20 pages • 40 minutes read
A. E. HousmanTo an Athlete Dying Young
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1896A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context
Housman puts himself in the literary context of the Elizabethan poet and playwright William Shakespeare and the 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine. He cites them as two main influences. As with Housman, Heine focused on loss and unrequited love. Similar to Housman, Shakespeare's speaker addresses a young man: In the first 126 sonnets in his famous sonnet sequence, Shakespeare’s speaker converses directly with a young man or “fair youth.” Like Housman’s speaker in “To an Athlete Dying Young,” Shakespeare’s speaker focuses on the mutable nature of accolades and fortune. In “Sonnet XIII” (1609), the speaker reminds the young man of “that beauty which you hold in lease” (Line 5) or for a limited time.
“To an Athlete, Dying Young” also has much in common with the Romantics, which began near the start of the 1800s. The Romantics emphasized the volatility of human life. Human beings weren’t rational and logical but as tempestuous as their environment. Housman continues the Romantic tradition by revealing the athlete’s precarious situation. If he didn’t die young, any number of elements beyond his control might have damaged him and his identity. Like a Romantic individual, the athlete is fragile and inseparable from his capricious environment.
Critics also link Housman to the Aesthetic Movement, which began around 1860. Here, artists made art not necessarily to deliver a message but to make something beautiful or arresting. In other words, they made art for art, not for the consumer’s edification or the greater good of society. Some of the lines or stanzas in “To an Athlete Dying Young” might seem overly ornate. In Stanza 6, it appears as if the speaker encourages the athlete to hold up his trophy one more time before his burial. Yet the artfulness of the stanza, with its crisscrossing alliterations and allusions, arguably muddies the message. In the context of the Aesthetic Movement, that’s fine. What’s important is the intrigue of the stanza or work.
Authorial Context
Housman’s life allows for a gay or queer reading of the poem. Housman told Moses he was “largely responsible” (quoted in Parker, 70) for the poems in A Shropshire Lad. Viewed through the lens of Housman’s sexuality and deep feelings for Moses, Moses becomes the athlete in the poem who figuratively died young because his alleged rebuff of Housman ended or killed any chance at a romantic partnership. Moses is the “[s]mart lad” who was able to “slip” (Line 9) from Housman, which, in turn, allows Housman to romanticize Moses and “gaze” (Line 26) at him. Housman subverts gender norms and the idea of the male gaze. Instead of objectifying or sexualizing a woman, his target is a man—Moses. Thus, Moses’s beauty is “briefer than a girl’s” (Line 28) or more delicate and fragile than a woman’s appearance. The authorial context shows how the poem can be read as an ode to Moses, a love poem, or as a poem marking the end of an aspect of their relationship. As Adalbert died young, it’s also possible to cast him in the role of the athlete.
The authorial context doesn’t push aside other readings. While modern norms might label Housman gay, such identifiers barely existed in Housman’s time, and even if they did, it's not clear that Housman would embrace them. The themes of fame, beauty, death, and loss transcend sexuality, gender, and time. Whether it’s Shakespeare’s sonnets, Housman’s poem, or a contemporary pop song like Kesha’s “Die Young” (2012), Western culture remains preoccupied with the tumult of celebrity and the thrill of not living very long.
