Abstract
This study aims to illustrate how the Arabic romantic song, Shadi and I, sung by the distinguished Lebanon's diva, Fairuz, exhibits a thematic parallelism and aesthetic affinities with William Wordsworth's romantic poem Gray. Despite the historical and cultural boundaries between the two contexts, the romantic poetic tales of the two children, Lucy and Shadi, display common aesthetic elements related to the conception of nature and the celebration of childhood. Both the poem and the song exhibit conspicuous thematic analogous ideas based on imagination and inspirational communion with nature. In other words, the romanticism of Wordsworth's Gray and the romanticism of Fairuz's Shadi and I, demonstrate a striking resemblance. The two poems are rich in allegory, vivid in imagery, simple in language, mysterious, and enchanting in their overall effect. Both are also characterized by subjectivity, individualism, love of nature, a sense of loss, amongst other tenets of Romanticism. They deal with the recurring profound themes of despair, child loss and the sinking into the beauty, grace and mysteries of nature. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s2p466
Highlights
This study attempts to explore the affinity and resemblance of the romanticism of Wordsworth's narrative poem "Lucy Gray" and the romanticism of Fairuz's narrative song "Shadi and I" to one another and to evaluate what is common to both of them.Wordsworth's lyrical poem "Lucy Gray," or as is sometimes titled "Solitude," was written in 1799 and published in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), a collection of poems by Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge, which represents a break with poetic tradition
"Lucy Gray" is a narrative poem that tells the mystic story of a rural child who disappears into the revered nature
Wordsworth wrote in the footnote of the original poem that he was inspired by a popular story of a child lost in a snowstorm: "It was founded on a circumstance told me by my Sister, of a little girl who, not far from Halifax in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snow-storm" (William Wordsworth, pp. 293-294)
Summary
This study attempts to explore the affinity and resemblance of the romanticism of Wordsworth's narrative poem "Lucy Gray" and the romanticism of Fairuz's narrative song "Shadi and I" to one another and to evaluate what is common to both of them. The sweet face of Lucy Gray/ Will never more be seen." One could catch sight of her playmates only, the delicate deer and hares playing "upon the green." The tone of the poem subtly changes after her disappearance as the narrator becomes so preoccupied with the unhappy past reminiscences and with the sad story of Lucy's loss through a snowy night. Lucy Gray's parents sorrowfully looks for her "all that night"; they "Went shouting far and wide" for Lucy Gray, "But there was neither sound nor sight" of her They searched and searched for the small "print of Lucy's feet" in the snow, over the mountainous hills "That overlooked the moor." They searched and wept "all that night" and "At day-break," going "downwards from the steep hill's edge" tracking the "footmarks small" everywhere "through the broken hawthorn hedge,/ And by the long stone-wall;/ And an open field they crossed" and "Those footmarks, one by one" they tracked until "further there were none." Eventually, the sorrowful parents turned "homeward" because Lucy Gray disappeared into the depth of nature mysteriously as she came furtively through it at the beginning of the poem. Many years passed by, but the blithe "sweet Lucy Gray" remains "a living child" for eternity and may be seen "to this day" over the "the lonesome wild," a perpetual dweller of nature: O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind. ("Lucy Gray")
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