Darkness

The reading and discussion of this apocalyptic poetry has me significantly concerned with the personified notion of Darkness. Darkness has been represented across all forms of media in a multitude of powerful forms. I suppose the purpose of this post is to hone in on a better sense of “Darkness” as represented by this week’s authors. In our discussion today, Professor Porter located the idea of Darkness portrayed by Byron as a force that “had no need / Of aid from them,” them being aspects of nature such as waves, tides, moon, air and the clouds (Byron 81-82). As a personification, Darkness “was the Universe,” She exists as an ultimate end-state, the being that exists after our existence ends. In a sense, Darkness here represents the nothingness of what the Universe and existence is after our human existence (and thus our ability to evaluate and explain the Universe) ends. This nothingness highlights our self-made ideas of the Universe, and in the context of the poem, reflects the way we evaluate and justify ourselves by looking at another man’s existence (see fugliness that kills – line 66). It is more difficult for me to pinpoint Thomas Campbell’s notion of Darkness in “The Last Man,” perhaps because it is blurred by religious connotation. He clearly separates Death and Darkness, although “The majesty of Darkness shall / Receive [his] parting ghost”. For Campbell, Darkness seems to be a being or force that can recall man from his existence on Earth: “The darkening universe defy / To quench his Immortality / Or shake his trust in God!”. It seems here that Darkness is the force that will let us live forever, or return us to God. *If someone would like to better delineate between Death and Darkness in the comment section please do*. The last notion of Darkness is explained by Bate in his essay “Living with the Weather”. Bate relies on a more literal interpretation of the term Darkness, and attributes it to literal weather phenomena such as draught, the sunless summer of 1816, volcanic clouds and nuclear winter.