LOWELL’S POEM “FOR THE UNION DEAD”: THE CHRONICLE OF THE PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE Mohammad Tajuddin Assistant Professor,Department of English Language and Literature International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh Email:
[email protected] Abstract The paper explores the relationship between the public events and the poet’s private issues as presented by Lowell in his poem, “For the Union Dead”. Robert Lowell is the most prolific writer of 20th century America. His poem “For the Union Dead” perhaps, is one of the best poems in the 20th century English literature. The supreme poem of Lowell’s career, it is a brilliant fusion of the public and the private themes. Written in free verse, the poem, through different shifting and vivid images of the past and the present, through telegraphic language or rather compressed sentences, contrasts Lowell’s own debased time with the lively and glorious picture of the ideal past of America. In contrast to the debased and devalued picture of the 20th century America of which Lowell was a part or witness, Lowell presents the picture of an ideal past, upon reflecting mainly on a Civil War Memorial dedicated to a civil war Martyr, Colonel Gould Shaw with his “Niggers” soldiers, who sacrificed their lives during the Civil war (1861-65) for great and noble causes or dreams such as equality, economic and racial freedom and unity of the United States of America. But during Lowell’s time people grew selfish due to growing materialism in the 20th century America. Due to the lack of values and ideals, society and the civilization, as Lowell deemed, turned into a sick and decayed entity which was doomed to annihilation.