How has the theme of paternity been crisscrossed by the poem "Marina" and its epigraph?. Explain

 

The theme of paternity:

The poem explores the theme of paternity by focusing on the rediscovery of his lost daughter of William Shakespeare’s Pericles. Marian is the name of the daughter of Pericles who has not seen her right from the birth as he was running away from his enemy facing miseries and threats on land and sea. It is in Act V of Shakespeare’s play, Pericles, Prince of Tyre that Pericles finds out that the dancer and singer performing before him is none else but his daughter. The dancing girl reminds him of his wife Thaisa, he talks to the girl, and is overjoyed to find that Marian is his daughter. Christ is the one being spoken about in "He who was living is now dead". We modern folks are in a similar position as Christ, but instead of being dead, we live in a sort of half-death, as "We who were living are now dying With a little patience".

Epigraph:

The poem takes as an epigraph lines from Act III of Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure, from a speech that is an extended meditation on old age and death. The narrator of Eliot's poem is himself close to death and reflects on his own mortality in terms of the decay of civilization. As in "The Wasteland," Eliot uses imagery of dryness and withering to link the image of the aging fisher king to the decline of the fertility of the kingdom and land. The old man is waiting among the ruins of his own life and western civilization, hoping for a sign of renewal, which is identified with rain. Christ appears as an ambivalent figure, who may be part of both the old world that is fading and the world that might be reborn. Christ is part of the youth of the world, but the present of the poem is one of old age; the second coming of Christ is a distant and uncertain possibility in the poem, that might bring destruction or renewal, the narrator, though, has lost faith, hope, and the strength needed for renewal:

“I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it

Since what is kept must be adulterated?

I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch . . .”

 

Instead, any potential hope for the future must rest in a new generation that can somehow transform or thrive in the fragmented post-apocalyptic modern world. The old man who narrates the poem, though, cannot see forward to the future but only sees the fragments of the past and the deceptions and melancholy lessons of history.