The Meaning of Gray’s ‘Elegy’

* I’m sorry to see that professor Jenijoy La Belle of Caltech, in the midst of a fine discussion of the past popularity and present obscurity of Gray’s “Elegy,” has somehow decided to distort its meaning (Commentary, Feb. 16). The poem is not about the lack of importance of class distinctions “in the greater scheme of things.” Gray doesn’t find the rich and the poor united in death because he sets the poem in a “country churchyard,” where only the poor are buried, while the rich are buried inside, under the church floor.

Gray’s basic distinction is not between poor and rich, but between the anonymous and the famous. These poor people buried in the churchyard may have been nameless and obscure, he says, but they also didn’t commit the sins that the aspiration to fame and greatness brings with it. La Belle may be right that the poem is now itself obscure because our own society is unsympathetic to Gray’s message. That lack of sympathy is, however, not caused by a desire to sweep away the theme of death, but by a preoccupation with the theme of fame. In a world where people parade their intimate lives on talk shows and no toenail clipping of the even vaguely famous is too minute to be ignored by the media, it’s easier to face death than it is to understand why someone would write a poem praising the virtues of being anonymous.

LEO BRAUDY

Leo S. Bing Professor of English

USC

* La Belle’s tribute to Gray’s “Elegy” was an excellent piece. Her linking the “paths of glory lead but to the grave” lines to “the democracy of death” is eloquent. However it should be noted that a different, quite cynical interpretation of those lines has been made by Marxist-oriented critics. They say that Gray’s intent was to persuade the common people, the poor and the downtrodden that they should not envy or resent the rich and powerful because even they who have trod the paths of glory end up in the grave like everyone else. The implication being that whether one is on the top or bottom of the heap in this life is really not important because death awaits us all.

It is a testimony to the greatness and universal appeal of the poem that it can be interpreted to reinforce widely divergent philosophies and views of the human condition.

SYLVAN GOLLIN

Claremont