Richard Wilbur's "Beasts" expresses nostalgia for a lost Eden, not of childhood, but of unconscious animal existence. Evil is man's alone, created by recognition of suffering and intensified by human efforts to resolve or lessen it. Thus the animals dwell in "major freedom." Wilbur's survey of the chain of being progresses from beasts to man by way of the halfway creature, the werewolf. (One remembers that in traditional descriptions of the chain, man occupies this position.) Reason is now the substitute for transcendent divinity, but it brings with it disintegrating harmony: "major" to "minor"; "concordance" to discord; peace to war; "slumber" to waking, present contentment to unsatisfied yearning.
"Beasts" is unified by pervasive musical imagery. Phrases that first appear to be a series of playful, localized metaphors gradually emerge by the end of the second stanza as a unifying motif and then as a symbolic reminder of the traditional discordia concors metaphor, an explanation for the usefulness of evil in the harmony of the whole creation. The first two stanzas portray the animal world "where though all things differ, all agree." This world is suffused with harmony, a completeness and interdependence between the beasts and nature…. [The] creatures are neither alien nor fearful, even of death.
This is a free excerpt of 205 words. There are 544 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Wilbur, Richard 1921–: Critical Essay by Anne Williams Access Pass.
