On Meeting After

Arthur Symons's On Meeting After

Arthur Symons (1865-1945), a significant figure in the late Victorian literary landscape, occupies a unique position at the intersection of Decadence, Symbolism, and early Modernism. His poem "On Meeting After" exemplifies his capacity for emotional precision and psychological depth while maintaining the formal constraints characteristic of late nineteenth-century verse. Though brief in its eight lines, the poem unfolds a complex narrative of encounter, memory, and unspoken emotion that rewards careful analysis. This essay examines how Symons crafts a moment of haunting significance through careful poetic technique, contextualizing the work within his broader artistic development and the fin-de-siècle literary milieu.

"On Meeting After" presents a speaker observing a woman whom he has not seen for some time, noting the profound change in her demeanor despite her ostensibly successful transition into married life. The poem's emotional power derives from what remains unsaid—the nature of the speaker's prior relationship with the woman, the specific memories that haunt her eyes, and the implicit suggestion that conventional "success" in love may conceal deeper emotional complications. Through this deceptively simple scenario, Symons engages with themes of memory, regret, social convention, and the limitations of human connection that resonate throughout his work and the broader literary movement to which he contributed.

Historical and Literary Context

To fully appreciate "On Meeting After," one must situate it within the complex literary moment of the 1890s, when Arthur Symons was establishing himself as both a practitioner and critical interpreter of new poetic movements. The term "Decadent" had gained currency in England, partly through Symons' own critical writings, particularly his influential essay "The Decadent Movement in Literature" (1893), later revised and expanded as "The Symbolist Movement in Literature" (1899). This period represented a transitional moment in English poetry, as the moral certainties and formal constraints of Victorian verse were giving way to more psychologically complex explorations and experimental techniques.

Symons operated as a crucial cultural mediator between English and French literary traditions, introducing many English readers to the work of Mallarmé, Verlaine, and other French Symbolists. From these continental influences, he absorbed a preoccupation with states of consciousness, subjective perception, and the power of suggestion rather than direct statement. "On Meeting After" demonstrates this Symbolist inheritance in its emphasis on the eyes as windows to hidden psychological depths and its reliance on what is implied rather than explicitly articulated.

The poem also reflects the characteristic fin-de-siècle preoccupation with the tension between social convention and authentic emotional experience. Written during a period when marriage remained the expected culmination of romantic relationships, particularly for women, Symons subtly questions whether such conventional "success" necessarily correlates with emotional fulfillment. The poem's suggestion that the woman's marriage ("They loved, they married: it is well!") may coexist with troubling memories aligns with the Decadent tendency to probe beneath the surface of respectable social arrangements.

Symons was also associated with the Rhymers' Club, a group of poets including W.B. Yeats and Ernest Dowson who met at the Cheshire Cheese pub in London during the early 1890s. This context is significant for understanding the poem's investment in formal precision alongside psychological complexity. Despite their innovative thematic concerns, the Rhymers maintained a commitment to technical mastery and traditional poetic forms, characteristics evident in the careful construction of "On Meeting After."

Form and Technique

Though compact, "On Meeting After" demonstrates Symons' technical sophistication and careful attention to formal elements that enhance its emotional resonance. The poem consists of two quatrains with a regular metrical pattern, creating a musical quality that belies the psychological complexity of its content. This tension between formal orderliness and emotional disturbance is central to the poem's effect.

Symons employs a strategy of repetition and variation to create both coherence and development across the poem's brief span. The repetition of "eyes" as a central motif (appearing four times in eight lines) creates a powerful focal point for the poem's concerns. The progression from "Her eyes are haunted" in the opening line to "Her haunted eyes" in the final line creates a circular structure that emphasizes the inescapability of whatever memories possess the woman. This circularity suggests that despite the temporal progression implied by "meeting after," some emotional states persist unchanged or even intensified by time.

The strategic use of punctuation contributes significantly to the poem's rhythmic and emotional qualities. Note how Symons employs exclamation points, commas, and question marks to create variations in pace and tone:

"They loved, they married: it is well! But ah, what memories Are these whereof her eyes half tell, Her haunted eyes?"

The exclamation point following "it is well!" introduces an element of forced enthusiasm or conventional response that is immediately undercut by the "But ah" that follows. The question mark that concludes the poem leaves its central mystery unresolved, emphasizing the speaker's position as observer rather than confidant, able to register the woman's changed demeanor but not to access her inner experience directly.

The poem's careful deployment of enjambment and end-stopped lines creates a rhythm that alternates between flow and pause, mirroring the tension between social continuity and emotional disruption that characterizes the encounter. For example, the enjambment between the first and second lines ("Her eyes are haunted, eyes that were / Scarce sad when last we met") creates a temporal link between past and present states, while the end-stopped fourth line ("That she may not forget?") completes the first quatrain with a question that will hang over the remainder of the poem.

Imagery and Symbolism

Central to "On Meeting After" is the dominant image of eyes as portals to inner experience, embodying what Symbolist aesthetics valued as the externalization of internal states. The eyes function as both literal features of the woman's face and symbolic indicators of her changed emotional condition. They are described as "haunted," suggesting possession by memories that will not release their hold. This spectral language connects the poem to broader fin-de-siècle preoccupations with haunting, spiritualism, and psychological states that resist rational explanation or control.

The term "haunted" carries multiple resonances, suggesting not merely sadness but a more complex condition of being inhabited by the past. Ghosts, after all, represent unfinished business, unresolved emotions, or traumatic experiences that refuse to recede properly into memory. The woman's eyes reveal that something from her past continues to make claims upon her present, despite her apparent movement into a new phase of life marked by marriage.

Significantly, the poem contains no other physical description of the woman or the setting of their encounter. This absence of material detail focuses attention entirely on the emotional exchange conducted through the gaze. The poem's interest lies not in the external circumstances of the meeting but in the psychological revelation it occasions. This economy of imagery aligns with Symbolist techniques of suggestion rather than explicit description.

The poem's most pointed symbolic opposition occurs between the conventional social narrative indicated by "They loved, they married: it is well!" and the counter-narrative suggested by the woman's haunted expression. This opposition creates the central tension of the poem—between public stories of romantic fulfillment and private experiences that may contradict or complicate such narratives. The exclamation point following "it is well" reads almost as forced approval of a socially sanctioned progression, while the woman's eyes tell a different, more complex story.

The Speaker's Position

The speaker's relationship to the woman remains deliberately unspecified but is crucial to the poem's emotional dynamics. The phrase "when last we met" establishes a prior relationship, while the speaker's ability to detect the change in her demeanor suggests intimate knowledge. Yet the speaker positions himself as an observer rather than a participant in her current emotional state, raising questions about his own relationship to the memories that haunt her.

Several possibilities suggest themselves: the speaker might be a former lover, witnessing the aftermath of their relationship from a position of distance; he might be a friend or acquaintance who was privy to some earlier emotional crisis; or he might even be the husband, perceiving a haunting in his wife's eyes related to experiences preceding their relationship. The poem's refusal to specify creates a productive ambiguity that invites readers to consider multiple potential narratives.

The shift from first-person observation ("we met") to third-person narration ("They loved, they married") is particularly significant, suggesting the speaker's exclusion from the woman's current life circumstances. This grammatical distancing enhances the sense of the speaker as outsider, observing but not participating in the conventional narrative of love and marriage that has ostensibly structured the woman's recent experience.

The final question—"what memories / Are these whereof her eyes half tell, / Her haunted eyes?"—positions the speaker as interpreter, attempting to read the woman's emotional state through external signs but acknowledging the incompleteness of this understanding. The eyes "half tell" their story, revealing enough to indicate profound disturbance but withholding specific content. This partial disclosure creates the poem's central mystery and contributes to its haunting quality.

Themes and Philosophical Dimensions

Memory and Its Persistence

"On Meeting After" explores how memories persist beyond the circumstances that created them, continuing to shape emotional experience despite apparent changes in life situation. The woman's haunted eyes suggest that conventional progress—falling in love, getting married—does not necessarily supersede or resolve earlier emotional experiences. This insistence on the continuity of psychological life across external changes aligns with emerging modernist concerns with consciousness and subjective experience.

The poem raises questions about whether certain memories can ever be fully integrated or transcended. The specific nature of what the woman "may not forget" remains unspecified, but the intensity of its effect is clear in the transformation of her gaze from "scarce sad" to "haunted." This transformation suggests that intervening experiences, rather than diminishing the power of memory, may actually intensify it through contrast or new perspective.

Social Convention and Authentic Experience

A central tension in the poem exists between conventional narratives of romantic fulfillment ("They loved, they married: it is well!") and the more complex psychological reality suggested by the woman's expression. This tension reflects fin-de-siècle anxieties about the relationship between social forms and authentic emotional life. The exclamatory "it is well!" reads almost as societal approval of a proper progression, while the woman's haunted eyes suggest a more complicated reality beneath this apparent success.

Symons, like many of his Decadent and Symbolist contemporaries, was interested in experiences and emotions that exceeded or challenged Victorian moral and social structures. The poem's suggestion that marriage—the conventional happy ending—may coexist with haunting memories aligns with this broader cultural project of exploring emotional experiences beyond conventional categorization.

The Limitations of Understanding Others

The poem highlights the partial and uncertain nature of interpersonal understanding. Despite the speaker's apparent familiarity with the woman, he can only speculate about the specific content of her memories. The eyes "half tell" their story, revealing enough to indicate emotional disturbance but maintaining essential privacy. This theme of limited access to others' inner lives would become increasingly important in modernist literature's exploration of subjectivity and perception.

The question that concludes the poem—"what memories / Are these whereof her eyes half tell, / Her haunted eyes?"—remains unanswered within the text itself. This lack of resolution places readers in a position similar to that of the speaker, encountering signs of emotional complexity without access to their specific causes or content.

Biographical Considerations

While biographical readings must be approached with caution, certain aspects of Symons' life and artistic development provide useful context for understanding "On Meeting After." Symons maintained complex relationships with various women throughout his life, including dancers and actresses he encountered in his extensive writing about theater and performance. His poetry often draws on the emotional dynamics of desire, possession, loss, and memory in ways that suggest personal as well as artistic investment.

Symons suffered a severe mental breakdown in 1908, which marked a significant turning point in his career and public visibility. While "On Meeting After" predates this crisis, it demonstrates his longstanding interest in psychological states that exceed or challenge rational control. His sensitivity to nuances of emotional experience, particularly those related to memory and desire, permeates his creative work and may reflect his own psychological makeup.

Throughout his career, Symons worked as both poet and critic, developing theoretical frameworks for understanding the new directions in literature while practicing these innovations in his own writing. "On Meeting After" exemplifies this theoretical-practical integration, embodying principles of suggestion, psychological complexity, and formal precision that he advocated in his critical work.

Legacy and Contemporary Relevance

Though Symons' reputation diminished somewhat in the twentieth century as modernism gave way to later movements, recent decades have seen renewed scholarly interest in his work as a crucial link between Victorian traditions and modernist innovations. "On Meeting After" demonstrates his contribution to the development of a poetic approach that could address complex psychological states while maintaining formal discipline.

The poem's concerns with memory, unresolved emotion, and the gap between social narratives and personal experience remain powerfully relevant to contemporary readers. Its exploration of how past relationships continue to haunt present experience speaks to enduring human concerns with the persistence of emotional attachments beyond their apparent conclusions.

From a formal perspective, Symons' ability to create significant emotional and narrative complexity within a highly compressed form offers a model of poetic efficiency that continues to influence contemporary practice. The poem accomplishes its psychological exploration through suggestion and implication rather than explicit statement, demonstrating how poetic economy can enhance rather than limit expressive power.

Conclusion

Arthur Symons' "On Meeting After" achieves remarkable emotional and narrative complexity within its brief compass. Through careful attention to formal elements, strategic ambiguity, and psychological precision, Symons creates a resonant moment of encounter that opens onto larger questions about memory, connection, and the relationship between social convention and personal experience.

The poem's power derives largely from what remains unsaid—the specific nature of the prior relationship between speaker and subject, the precise content of the memories that haunt the woman's eyes, and the implications of these memories for her current life circumstances. This strategic withholding invites readers into an interpretive relationship with the text that mirrors the speaker's own attempt to read the woman's emotional state through external signs.

As a product of its specific literary-historical moment, "On Meeting After" demonstrates how the innovations of Symbolism and Decadence—particularly their emphasis on subjective experience, suggestion rather than explicit statement, and attention to states of consciousness—were integrated into English poetic practice at the turn of the century. At the same time, the poem's exploration of how memories persist across time and circumstance speaks to enduring human concerns that transcend its particular historical context.

In its sensitive attention to the complexities of emotional experience, its formal discipline, and its evocation of the mysterious persistence of memory, "On Meeting After" exemplifies Arthur Symons' significant contribution to the development of modern poetry and confirms his place as an important transitional figure between Victorian and modernist literary traditions.

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