Conversation Galante
Conversation Galante - meaning Summary
Playful Skepticism About Seriousness
The poem stages a brief dialogue between a self-conscious speaker and a witty woman about the moon, music, and poetic seriousness. The speaker offers grand or comic images of the moon and worries that music and poetry only mask emptiness. The woman deflates his pretensions with light irony, suggesting playfulness and skepticism undermine absolutes. The exchange undercuts poetic solemnity and highlights a tension between earnestness and amused detachment.
Read Complete AnalysesI observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon! Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) It may be Prester John's balloon Or an old battered lantern hung aloft To light poor travellers to their distress." She then: "How you digress!" And I then: "Some one frames upon the keys That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain The night and moonshine; music which we seize To body forth our vacuity." She then: "Does this refer to me?" "Oh no, it is I who am inane." "You, madam, are the eternal humorist, The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist! With your aid indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" And—"Are we then so serious?"
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