Broken Ritualization and the Dynamics of In-betweenness in Matthew Arnold’s “Empedocles on Etna”

Abstract

Matthew Arnold’s “Empedocles on Etna” displays paradoxical relations betweenhuman ritualization, myth making, and poetic creation by way of employing Empedocles, a poetphilosopherof historical origins, which Arnold turns into mythic proportions for his own poeticpurposes. Regardless of Arnold’s original intent, Empedocles becomes the embodiment of anoverwhelming sense of in-betweenness; unable to relate to his own surroundings, he is caughtwithin an interior questioning of the inner-workings of his own thought, which in turn signifies theperpetual in-betweenness of human experience as the paradoxical seedbed of poetic creation,myth, and ritual. Empedocles, by living through his in-between and alienated state also probes thedynamics of in-betweenness, as his own broken sense of ritualization, or identification with amythical world-order represented and countered by Callicles, gives way to a critical inquiry of thein-betweenness of human experience in general regarding the problematic function of inbetweennessfor the sustenance, but more so for the investigation of human meaning-makingmechanisms, such as poetry, myth, and ritual.