfeeling and cold society.

Dying far before his time, Lampman led a life of misery. He was supported only by a few close friends and his immortal poetry. This essay is founded around one particular of his works but I feel it necessary to discuss the conditions in which he lived in order to fully understand what he was trying to express and/or symbolize. Lampman really hated his day to day life, he lived only for his friends and his works. Trapped in a city for which he had no love, he often reflected his loathing of it in his numerous works situated in cities. A lover of nature,

Lampmans poems often immediately assumed a tone of life, mirth, and a feeling of pleasure and warmth; the others formed a picture of death, hell, and hate all held together by the one problem that is always present, Man.

With few close friends like Duncan Campell Scott, and other that were poetically inclinded, Lampman formed a group through-out collage that met frequently to write and discuss. Close friends like that influenced him to write such popular pieces as "Heat" and "A sunset at Les Eboulements" and yet in his darkest moments we get the main topic of this essay "The City of The End of

Things". Like most great poets, Lampmans moods and feelings had a direct effect on the nature and topic of his poetry. Lampman chief poetry was done after a great joy in his life, or a great sadness. Sadly, Archibald was not a rich man and lived not a happy life, and most of his poetry reflects that. "The City of

The End of Things" was written in a time of great sadness and hate for the world.

Published one year after his death many people fail to realize the direct connection to themselves in the poem.

Lampmans poetry was divided into two moods, saddness and joy, each primarly involed with nature or cities. Let us discuss the tools used in "The City of

The End of Things". Dubed "The Apocalypic City" by Many experts, these mutations of the apocalypic city shows how much Lampmans visions shifted with his moods.

He was passionatly committed to social change, but in extreme he identified redemption with paralyzed oblivion (N.G Guthrie)

The infernal features of the City are so many inversions of the values that

Lampmans saw in natural landscape. Its roaring furnaces, its "ceaseless round"