Texts and Human Experiences: Beyond Metaphor by Gwen Harwood

Today, we’ll be looking at Beyond Metaphor by Gwen Harwood, a newly included poem in the updated HSC Texts and Human Experiences Module. Below is an unpacking of the new syllabus description for HSC Common Module.

From NESA: “Students deepen their understanding of how texts represent individual and collective human experiences. They examine how texts represent emotions and qualities related to these experiences. By responding to a range of texts, students explore how texts provide insight into emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences. They explore the ways texts represent identity, culture, acceptance and growth, invite the reader to see the world differently, and challenge assumptions. Students explore how texts can represent the tension between agency and conformity in our human experience, while examining the paradoxes of motivation and behaviour. Through critical and creative responses to texts, students consider the ways that texts encourage them to reflect personally and challenge their assumptions about the nature of human experience.”

Important things to note:

• individual and collective human experiences
• emotions and qualities related to these experiences 
• emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences 
• identity, culture, acceptance and growth
• invite the reader to see the world differently, and challenge assumptions
• tension between agency and conformity
• paradoxes of motivation and behaviour 
• texts encourage students to reflect personally and challenge their assumptions about the nature of human experience (you need to mention the composer’s impact on the audience/responder at least 2-3 times throughout each body paragraph e.g. Harwood inspires audiences with her reconciliation with mortality or Harwood prompts the audience to question the reductionist views of death

Now let’s explore the poem in depth and see how we can link it to the human experiences module.

By Metaphor by Gwen Harwood

Sometimes I’m gripped by poems so sad and awful 

I could not write them down. They’re like those dreams 

you have of irremediable anguish

but can’t recount, though you were there, you suffered

your lost love’s pain, your child’s unanswered cry.

Only Mozart, perhaps, found the right tone 

to make things bearable. Who was it said 

of the end of the Tractatus: What you can’t say

you can’t say, and you can’t whistle it either. 

Annotations:

Harwood establishes that poetry writing is a deeply personal experience, and sometimes embodies so much trauma that she is metaphorically “gripped” by it, suggesting that she is both captivated by these unverbalised vignettes yet is also confined by them. She emotively states how these poems are “so sad and awful I could not write them down,” revealing how traumatic emotional experiences can prevent one from expressing them in concrete terms. She additionally likens them to “like those dreams/ you have of irremediable anguish/ but can’t recount”, using enjambment to highlight the dissolving boundaries between vivid memories of emotional torment and how these memories are ultimately ephemeral, highlighting the elusiveness of being able to capture pain through art. She attempts to give concrete examples of this torment, listing “you suffered your lost love’s pain, your child’s unanswered cry” to highlight universal human experiences that evoke distress. Harwood alludes to “Mozart [who] found the right tone to make things bearable” to reflect how he is able to convert pain and suffering into his musical compositions, allowing audiences to use his music to solve their pain. She contrasts the ability to convert pain into art by alluding to “Tractatus”, a treatise written by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein whose final line of his treatise is “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” to highlight how ideas that fall outside the boundaries of logical language cannot be verbalised, such as the metaphysical, ethics and values. Harwood mirrors this idea in her concluding line “What you can’t say you can’t say, and you can’t whistle it either” to reveal how some complex experiences are beyond conceptualising through language, and can only be vaguely felt.  

Now consider how it links to the human experience module:

• Individual and collective human experiences: Harwood presents the individual experience of the persona realising how painful experiences cannot be verbalised into poetic art.
• Emotions and qualities related to these experiences: she suffers emotions of anguish when remembering past experiences and not being able to write them down.
• Emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences: This poem uncovers an emotional and intellectual experience of acknowledging how she is unable to verbalise her pain in poetry.
• Identity, culture, acceptance and growth: she accepts the inability of language to convey the depths of human experience.
• Invite the reader to see the world differently, and challenge assumptions: she challenges our assumptions that language can convey the complexities of human experience.
• Tension between agency and conformity: She realises she doesn’t have the agency to convey human trauma.
• Paradoxes of motivation and behaviour: despite wanting to convey human suffering through art, she recognises that she doesn’t have the capacity to due to its ephemeral nature.

Curious to learn more? At JP English, we provide Year 12 students with detailed notes on the prescribed text’s main ideas, context, links to the rubric and form, sample exam questions along with sample essay paragraphs. Additionally, Year 12 lessons are strictly text based and range between 3-6 students so that each student gets detailed support for their school assessments. School assessment help is provided both during class time and outside of class time through our free online marking service. We regularly update our materials so you get the latest exam tips based on our years of experience helping HSC students excel.