Norton Anthology of the English literature (Vol. E+F) Poems analysis, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Norton Anthology of the English literature (Vol. E+F) Poems analysis e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Thomas Hardy HAP (1898) Se un qualche dio vendicativo mi chiamasse da lassù in cielo, e dicesse ridendo: “Tu essere sofferente sai che il tuo dolore è la mia estasi, che la tua perdita dell’amor è il profitto del mio odio!”   Allora lo sopporterei, mi stringerei in me stesso, e morirei, indurito dal senso di un’ira non meritata; per metà rassicurato dal fatto che Qualcuno più potente di me abbia voluto causarmi le lacrime che verso.   Ma non è così. Come può succedere che la gioia venga uccisa, e perché sfiorisce la miglior speranza seminata? La Casualità grossolana ostruisce sole e pioggia, e il Tempo che gioca a dadi lancia un gemito per la contentezza…. Questi ciechi giudici distribuito tante benedizioni sul mio pellegrinaggio quanto dolore. ‘Hap is one of Thomas Hardy’s earliest great poems, composed in the 1860s while he was still a young man in his twenties. Its theme is one that would return again and again in both Hardy’s poetry and in his fiction: the seeming randomness of the world, and the ways in which our fortunes (and our misfortunes) are a result of blind chance rather than some greater plan. In summary, then, Thomas Hardy laments in ‘Hap’ (the word ‘hap’ being another word for chance, hence the word ‘perhaps’) that the misfortune he has endured and suffered throughout his life is not the result of some angry and capricious god: he could live with that, he says, since at least then he could attribute his bad luck to some higher power. But no: Hardy could not believe in a god, benevolent or malevolent, and so has no choice but to conclude that the suffering he has endured is a result of blind chance rather than some grand divine plan. Thomas Hardy lost his own religious faith early in life, though he retained a fondness for ‘churchy’ things such as the King James Bible and church architecture, as can be seen in many of his novels. Hardy asks: ‘How arrives it joy lies slain, / And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?’ ‘Unblooms’ is one of Hardy’s negatives which he’s so fond of: hope did once grow and bloom, but now doesn’t simply wither, it unblooms, the word reminding us wryly of the word’s opposite. (Compare the word ‘unhope’ in his poem ‘In Tenebris: I’: how much more piercing is that word than the more straightforward synonym, ‘despair’.) What causes pain and unhappiness in the world? Not some divine power, but ‘Casualty’ and ‘Time’, which are personified in the poem’s concluding stanza, described as ‘purblind doomsters’ – that is, entities which secure Hardy’s ‘doom’ or fate but which, unlike an all-seeing and all-powerful god, do so half-blindly (hence ‘purblind’) rather than with some grand scheme in mind. We aren’t the playthings of the gods; we are at the mercy of random chance, or ‘hap’. In terms of its form, ‘Hap’ is a sonnet which blends the Italian and English sonnet forms. It is divided into, effectively, an octave or eight-line section and a concluding sestet or six-line section, which follows the model of the Italian sonnet, but the first eight lines rhyme ababcdcd rather than abbaabba (the latter being how Italian sonnets rhyme). This makes the poem a curious hybrid of the English and Italian sonnet forms, lending the poem’s rhyme scheme an air of uncertainty: there is order and structure there, but it is difficult to predict as the poem progresses. The poem can be seen as Hardy’s reaction to the basic thinking that underlies Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” which had been published in 1859. Hardy understood Darwin to imply that the mechanism that drove natural selection was mere accident and chance. Although this is generally held to be a misinterpretation of Darwin’s theory, it was one that was widely held and it was also a reason why many Victorians regarded Darwinism as being a version of atheism and therefore to be condemned. Hardy had no wish to reject what he understood to be Darwin’s theory, but he wanted to come to terms with it, and “Hap” is one such attempt. The opening quatrain is headed by “If” and the second by “Then”; thus they can each be regarded as separate clauses of the same sentence that seems to propound a statement of logic. The “If” clause represents a somewhat Old Testament view of “some vengeful god” who delights in causing sorrow to mankind and to the poet in particular. It appears that the poet has had a love affair go wrong: “Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, / That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!” The “Then” clause states that the poet would have accepted the idea that his misfortune was caused by a supernatural force, or would at least have been “Half-eased” by the knowledge that he was the victim of one who was “Powerfuller than I”. His attitude seems to be similar to that of Gloucester in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” when he says: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport”. However, the “volta”, or turning-point of this sonnet presents the reality which the poet now appreciates in the post-Darwinian world, namely that human misfortunes are not willed by the gods but happen by chance. Hardy can only blame “Crass Casualty”, and “dicing Time” which act as “purblind Doomsters”. The point he makes is that these forces are not vengeful like the gods in most mythologies but are completely indifferent. This is clear not only from his choice of adjectives (“crass” being used here to mean “insensitive” or “without thought”) but from the poem’s conclusion: “ … had as readily strown / Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain”. So the question then arises as to which world-view is preferable, that which supposes that the gods are set on destroying man’s happiness, or the cosmos revealed by Darwin in which the forces of nature are mechanical and purposeless and man has as good a chance of happiness as of despair? There is evidence that Hardy stressed to his critics that he was not replacing one source of cosmic oppression with another, and he was in fact quoted as saying that: “The world does not despise us; it only neglects us” (See “The Life of Thomas Hardy”, by Florence Emily Hardy, p. 48). The implication of this is that man has been dealt an even hand and must play it the best way he can. The new order is therefore a bestowal of freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility – there are precursors of Sartrean thinking here. There is a mystery in this poem as to what Hardy meant by “why unblooms the best hope ever sown?” As mentioned above, the misfortune that prompted Hardy’s thoughts sounds as though it was a blighted love affair, but, although Hardy had several lady friends who came and went at this time in his career, there were none who were, as yet, potential marriage partners. This suggests that “the best hope” had more to do with Hardy’s failure to get his poetry into print. Hardy believed himself to be a talented poet and was surprised and disappointed that none of the journals to which sent his work were willing to buy it. Perhaps there is a clue to this failure in the line quoted above – an editor who saw “unblooms” instead of “blooms not” might have considered that this was not poetic enough. It was certainly not a word that Tennyson would have chosen, and Tennyson was at that time Poet Laureate and the leader of poetic taste in England. An aspiring poet who did not conform to the standard set by Tennyson would no doubt struggle to find an audience. “Hap” would probably not strike the modern reader as being anything particularly remarkable. It is well constructed, with a single train of thought that does not depart down any side tracks. The language is well-controlled, with every word making an impact. However, by not being Tennysonian enough, and expressing a view that seemed to side with Darwinism against the religious orthodoxy of the day, Hardy’s surprise at not being able to publish poems such as this should surely not have been as great as it was. CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN (1912) In una solitudine del mare a un abisso dalla vanità umana e dall'Orgoglio della Vita che la progettò, essa è distesa immobile. Nelle camere d'acciaio, che erano le pire thematic imagery is to portray the ship built by men and the iceberg built by nature as predestined to meet as strangers much like the bride and groom in arranged marriages. The final ironic punctuation to this imagery is the very unique description of the collision between ice and steel as an “consummation” of this marriage that was always meant to be. Analysis The metonymy of the “Pride of Life” (3) for mankind with their “human vanity” (2) conveys the disapproval of the speaker, the words “pride” and “vanity” connoting the extravagant features that offend God with their hedonistic qualities. Furthermore, the speaker’s juxtaposition of “the mirrors meant / to glass the opulent” (7-8) to “the sea-worm…grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent” (9) and the “jewels in joy” (10) to lightless masses within the water, reiterates the useless vanity of the ship; only anthropomorphic “moon-eyed fishes” (13) can view and question “this vaingloriousness” (15) now. Thus, the critical tone of the speaker and juxtapositions of vain luxuries to their inevitable fate connects the “Pride of Life” (3) to the “Immanent Will” (18), thereby establishing the conflict of man against God and nature. The speaker’s insidious diction and foreboding tone reflects the opposition between the Titanic and the iceberg, symbolizing the overall theme of the conflict of man against nature and God. The speaker refers to God as “The Immanent Will” that “stirs and urges everything” (18), the word “immanent,” which connotes God, being a pun for “imminent” that reflects the inevitable conflict of the crash of the Titanic into the iceberg. Furthermore, the personification of the iceberg as “a sinister mate” (19) that grew “in shadowy silent distance” (24) characterizes it with assassin-like attributes, the sibilance and imagery conveying the insidious aspects of the crash’s inexorability and unexpectedness for “mortal [eyes]” (26), the metonymies of “mortal eye” (26) and “Immanent Will” (18) representing the bigger conflict of man versus God and nature. The speaker’s foreboding tone reiterates the symbolism of the poem’s conflict by illustrating that mankind’s hubris cannot conquer the omnipotent, thereby establishing the futility of human vanity. The metaphoric marriage of the ship and iceberg within the final section of the poem reiterates the man versus nature conflict, emphasizing that nature and God trump the vanity and hubris of mankind. The speaker personifies the iceberg as “a sinister mate” (21) for “her - gaily great” (22), the antecedent of “her” referring to the Titanic and personifying it as a bride, thereby conveying that they were destined to converge. This is reaffirmed by the pun of “intimate welding” (27), the word “welding” denoting a coming together of materials whereas “wedding” denotes a coming together of people, the double meaning illustrating both the physical Titanic’s crash and the bride Titanic’s marriage to the iceberg. Furthermore, the idea that the iceberg and ship are “anon twin halves” (30) that the “Spinner of the Years” commands to consummate, expresses a theme of predestination whereby the collision was inevitable due to the will of God. Thus, the speaker’s marital metaphor expresses the inevitability of the man versus God and nature conflict, reiterating the themes that fate decides the events of mankind and no amount of vanity or hubris can change destiny. The Titanic is symbolic of the pride and vanity of humanity in opposition to the natural power of God that is exhibited through the iceberg. The ships’ sinking as a result of the iceberg metaphorically illustrates the triumph of God and nature over the pinnacle of mankind’s creation. Thus, by depicting the hubris and vanity of mankind against the omnipotent, the poem serves to demonstrate the inevitable defeat of mankind by divine power in conflict, thereby reinforcing the futility of man against God and nature. Symbols, allegory and motifs - The Title Hardy wrote a poem laden with symbols, metaphor, imagery and a host of other literary devices with which to work out his overriding theme, but any consideration of the most important symbolic attributes has to begin before the beginning: the title itself is a symbolic image rich with meaning. The paradox is amply evidence: “twain” is on archaic word meaning two of something that has taken the connotation of something that has been divided in order to create two from one. Convergence connotes the exact opposite: instead of being separated into two, multiplicities join back together along a single axis. The duality inherent in the symbolic opposites of the poem’s title will be reflect the very structural integrity of the poem’s design. - The Iceberg The first six stanzas are all about the Titanic and the vanity of men who rejoiced prematurely at their overpowering the forces of nature by creating a thing which nature could destroy. The unsinkable Titanic by definition is endowed with the personification of feminine properties: ships are always referred to as “she.” Stanza VII introduces her male counterpart: the iceberg who is more than just a convenient male symbol, but her the mate to whom she is predestined to meet and wed. - Immanent Will The Titanic thus becomes a symbolically feminine as a creation of man. If the iceberg is the groom nervous but patiently awaiting the date of their arranged wedding, would it not to stand to reason it also had a creator? The final line of the sixth stanza answers that question in the form of a force known as the Immanent Will. This force directing the fates is unknowable to man who is nevertheless at is mercy and it is this force that both shaped the ship’s icy mate and direction the groom on his progress to that predetermined time and place at which the couple would meet and marry. The Immanent Force is pure symbol, devoice of form and shape but always lingering nearby in its hidden presence. - A Hidden Monument to Man's Excessive Pride The fifth stanza introduces almost a whimsical element in the form of a fish who stops to stare at the massive ship lying motionless far beneath the world above. Recognizing that the strange structure is hopelessly out of place in his world under the sea, the fish is even moved to question why something that seems to even within its rightful place to be primarily a monument to its creator sense of sense of glorious accomplishment is even down there in the first place. In that moment, the Titanic’s majesty above the waves becomes every bit as foolhardy as its future as ghostly coffin below; its sinking forever a transforming it into a symbol of over the overreach of pride. - The Marriage Consummated The final symbolic metaphor of punctuating Hardy’s thematic conceit of the meeting between ship and ice as a pre-arranged marriage is the image of the collision not in language expressing how the ice ripped the ship in twain, but how their meeting was an inevitable convergence of the symbolic male and female. The iceberg’s penetration through the ship’s steel structure is given the ironic and unexpected description as a consummation by Hardy, a consummation that invisible forces shaping our destiny would not allow to be subverted by human interference. Literary elements - Form and Meter “The Convergence of the Twain” is organized into eleven three-line stanzas that are numbered with roman numerals (I-XI). Furthermore, it follows an AAA rhyme scheme with true end rhymes ending each line of a given stanza. This three-line stanza designation can be seen as symbolic of The Holy Trinity or a biblical number of completion. Also, the true end rhymes of each stanza represent the rhythmic nature of the ocean and symbolize its consistency before, during, and after the Titanic’s existence with the ocean constituting nature. Moreover, each stanza consists of two short lines which are general thoughts and one short line which serves as a conclusion for the two aforementioned lines’ content. The poem does not contain a regular meter which can be representative of nature’s irregularity in comparison to the meticulousness of mankind. Just as the iceberg was unexpected by the methodical engineers of the Titanic, the meter continues the motif of nature being irregular but also paradoxically being consistent (as seen in the rhyme scheme). - Metaphors and Similes The Titanic and the iceberg are joined in a metaphoric marriage in the final stanzas of the poem which represents the man versus nature conflict. The Titanic is personified as a feminine figure whereas the iceberg is personified as a masculine figure with the theme of predestination urging the two of them together in the tragic event. Thus, the speaker’s marital metaphor expresses the futility of the man versus God and nature conflict, reiterating the themes that fate decides the events of mankind and no amount of vanity or hubris can change destiny. - Alliteration and Assonance Alliteration in “The Convergence of the Twain” serves to emphasize humanity’s vanity by drawing attention to key phrases the underscore the ostentatiousness of the Titanic. For example, alliteration highlights the phrase “jewels in joy” (10) and juxtaposes it to “bleared and black and blind” (12), illustrating the ultimate fate of the luxurious items on the ship. Moreover, the sibilance of certain phrases in the poem highlights key details of the Titanic’s situation. The “solitude of the sea” (1) employs sibilance in order to emphasize the loneliness and isolation attributed to open waters. However, sibilance is also heard in “shadowy silent distance” (24) as to evoke a foreboding tone with its sound conveying the iceberg’s insidiousness. - Irony The irony in “The Convergence of the Twain” stems from the theme of hubristic mankind. Despite humanity taking time to decorate and engineer the Titanic to be seemingly unsinkable, it seems that nature created an iceberg that was specifically meant to trump the power of the ocean liner. Moreover, there is dramatic irony in “The Convergence of the Twain” that is caused by the Titanic’s sinking being a historical event; it is known that the ship will be sunk but the passengers do not know this. - Genre Metaphysical Poetry - Protagonist and Antagonist It is ambiguous who is the protagonist and the antagonist in “The Convergence of the Twain.” Humanity and the Titanic can be seen as the antagonist because of their excessive opulence. However, they can also be seen as failed protagonist against the “Spinner of the [Years’s]” (31) absolute and unfair justice. - Major Conflict The major conflict is external and is between man versus nature or man versus God depending on the interpretation. The man made ship of the Titanic was destined to crash into the iceberg based upon the “Immanent Will” (18) as a result of its offensive opulence. Thus, the Titanic is symbolic of the pride and vanity of humanity in opposition to the natural power of God that is exhibited through the iceberg. Therefore, by depicting the hubris and vanity of mankind against the omnipotent, the poem serves to demonstrate the inevitable defeat of mankind by divine power in conflict, thereby reinforcing the futility of man against God and nature. - Allusions The phrases “The Immanent Will” (18) and the “Spinner of the Years” (31) could be alluding to God and his absolute justice as He controls aspects of nature that destroy the sinful opulence of mankind. - Metonymy and Synecdoche The metonymy of the “Pride of Life” (3) for mankind with their “human vanity” (2) conveys the disapproval of the speaker, the words “pride” and “vanity” connoting the extravagant features that offend God with their hedonistic qualities. - Personification The Titanic and the iceberg are personified by being represented as bride and groom. The ship is given feminine qualities and a feminine pronoun and the iceberg is denoted to be her “sinister mate” (16). IN TIME OF ‘THE BREAKING OF NATIONS’ (1917) Soltanto un uomo ch'erpica le zolle A passo tacito e lento Con un vecchio cavallo che incespica e ciondola il capo, Mezzo assonnato, mentre procedono insieme. Non altro che fumo sottile senza fiamma Dai cumuli dalla gramigna; Ma questo mai non muterà nel tempo Sebbene le dinastie tramontino. Laggiù una fanciulla e il suo amoroso Vengono bisbigliando tra loro; Gli annali della guerra si perderanno nella notte Prima che la loro storia muoia. Thomas Hardy wrote ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’ specifically for the Saturday Review, having been asked for an uplifting poem during the First World War. The title is an allusion to the Bible and the Old Testament, and, more specifically, to Jeremiah 51:20: ‘Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms.’ In other words, Hardy’s poem is written in the time of such ‘breaking of nations’ – in a time of war. Hardy’s biblical allusion suggests that war has always been a part of human history: such ‘breaking of nations’ as that being seen across Europe during the First World War is nothing new, and although it seems momentous and horrendous now, while people are living through it, in the grand scheme of things it will make little difference. Indeed, if we summarize the three stanzas of this short poem, we see that this is exactly the meaning of Hardy’s poem. The first stanza matter-of-factly focuses on ‘a man harrowing clods’, i.e. using an implement to break up clods of earth. Rather then wielding the battle axe of the Book of Jeremiah, this man is using an agricultural tool to perform a very different ‘breaking’ of the earth. There is something almost dreamlike about the man’s ‘slow silent walk’ and his ‘old horse that stumbles and nods / Half asleep’. The second stanza, like the first, begins with the offhand word ‘Only’: this is all, nothing to see here. There is ‘thin smoke without flame’ coming up from the ‘heaps of couch-grass’ (a common Voi ci amate quando noi siamo eroi, a casa, in licenza, O feriti in qualche posto importante. Voi amate le onorificenze, credete Che la cavalleria redima dalla disgrazia della guerra. Ci rendete bombe. Ascoltate con piacere, Storie di sporcizia e pericolo teneramente emozionate, Voi onorate i nostri lontani impeti mentre noi combattiamo, E piangete le nostre memorie coronate d’alloro quando veniamo uccisi. Non potete credere che le truppe britanniche “si ritirano” Quando l’ultimo orrore infernale le spezza, e loro corrono, calpestando i corpi terribili – accecati dal sangue. O madre tedesca che stai sognando vicino al camino, Mentre stai facendo le calze da mandare a tuo figlio Il suo viso è calpestato più profondamente nel fango This poem accuses British women of gaining vicarious pleasure from the war, and glorying in the fighting of soldiers abroad. Glory of Women: ‘Glory’ is a religious word; a divine light that shines from the sacred. Something glorious is something worthy of honor, or praise— here, this poem purports to write about the honor or praiseworthiness of women. In this poem, therefore, the ‘Glory of Women’ is considered ironically. Structure ‘Glory of Women’ is a sonnet. The choice of a sonnet is again ironic— sonnets, of course, being traditionally associated with love. The poem is not necessarily a traditionally structured sonnet, however. The ‘volta’, or ‘turn’ of meaning or focus in the poem occurs before the sextet, as is traditional. There is a turn from detailing what Sassoon takes to be British women’s attitudes towards soldiering and war to a more savage imagery that shows the women to be deluded. There is also, unconventionally, an even more pronounced turn that occurs in the final three lines, as the shocking ending turns from British women to the German mother. “You love us when we’re heroes…”: from the first, this poem has a confrontational,  accusatory tone, with the direct address of ‘you’ from a notional ‘us’; the voice of a male soldier. The idea of conditional love here— “when we’re heroes”— is the first sign of an accusation of hypocrisy leveled at women. “Or wounded in a mentionable place”: the suggestion is that female loyalty depends on the wound that a soldier sustains, and that it must not be socially embarrassing for women to relate. “You worship decorations”: the essential superficiality of the feminine viewpoint is suggested by the idea of worshipping “decorations”— another name for medals. “you believe / That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace.”: Sassoon suggests that women romanticize the war, focusing on “chivalry” and honor. The war, meanwhile, is described as being precisely dishonorable: it is a “disgrace”. “You make us shells.”: women, Sassoon suggests, are complicit in the violence, because they are involved in the manufacture of weapons. “You listen with delight, / By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.”: the strong rhythm imparted by the alliteration here— “delight”, “dirt”, “danger”— gives a sense of a compelling parlor narrative. “You crown our distant ardours…And mourn our laurelled memories…”: the most sarcastic lines in the poem, employing commonplace, romantic phrases and suggesting this is the limit of women’s understanding of war. To “crown… distant ardours” means to be the focus of the men’s desires; the “laurelled memories” talked of are the thoughts of the men killed and victorious (thus presented with laurel wreaths) in battle. Note the repetition of ‘our’ here; the opposition of men and women is particularly strongly sustained in these lines. “You can’t believe that British troops ‘retire’”: The beginning of the ‘sextet’ or final six lines of a sonnet. The poem turns from romantic images of men prevalent at home to the true actions of men in war. To ‘retire’, here, is a euphemism for retreat. “Hell’s last horror… Trampling the terrible corpses— blind with blood”: The alliteration here accentuates the vicious and desperate retreat of the men. The aspirate ‘h’ sounds recall the heavy breath of the running men, the harsher ‘t’ sounds the crushing of bones underfoot, while the plosive ‘b’s almost mimics the projection of blood itself. “O German mother dreaming by the fire…”: the sudden turn to the presentation of a German mother at home is surprising for the reader, after the focus on the insensitivities and moral complicity of British women in the war. In some ways she is presented more sympathetically than British women: her “dreaming”, because not elaborated on, doesn’t seem as immediately corrupt as that of British women. “While you are knitting socks… His face is trodden deeper in the mud.”: The final couplet is deliberately shocking. The contrast between the thoughtful domestic scene and the utter savagery of a human head being stood on is horrifying, and meant as a corrective to the illusion that dominates the poem. The brutal truth, Sassoon insists, is a factual corrective to delusion. Isaac Rosenberg BREAK OF DAY IN THE TRENCHES (1922) L’oscurità si sgretola. Il Tempo è lo stesso vecchio druido di sempre, una sola cosa viva scavalca la mia mano, uno strano sardonico topo, mentre colgo un papavero dal parapetto per metterlo all’orecchio. Buffo topo, ti sparerebbero se sapessero le tue simpatie cosmopolite. Dopo avere sfiorato questa mano inglese farai lo stesso con una tedesca, e certamente presto, se ti piace attraversare il verde che fra loro riposa. Sembri ridere nell’intimo mentre superi occhi attenti, belle membra, atleti superbi, meno fortunati di te nella vita, legati ai capricci dell’assassinio, allungati nel ventre della terra, i campi squarciati di Francia. Cosa vedi nei nostri occhi al ferro e al fuoco scagliati urlanti attraverso cieli attoniti? Quale tremito – quale cuore atterrito? Mentre cadono, continuano a cadere, i papaveri con radici nelle vene dell’uomo, il mio dietro l’orecchio è al sicuro – appena un po’ sbiancato dalla polvere. ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ is by one of the First World War’s leading war poets, Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The poem might be analyzed as war poetry’s answer to John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ – because the rat which is so friendly towards the English poet will also cross No Man’s Land and make friends with the German enemy. The rat, that ubiquitous feature of WWI imagery, here acts as a reminder of the English and Germans’ common humanity, even in times of war. In this poem, Rosenberg describes time in the trenches during the war. The darkness of night is fading and the time has come to move on. The only thing moving near him is something alive, a rat. He prepares the parapet's poppy by his ear. He remarks to the rat that it would be shot, if they knew its thoughts. It touches the hands of the English, but also the Germans if it desires to cross the land between trenches. As he describes the rat passing by the soldiers, Rosenberg paints a horrific image, relaying that the rat is more likely to live than the soldiers, who are themselves murderers. They are physically like athletes, but lie in awful conditions in the depth of the earth, there in France. Rosenberg asks the rat what it can see in the eyes of the soldiers, including himself, when the flames roar and the iron cries. He notes that the roots of poppies are in the veins of men, and they are dropping more and more. He regards his as safe though, tucked in behind his ear and coated with white dust. ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ is a quintessential war poem. Yet the style is understated, even offhand: here there is none of the strong moralizing or quietly righteous (never self-righteous) indignation found in much of Wilfred Owen’s poetry. Instead, Rosenberg describes and lets his description (largely) do the work. The poem is written in something approaching free verse, rather than using the rhyme schemes and regular meter found in much of Owen’s work. And the description of the soldier’s encounter with the rat is masterly. In summary, as the poem’s title makes clear, it is dawn in the trenches during the First World War. It’s just an ordinary morning (Time is personified as a druid, suggesting there is something age-old and ancient about the dawn) except that when the soldier on sentry duty plucks a poppy from the top of the trench, a rat suddenly ‘leaps my hand’. Note the missing preposition: the rat doesn’t leap into or onto the speaker’s hand. It is more direct than this, the turning of the intransitive into a transitive verb mirroring the suddenness, and unexpectedness, of the action. The soldier sees the rat as ‘cosmopolitan’ for fraternizing with an English soldier in No Man’s Land. Blithely, the rat will ‘cross the sleeping green between’ – the drawn-out assonance of the ‘e’ sounds suggesting the blissful indifference of the rat, which does not realize it is running around a war-zone. The rat darts between strong, fit, healthy young men, yet – despite the associations between rats and disease and extermination – this rat’s life expectancy is probably better than most of these young soldiers, who may be dead next week, or tomorrow, or later that day. Indeed, many of their fallen comrades already lie ‘Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, / The torn fields of France.’ Rosenberg then wonders what knowledge the rat has of the fear and terror in the soldiers’ eyes. Does it sense their misgivings, their anxieties? Or is it blithely and blissfully unaware of the conflict raging around it? The speaker of the poem then turns to consider the poppy he picked from the trench, and alludes to the idea that red poppies sprang from the blood of dead soldiers. These poppies are dropping and dying here in No Man’s Land – just like the soldiers themselves – while the rat thrives. The final line is a fine example of Rosenberg’s understated style: the red poppy is ‘just a little white with the dust’, but the whiteness resonates with ambiguous symbolism, suggesting death (the pale faces of the dead soldiers?), purity, and ghostliness. But Rosenberg doesn’t force any particular meaning on us as readers: he could simply be making a literal comment about the dust on the poppy, a matter-of-fact statement that should be taken at face value. Wilfred Owen DULCE ET DECORUM EST (1918) Piegati in due, come vecchi accattoni sotto sacchi, con le ginocchia che si toccavano, tossendo come streghe, bestemmiavamo nel fango, fin davanti ai bagliori spaventosi, dove ci voltavamo e cominciavamo a trascinarci verso il nostro lontano riposo. Uomini marciavano addormentati. Molti avevano perso i loro stivali ma avanzavano con fatica, calzati di sangue. Tutti andavano avanti zoppi; tutti ciechi; ubriachi di fatica; sordi anche ai sibili di granate stanche, distanziate, che cadevano dietro. Gas! Gas! Veloci, ragazzi! – Un brancolare frenetico, mettendosi i goffi elmetti appena in tempo; ma qualcuno stava ancora gridando e inciampando, e dimenandosi come un uomo nel fuoco o nella calce… Pallido, attraverso i vetri appannati delle maschere e la torbida luce verde, come sotto un mare verde, l’ho visto affogare. In tutti i miei sogni, prima che la mia vista diventasse debole, si precipita verso di me, barcollando, soffocando, annegando. Se in qualche affannoso sogno anche tu potessi marciare dietro al vagone in cui lo gettammo, e guardare gli occhi bianchi contorcersi nel suo volto, • The second stanza gives us a slightly different setting, but it's still pretty conventional in a romantic sense. This time, the speaker is in a field by a river, chillaxing with his love. It seems like again the speaker is describing his younger self. • He's also still with his love at this point—no break-ups and tears just yet.  • We also notice that there's some ambiguity here since we're not sure where exactly this field or river is. Likely, we're still in the salley gardens since the speaker hasn't indicated otherwise. Lines 11-12 • We have an instance of slant rhyme going on with "river" and "shoulder." (This is in addition to our expected end rhyme of the even lines—"stand" and "hand.") • So why did Yeats toss some slant rhyme into the mix? Well, it seems like the couple described in this poem aren't quite seeing eye to eye. What better way to reenact this disagreement than with slant rhyme? Even on a sonic level, the couple is not quite meshing. Lines 13-14 • The young girl has some more advice for the speaker here. She tells him to take things easy in life (in the same sort of way he should take love easy). In other words, she thinks it's important to avoid putting so much pressure on life and love and to just chill out already.  • She also uses the simile of grass growing on "the weirs." A weir is like a dam or any kind of obstruction that helps to control rivers and streams.  • Notice we have the same sort of simile as the first stanza that uses nature and romantic landscapes to help illustrate the girl's message. Lines 15-16 • The "young and foolish" part is also used as a refrain in the poem since the speaker repeats the phrase in both stanzas to emphasize his point.  • Notice the use of "was" here, too, reminding us that the speaker is looking back to those days when he was a young and foolish boy. • In the end, we have a typical kind of ballad here that's all about love and heartbreak when we're young. Form and meter What makes a ballad like "Down by the Salley Gardens" sound so catchy is the speaker's use of simple alternating rhymes and the use of iambic trimeter. An iamb is just a two-syllable pair where the first syllable is unstressed and the second is stressed (say "allow" and you'll hear one in action). Iambs are super-common in ballads because, when strung together, they create a rhythm that makes a song easy to remember. Take a look at line 2: "my love and I did meet." Hear that daDUM daDUM daDUM pattern? That's three iambs in a row, or iambic trimeter. Rhyme scheme We get glimpses of harmony with the regular end rhymes in the even-numbered lines, but we don't get the same thing in the odd lines. Instead, we get no rhyme or, at times, slant rhyme, like "river" and "shoulder" (lines 9 and 11). In this case, the words only kind of rhyme, approaching harmony but never quite getting there. Gee, does that remind you of any Irish couples hanging out in some pretty gardens at all? Hey, us too. This poem—in both meter and form—gives us a glimpse of perfect unity, but ultimately shows us that it's just not in the cards. Speaker Our speaker sounds a bit nostalgic and reminiscent over his youthful and foolish days of refusing to take good advice in "Down by the Salley Gardens." So we know for sure that he's using a retrospective kind of first-person voice. Idioms like "take love easy" and "full of tears" aren't exactly super-advanced poetic expressions. Rather, they're down-to-earth ways of describing his mistake. We see the speaker in a common, accessible way, a regular Joe who can admit when he made a mistake. And since he sounds so familiar, it's not as if he sounds pretentious or self-righteous about the kinds of lessons he's learned. Instead, it's as if he's looking out for the rest of us by letting us know that being too pushy and eager is totally common when you're a young boy. Setting The natural scenery of the park is a typical place for two lovers to meet (or, in this case, to break up), and so we have a setting that puts us firmly in this the folk ballad tradition. The setting does more than just give us a sense of history and genre, though. If it weren't for the setting, we wouldn't really see the girl's message to the speaker as clearly as we do. She uses the willow trees and the grass growing on the weirs as similes for how the speaker should approach life. So the setting becomes a kind of means towards the end of trying to snap some sense into the speaker. Sound As far as the sounds of the poem itself, the word choices here don't add up to much in the way of alliteration, assonance, or consonance. Instead, it all sounds rather simple and straightforward as the speaker tells his familiar story about young love, heartbreak, and the advice he should've taken. No special sound tricks here Themes - Memory and the past The speaker is busy looking back to his youthful days of yonder in "Down by the Salley Gardens," so we know we're dealing with some ideas related to memory and the past. Since the ballad is about young love and all of the advice kids never take (come on, kids), the speaker's past serves as a lesson to be learned for those who might find themselves in similar situations. But he's not acting high and mighty about what he learned. Nope, in fact he sounds pretty honest about how foolish he was. At the same time, we may come to recognize that the speaker's struggle is just part of growing up. His looking to the past reminds him of how much he's actually come to learn about himself, so maybe it was worth being an epic fail. - Love "Down by the Salley Gardens" gives us a perfect scenario of the picturesque circumstances of love that are quickly countered by the less attractive consequences of heartbreak. Being young and foolish doesn't help matters much either. It's not the corny, natural, romantic details that give us an impression of love in this poem. Love's true power is revealed when we learn that the speaker is full of tears. The girl shows him to the door because she knows he's too immature to be capable of true love. - Youth The speaker of "Down in the Salley Gardens" makes young love out to be a kind of fairytale nestled in willow trees and pretty rivers. But then reality rears its ugly head as he gets too pushy, which inevitably lands him in a pool of his own tears. Still, it's all part of being young and learning some tough lessons that help us to grow up. Every young person at some time has to take a trip on the pain train. Youth involves not having much life experience, so it makes sense that young love in the poem would end in heartbreak. In the ballad, young love is accompanied by some clichéd romantic imagery because young love itself tends to end up as a sort of cliché. NO SECOND TROY (1910) Perché io dovrei rimproverarla perché ha riempito i miei giorni Di tristezza, o perché voleva ultimamente Insegnare ad uomini ignoranti maniere violente, O avventare le strade secondarie su quelle principali, Se soltanto avessero avuto coraggio pari al desiderio? Che cosa avrebbe potuto pacificarla, lei che ha un animo Reso dalla nobiltà semplice come una fiamma, E una bellezza simile a un arco teso, di un genere Che non è naturale in un’età come questa, Alta bellezza e solitaria e molto austera? Che cosa avrebbe potuto fare, essendo quella che è? C’era forse per lei un’altra Troia da incendiare? Yeats published "No Second Troy" in 1916 in the collection Responsibilities and Other Poems, after he had already proposed to Gonne – and been rejected – on numerous occasions. (Hey, you gotta admire his persistence.) Having pursued her for over a decade and dedicated many of his poems to her, we think it's fair to say that Yeats was obsessed with her. In this poem, however, Yeats's attitude is somewhat harsh, as he compares Gonne with the infamously beautiful – and notoriously mischievous – Helen of Troy. Helen is a legendary character from Homer's Iliad. Like Maud Gonne, Helen was considered one of the most beautiful women of her age. She was also partly responsible for starting the Trojan War, which eventually led to the burning of the great city of Troy. With the comparison to Helen, Yeats is accusing Maud Gonne of being partially responsible for the violence in revolutionary Ireland, just like Helen was partially responsible for the Trojan War. According to "No Second Troy," she "taught to ignorant men most violent ways.” Summary Lines 1-2 • The first question begins with "Why," and more specifically, "Why should I blame her?" • Right from the start, one thing is clear: the speaker does blame "her." Otherwise, he would not be wondering why he does, or should. • The speaker blames Maud Gonne for filling his life with unhappiness. We can only assume that the reason for his "misery" is that she rejected him – again and again. Lines 2-3 • Yeats is talking about the role Maud Gonne played in encouraging violent, revolutionary activities in Ireland during the movement for independence. • Unlike the poor, simple souls she encouraged, Gonne was an educated, intelligent woman from a wealthy background. From Yeats's perspective, she should have known better. She doesn't have "ignorance" as an excuse for her radical beliefs. • This poem was published in 1916, the same year as the violent Easter Rising in Ireland, in which Gonne and her husband played a role. Lines 4-5 • The speaker accuses Maud Gonne of class warfare, trying to make poor, simple people, who live in the "little streets," rebel against the more powerful people who live on the "great" streets. • Yeats was a conservative dude, and he didn't have as much faith in the spirit and character of the commoners as Gonne did. The common folk have the "desire" to overthrow British rule, but they don't have the "courage" to carry out the deed. They are too impoverished and uneducated. Lines 6-7 • The beginning of the second question says, in effect, "She couldn't have turned out any other way, so what are you getting your undies in a bunch about!” • Maud Gonne's state of mind is captured by the word "fire," as in "fiery." She can't be peaceful with a mind of fire. Lines 8-9 • Yeats moves from discussing Gonne's mind to discussing her appearance. Her beauty, like her emotions, is simple. He compares her appearance to a "tightened bow" and says that her kind of beauty is old-school; it belongs to another age. • The bow is often associated with ancient Greece, and because we know how much Yeats like dropping references to the good old Greeks, we can say pretty confidently that the "age" in which Gonne's beauty would seem most natural would be oh, say, a couple thousand years ago on the Mediterranean coast. Line 10 • There he goes with more description of Gonne's noble beauty. • She is "high," like someone haughty or of "high" birth. • She is a "solitary" person, the kind of person who is confident in her own worth and does not need to be validated by others. • Finally, she is "stern," or unyielding. Not just stern, but "most stern.” Line 11 • This line is strangely vague and general. Also, the syntax (the order of words) is gnarled (nodosa) and complicated with all those verbs: "could...have," "done," "being," and “is." • He decides that there is no point guessing about what could have been and blaming Maud for the way she was born and raised. Line 12 • The mention of Troy ties together the little hints about how Maud Gonne is like a character from an ancient Greek epic. In this line, he compares her directly to the famous Helen of Troy. • The speaker is saying that, if there had been another Troy for Maud to burn, she would have burned it. But since there wasn't, she had to go around making trouble for lovesick poets and stirring up violent protests against the British. con un cenno del capo o con parole cortesi e senza senso, o mi indugiavo un attimo, dicendo altre parole cortesi e senza senso, e prima di andarmene pensavo a una storiella ironica, a una piacevolezza per divertire un amico accanto al fuoco, al circolo, sicuro che anche loro come me vivevano camuffandosi da giullari; ogni cosa è mutata, mutata interamente: una terribile bellezza è nata. I giorni di quella donna trascorrevano in ignorante volontà di bene, e le sue notti in argomentazioni, fino al punto che la sua voce si faceva aspra. E quale voce più dolce della sua, quando giovane e bella, dietro la muta dei bracchi cavalcava? Quest'uomo un tempo aveva diretto una scuola e montato il nostro alato cavallo; e quest'altro aiutante ed amico, stava esprimendo appena la sua vera statuta; alla fine avrebbe anche potuto giungere alla fama, tanto la sua natura si sarebbe detta sensibile, e così dolce e ardito il suo pensiero. E quest'altro lo avevo immaginato uno zotico ubriaco e vanitoso. Aveva inferto la più amara offesa a qualcuno che avevo in fondo al cuore, e tuttavia lo enumero nel canto; anch'egli ha rinunciato alla sua parte nella nostra moda casuale; anch'egli a sua volta è mutato, mutato interamente: una terribile bellezza è nata. Cuori che hanno un unico proposito estate e inverno sembrano fatti di pietra per incantesimo, così da ostacolare la corrente viva. Il cavallo che giunge dalla strada, il cavaliere, gli uccelli che si schierano da nuvola precipite ad un'altra nuvola, minuto per minuto si tramutano; sopra il ruscello l'ombra di una nuvola muta minuto per minuto; e uno zoccolo scivola sul bordo e un cavallo vi cade diguazzando; e le folaghe che hanno lunghe zampe si tuffano, e le femmine chiamano i maschi; vivono minuto per minuto: la pietra resta al centro. La troppo lunga rinuncia rende di pietra il cuore. Oh, quando sarà abbastanza? Sarà il cielo a decidere, a noi compete solo mormorarne i nomi come una madre che nomina il suo bimbo quando alla fine il sonno si è posato su quelle membra or ora senza freno. Cos'è se non la notte che precipita? No, non la notte è questa, ma la morte; e fu una morte inutile, alla fine? L'Inghilterra può forse tener fede alla parola data, in ogni caso; noi conosciamo i loro sogni; basta sapere se sognarono e son morti; che importa se fu un eccesso d'amore a sconvolgerli fino alla morte? Ecco, lo scrivo in versi - Mac Donagh e Mac Bride con Connolly e Pearse ora e nei tempi che verranno, in ogni luogo in cui si indossi il verde, sono mutati, mutati interamente: una terribile bellezza è nata. W.B. Yeats's "Easter, 1916" is all about a historical event called the Easter Uprising, which happened in Ireland on Easter of (you got it) 1916. Basically, the British promised the Irish that they would give them free rule over their country in 1914. But then a little scuffle known as World War I broke out, and the English totally backed down on their promise, telling the Irish that they'd get around to the whole home-rule thing when the war was over. Well, some Irish folk didn't want to wait around for the war to end, so they banded together and seized control of the country on their own. The English were, shall we say, not happy. They brutally put down the uprising and executed a bunch of the uprising's leaders. On the one hand, Yeats feels like he's above all the common, less-educated folk who fought in the Easter Uprising and died terrible, somewhat futile deaths. On the other hand, he recognizes that their sacrifice might go down in history more than his poetry will. Basically, he's a little uncomfortable with his upper middle-class comfort and sense of superiority. Summary Yeats starts the poem off by talking about the dudes he runs into in the street when the shops and offices are closing up around Dublin. Next, Yeats breaks off and starts going through a list of all the people who were involved with the Easter Uprising of 1916. As he continues, Yeats compares these fighters and their unchanging dedication to a rock that sitting at the bottom of a stream. The stream and the nature around it keep changing, but the stone remains unmoved. At the end of the day, Yeats isn't sure how much he admires the people he's talking about. But he definitely has learned to respect them and the sacrifice they made for something they believed in. Yeats closes the poem by repeating the phrase "A terrible beauty is born," which he's mentioned several times in the poem. Basically, this phrase closes the poem by suggesting that even though the deaths of the Easter Uprising are terrible, history tends to remember bloody battles and self- sacrifice more than anything else. So with regards to being remembered, there's kind of a terrible beauty in the death that came out of Easter, 1916. - Lines 1-4 At this point, we're still not totally sure what Yeats' title means for this poem. All we know is that he tends to run into people he knows (or more likely, people who know him) at the end of the business day in Dublin. Not much to go on so far. - Lines 5-8 Here, Yeats takes his snobbery up a notch and mentions how he's passed these people with a mere "nod of the head" or maybe some "polite meaningless words." You know, like when someone asks you how you're doing, but you know they don't really care about the answer. The repetition of the phrase "polite meaningless words" also helps us realize just how much Yeats finds his interactions with people repetitive (and probably boring). But hey, at least the guy has the good will to "linger awhile" with some of these people. There's nothing really all that poetic about what he's saying in these opening lines, just like there's nothing poetic about the boring conversations he's talking about. - Lines 9-12 While he's talking to these people, Yeats will sometimes think of a funny story or "mocking tale" that he can tell that will make people happy around the fireplace at a nearby club or “bar." One thing that does happen in these lines, though, is that Yeats' diction starts to get even folksier than it is in the beginning lines. We're thinking this might be ironic on Yeats' part, as he is starting to use silly sounding words to help show how unimportant these interactions are to him. - Lines 13-16 By associating a silly life with the kind of "motley" clothes people wear, Yeats is also using a little device called metonymy. Basically, he's playing on our usual associations with clown clothing to make us think of his entire social life as silly and pointless. This is another image Yeats uses to say that he always assumed these people lived in a world where you went to work, joked around at the bar, and called it a day. Apart from the fact that both of these words are very different in tone from the rest of the first stanza, they also create a lot of conflict right off the bat by being an oxymoron. By definition, beauty is supposed to be a good thing. So what are we to make of a guy who refers to a certain type of beauty as "terrible?" That's a question that only reading the rest of the poem can answer. It's also a little technique called foreshadowing. - Lines 17-20 It's not totally clear which woman Yeats is talking about here. But some quick research tells us that it's probably the Countess Constance Markievicz, who was one of the main people behind the Easter Uprising. By using the phrase, "her voice grew shrill," Yeats is also bringing us back to one of his favorite poetic techniques—metonymy. When he says that the woman's voice grew shrill in these lines, that's not all he actually means. What he's saying is that this woman's involvement in politics has taken away her feminine beauty, which Yeats symbolizes here through the idea of a once-beautiful voice getting shrill over time because its owner won't stop arguing about politics. - Lines 21-23 By using the metonymy of a "shrill voice" to show an ugly change, Yeats seems to be saying that the Countess was once a young and beautiful woman who did beautiful rich- people activities like rabbit hunting. But as she got older, she got involved in the dirty world of politics and her voice got shrill. Yeats here isn't exactly advocating for women to enter politics. It seems that he prefers them young, rich, beautiful, and away from the public sphere. Not the most forward-thinking message, but there you have it. - Lines 24-30 Now Yeats is talking about some guy who kept a school and "rode our winged horse.” We need to look this dude up to find out that his name was Padraic Pearse. Like the Countess, this guy was one of the leaders of the Easter Uprising in Ireland. And yes, the dude was the founder of a boys' school in Dublin and he was also a poet. Yeats throws in the mention of the "winged horse" because this mythical beast (or Pegasus) was the official animal of the poet in Greek myth. Now that's some solid symbolism going on there. Next, Yeats mentions "this other" dude, who was a helped and friend to Pearse. The guy Yeats is referring to is probably Thomas MacDonagh, who was a poet and dramatist who also helped with the Uprising. In this section, you can also see Yeats starting to get a little more obvious with some of the rhymes he's been throwing down in this poem. Throughout these lines, Yeats keeps saying things like "That woman" of "this man." It sounds like he's actually holding out an old photograph and pointing at each of these people as he describes them. This has the effect of showing us that these people lived only as memories because they're now dead or in prison for life. - Lines 31-35 The guy Yeats is talking about here is Major John MacBride, a man who was once married to Maud Gonne, who just so happens to be the woman Yeats spent most of his life obsessing over. Yeats clearly resented this guy for being married and unmarried to Maud. But still Yeats overcomes his sour grapes and says "Yet I number him in this song," meaning that he's willing to give MacBride his due for fighting for the Irish cause. - Lines 36-40 The fact that Yeats calls the Uprising a "casual comedy" suggests that he still isn't sold on whether or not the whole thing was worth the trouble. The phrase "casual comedy" also involves some alliteration that makes it sound even more, well, casual. It's almost verging on some of the silliness that Yeats puts in the first stanza of this poem. Yeats closes the stanza with everyone's favorite oxymoron by writing, "A terrible beauty is born," which he'll repeat a couple more times in the poem. In fact, you could just go ahead and call this phrase a refrain. In this context, he seems to be suggesting that even though the bloodshed of the Uprising was terrible, there's something beautiful about the sacrifice that people were willing to make for something they believed in. - Lines 41-44 In these lines, he compares hearts that have only one purpose only to a stone that splashes into or "troubles" the living stream of history. He's using a device called synecdoche to use people's hearts as symbols for the entire person. Yeats' language is different here than earlier in the poem. By comparing the fighters to a rock, he's giving them a sort of respect that he hasn't earlier in the poem. "Transformed utterly" (39), Yeats means that the dead fighters have succeeded in making Ireland a better place. Deep down, Yeats admires the dead fighters because he thinks people will remember them longer than they will remember him. - Sacrifice While he may not be sure about whether he admires the Irish fighters, Yeats can definitely get behind the fact that these people totally sacrificed themselves for something they believed in. Ultimately, Yeats thinks that the sacrifice of the Irish fighters was foolish, since all they had to do was wait for the war to be over before Ireland got its independence. Yeats admires people who sacrifice themselves for a cause because this is something he'd never do. - Immortality Throughout "Easter, 1916," Yeats has a way of talking about the dead Irish fighters as though they'll be able to live forever because of their sacrifice. But on the other hand, he also recognizes that they're dead and gone, possibly for no good reason. The question of immortality is one of the main places in this poem where you really see Yeats struggling to make sense of what has happened in the Easter Uprising. On the one hand, it showed the heroism of the people who fought and died. On the other hand, it was a strategic nightmare that didn't accomplish anything in the long run. SAILING TO BYZANTIUM (1927) Quello non è un paese per vecchi. I giovani l’uno nelle braccia dell’altro, gli uccelli sugli alberi – Quelle generazioni morenti – intenti al loro canto, Le cascate ricche di salmoni, i mari gremiti di sgombri, Pesce, carne, o volatili, per tutta l’estate lodano Tutto ciò che è generato, che nasce, e che muore. Presi da quella musica sensuale tutti trascurano I monumenti dell’intelletto che non invecchia. Un uomo anziano non è che una cosa miserabile, Una giacca stracciata su un bastone, a meno che L’anima non batta le mani e canti, e canti più forte Per ogni strappo nel suo abito mortale, Non v’è altra scuola di canto se non lo studio Dei monumenti della sua magnificenza E per questo ho messo vela sui mari e sono giunto Alla sacra città di Bisanzio. O saggi che state nel fuoco sacro di Dio Scendete dal sacro fuoco, scendete in spirale, Come nel mosaico d’oro d’una parete, E siate i maestri di canto della mia anima, Consumate tutto il mio cuore; malato di desiderio E legato ad un animale mortale, Non sa quello che è; e accoglietemi Nell’artificio dell’eternità. Una volta fuori dalla natura non prenderò mai più La mia forma corporea da una qualsiasi cosa naturale, Ma una forma quale creano gli orefici greci Di oro battuto e di foglia d’oro Per tener desto un Imperatore sonnolento; Oppure posato su un ramo dorato a cantare Ai signori e alle dame di Bisanzio Di ciò che è passato, che passa, o che sarà. Our speaker decides that the old country is for the birds. Literally. It’s obsessed with the latest trends. Whatever’s newest and prettiest gets all the attention. There’s no interest in things that might endure for generations. Luckily, our speaker’s a resourceful guy. He’s so ready to get the heck outta Dodge that Byzantium (a country nearby) starts to sound pretty appealing. It sounds so appealing, in fact, that he sails there. Byzantium is a holy city, which works out well for our speaker. In fact, he’s expecting a revelation. Primarily, he’s hoping that the wise folk in Byzantium will consume his soul. Once in Byzantium, our speaker starts thinking about death. In Byzantium, death becomes something that can be thought about realistically. In fact, once he starts reflecting about death, he actually begins to figure out ways to commemorate life. According to the speaker, the best way to commemorate life is art. He finally decides that art becomes a way to lodge the soul in a new "bodily form." Art can, however, bear witness to the past. - Line 1 "That" country sucks for old people. As far as we can tell, then, our speaker must be an old person. After all, if it’s so good over there for the young, then why would our speaker leave? More importantly, the first line of the poem lets us know that our speaker seems to be a pretty opinionated sort of guy. He seems perfectly happy to let us travel down the road of his thoughts…just don’t expect too many signposts along the way! - Lines 1-3 First we’re reading about young things and pretty birdies. Suddenly, however, our speaker tosses in a casual reference to death. Not just one death: lots of death. Whole flocks of birds and generations of young lovers. Yeats’s use of the word "generations" in line three is particularly provocative. Well, the poem was published in 1928. It’s smack in the center of a literary movement called "modernism." Here’s why that’s important to us, though: modernism was partially born out of the devastating losses and tragedy of WWI. After 1918, the world changed. Disillusioned by the senseless violence and seeming futility of war, the generation of young men and women who came back from the battlefields became pretty cynical about the whole state of their society. Back to our poem, then: line 3 seems to be deliberately invoking the language of wartime losses. - Lines 4-6 Our speaker insists upon the natural world in this stanza. Humankind (that would be "flesh" here) is sandwiched between "fish" and "fowl." We’re just like the birds and the fishies. We live, and then we die. What distinguishes people from animals? Well, in "that country," at least, not much. - Lines 7-8 Yeats weaves a deliberate set of artistic references into this line. He wants to compare living in the moment to thinking about something long-lasting (and even immortal). To do so, he compares music to sculpture. Music sounds really great…for about three minutes. Sculptures, however, are around for a long time. Comparing life to "music" may sound sweet, but it’s actually a pretty damning critique. If you’re too absorbed in the here and now, you’ll never be able to think about things that might matter more than your petty little problems. - Lines 9-11 Once you get done with all that lovin’ and livin’ that young people do, you’re nothing more than a bunch of clothes on an old, wrecked frame. It’s not a pretty picture – unless, of course, you have a brain (or, in this case, a soul). Using personification to allow the soul itself to "clap its hands and sing," Yeats introduces a teeny tiny bit of distinction between the soul and the body. The body, remember, is just a stick with some clothes on it. The soul, however, seems to almost have a body of its own. - Lines 11-12 When he (or she) thinks about the soul and its singing, he’s focused on the way that songs come out of aging and suffering. In other words, the older you get, the louder you should sing. Our speaker’s talking about living out loud – letting your soul stay alive and kicking, even if your body’s a "tatter," or disintegrating. - Lines 13-14 What we do know, however, is that the speaker seems pretty upset about the fact that folks spend most of their time talking and thinking about how great they are. Sculptures and monuments = good. Sculptures of yourself = bad. - Lines 15-16 Now the speaker has actually arrived at Byzantium. It’s a holy city. Today we’d call it Istanbul In 1928, Yeats would have called it Constantinople. Byzantium was once the center of Greek art and culture. Interestingly, Yeats chose to use the ancient name of the city, Byzantium, instead of its Roman name, Constantinople. Using the Greek name for the city allows Yeats to affiliate his speaker with Greek arts and values. - Lines 17-18 The whole poem seems to have shifted from nature and the body (that cycle of living and dying that we saw in stanza one) to something more mystical. The art has changed, as well. Using gold to metaphorically describe the sages allows our speaker to allude to the precious nature of the sages, as well. When we say that the sages are "precious," we mean that they’re valuable. Like gold. Moreover, a mosaic is a piece of art. the nifty thing about mosaics is that they create a beautiful picture out of lots of small parts – sort of like the way that a good society is created by the collaboration of lots of individual people. The sages aren’t the end-all and be-all of Byzantium. They’re just a small (and beautiful) part of a pretty awesome whole. - Lines 19-20 So our speaker asks the sages to swirl around him and become the "singing masters" that he couldn’t find back in his old country. In other words, he’s looking for a spiritual rebirth. Note the long "i" sounds in the words "fire" and "gyre." There’s a super-spiffy technical term for repeating vowel sounds in a segment of poetry. It’s called "assonance." Assonant words tend to blur together in our ears, almost as if the vowels are echoing each other. Go ahead: read line three aloud. Notice how the "i" seems to carry over? That’s intentional – it allows the word "fire" to extend its reach over the entire line (almost as if it’s taking the line over). It’s consuming. Just like an actual fire. - Lines 21-23 So the speaker’s still having a conversation with the sages. If the sages come out of fire, maybe they can work like fire, consuming the speaker’s heart. That’s what he’s hoping for, at least. Total destruction (and a total make-over). The problem, it seems, is that our speaker’s heart is just too attached to his body. It’s a natural reaction. We’re all pretty attached to our bodies. After all, they’re the only way that we know the world. Attached to a body, our speaker’s heart can’t break free and exist on its own. That, my friends, is a problem. - Lines 23-24 Why is eternity an "artifice?" And why does our speaker want to be a part of it? Art is a form of artifice. It’s not part of the natural world. It’s made up – and that means that it doesn’t have to participate in all those endless cycles of birth and death that our speaker hated so much, earlier in the poem. Having your soul gathered up into your art might not sound like a pleasant experience, but it may just be the only way that our speaker can transcend his own body and become part of a larger whole. - Lines 25-26 As our speaker decides, the best way to preserve part of yourself is to lodge that part in "unnatural" things like art. Right now nature’s got him locked in her claws; after death, however, he’ll be free to return as something else. - Lines 27-29 Once he’s imagined himself as an artwork, our speaker spends these lines clarifying exactly what sort of art he’d like to be. Notice at this point that he’s alluding to the gold that went into the sages’ mosaic in stanza three. Now, however, our speaker seems to be imagining himself as a sculpture of some sort. Then again, maybe our guy’s imagining himself in his own mosaic, instead. And here’s where his imagination takes over. Because art sticks around for such a long time, it can have many audiences. It’s a weird sort of popularity, but our speaker seems to want it. He imagines his audience as a "drowsy Emperor.” - Lines 30-32 Moving deeper into a reverie about his future form, our speaker loops back to the first stanza of the poem. Envisioning himself "set upon a golden bough," our speaker seems to suggest that he’d like to be a bird. Unlike the birds of nature, however, which fall in "dying generations," he’ll be a golden bird. Nature transforms into art over the course of the poem. This time, though, the birds actually have someone to listen to their song. The "lords and ladies of Byzantium" will turn to the golden bird as a touchstone, something that allows them to connect the past, present, and future. Because art lasts for all time, it can be relevant to all ages. That, friends, is immortality. Symbolism Nature Yeats begins his poem with a description of nature in all its youthful glory. Anything that starts out this perfect, however, can’t stay that way for long. Death is the dark underbelly of all the delightful life that the speaker references. As he ages, death seems to occupy more and more of his time. Mimicking his need to escape thoughts of dying, the poem shifts from a contemplation of nature to a discussion of art as it progresses. Art As old age approaches and nature becomes threatening, art starts to sound like pretty good stuff. For one thing, it doesn’t age (like his body will). For another, it doesn’t ever go out of circulation (again, like his body will). Regeneration In this poem, regeneration takes on huge spiritual overtones. The artwork and the work of human life become one and the same as our speaker tries to figure out how to break through the boundaries of human experience. Spirals and Circles If you were walking in a circle, you’d follow the same path forever. You end up right back where you started, and then you start walking again. If you walk in a spiral, however, you’re going places. You might be moving upwards or outwards. Either way, you’re seeing new things and making new tracks. For Yeats, the cycle of natural life is an endless circle. Form and Meter Divided into four eight-line stanzas, "Sailing to Byzantium" takes on a sort of formal regularity. It’s actually written in ottava rima. Ottava rima was traditionally an Italian poetic form. It was usually • Gabriel's still feeling a little jarred by Lily's jab about men, which he thinks about as he waits to go into the room where all the dancing's happening. Clearly this guy does not know how to have fun at a party. • He's written a speech, and he takes it out to look at it and decide if it's too highbrow for everyone. He decides that "his whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure." (The Dead.29). Shmoop generally thinks formal speeches at raucous shindigs are almost always a mistake, but hey, who are we to judge? On with the dancing. • Not so fast. Gabriel's wife and his two aunts, Julie and Kate, come out of the room, and we get his impressions of the aunts. He sees that Julia seems older and more "grey," while Kate "was more vivacious" (The Dead.30).  • Gabriel is the son of Julia and Kate's older sister, Ellen, who had married a man named T.J. Conroy. Ellen's dead now.  • The conversation turns to Gabriel and his wife Gretta's plans for after the party. Last year Gretta caught a cold, so they've decided not to go straight back to their house in the suburb of Monkstown. Instead, they'll be shacking up at the Gresham hotel tonight, because they have a babysitter they can trust.  • Aunt Kate says that Lily seems to be acting strangely recently.  • Here comes worry number two. Freddy Malins arrives, and Gabriel heads downstairs to make sure the guy's not sloshed. Back upstairs, several people come out into the hall after the dance to get drinks, including Mr Browne, who brags that he's a ladies man until the three women he's with start to think he's being creepy. • Finally we get to cut a rug. It's time for quadrilles, a French dance.  • Freddy's drunk. and pretty happy about it, "laughing heartily in a high key" (The Dead.89). He rubs his fist into his eye when he's like this. It's just sort of a thing.  • He runs over to Mr Browne, who has already gotten the message not to let him drink. He pours Freddy a big glass of non-alcoholic lemonade, but Freddy's too interested in repeating a story, laughing, and rubbing his eye to bother drinking it.  • Mary Jane plays a piece on the piano that's too fast and lacks melody, and not even Gabriel can appreciate it.  • Gabriel sees an embroidered artwork on the wall, and it reminds him of his own mother's gift to him, many years ago, of an embroidered waistcoat (it's like a vest).  • Then he thinks of his mother's reputation as the smartest sister, and of how her sense of "the dignity of family life" was responsible for Gabriel's brother's success as a priest and his own completion of a college degree (The Dead.100). We get it, Gabe. You're awesome. • The memory ends with his recalling how his mother had not liked Gretta even though Gretta had taken care of her just before she died. Let's just say this family has its share of dysfunction. • Gabriel dances with Miss Ivors, who picks on him for being the columnist who signs his name "G.C." in a conservative, anti-Nationalist paper called The Daily Express.  • Gabriel is ashamed but doesn't admit it. He thinks to himself that writing a book review for a conservative paper doesn't make him conservative, and that it has more to do with his love of books, but that argument isn't fooling anyone. • She's still being friendly as they keep dancing, and says she liked Gabriel's review of the poems of Robert Browning. So that's cool, but doesn't really make up for her mean comment. • She asks if Gabriel and Gretta will come along for a vacation to the Aran Isles, but Gabriel sheepishly says he's planning to go to Europe, as he does every year, for a bicycling trip. She retorts, "And why do you go to France and Belgium […] instead of visiting your own land" (The Dead.125). Now she's getting a little out of line.  • They argue about whether Irish is a language Gabriel should know, and he disagrees. Then he goes totally postal and says, "I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!" He stops there; he's already too upset (The Dead.131). Looks like this guy's having a bad night. • Miss Ivors is still dancing "warmly" with him, but takes the opportunity to call him "West Briton" one more time before the dance is over (The Dead.135, 138).  • While Gabriel talks with Freddy Malins's older mother, who is visiting from Glasgow, Scotland, he's still preoccupied with Miss Ivors's remarks, and feels that they were totally out of line. "She had tried to make him ridiculous before people" (The Dead.139).  • Gretta comes over and has noticed that Gabriel was speaking about something with Miss Ivors, but Gabriel's not about to relive that moment.  • When he mentions the trip to the Aran Isles, Gretta wants to go.  • Mrs Malins is speaking to him but he's already focused on his dinner-time speech; getting up to let Freddy join his mother, he thinks how much better it would be to be outside, walking in the snow, than inside "at the supper-table" (The Dead.155). • He cannot get the speech off his mind, so he rehearses its five main parts: "Irish hospitality, sad memories, the Three Graces, Paris, the quotation from Browning" (The Dead.156). Got it.  • Remember that book review that Miss Ivors had said she liked? Well, the Browning quotation in the speech comes straight from it. Only instead of being happy, he doubts her sincerity, and dreads that she'll hear his speech.  • Aunt Julia sings a song called "Arrayed for the Bridal," and does a really great job, even for an older lady. • Freddy Malins in particular likes the song, and makes a little bit of a scene with his exaggerated compliments. What a shock. • In response to all of this, Aunt Kate brings up the fact that it was unjust for the pope to bar women from singing in church choirs (which had happened in 1903—for real), thus robbing Julia of a place to sing.  • Mary Jane helps wind down the discussion, which is getting a little awkward, by getting everyone to come to the dinner table.  • Despite several people's objections, Miss Ivors leaves the party before dinner is served, and says goodbye using the Irish expression, "Beannacht libh," which means farewell (The Dead.192). This bugs Gabriel. But then again, everything seems to bug ol' Gabe. • The dinner table would put any all-you-can-eat buffet to shame. The main dishes are goose and ham, and there are enough side dishes, desserts, and drinks to fill the table and the top of the piano.  • Gabriel starts feeling better because he "liked nothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table" (The Dead.198). Don't we all? He serves everyone first, and is the last to sit down to eat.  • While he eats, the rest of the table discusses opera, and Freddy Malins mentions a black opera singer whom no one else has heard of. • Mr Browne complains that Dublin does not feature performances of "the grand old operas" anymore because they can't hire good enough singers (The Dead.214).  • Mr Bartell D'Arcy disagrees, and mentions the great tenors of Europe. Aunt Kate recalls a tenor named Parkinson (who wasn't really a historical tenor, so we'll forgive you for not recognizing the name). • During dessert, Mrs Malins says that Freddy will be traveling to a Trappist monastery called Mount Melleray. Yeah, he'll be a great fit at a monastery. • This leads to a discussion of the strange customs of the monks: "the monks never spoke, got up at two in the morning and slept in their coffins," which, as Mary Jane explains, serves "to remind them of their last end" (The Dead.232). So morbid, right? Well, it pretty much kills the dinner table conversation.  • Then everyone hushes for Gabriel's speech. Before he starts, he thinks of the snow outside on the Wellington Monument. • Here's how the speech goes: • Ahem. There's a humble beginning: "my poor powers as a speaker are all too inadequate" (The Dead.244). • Then, Gabriel gets in to the subject of hospitality. Like, how much hospitality the hostesses show, and how it's pretty much the best thing about the Irish.  • Now Gabriel's going to start showing off some mean speech-making skills. First, he compares the present "thought-tormented age" to the "spacious" past, and orders everyone to "cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones" (The Dead.252).  • Then, he's going to link right on to that word, "dead," and use it to pull everyone's heartstrings. An acknowledgment of "sadder thoughts," which include "thoughts of the past, of young, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight," followed by a statement that he will not "linger on the past" (The Dead.254, 55) and who wouldn't need a Kleenex?  • Don't worry, though, he's going back to smarty-pants land with two allusions to Greek mythology.  • First up? The Three Graces, the mythological daughters of Zeus who represent beauty. Gabriel uses the allusion to refer to the three hostesses of the party.  • Then, he alludes to Paris, who was chosen to judge a beauty contest among three goddesses. Gabriel compliments each of the hostesses and says he could not choose among them. Ah, he's got a way with the ladies.  • With a quick closing toast, the whole thing is over. Was it really as bad as you thought it was going to be, Gabriel?  • Everyone sings the chorus, "For they are jolly gay fellows," Aunt Kate starts crying, and "even Aunt Julia seemed moved" (which really is surprising, since she's been having trouble hearing the speech) (The Dead.264). The rest of the dance party, which had been going on in another room, joins in and sings.  • Party over. Hey, at least it ended on a high note. The story breaks and then picks up with Mr Browne and Freddy Malins outside hailing cabs for the departing guests.  • Gabriel's putting on his coat and, while he's waiting for Gretta, hears a piano playing upstairs.  • While they wait, Gabriel tells the story of Johnny, the horse that was once owned by Patrick Morkan, his grandfather.  • The horse worked in the mill, and when Patrick tried to take it out to a military review, it got stuck walking in circles around a statue of King William III (a British king who defeated the Irish). Gabriel goes all out to tell the story, and even imitates a circling horse, and everyone cracks up. Who knew the nervous speech-writer was also a stand-up comic?  • Freddy Malins knocks on the door and says that he's only found one cab, so Gabriel and Gretta might have to walk a little bit.  • After Freddy invites Mr Browne to ride with them, they have trouble giving the cabbie directions, and everyone ends up shouting something different as Freddy Malins performs for the crowd. Everyone laughs at the situation. This story got funny real fast.  • While all this was happening, Gabriel had been inside, "in a dark part of the hall gazing up the staircase" (The Dead.313). He's looking up at the top of the stairs at his wife, who is very still as she listens to something that Gabriel can't hear from where he is.  • Gabriel, still standing there, thinks that his wife is a "symbol of something," but he can't decide of what. He thinks of painting a picture of her and of calling it "Distant Music" (The Dead.314). Keep your day job, dude.  • Once everyone comes inside and shuts the door, Gabriel can hear that it's a sad song, and Mary Jane identifies the singer as Bartell D'Arcy. He stops singing, even though Mary Jane wants him to keep going. He defends himself by saying that he's "hoarse as a crow" (The Dead.325). • As Mr Bartell D'Arcy gets ready to leave, Gabriel sees that his wife has gotten emotional while listening to the song, and "a sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart" (The Dead.333).  • The song is called "The Lass of Aughrim," and it seems like Gretta has heard it before.  • Everyone says goodbye and good-night: it's the early hours of the morning by now and Gabriel walks behind Gretta and Bartell D'Arcy.  • "Gabriel's eyes were still bright with happiness" (The Dead.350), and he feels, among other things, "valorous." He thinks of her at this moment as someone who needs his protection.  • He remembers little bits and pieces of "their secret life together," and in particular one time when she asked a man who was "making bottles in a roaring furnace" if the fire was hot (The Dead.351). You had to be there, we guess. • Gabriel feels like there's still something left in his relationship to his wife, something that "the years of their dull existence together" haven't completely obliterated (The Dead.354). How romantic. • He remembers a love letter he wrote to her, and its words like "distant music" (The Dead. 355).  • They get a cab with Miss Callaghan and Mr Bartell D'Arcy, and Gretta is very quiet. As they cross the O'Connell Bridge, Gabriel calls attention to the statue of Daniel O'Connell, a hero of the Irish struggle.  • Gabriel's still happy, and pays for the cab for all of them. As he walks with Gretta on his arm, he starts to feel "a keen pang of lust" (The Dead.368). It gets stronger and stronger as they go up the stairs to the hotel.  • Stay strong, readers! We've reached a place in the story where the plot moves fast, and the tears flow even faster.  people are defined by their geography—the place where they live—more than anything. If we ask ourselves why a character is like she is, or why she does things so strangely, there's one answer to that question that's always right: "because she lives in Dublin.” The ending Okay, first things first: take a deep breath. The last lines of "The Dead” are some of the most famous lines in 20th-century literature. Why are they so famous? First of all, the literary skill that goes into them is just about unparalleled, and it gives us the purest gold of Joyce's ability to put together words like nobody else. In terms of senses, this passage calls on our senses of sight, touch, and hearing to perceive the snow, which is, by the way, both real snow and a part of Gabriel's imagination. On the one hand, it's a passage of concrete detail: we start out learning exactly where Gabriel is, and then are told both the direction of his vision and exactly what he sees. We even know the source of light that allows him to see the snow in the first place. Then things start getting a little abstract. A "journey westward" refers to a trip to the West of Ireland, but it also suggests a journey toward the setting sun, toward darkness and toward death. It's concrete when it refers to the day's weather, and when it reports the places where snow is falling, but it's abstract at the same time as we realize that these aren't just places on a map, but places that are very, very significant for Gabriel. When he thinks of the snow on Michael Furey's grave, we realize pretty suddenly that we aren't just looking at a weather map anymore—we're thinking, along with Gabriel, of a moment in the present that calls back to the past. And in this passage we're the proud perceivers of the effects of a literary device called anaphora: that word "falling" and then that word "lay" keep getting repeated, creating a lulling rhythm that mimics Gabriel's own nodding off to sleep. Repetition is a big part of this passage in general. Did you notice how the word softly, which first describes the way that the snow falls, has an encore in the last sentence when it describes the way that Gabriel's soul "swooned"? It's almost unnoticeable, but that's the point: the way that snow falls is also almost unnoticeable, unless you're having the biggest epiphany of your entire life. Like Gabriel in the final sentence. And you're right—it's a complex sentence from the start. The word "as" signals to us that there's something happening simultaneously, and we're supposed to be following both of those things. On the one hand, the movement of Gabriel's soul (the movement of souls is called metempsychosis), and on the other, the movement of the snow. But wait, are those actually two things, or just one thing? Since his soul is swooning just as softly as the snow is falling, isn't his soul a lot like snow? That's where Joyce's next literary device comes in. He's using chiasmus, which is what we call that reversed order that makes "falling faintly" and "faintly falling" sound so totally awesome. And as if that wasn't enough, we get the wildest metaphor we've seen in Dubliners, which compares the snow's falling to "the descent of their last end." It's especially hard to interpret when we're reading because, the antecedent of "their" actually follows the pronoun. This isn't usually fair, but Joyce is pulling out all the stops here and telling us that he needs to use this pronoun right here, right now because he's about to drop an amazing, amazing phrase and he needs it to come at just the right time. So as we're reading we're asking ourselves, "wait, whose last end?" and the suddenly we find out the answer to that as well as the conclusion of the simile. Where was the snow falling, and whom was it falling on? Oh, "upon all the living and the dead." But even answering that basic question doesn't quite make it clear what he's getting at until we remember that "the descent of their last end" was a phrase used previously by Mary Jane to describe the way that monks sleep in their coffins. Now the phrase doesn't just describe a group of eccentric monks: it describes "all the living and the dead." That's the way Gabriel sees and hears this snow falling—as if it were death itself dropping all our swooning souls into little coffins all over the memory-dotted landscape of the country he's sick to death of. There's some paralysis for you. One minute you were alive and giving a speech at a holiday party, and hoping to have some fun with your wife on the way home. The next you see a vision that's about as close to apocalyptic as it gets: everyone, even the living, are basically dead, so still that you can hear the snow—or your own soul—"falling through the universe." And that's what's up with the ending. Allusions - William Vincent Wallace and Edward Fitzball, Maritana: "Let Me Like a Soldier Fall," (The Dead. 214) - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: "the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet." (It's Act II, scene ii, in case you were wondering.) (The Dead.100) - George Linley, "Arrayed for the Bridal." Linley wrote the music, but the song comes from an opera by Bellini called I Puritani (The Dead.158) - Ambroise Thomas, Mignon: An opera. (The Dead. 214) - Giacomo Meyerbeer, Dinorah (The Dead.214) - Gaetano Donizetti, Lucrezia Borgia: An opera based on a novel by Victor Hugo, the famous French novelist. (The Dead.214) - Greek mythology, The Three Graces (The Dead.255) - Greek mythology, Paris (The Dead.260).  - You can find versions of the story in the Iliad and in Ovid's Metamorphoses.  - "The Lass of Aughrim," a popular ballad in Ireland: "O, the rain falls on my heavy locks." (The Dead.317) T. S. Eliot THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK (1914) Allora andiamo, tu ed io, Quando la sera si stende contro il cielo Come un paziente eterizzato disteso su una tavola; Andiamo, per certe strade semi-deserte, Mormoranti ricoveri Di notti senza riposo in alberghi di passo a poco prezzo E ristoranti pieni di segatura e gusci d’ostriche; Strade che si succedono come un tedioso argomento Con l’insidioso proposito Di condurti a domande che opprimono… Oh, non chiedere « Cosa? » Andiamo a fare la nostra visita. Nella stanza le donne vanno e vengono Parlando di Michelangelo. La nebbia gialla che strofina la schiena contro i vetri, Il fumo giallo che strofina il suo muso contro i vetri Lambì con la sua lingua gli angoli della sera, Indugiò sulle pozze stagnanti negli scoli, Lasciò che gli cadesse sulla schiena la fuliggine che cade dai camini, Scivolò sul terrazzo, spiccò un balzo improvviso, E vedendo che era una soffice sera d’ottobre S’arricciolò attorno alla casa, e si assopì. E di sicuro ci sarà tempo Per il fumo giallo che scivola lungo la strada Strofinando la schiena contro i vetri; Ci sarà tempo, ci sarà tempo Per prepararti una faccia per incontrare le facce che incontri; Ci sarà tempo per uccidere e creare, E tempo per tutte le opere e i giorni delle mani Che sollevano e lasciano cadere una domanda sul tuo piatto; Tempo per te e tempo per me, E tempo anche per cento indecisioni, E per cento visioni e revisioni, Prima di prendere un tè col pane abbrustolito Nella stanza le donne vanno e vengono Parlando di Michelangelo. E di sicuro ci sarà tempo Di chiedere, «Posso osare?» e, «Posso osare?» Tempo di volgere il capo e scendere la scala, Con una zona calva in mezzo ai miei capelli - (Diranno: «Come diventano radi i suoi capelli!») Con il mio abito per la mattina, con il colletto solido che arriva fino al mento, Con la cravatta ricca e modesta, ma asseríta da un semplice spillo - (Diranno: «Come gli son diventate sottili le gambe e le braccia!») Oserò Turbare l’universo? In un attimo solo c’è tempo Per decisioni e revisioni che un attimo solo invertirà Perché già tutte le ho conosciute, conosciute tutte: - Ho conosciuto le sere, le mattine, i pomeriggi, Ho misurato la mia vita con cucchiaini da caffè; Conosco le voci che muoiono con un morente declino Sotto la musica giunta da una stanza più lontana. Così, come potrei rischiare? E ho conosciuto tutti gli occhi, conosciuti tutti - Gli occhi che ti fissano in una frase formulata, E quando sono formulato, appuntato a uno spillo, Quando sono trafitto da uno spillo e mi dibatto sul muro Come potrei allora cominciare A sputar fuori tutti i mozziconi dei miei giorni e delle mie abitudini? Come potrei rischiare? E ho già conosciuto le braccia, conosciute tutte - Le braccia ingioiellate e bianche e nude (Ma alla luce di una lampada avvilite da una leggera peluria bruna!) E’ il profumo che viene da un vestito Che mi fa divagare a questo modo? Braccia appoggiate a un tavolo, o avvolte in uno scialle. Potrei rischiare, allora?- Come potrei cominciare? . . . . . . . . . . . . Direi, ho camminato al crepuscolo per strade strette Ed ho osservato il fumo che sale dalle pipe D’uomini solitari in maniche di camicia affacciati alle finestre?… Avrei potuto essere un paio di ruvidi artigli Che corrono sul fondo di mari silenziosi . . . . . . . . . . . . . E il pomeriggio, la sera, dorme così tranquillamente! Lisciata da lunghe dita, Addormentata… stanca… o gioca a fare la malata, Sdraiata sul pavimento, qui fra te e me. Potrei, dopo il tè e le paste e i gelati, Aver la forza di forzare il momento alla sua crisi? Ma sebbene abbia pianto e digiunato, pianto e pregato, Sebbene abbia visto il mio capo (che comincia un po’ a perdere i capelli) Portato su un vassoio, lo non sono un profeta – e non ha molta importanza; Ho visto vacillare il momento della mia grandezza, E ho visto l’eterno Lacchè reggere il mio soprabito ghignando, E a farla breve, ne ho avuto paura. E ne sarebbe valsa la pena, dopo tutto, Dopo le tazze, la marmellata e il tè, E fra la porcellana e qualche chiacchiera Fra te e me, ne sarebbe valsa la pena D’affrontare il problema sorridendo, Di comprimere tutto l’universo in una palla E di farlo rotolare verso una domanda che opprime, Di dire: « lo sono Lazzaro, vengo dal regno dei morti, Torno per dirvi tutto, vi dirò tutto » - Se una, mettendole un cuscino accanto al capo, Dicesse: « Non è per niente questo che volevo dire. Non è questo, per niente. » "To His Coy Mistress," like many poems, is about a man trying to get a woman to sleep with him, and it begins: "Had we but world enough, and time, / This coyness, lady, were no crime." The woman is being "coy" by pretending that she won’t sleep with the poet. Prufrock, however, uses the reference to "time" in exactly the opposite way. He thinks there’s plenty of time for delays and dawdling. Just like in Marvell’s poem, Prufrock addresses himself to a "mistress," someone he "loves," but here it’s Prufrock, and not the mistress, who is being “coy." By talking about the smoke, he’s trying to justify the fact that he wasted our time with an entire stanza of description of the fog instead of asking that "overwhelming question" he told us about. Stanza V He says there’s "time for all the works and days of hands." Allusion alert: Works and Days was the name of a work written by the Greek poet Hesiod. It's a poem about the importance of working for a living and not living a lazy, pointless existence. Also, have you noticed how Prufrock seems to refer to individual body parts instead of people? So far we have "faces" and "hands." The hands are dropping a "question" onto a “plate.” Stanza VI The setting gets more specific, too. We might imagine him standing outside the upstairs room his "love" is in. He paces back and forth and tries to decide whether to ask his big question. "Do I dare?" he wonders. But no, he doesn’t dare. He turns around and heads back downstairs. Of course, Prufrock doesn’t exactly describe this scene to us: he’s much too tricky for that. Instead, he poses it as a hypothetical situation. His only attractive features, funny enough, are his clothes. He has a nice coat and necktie, which he wears according to the fashion of the time. Prufrock’s concern about what other people think might make us suspicious. Back to the Epigraph we go! Recall that Guido da Montefeltro was also worried about his reputation, even though it didn’t matter because he was already in hell. Prufrock, too, seems to have nothing to lose by asking his question – it’s not like we were in love with the guy already. To the contrary, he seems like kind of a coward. But now, on top of cowardice, he also seems superficial. Prufrock doesn’t want to rock the boat or "disturb the universe." That would involve taking a risk, and risks aren’t Prufrock’s thing. But he still insists (again) that he has plenty of time. Stanza VII Now he’s trying to convince us that he’s a wise man with lots of experience. He doesn’t need to do anything, because he’s done everything already! Prufrock thinks he is impressing us, but he’s really damning himself before our eyes. He basically lives from one cup of coffee to the next, with nothing interesting in between. Prufrock says he has heard voices "dying" or fading away when music starts to play in a "farther room." We already know that he has a hard time entering rooms that contain people he wants to talk to (see lines 37-39), so he has to settle on overhearing other people’s voices through the walls. He lives through other people. The phrase "dying fall" is, you guessed it, another literary reference, this time to Shakespeare’s famous play, Twelfth Night. In the first scene of the play, a lovesick count named Orsino is listening to music that has a "dying fall." The music reminds him of his love for one of the other characters. Finally, he asks, "So how should I presume?" To "presume" is to take for granted that something is the case. The speaker of Andrew Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress" presumes that his mistress wants to sleep with him. This can be a bad thing, if you presume too much, but Prufrock is just looking for any reason not to ask his important question. He doesn’t want to "presume" that he’ll get a favorable response. This is pretty cowardly of him. Stanza VIII He’s trying to cover up his fear but not doing a very good job. He doesn’t like how eyes seem to "fix" or freeze him, and a "formulated phrase" means a phrase that judges, summarizes, and reduces something complicated to something simple. We don’t know what phrase he has in mind, but it shouldn’t be surprising by now that he’s afraid of judgments of any kind by other people. He imagines himself "sprawling on a pin" and put, "wriggling," on a wall. He’s referring to the practice, in his time, where insects that were collected by scientists were "pinned" inside a glass frame and hung on a wall so they could be preserved and inspected. The "butt-ends" could refer to any kind of end – the little odds and ends of his daily life, the evenings he spent, etc. But it’s also the word people use for the end of a cigarette, the part that doesn’t get smoked. Prufrock is comparing his life to a used-up cigarette. Stanza IX Considering how much he dislikes scientific observation of himself, he sure does it a lot to other people. Here he sees women merely as "arms," and he uses the same repetitive phrase about how he has "known them all.” But he seems pretty excited about the arm in line 64. This is probably the arm of the woman he invited on a walk (the "you" of the poem). If they did go for a walk through half-deserted streets, it would make sense to see her arm under the "lamplight." The soft, "light brown hair" makes this arm different from all the other ones and would seem to contradict his claim to have seen all the arms. Stanza X Here he wonders how to "begin" to talk about that difficult subject. And the difficult subject is… himself! This is the story of his "days and ways" from line 60, and it begins "I have gone at dusk through narrow streets." But, of course, we know that already. He’s basically taking us back to the beginning of the poem. The most interesting new detail he has to offer us is that he saw "lonely men" smoking pipes out of their windows. Stanza XI Here’s another image from way out of left field. It might also be the most accurate self-evaluation that Prufrock offers in the entire poem. It would have been more fitting, he says, to have been born as a pair of crab claws that "scuttle" across the floor of the ocean. The crab is the perfect image of Prufrock, because it seems suited to a single over-riding goal: self-protection. Stanza XII Prufrock continues to confuse the past, present, and future. He winds the clock back to the afternoon and then plays it forward to the evening, which is when we started the poem. The afternoon and evening are "sleeping," much as the cat-like fog was asleep outside the house in line 22. He’s wondering if he should "wake" the day up somehow, say, by asking (cough, cough) a certain question? But he’s hesitant because the day seems so peacefully asleep, as if it were being "smoothed by long fingers." This image of the fingers makes us think of petting a cat, but it may remind you of something different. The evening is "asleep" and "tired" – nothing is happening. But it might also be "malingering," or pretending to be tired. He’s feeling so lazy that he’s not sure he has the "strength" to ask the "overwhelming question," which would produce a big decision or a “crisis." Prufrock doesn’t want to be confused with a prophet. Even though he weeps, fasts, and prays like a prophet, he isn’t one. Even though he has seen his head on a platter – what’s that about? In the Bible, the prophet John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus, dies after the stepdaughter of a powerful king asks for his head on a platter. We’re not sure what Prufrock is trying to say – he may just be feeling sorry for himself. He doesn’t want us to think he feels sorry for himself, though – he says it’s "no great matter.” He continues to mope around and feel sorry for himself. He already feels as if his best days are behind him, like a candle that flickers and goes out. In the old days, a "footman" was like a butler who would help rich people do things. One of the things a footman would do is to hold your coat as you got in a carriage or entered a house. But this footman isn’t so friendly. He’s the eternal Footman – "death" – and if he’s holding your coat, it means you are probably about to enter some place that you won’t come out of again. Prufrock has another rare moment of honesty when he admits to being afraid. It’s pretty uncommon for him to say anything "in short" like that. Stanza XIII Now Prufrock talks as if he has already passed up on his opportunity to do that important thing. He compares the effort it would required to take on "some overwhelming question" to squeezing the entire universe into a ball. Prufrock compares his task of asking the question to Lazarus coming back from the dead. Really, now, this is a bit much. It shouldn’t take a resurrection to tell someone how you feel. But there’s more to the story. In the Bible, a rich man named Dives dies and gets sent to Hell. Around the same time, a poor man named Lazarus dies and gets sent to Heaven. Dives asks the prophet Abraham to please send Lazarus back to earth to warn his brothers to mend their ways or they’ll end up in Hell. Abraham is like, "No way, man. If your brothers didn’t get the message already, what with all the prophets and such who have been running around, one dead guy coming back to life isn’t going to save them.” The epigraph comes from a poem about another guy who, unlike Dives, did make it back from Hell to tell warn people about sin. His name was Dante Alighieri, the poet. But Prufrock is no Lazarus, nor is he a Dante. He’s more like Dives, the guy who never escapes from his terrible situation. At any rate, he never asked the question, because he was too afraid of getting rejected. So he’ll never know if that’s what she "meant." Stanza XIV He’s still thinking in worst-case-scenario mode. He wonders if it would have been worth it if after him and his love have experienced all of these nice but trivial pleasures of everyday, middle-class life, including "sunsets," "novels," and "teacups" – but he can’t finish his thought. If we had to guess, we might say that he’s afraid that if his big question didn’t go over well, it would throw a wrench in his tidy, polite, inoffensive life. Ah, now he comes up with the right words to say what he means. It’s as if the words locked in his "nerves" were being projected by a "magic lantern" onto a screen for him to read. But, in typical Prufrock-fashion, even the right words are disappointing. It’s just another image of a woman sitting on a couch or a bed and saying she has been misunderstood. Stanza XV Aside from Dante, the poet whom Eliot loved most was Shakespeare. So here’s a Shakespeare reference. In Hamlet, the title character is an indecisive chap, much like Prufrock has been for most of the poem. Hamlet can’t decide whether or not to kill his uncle, even though his uncle has committed some really awful crimes. Like Prufrock, Hamlet can seem like a coward who talks too much. But now Prufrock says he’s not like Hamlet, after all. And if you like puns, the end of line 111 has a good one. In the play, Hamlet begins his most famous speech: "To be or not to be, that is the question." You might even say it’s an "overwhelming question." But Prufrock has already made a decision on that question: he was not "meant to be." Prufrock compares himself to a minor character in the play, one of the "attendants" who serve the king. We think he’s talking about Polonius. In Hamlet, Polonius is the father of Ophelia, the heroine, and everyone respects him because he always takes the cautious route and acts like "an easy tool." Even Shakespeare uses him to "start a scene or two" in the play, then kills him off around the midway point. Polonius talks a good game – he uses fancy words ("high sentence") and proverbs – but in the end, he’s kind of a dunce. As Prufrock so cautiously puts it, he’s "almost ridiculous" and almost like "the Fool." With this recognition, Prufrock has finally arrived at a pretty honest assessment of himself. Stanza XVI Though Prufrock has done a pretty good job so far at disguising the passage of time, he can no longer hide the fact that he’s getting older and older. He blew his chance to ask the question, and now he’s like the guy who stays at a party too long, except that the party is his own poem. Because he already failed to make one big decision, he’s going to pretend he’s an assertive, confident guy by making a bunch of comically minor decisions. Thus, the infamous rolled trousers bit. Stanza XVII As one of the annotated guides to Eliot’s poems put it, parting your hair behind was considered “daringly (audacemente) bohemian" at the time. Prufrock is still trying to make all kinds of tiny decisions, now that he has missed his big chance. As always, he’s interested in the small pleasures of food and fashion, like the peach and the white flannel trousers. He’s also going to check out the ocean. He sees some mermaids. Wait, that’s actually pretty exciting. But this is Prufrock, who can’t keep track of what time it is, so he says he has "heard" the mermaids singing to each other, as if this event were already in the past. Sound check Like a Siamese cat, Eliot is an exceptionally athletic and agile poet. He can go from rhymed to unrhymed verses without you even knowing it. With feline slyness, the poem slips in and out of blank verse, and it also makes "sudden leaps," like when it suddenly transitions from Prufrock to the women talking of Michelangelo and back again. The circling pattern is both obvious and maddening. The poem repeats the same refrains over and over and, like "how should I presume?" and "there will be time." You could find yourself dizzy from all this circling. Sometimes we think we’re getting close to the center of the circle, like when Prufrock wonders, "Do I dare?" But then the poem just leads us back out again, and the motion continues. The poem’s simple rhymes, like a nursery song, create a foggy confusion that distracts us from the sinister or "insidious" intent of the speaker (line 9). Watch how all these tricks come together in the following verses: "In a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse" (lines 47-48). The first line leads us to an expectation – time for what!? – which the second line "reverses." The ridiculously obvious internal rhyme of "decisions" and "revisions" blinds us to the fact that the poem has not told us what has been decided and what has been revised. Every time you try to get your hands on this quick little cat, it slips away from you. This is a poem where you should keep your eyes open to what’s really going on – otherwise, you could get lost in the fog. The title The title is actually the only place where Prufrock’s name is mentioned – in the poem he talks about himself in the first person. Eliot is clearly poking fun of himself with this title – as a young man he signed his name "T. Stearns Eliot," but that doesn’t mean the poem is biographical. For one thing, we’re pretty sure Eliot didn’t drown in the ocean. The other thing to know about the title is that it’s completely ironic in light of the poem, which is not so much a "love song" as the depressed ramblings of a lonely and cowardly man. If you have ever seen The Daily Show or one of the other "fake news" programs, then you know the kind of irony that’s at work here. The title of the poem is only pretending to be serious, while the poem itself is more like a "fake love song." Themes Love It’s hard to tell whether Prufrock is really in love with the person he is talking to. He speaks about himself a lot, and he ignores her, or "us," for most of the poem. Maybe he’s too shy to speak his mind, although "cowardly" seems more accurate. There are a couple of points where he almost overcomes his massive fear of rejection, especially when he is standing on top of the stairs and wondering, "Do I dare?" (line 38). But he’s so vain and so taken up with trivial pleasure like coffee and peaches that it’s hard to believe that the feeling he has is really "love." It might just be lust or just a strong attraction. Whatever it is, the feeling never goes anywhere, and Prufrock is left to drown with his would-be beloved in the deep, deep ocean. Manipulation The poem’s epigraph is a quotation of Guido da Montefeltro, a particularly manipulative chap who finds a place near the bottom of Dante’s Hell in Inferno. Right away, this epigraph sets off alarm bells that we should be suspicious of everything that shy old Mr. Prufrock says. First he’s trying to lead us down dark, winding streets, then he’s trying to convince us of how decisive he is. Prufrock is one of the most deceptive narrators you’ll ever encounter. Passivity Prufrock is the dramatic equivalent of a bump on a log. He never does anything. In this poem, no one does. Actions are discussed as either future possibilities or as thing already done and past. And not for a second do we believe that Prufrock has "known" all the things he claims to have known. The only thing this guy is good at is eating and wearing nice clothes. Time In relation to time, this poem is a total trip. It ricochets (rimbalza) back and forth between the past and the future, almost never settling on the present. One moment Prufrock is talking about all the things he’s going to do before having tea; the next moment he has had tea and still doesn’t have the energy to do anything. But somehow, by the end of the poem, Prufrock’s big chance has passed him by, and he becomes a sad, old man in flannel pants. Appearances There seem to be no complete human beings in this poem. There are only bits and pieces of people. The person whose appearance we know most about is Prufrock. The lack of bodies is one of the signs that might make us think the poem is set in Hell. THE HOLLOW MEN (1925) Mistah Kurtz – morì  Un penny per il vecchio Guy Siamo gli uomini vuoti Siamo gli uomini impagliati Che appoggiano l’un l’altro La testa piena di paglia. Ahimé! Le nostre voci secche, quando noi Insieme mormoriamo Sono quiete e senza senso Come vento nell’erba rinsecchita O come zampe di topo sopra i vetri infranti Nella nostra arida cantina   Figure senza forma, ombre senza colore, Forza paralizzata, gesto privo di moto;   Coloro che han traghettato Con occhi diritti, all’altro regno della morte Ci ricordano – se pure lo fanno – non come anime Perdute e violente, ma solo Come gli uomini vuoti Gli uomini impagliati.   Occhi che in sogno non oso incontrare Nel regno di sogno della morte Questi occhi non appaiono: Laggiù gli occhi sono Luce di sole su una colonna infranta Laggiù un albero ondeggia E voci vi sono Nel cantare del vento Più distanti e più solenni Di una stella che si spegne.   Non lasciate che sia più vicino Nel regno di sogno della morte Lasciate anche che porti Travestimenti così delicati Pelliccia di topo, pelliccia di cornacchia, doghe incrociate In un campo Comportandomi come si comporta il vento Non più vicino –   Non quel finale incontro Nel regno del crepuscolo   Questa è la terra morta Questa è la terra dei cactus Qui le immagini di pietra Sorgono, e qui ricevono La supplica della mano di un morto Sotto lo scintillìo di una stella che si va spegnendo.   È proprio così Nell’altro regno della morte Svegliandoci soli Nell’ora in cui tremiamo Di tenerezza Le labbra vorrebbero baciare Innalzano preghiere a quella pietra infranta.   Gli occhi non sono qui Qui non vi sono occhi In questa valle di stelle morenti In questa valle vuota Questa mascella spezzata dei nostri regni perduti   In quest’ultimo dei luoghi d’incontro Noi brancoliamo insieme Evitiamo di parlare Ammassati su questa riva del tumido fiume   Privati della vista, a meno che Gli occhi non ricompaiano Come la stella perpetua Rosa di molte foglie Del regno di tramonto della morte La speranza soltanto Degli uomini vuoti.   Qui noi giriamo attorno al fico d’India
 Fico d’India fico d’India
 Qui noi giriamo attorno al fico d’India
 Alle cinque del mattino.   Fra l’idea E la realtà Fra il gesto E l’atto Cade l’ombra                   Perchè Tuo è il Regno   Fra la concezione E la creazione Fra l’emozione E la responsione Cade l’Ombra        La vita è molto lunga   Fra il desiderio E lo spasmo Fra la potenza E l’esistenza Fra l’essenza E la discendenza Cade l’Ombra                   Perchè Tuo è il Regno   Perchè Tuo è La vita è Perchè Tuo è il   È questo il modo in cui il mondo finisce
 È questo il modo in cui il mondo finisce
 È questo il modo in cui il mondo finisce
 Non già come uno schianto ma con un piagnisteo. The mediocre souls in Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno also run around with no purpose, another sign that Eliot was inspired by that text. At the end of the section, the souls vow not to have a "final meeting" at "twilight." This meeting could refer to the Last Judgment in Christian theology and "twilight" could refer to the end of the world. The Hollow Men are afraid of the judgment they'll receive when their character is finally examined by the "eyes." They can only delay justice, not escape it. Section III The Hollow Men live in a region that looks like desert where nothing lives but cacti that can survive without much water. The Hollow Men pray to "stone images," which are like false gods or idols. The "dead man" is one of the Hollow Men. They are dead in the sense that they do not have life, but they also cannot cross over into the kingdom of death. All of a sudden the Hollow Men are curious about "death's other Kingdom.” They want to know if people in the other kingdom also wake up alone, with warm and tender feelings but no outlet for them except to pray to a bunch of "broken stone" images. Section IV The Hollow Men are still worried about those eyes. The eyes from heaven are not present, but the lines also suggest that the Hollow Men have no vision. There is another way to interpret this line. "Eyes" sounds like "Is", as in, "The Is are not here." There are no independent personalities or selves among the group. Hope continues to fade, as the stars fade or "die" away. The "valley" leads us to think of one a famous Psalm from the Bible, that goes, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me" (Psalm 23). They are in a valley of death, but there is no one there to comfort them because they never joined with God. They are huddled together as if they were going to be washed away. The river is practically overflowing with water, in contrast to the dryness of the men and the desert around them. This is the last place that they will meet before they face some more terrible fate. The river most likely represents Acheron, branch of the mythical River Styx in Greece that souls must cross into death. To make the trip, you would have to pay Charon, the ferryman, a coin to take you on his boat. Unfortunately, no one has arrived to take these souls across. They are stranded. There's nothing left to say about their dire situation, so they "avoid speech.” In Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno, Dante asks his guide Virgil why souls are so eager to get across Acheron, and Virgil responds that God's justice "spurs them on" so that they actually want to get to Hell sooner. A "multifoliate" rose has many petals. Here again Eliot is referring to – guess who? – Dante Alighieri. In Dante's Paradiso, the final vision of paradise is of a flower made up of saints, angels, and other examples of goodness and virtue. The community of Heaven is like a rose with petals made of people. Dante also compares Mary, the mother of Jesus, to a rose. The point of these lines is that the Hollow Men cannot save themselves. They have no hope except for the Heavenly souls to come down and restore their vision of truth and goodness. Section V "Here we go 'round the mulberry bush" is a children's song about people dancing around the bush "so early in the morning." Eliot actually gives the time at which they are dancing: 5 o'clock in the morning. According to one commentary on the poem, "5:00 a.m. is the traditional time of Christ's resurrection" (source). The resurrection is the most important moment in the Christ story, but here the Hollow Men are performing a children's dance around a cactus, totally unaware of the significance of the time. If you look back to lines 12-13, you'll remember the list of "missing essentials," or things that are lacking some essential component, like "gesture without motion." In this final section of the poem, Eliot presents a similar idea. For the Hollow Men, some mysterious "shadow" has fallen between some potential for action and the action itself to prevent them for doing anything. They have "ideas" but cannot bring them into "reality." They can "move" but not coordinate their movements into "action." The "shadow" falls like an iron curtain to block their intentions. The Hollow Men begin to say part of a prayer but do not finish it. "For Thine is the Kingdom" is part of the ending to the Lord's Prayer. You get the feeling that if the Hollow Men could just get to the end of the prayer, maybe they would be saved. Statement: "Life is very long.” You can almost here the Hollow Men sighing wearily as they say that, as if they are bored and worn down. Compared to eternity, of course, life is pretty short. In case Eliot is getting too philosophical, here's a simpler way of putting it: the Shadow prevents things that should naturally follow from one another from happening. The stanza ends, again, with a fragment of the Lord's Prayer. They still can't say any more than this one part of the prayer. The Hollow Men repeat the fragmented lines from the end of the last three stanzas, but this time chopped down even further. They just trail off, as if they can't remember how the rest goes or have slipped into some semi-conscious state. They pick up again with another crazy adaptation of the "Mulberry Bush" song. In Eliot's version, the Hollow Men are singing about how the world ends as they dance around the prickly pear. The question is, does the world end this way for everyone, or just for the Hollow Men? Symbolism Stuffing and scarecrows So which is it? Are the Hollow Men "hollow" or are they "stuffed"? Both, it seems. Their hollowness is a sign that they lack a soul and other essential qualities of being human. They are also dead, so they don't have complete bodies. But they are filled with straw like one of the effigies that English school-kids blow up on Guy Fawkes Day. Dryness The beginning of the poem establishes that the Hollow Men live in a dry and barren world. The presence of cacti confirms that the poem is set in a desert. Dryness is a symbol for lack of life, as water is essential for all life. These guys don't have blood pumping through their veins; just straw. Broken things Everything around the Hollow Men is broken – nothing is complete. You wouldn't want to lend anything valuable to the Hollow Men or it would probably come back broken. Images of broken objects symbolize the fragmented spiritual condition of the Hollow Men. Heaven The Hollow Men never speak of Heaven by name. In fact, they seem afraid to do so. They are curious about what "death's dream kingdom" is like, but they also fear the "eyes" of heavenly souls and the final judgmental that God will deliver. Fading or dying stars symbolize the receding chance for hope and salvation from Heaven. Eyes The Hollow Men fear the judgmental glare of the people from "death's dream kingdom," but the eyes of these heavenly souls might just be their only hope for salvation. The eyes see the Hollow Men for the empty creatures they really are. The shadow "The Shadow” is the name of the mysterious symbol of darkness that disconnects causes from effects and completely messes with the natural state of things. The Shadow falls like a curtain between normally connected concepts like "emotion" and "response." It seems to represent the unknown force that leads to a failure of willpower and to the inability to follow through with our intentions. Form and meter If you had to label the poem as anything, you would have to call it "free verse," because it doesn't have a regular meter or rhyme scheme. The poem is almost like a speech or a dramatic monologue delivered by a character, the character being all of the Hollow Men. But the verses don't hold together like a speech in a play. In the last section, for example, a childish dance around the "Mulberry Bush" is contrasted with mysterious and philosophical lines about "the Shadow." "The Hollow Men" consists of five sections of varying lengths. The lines are generally short. Like many of Eliot's poems, this one has an epigraph at the beginning – and not just one epigraph, but two. Nor does Eliot use a strict meter like iambic pentameter, though he sometimes used regular meters in other poems. Speaker The poem is a dramatic monologue of sorts, which means that the speaker is not just a stand-in for the poet. Instead, Eliot puts words in the mouths of the Hollow Men and allows them to explain their situation. But the voice of the Hollow Men seems to be made up of several different kinds of voices. The speaker is "fractured," like a broken mirror and like the images of broken things scattered throughout the poem. At times the Hollow Men are a bit cheesy and self-pitying, such as when they cry, "Alas!" in line 4. At other times, they talk like professors of ancient Greek philosophy, covering topics like the gap between "idea" and "reality" or between "potency" and "existence." They speak in a highly stylized and symbolic language that does not resemble normal speech. To be fair, the Hollow Men don't get a chance to defend themselves. It's more like they are puppets being manipulated by someone who wants to condemn them. This "someone" has read a lot of Dante's Divine Comedy and wants to compare the Hollow Men to the "small-souled" people in Canto 3 of Dante's Inferno. Our puppet-master/speaker also makes them sing and dance. The poem begins the declaration that the Hollow Men are a kind of chorus, speaking together as one. By the final section, they are dancing around a prickly pear cactus and singing a children's song. Every once in a while, they try to say part of the prayer but can't bring themselves to do it. They trail off and return to their "end-of-the-world" jig. Setting The Hollow Men live in a desert nether world that looks like it could be in outer space. Everything around them is bone dry. Everything, that is, except for the Acheron, a branch of the River Styx, the entrance to death, which the Hollow Men cannot get across. They are stuck between life and death. The river is "tumid" or full. The landscape is littered with small cacti, dry grass, broken stones, and columns. The stones look like the remnants of an archaic sacred space where a ritual was once held. The wind blows softly, producing a scratchy sound. You can barely make out a few stars in the distance, but every time you look, they appear farther and farther away. You get the feeling you are always being watched, and that the stars might actually be eyes. You hear a low and meaningless mumbling from the banks of the river. What's that? Oh, it's just the Hollow Men, huddled together and trying not to be noticed. Their heads are stuffed with straw and they lean together like scarecrows on wooden posts. They can't see anything, and thus feel their way around by "groping." They are waiting for a ferryman who will never come. Sound check The Hollow Men's description of their voice as being "As quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass" could apply to the sound of the poem as a whole, without the meaningless part. This poem is often associated with Eliot's most famous poem, The Waste Land, because both works are set in Hellish environments and concern people whose lives are fragmented and incoherent. Both poems were written around the same period in Eliot's life. But compared to The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men" is a much sparser, quieter poem. The short length of the lines in "The Hollow Men" creates frequent pauses, as if each line were a small gust of wind followed by an eerie silence. Like the wind, the poem often changes directions and returns to the same place. In lines 11 and 12, for example, the Hollow Men suddenly transition from a description of themselves to a repetitive philosophical aside: "Shape without form, shade without colour [. . .]". The poem keeps circling back on itself and repeating words like "hollow," "kingdom," "eyes," "dry," "broken," "fading," "dream," "stone" and "Shadow." The volume of "The Hollow Men" is never raised very high, even as the Hollow Men describe their terrible half-existence. When they start singing in the end, the verses have the quality of a flat monotone. Like the wind in the grass, these lines make a sound but have no consistent melody. It's not that Eliot couldn't write musical poems – his "Four Quartets" is intensely lyrical – but he wants the sound of this poem to mimic the emptiness of the Hollow Men. Only occasionally does he include a word that really stands out, like "supplication" or "multifoliate." You notice these words precisely because they don't seem to belong. They are rare oases in a flat desert of sound. The title An important connection might be Marlow 's description of the character Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness as "hollow at the core." This connection is relevant because the first epigraph of the poem is a quote from Heart of Darkness announcing Kurtz's death. Themes him, but because he's dead no one can. The other people chatter among themselves and talk over each other, not addressing the dead man, but distressing him all the same by getting the facts wrong. Everyone seems disconnected from each other in some way. Life and death Everything revolves around these two states in the poem, whether they're described literally or undercover as metaphors. As readers, we're left uneasy that life and death can coexist so close to each other; in fact one can even look like the other if we're too far out. Form and meter Here we have four-line stanzas, a common type of stanza called a quatrain. Quatrains are especially popular in rhymed poetry, so let's look for end rhymes (the rhyming words at the end of lines, just like it sounds). There don't seem to be any exact end rhymes in the first stanza, but "moaning" and "drowning" both share an "n" sound before the matching "-ing" endings. We call that a feminine rhyme. So, this stanza sort of rhymes ABCB. What about the other stanzas? Same thing, though stanza 2 uses exact end rhymes: "dead" and “said." Quatrains with an ABCB rhyme scheme already give us enough information to make a pretty good guess at the poem's form. Focus on the stressed syllables, take a look at the first two lines: "Nobody heard him the dead man, / but still he lay moaning." The first line has four stresses, and the second has three. You'll find that lines 3-4 repeat this alternation of four and three. Four feet in a line is called tetrameter (tetra- means four) and three feet in a line is trimeter (tri- means three). So in the first quatrain, we have alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines. We know the first stanza is a quatrain with alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines rhymed ABCB. This happens to fit the definition of ballad stanza, a popular verse form used in songs and closely related to the form of religious hymns. As you can guess, though, this simple description of the poem's form isn't all there is to say. For one thing, it doesn't detail the kinds of metrical feet that occur in the poem. The first two feet of the second line are iambic: "But still he lay." Hear that daDUM daDUM? The first foot starts with a stressed and then an unstressed syllable. This is the reverse of an iamb, also known as a trochee. You might also notice that Shmoop hears the last two feet in line 1 as two unstressed syllables followed by two stressed syllables. The terms for these feet are pyrrhic and spondee, respectively. In general, you could say the poem is roughly in ballad meter (alternating lines of tetrameter and trimeter) and is mostly iambic with frequent trochaic substitutions. Why do we say the poem is "roughly" this way? Because there are some exceptions. Of course. If you glance at stanza 2, you'll see that lines 6 and 8 are too short and line 7 is too long. Speaker The narrator The first is the speaker of lines 1-2 and the parenthesis of line 7. We don't know a lot about this person except he or she sets the stage and appears to hear both the dead man and the other people (even though the first thing the speaker says is "Nobody heard him"). There's maybe a hint that this speaker judges the dead man for "moaning," but otherwise he or she's a mystery we'll never solve. The dead guy The second speaker is the dead man himself, as we find out when he says, "I was much further out than you thought" (3). Somehow despite being dead he can't (or won't) shut up. What does this mean, really? Is he a ghost that other people can't hear? Is his corpse talking? Is he in the after-life commenting on his recent demise? All we can really know is that he's a dead man trying to set the record straight about his lonely struggle, only the other people (the third voice) aren't listening to a word. The living The third speaker may actually be more than one person, as "they said" suggests. They chatter about the dead man's character and his final moments, apparently getting everything wrong. They could be friends or work acquaintances, but the poem doesn't really tell us their identities, and we're not sure it matters in the first place. They remain a general "they," those frustrating other people who never quite understand you. Do they listen? All these missed connections come together to show how you can be lonely in a crowd or dying in the middle of a bunch of people who would help you if they knew. It also shows how hard it is to see when someone needs help. Everyone in the poem seems to have their own needs and interests that keep them from really communicating with each other, which—it's undeniable—contributes to tragedy. Setting If he was literally drowning, he must have been doing so in some body of water. Then, if people are standing around commenting on him, probably the scene is slightly different. Could it be on the shore after his body is pulled out? Or is it at his funeral, maybe his wake, as people gather around to remember him? What if the dead man is speaking from his grave or the afterlife? We just don't know. The timeline is a little easier to reconstruct: guy dies, dead guy complains, folks talk about him, dead guy blasts them for getting it all wrong. It's not very specific about dates or how much time passes, of course, but at least it's a clear sequence. The one surprise comes in the final stanza when we learn that the dead man didn't struggle just the once, but instead spent his life drowning. You could say his death wasn't a single event, but a long, lonely process. The setting, then, isn't even a real seashore, but instead just the poor guy's depressed mind. Sound check Alliteration One of the first sonic tricks we hear in the poem is line 1's repetition of "h" sounds at the beginning of "heard" and "him," but that's nothing compared to the "h" parade huffing through line 7: "have" and "him his heart." Most of these repetitions of initial letters happen within the lines, giving the sound of each line more unity (and making it more fun to say). Smith uses alliteration sparingly in this poem, but see if you can find another good example. Consonance It's not just initial letters that repeat. Take a look at the consonants that keep showing up through the poem. There's the thudding "d" sound in "nobody," "heard," and "dead," which could mimic the crashing of waves, or even a heartbeat. Listen too for the soft "th" sounds in the first stanza—"further," "than," and "thought"—and hear how they clash with the harder "t" sounds throughout the poem. Could these be the waves whispering at first, then getting choppier? You could say the poem is swimming in repeated consonants. Assonance The repetition fest ain't over yet. Repeated vowel sounds pop up throughout the poem to link one line to another. For example, the first word of line 1, "Nobody," links to the last word of line 2, "moaning" through the same long "o" sound. In fact, you'll find this long "o" throughout the poem. We think it represents the sound of the dead man's moaning perfectly. Look, too, at the "ow" sound in "out" and "drowning". They're tied together by what sounds like a cry of pain, right at the moment the dead man describes his suffering. Internal rhyme Finally, in a few places the sound repetitions come together to give the poem more exact rhymes. Since the ballad stanza only gives two end rhymes per stanza (see "Form and Meter") and this poem makes two of the three rhyming pairs feminine rhymes, we have to look inside the lines to find the cleverly hidden precise echoes. See, for example, the way the end of line 3 ("thought") rhymes with "not," the second word of the next line. Or check out line 7's "way" chiming with line 8's "They." As with the assonance, internal rhyme works to connect lines to each other in a more subtle way than the usual end rhymes would, making the poem like an awesome echo chamber. Title It immediately sets up the poem's strong opposition between what appears to have happened (waving) and what actually did go down (drowning). This opposition is later echoed in the perspective of the useless friends versus the point of view of the dead man. It also hands us a possible scenario right away so we can make some guesses at why the dead man introduced in the first line is, um, dead. At first the poem's actually inviting us to think too literally about the situation—that a man drowned in the ocean and his acquaintances are chatting over his corpse—before showing us in the last stanza that we might have to take the drowning as metaphorical. Themes Isolation The dead man's really on his own out there in "Not Waving but Drowning." Because he's out of reach, physically or metaphorically, there's no one to throw him a line when things get tough. Even worse, being dead finally cuts off all hope of help or reconnection to the community of the living. Instead, he's stuck, alone, obsessed with his fate, while the fools he left back on land chat about his death. Communication There's a surprising number of voices in this short poem, but an even more surprising lack of real dialogue. No one seems to be connecting with other people in "Not Waving but Drowning." Instead, the dead man speaks to an audience that doesn't hear and vainly tries to correct misinformation, while the ones he addresses say untrue things about the dead man and talk over each other. Everyone seems to be stuck inside their own perspective, which makes this poem an awfully bleak picture of society in a microcosm of just twelve lines. Suffering As readers we initially think he's moaning about his death. Likewise, the people in stanza 2 think the saddest thing was the suffering he experienced at the moment of death. But the dead man himself tells us it was much worse than we suspect: it wasn't his death that was unbearably painful, it was his entire life. Death The focus is a talking corpse who just won't shut up even though the living can't hear him. Is he alive? Was he ever alive? The other people seem to think that he used to be lively, indeed, but the picture of the dead man that comes through by the end is of a nightmarish existence that was always like being dead. W. H. Auden SPAIN (1937) Summary The poem begins, “Yesterday the past.” It was yesterday that the trade routes sprang up and the counting-frame and the cromlech were used. Yesterday there was insurance and the divination of water and the creation of the clock and the taming of horses; it was “the bustling world of the navigators.” Yesterday myths of fairies and giants were destroyed, and chapels were built in the forest. Angels and gargoyles were carved. Heretics were put on trial, and feuds over theology took place. Today, though: “the struggle.” Yesterday was the belief in the perfection of the Greeks, the prayer to the sunset, and the “adoration of madmen.” Today the struggle. The poet whispers in the pines and the waterfall and the crags, calling for his vision and for the “luck of the sailor.” The investigator uses his instruments and analyzes bacteria or the planets; he inquires and inquires. The poor live in their barren cottages and drop the paper to the floor, asking for “History the operator, the / Organiser” to be revealed. The nations combine the individual cries, calling to History. Since History or Time has intervened before, it should descend and intervene again, regardless of what form it takes. If this spirit even answers, it has replied that it is not actually “the mover”—History is “whatever you do.” It will do what the nations and individuals choose. In this, History is “your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain.” Many people heard this throughout the peninsulas and plains, or in the islands or in the cities. Hearing this they migrated like “gulls or the seeds of a flower.” They clung to the express trains and floated over the seas and walked the passes, all presenting their lives. Spain is a dry square, snipped from Africa and welded to Europe. This is where “our thoughts have bodies” and “Madrid is the heart.” Our fears and greed blossom into instruments of war, our friendships into an army. Tomorrow, there is, perhaps, the future. There will be research into consciousness and fatigue and radiation, rediscovery of love and the arts, local politics, and quotidian life. Today, though, is the struggle. Tomorrow will have young poets, walks by the lake, bicycle races. Today is the struggle. Today the chances of death are high, and it is necessary to accept guilt for murder. Powers are expended over the map, and everything is full of “makeshift consolations” like jokes and cigarettes and the “fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.” The stars are dead, the animals are gone, and we only have ourselves and our short day. Those who lose the battle will receive nothing from History except an “Alas.” Analysis Written in 1937 after his visit to Spain, it addresses the Spanish Civil War. The first version Auden wrote was published as a pamphlet in 1937 (its proceeds went to the war effort), and the second version, revised slightly, was included in Another Time in 1940. Auden would later repudiate this poem, as he did with “September 1, 1939,” as “dishonest.” Auden had gone to Spain as a volunteer, where he served as an ambulance driver, wanting to see the terrors and thrills of war firsthand. The civil war was split between the Republicans and Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Fascist forces. Franco was a tyrannical brute in the same fashion as Hitler and Mussolini. As a leftist American intellectual, Auden supported the Republicans, but he witnessed the brutality of both sides. The poem speaks of three times: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It begins with Spain’s past, invoking the taming of the wilderness, the exploration and conquest, the various inventions, the Notice how Auden manages to make this both a story and a description? Here's what we mean by that: he's allowing the speaker to narrate Brueghel's painting – and in so doing, he makes all the action happen in real time. We are there as the sun is shining and Icarus is drowning. Does that make his version more real or more alive than Brueghel's? Not necessarily. But it does make us pay attention to the temporality of Icarus's fall. It's no longer static. It happens across time – the time that it takes us to read the last few lines, as a matter of fact. And that drawn-out falling makes the tragedy of Icarus' death all the more excruciating to witness. Then again, our speaker could just be describing what he sees in the painting. Brueghel manages to make the light strike Icarus's legs. That's how we know that he's actually in the water. All of the peace and tranquility in this poem (and, well, in the painting to which it refers) gets exposed as something that looks a lot like hypocrisy. Sure, everything is expensive and beautiful and perfect. But that's only a thin veneer over what's actually the action in this scene – a terrible, terrifying drowning. Like Brueghel, Auden is emphasizing Icarus's surroundings. In so doing, he transforms the myth; it's no longer about a boy who dreamed too big and couldn't figure out how to fly. It's about all the simple, ordinary people who wouldn't go out of their way to pull a drowning boy out of the water. Auden's poem doesn't emphasize the extraordinary – just like the rest of the lines, these lines are simple. No tricky words. No fancy rhymes. In so doing, he could just be normalizing the sorts of indifference he describes. We wonder, though, if he's not exposing that indifference for what it is: an unwillingness to recognize amazing things or out of the ordinary things or even just awful things. In other words, this poem is asking us to open our eyes. You just never know what you're going to see once you do. Symbolism Plane Jane No need for fancy language here. In fact, Auden seems to think that you don't need to break out every SAT word you ever knew in order to talk about the Big Stuff like art, culture, and human nature. It’s all about who you know Even though Auden keeps his language pretty simple and straightforward, he does build up a fairly elaborate network of references and allusions – to places, people, and things happening behind the scenes. Put all of these references together, and you'll start to get a sneaking suspicion that the real story is happening elsewhere, outside of the poem's framework…which is exactly what this poem is trying to get you to see! Heroic ends There's a heap (mucchio) of references in "Musée des Beaux Arts" to folks who think big…and end badly. Like Icarus. And the martyrs. Who’s Icarus? Icarus was a big dreamer. He wasn't satisfied with just escaping from a horrible labyrinth in which he and his father were being held captive. He wanted to escape in style. Icarus actually had some help, though – his father, Daedalus, was a pretty talented craftsman. He fashioned two pairs of wax wings so that he and his son could fly away from their place of captivity. They take off. Everything's going fine. In fact, Icarus is enjoying flying so much that he decides he's going to get higher and higher and closer and closer to the sun. The closer Icarus gets to the sun, the meltier his wax wings become. And without wings, Icarus starts to fall…and that's where our poem picks up. Icarus is plunging towards the water. And by the end of the poem, he's in the water. Form and meter See, the first couple of lines all have ten syllables in them. Just when you think that Auden's settling into that oh-so-traditional of meters, line 4 derails everything completely. Line four goes on way longer than ten syllables. And after that, it's all up for grabs. It's almost as if "real life” refuses to be contained by anything as stodgy (noioso) or constraining as a formalized metrical pattern. That's what we mean when we day that the form is pretty free and easy. Life just seems to take over, and Auden's totally content to just let things roll. The way that lines break throughout the poem helps to facilitate this sense of ease. Notice how most of the punctuation in the first few lines actually occurs in the middle of the lines? That means that lines tend to be enjambed. Auden might just be thumbing his nose at the sorts of conventions which "old masters" of poetry would have recognized: rhyme, meter, and end- stopped lines. Why? Chances are that he's trying to formally duplicate the sorts of entanglements and messiness which his poem tries to tackle. We've said it before, but we'll say it again here: the deliberate references to "Old Masters" and museums and old paintings creates an interesting tension with the simple language and prosaic qualities of Auden's form. We've got two basic thoughts about this: 1. The disparity between the two is an intentional move, one intended to demonstrate how even simple subjects and language can be part of a great tradition. 2. The tension could be a way for Auden to demonstrate that there is no tension between great art and commonplace emotions. Even mythical characters get scared when they're falling. Especially when they're falling out of the sky What's interesting about our speaker is that he's pretty absent from the poem as a whole. In fact, the only way that we're able to learn anything at all about him is the fact that the poem's title tips us off to where he is: in the Musée de Beaux Arts. And that's not necessarily the speaker's doing. Come to think of it, the word "I" never once enters this poem. Which should tell you something. Whoever this speaker is, he's keeping a very low profile. So why have a hidden speaker? You could think of this guy as the voice in your ear when you rent an audio tour to the museum. In a novel, he'd be a third-person narrative voice. In this poem, however, he's a speaker who doesn't ever move outside of a tight frame of reference. He's sitting before a single painting, and his mind is completely absorbed in what's before him. W.H. Auden is a master of form. You could think of him as a chameleon: just when you're ready to pin him as a formal poet, one who's careful to respect traditional rhyme and meter, he breaks out something like "Musée des Beaux Arts," which has no rhyme or metrical pattern to speak of. What it does have, though, is simple, precise language. Nothing to get too upset about. Nothing to twist the tongue or boggle the mind. Nice, neat, simple language. What makes it so amazing is that he's able to craft a masterpiece with the mildest of tools. Setting 1. The Musée des Beaux Arts, a fine arts museum in Brussels, Belgium. We can tell that from the title. Funnily enough, though, Auden never mentions it again. It just sort of hangs in our minds through the rest of the poem. It's a setting that's only a setting, nothing more. 2. Sixteenth-century Belgium. That's where the plowmen (contadino) comes in. And maybe even the little kids skating on the pond. Definitely the ship. 3. Ancient Greece. Maybe even mythic Greece. That's where Icarus, the boy flying to the sun with wings of wax, hails from. 4. But here's the important one: the speaker's mind. See, that's where all of these wonderful worlds collide. Only a painter could pair myth with absolutely, totally ordinary. And only Auden's speaker can filter the experience of that poem through an individual's consciousness. Ironically, all of these jumbled (mescolati) settings only reinforce the speaker's earliest point: that suffering occurs anywhere, anytime – and while all sorts of other things are going on. Have you noticed the one setting that we didn't describe? It's the sky – which is where Icarus falls. Even as Auden is describing the ways that we never pay attention to the suffering around us, his poem manages to avoid describing that suffering outright (direttamente). It's almost like Auden tricks us into participating in exactly the sort of dynamic that his poem describes – which is only proper. Sound check His poem is not full of fluffy language or alliteration or any other of those nice tricks that poets like to pull out of their bags. In fact, it's not full of tricks at all. The only time that our speaker gets fancy with adjectives is when he's describing a baby's birth and a ship – and even then, he only uses two words to convey his excitement. As far as poets go, that's as laid-back as it gets. Somehow, though, this poem never manages to sound like it's an internal monologue. Our speaker never second-guesses himself or pauses to readjust his thinking. There's something neatly (perfettamente) fluid in his movement from philosophy to description. He's trying to explain what he's just seen. He's not out to score any points by talking big. He's just sharing some thoughts that an awfully beautiful painting inspired. Then again, there's a sort of deliberate tongue-in-cheekiness (ironico) to all of the adjectives that our speaker is tossing around, especially in the last section. He sounds so…happy. Does that mean that Icarus's flight is a silly one? Perhaps. But does that also mean that his fall is not at all troubling? Well, that's where we begin to suspect that our speaker's choice of adjectives might be just a bit diabolical. On second thought, too many happy adjectives make him sound a bit sly (furbo) – almost as if he's slightly more conscious of his audience than we might otherwise have thought. The title You could think of this as the breadcrumbs that Hansel and Gretel use to get themselves back home. Auden wants to spend a few minutes at the beginning of the poem thinking big – so the title helps to ground us while he thinks about life, the universe, and everything. Then again, this title hearkens back to all the poems that poets wrote immediately after seeing/ doing something – like "Upon Reading Chapman's Homer" or "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798." It's like Twitter for the early twentieth century. Themes Suffering Anytime that a poem announce that it's about suffering, chances are…it's about suffering. But Auden makes sure that we know just how embedded (intrinseco) suffering is in the other activities that occupy our daily lives. Painting society with a wide brush allows Auden to draw back and emphasize the ways that pain is everywhere. Passivity There's a thin, thin line between innocence and indifference. Sure, kids can get away with not caring about what happens in the world around them. Heck, animals couldn't care whether or not a revolution's in the air. But what about those folks who just work too hard or have too much on their minds to know or care when something's going wrong? What about those people who just quietly mind their own business all of their lives? As far as this poem is concerned, the world might not need heroes – but it sure is just a little bit short on honest-to- goodness helpfulness and sympathy. Art and culture Why the deliberate invocation of high culture? Well, maybe Auden's got a point to make about the role of art. Didn't someone once say that art was for everyone? We're betting that Auden is soundly in that guy's camp. Choices In Brueghel's painting that Auden references, Icarus chooses to fly too high. Men choose to keep their eyes down while he drowns. Brueghel chooses to depict all of this in a painting. Auden chooses to put a pen to paper while sitting in front of that painting. See how many choices it takes to get one little poem? You might even say that everything is connected. Dylan Thomas DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT (1952) Non andartene docile in quella buona notte, i vecchi dovrebbero bruciare e delirare al serrarsi del giorno; infuria, infuria, contro il morire della luce. Benché i saggi conoscano alla fine che la tenebra è giusta perché dalle loro parole non diramarono fulmini non se ne vanno docili in quella buona notte. I probi, con l'ultima onda, gridando quanto splendide le loro deboli gesta danzerebbero in una verde baia, s'infuriano, s'infuriano contro il morire della luce. Gli impulsivi che il sole presero al volo e cantarono, troppo tardi imparando d'averne afflitto il cammino, non se ne vanno docili in quella buona notte. Gli austeri, prossimi alla morte, con cieca vista accorgendosi che occhi spenti potevano brillare come meteore e gioire, s'infuriano, s'infuriano contro il morire della luce. E tu, padre mio, là sulla triste altura maledicimi, benedicimi, ora, con le tue lacrime furiose, te ne prego. Non andartene docile in quella buona notte. Infuriati, infuriati contro il morire della luce. Dylan Thomas's most famous poem, known by its first line "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," is also the most famous example of the poetic form known as the villanelle. Yet, the poem's true importance lies not in its fame, but in the raw power of the emotions underlying it. Thomas uses the poem to address his dying father, lamenting his father's loss of health and • Line 1: Beginning with this line, we have an extended metaphor in which day represents life, night represents the afterlife or a void, and sunset represents the moment of death. Throughout the poem, entering into the dark, noticing night fall, and the last lingering light of the evening will remind us of how easily – and how inevitably – life slips away from us. The first line is also a refrain in the poem, repeated a total of four times. As if that weren't enough to make you notice it, it's got quite a bit of obvious alliteration of n sounds at the beginning of "not" and "night" and hard g sounds at the beginning of "go" and "good." (Even though "gentle" begins with g, it doesn't count as alliteration here because it's a soft g instead of a hard one.) There are also other n sounds buried in the line, in the middle of "gentle" and "into." All this sound play ties the line together into a tidy package, making the words go together, even though they're full of harsh, hard sounds. • Lines 1-3: These lines are an apostrophe to the person the speaker is addressing. • Line 3: The repetition of the first word of this line, "rage," emphasizes it with an uncanny (strano) doubling. The end of the line is united by the similar vowel sounds in the middle of "dying" and "light," a technique called assonance. • Lines 10-11: Here the sun's rapid flight across the sky is still part of the extended metaphor in which day represents a life cycle, but the sun also becomes a symbol of all that's beautiful, wonderful, or amazing in the world. The sun stands in for all the amazing things in the world that artists and poets might want to celebrate in their work. Lightning, meteors, and other things that fall from the sky • Bolts of lightning, blazing meteors, and other images of light and fire captivate our attention in this poem about living with intensity. Life is no "brief candle" here; it's a blazing bonfire, a towering inferno, a firecracker. Sometimes people say they want to "go out with a bang," and Dylan Thomas would definitely have approved of that attitude. • Lines 4-6: The poem relies on intense and puzzling imagery, a lightning bolt that isn't forked or split by the words of wise men. Lines 13-14: The poem presents us with a paradox: the dying men who have gone blind can still "see," at least in a metaphorical sense. The paradox and the images surrounding it are emphasized by more over-the-top alliteration: "blinding," "blind," "blaze," and "be." Three of these four words repeat a bl consonant pair in addition to the initial b sound, making the alliteration even more noticeable. The best men • "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" begins with an address to an unknown listener and ends by revealing that this listener is the speaker's father. In between these direct addresses, however, the speaker describes the valiant (prode) and praiseworthy (lodevole) behavior of many different kinds of exemplary men – "wise men," "good men," "wild men," and "grave men." The speaker hopes that his father will be all these things. • Lines 7-15: The poem uses parallelism as the actions of the different types of men are listed. Each of these three stanzas begins by listing the type of men in question, then describing something amazing that that group of men have done. The speaker ends each by reminding the reader that these men won't let themselves die without a struggle. • Line 17: The speaker creates an oxymoron by asking his father to "Curse" but also to "bless" him. The juxtaposition of these two words together, separated but also joined by a comma, implies that they can be thought of as opposites, but also as, in some strange way, the same thing. This line is also one of the only soft-sounding lines in the poem, due to the sibilance, or repeated s sounds, throughout – in the words "Curse" and "bless," but also, less obviously, in "fierce" and "tears." This makes the line sound extremely different, softer and gentler than the rest of the poem. Form and meter "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" is written in a very specific form, the villanelle. Villanelles have nineteen lines divided into five three-line stanzas and a sixth stanza with four lines. In English, villanelles tend to be written in the common metrical pattern called iambic pentameter, which means ten syllables per line, with every other syllable stressed, starting with the second syllable. So the lines will sound like this: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. For example, the second line of this poem is, more or less: Old age should burn and rave at close of day What villanelles are required to have is an intricate rhyme scheme and two lines that are refrains – like refrains in songs, they get repeated over and over. The rhyme scheme is ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA, so there are only two rhymes that end all the lines. In addition, the first line and third line, the refrains, are repeated four times each – the first line appears at the end of stanzas 2 and 4 and as the second-to-last line in stanza 6. The poem's third line appears again at the end of stanzas 3, 5, and 6. So if we call the first line A and the third line A', and any line that rhymes with them a, then the rhyme scheme is: AbA' abA abA' abA abA' abAA’. The villanelle form wasn't designed for the English language, which has fewer rhyming words than many other European languages. Villanelles were originally a French type of poetry, and they only became popular in English as a late-19th-century and early-20th-century import. Dylan Thomas's ability to follow this strict and complicated form, which actually works against the language he's using, and still create such an emotional poem with an urgent feel, is truly impressive. Speaker Usually we're super-strict about keeping the speaker of a poem separate from the author of a poem. After all, poets often create fictional personas who they imagine to be speaking their work – not everything they write down is what they personally believe. But in the case of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," it's nearly impossible to separate the speaker of the poem, who is urging his father to struggle mightily with death, from the author Dylan Thomas, who was really upset about his own father's declining health and impending death. Maybe the best way to think of it is this: Thomas is using the speaker of his poem to say things to an imaginary father that might have been too difficult to say face-to-face to his own father, or that his father (who was dying at the time) wouldn't have had the energy to hear or understand. The speaker is Thomas's alter ego, composed of autobiographical elements, but still not quite the same as the man himself. It's also interesting to notice that we don't know the speaker is using the first person until nearly the end of the poem, when he uses "me" and "I" in line 17. We have to shift our opinion of the speaker and his perspective once we're blindsided with the first-person stuff in the last stanza. Setting "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" doesn't just have one setting – it has many. Over the course of the poem's compact nineteen lines, Thomas takes us from a lingering sunset to a bolt of lightning, from a green bay extending out from the seashore to a shooting star blazing across the sky, and finally to the top of a mountain. Of course, all of these places are metaphorical descriptions of life, death, and struggle, but we're starting to notice that they're all grand aspects of nature. Sound check It is harsh but lyrical, jarring but hypnotic. The repeated lines, called refrains, and the use of only two rhyming words give the poem a singsong quality. But Thomas also uses harsh consonant sounds, often alliterated, to give the poem an explosive feel. He also omits soft endings on words wherever he can – notice that his choice of "gentle" in the first line, instead of the more grammatically correct "gently," makes the word end on the strangling (strozzata) consonant "l" instead of the sweeter long "e" sound. The poem also has as few linking words and conjunctions as possible; connections happen through commas instead, as in "Rage, rage" and "Curse, bless." This means there are more stressed words in the poem, which adds to the feeling of a strong, intense rhythm. The title There isn't one – that's what's up with the title! This famous villanelle, the poem for which Dylan Thomas is best known, was left untitled by the poet. Was he a romantic? When Dylan Thomas was writing, a lot of people thought he was going to start a new Romantic movement. You know, the obsession with feeling, nature, and the individual that ties together poetry by William Wordsworth (check out "Tintern Abbey"), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (take a gander at "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"), Lord Byron (coming soon… "She Walks in Beauty"), John Keats (consider "Ode on a Grecian Urn"), and others. Thomas certainly is a passionate poet, and his intense feelings come close to overwhelming the reader in this poem. But he's also a very organized poet. He chooses a poetic form with a lot of complicated rules to follow – the villanelle – and then he shapes his passion to fit this form. The amazing thing about the poem is that this highly structured form doesn't stifle any of the feeling in his message. Themes Mortality It laments the necessity and inevitability of death, encouraging the aged to rebel against their fate. The poem suggests that we should leave this world the way we came in – kicking and screaming, holding on to life for all we're worth. Old age It is the speaker's exploration of what it means to age closer and closer to an inevitable death, especially if the aging person becomes frail and starts to lose his or her faculties. In order to restore power and dignity, the speaker urges the dying to fight their fate and cling tenaciously onto life. Transience (fugacità) Transience in "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" causes the speaker a lot of anxiety. It worries him that there are things people might have been able to do in the world if only they had been here longer. It bothers him that the sun travels so quickly across the sky and that people live such a short time. But even though transience is disturbing, it also creates opportunities for beauty. Wisdom and knowledge Here wisdom means a determination to struggle. Even if the struggle isn't pretty, even if it means ranting, raving, crying and screaming, the speaker believes that is more dignified than simply lying down and giving in to fate. Family Spoken by a son to his dying father, it suggests the intensity and power of familial bonds. It also works through a reversal of roles – the son, not the father, is giving advice, and the father, not the son, is weak and in need of encouragement and help. M. Nourbese Philip DISCOURSE ON THE LOGIC OF LANGUAGE (1989) Philip’s “Discourse on the Logic of Language” is hinged on competing discourses.  One of the most fascinating competitions in the poem, which is even more evident in the live performance of the poem, is that between the poetic and the mythic.  These two discourses are presented as the being the voice of the poet herself yet they still are competing for the reader’s attention.  The mythic section is written sideways down the page, distracting from the easier to read poetic section.  The mythic section is also presented in all capital letters; this makes the section appear to be almost screaming out from the page, it desperately wants to be read.  This suggests that the speaker of the poem is suffering an internal struggle.  The mythic section, which seems to be firmly connected to her culture, is not rooted in logic.  The poetic section, however, seems to be invested in logic: not a foreign lan lan lang language l/anguish anguish -a foreign anguish. (Philip 56.4-8) These repetitions and slight alterations suggest that she is trying to use logic to understand the cultural language conflict.  These different stances on logic put the mythic discourse and the poetic discourse completely at odds with one another.  She is unable to find a balance between her pre-colonial cultural values and the new post-colonial cultural values being imposed. The final section of the page, which is in the form of a multiple choice quiz, shows one unified voice with no competition.  There is a strong sense of logic or reason in this voice, but there is also an appreciation that logic is not sufficient in and of itself to provide answers: She does not supply the reader with the answers and indeed there is no clear correct answer to any of her questions.  In this way she is exercising a right to opacity – she does not owe anyone an explanation for anything.  She is choosing to exist as one unified person despite seemingly binary oppositions. In uno dei suoi pezzi più eloquenti, Philip riapre il dibattito sulla lingua naturale e, facendo ricorso alle figure parentali del padre e della madre crea una metafora incisiva del tormento della parola all’interno di un sistema linguistico predefinito con l’uso della violenza. Ecco la prima lezione di lettura che Philip ci offre: la poesia dovrebbe essere letta da destra a sinistra. Leggendo da destra trying to be honest with each other – or does it also hint at a third person in the relationship, who prevents the two lovers from being honest with each other? ‘Talking in Bed’ contains what we propose to call the ‘Larkin zoom’: it begins with something local and everyday (and often unremarkable, and perhaps even unpromising as material for poetry), and then zooms out to take in the wider themes and resonances which are suggested to the poet by that local starting-point. From two people in bed we move to the sky, whole towns, perhaps even the whole senseless and uncaring universe. SAD STEPS (1974) ‘Sad Steps’ was completed by Philip Larkin in April 1968, and was published in his final volume of poetry, High Windows (1974). Larkin was in his mid-forties when he wrote ‘Sad Steps’, and the poem analyses and explores the poet’s awareness of middle age, and the loss of his youth. The title of Larkin’s poem is an allusion to another English poem by Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), namely sonnet 31 from Sidney’s sixteenth-century sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella. Sidney’s poem begins with the line, ‘With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies’. The opening line of Larkin’s poem, in turn, adds a different meaning to this title: for Sidney, the moon seemed to be taking ‘sad steps’ across the night sky, but for Larkin, his ‘sad steps’, at least at first, seem to be altogether more everyday and down-to-earth, namely the steps he takes back to bed ‘after a piss’. The crudeness of this word, coming at the end of the line as it does, completely disabuses us of any straightforward poetical songs to the beauty of the moon, or the way it reflects the poet’s lovelorn heartache. This is something John Carey has identified as part of Philip Larkin’s wider poetic strategy, what Carey calls ‘the two Larkins’: the first, who tends to open the poem, is bluntly spoken, demotic in his language, even slightly adolescent; the second Larkin, who takes over the ‘voice’ of the poem as it develops, is more thoughtful and philosophical. ‘Sad Steps’, in summary, sees Larkin being struck by the moon in the night sky, something that poets have been drawn to as a poetic topic for centuries. But Larkin rejects the age-old responses to the moon (‘Lozenge of love!’ or ‘Medallion of art!’, to say nothing of the link between full moons and werewolves hinted at in ‘wolves of memory’, suggesting man’s primeval connection to the moon), highlighting them in exaggerated terms, using exclamation marks to suggest they have lost their sincerity and now seem excessively romantic and out of touch with people’s true attitudes to the moon as symbol. In a typical Larkinesque ‘turn’ at the end of line 12, with a characteristically brusque ‘No’, Larkin replaces these high-romantic visions of the moon’s significance with a more grounded and realistic response: he ‘shivers slightly’ looking up at the moon, because the cold greyness of the moon is a reminder, for him, of his lost youth, and the fact that he will never be young again – though for others, who still have their youth, these things are ‘undiminished’. Why does the moon prompt these thoughts? The clue, or at least part of it, lies in the allusion to Sidney’s poem encoded in that title, ‘Sad Steps’. The sonnet sequence from which Sidney’s poem comes, Astrophil and Stella, is all about the poet’s pain and heartbreak that stems from being in love with a woman he can’t have. Sidney’s poem thus connects the moon with what Larkin describes as ‘the strength and pain / Of being young’: namely, the trials and tribulations of being in the first throes of (unrequited) love. Larkin’s poem is not written from this youthful perspective, but from an older, middle-aged one, and the moon’s pallor only reminds Larkin that, for him, those strongly-felt emotions of youth have faded and become washed out, and love is no longer felt with the same sharpness or keenness. ‘Sad Steps’ sums up Larkin’s ability to analyse his own feelings in a plain-speaking manner, whilst also employing highly poetic language and a sophisticated rhyme scheme to do so. Derek Walcott A FAR CRY FROM AFRICA (1956, 1962) Un vento scompiglia la fulva pelliccia Dell’Africa. Kikuyu, veloci come mosche, Si saziano ai fiumi di sangue del veld. Cadaveri giacciono sparsi in un paradiso. Solo il verme colonnello del carcame, grida: «Non sprecate compassione su questi morti separati!». Le statistiche giustificano e gli studiosi colgono I fondamenti della politica coloniale. Che senso ha questo per il bimbo bianco squartato nel suo letto? Per selvaggi sacrificabili come Ebrei? Trebbiati da battitori, i lunghi giunchi erompono In una bianca polvere di ibis le cui grida Hanno vorticato fin dall’alba della civiltà Dal fiume riarso o dalla pianura brulicante di animali. La violenza della bestia sulla bestia è intensa Come legge naturale, ma l’uomo eretto Cerca la propria divinità infliggendo dolore. Deliranti come queste bestie turbate, le sue guerre Danzano al suolo della tesa carcassa di un tamburo, Mentre egli chiama coraggio persino quel nativo terrore Della bianca pace contratta dai morti. Di nuovo la brutale necessità si terge le mani Sul tovagliolo di una causa sporca, di nuovo Uno spreco della nostra compassione, come per la Spagna, Il gorilla lotta con il superuomo. Io, che sono avvelenato dal sangue di entrambi, Dove mi volgerò, diviso fin dentro le vene? Io che ho maledetto L’ufficiale ubriaco del governo britannico, come sceglierò Tra quest’Africa e la lingua inglese che amo? Tradirle entrambe, o restituire ciò che danno? Come guardare a un simile massacro e rimanere freddo? Come voltare le spalle all’Africa e vivere? The poem A Far Cry from Africa belongs to post colonial poetry. Mainly the poem discusses the events of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the early 1950s. It was a bloody battle during the 1950 between the European settlers and the native Kikuyu tribes in Kenya. Kikuyu was the largest and most educated tribe in Kenya. As the British people invaded more and more their land they outrageously reacted. The Kenyan tribes rebelled against the British who stole the motherland of them. The rebellion was under a secret organization called Mau Mau. It is estimated a large number of Kikuyu as well as whites were slaughtered (massacrati) during the process. A Far Cry from Africa by Derek Walcott is a poem based around the struggles in Africa. One would presume it is at least partially autobiographical and so it’s a fairly safe assumption that the narrative voice is indeed Walcott’s own. Summary The poem starts with the painful jarring harsh (oppressiva) experience of the rebellion that changed the tranquil peaceful setting of the country. The nation itself compared to an animal, as it indicates it is an animal like a lion. “Tawny pelt” (fulvo di pelliccia) And how Kikuyu started the bloody battle. The Kikuyu are compared to flies who are feeding on blood. Next we are informed the aftermath of the rebellion. The poet describes that the country before the conflict was a ‘paradise’ and with an ironical comment he indicates the death, inhumanity and destruction occurred in the land. There is the juxtaposition of the conflict against something divine with the image of corpses scattered through a paradise. The worms that can be seen as the ultimate emblem of stagnation and decay, cries at the worthless death. Sarcastically poet indicates how the humans are reduced to statistics. And at the same time though scholars justify the presence of white men in Africa and the process of civilizing the natives, the poet indicates the fact that it was a failure with the brutal death of the small white child and his family. People behave like animals ‘savages’ hints and remind us the persecution endured by the Jews. Jews were killed in millions due to their ethnicity during the time of Hitler. Though the time and the place is different the same kind of situations repeat in the world time to time. Next the poet creates a picture of white men in searching for natives who are hiding behind the bushes. The sound of ‘ibises’ hints a bad omen. Again the repetition is shown through the word ‘wheeled’. The civilized men thrived on conquering others. This process of violence and conquering each other indicates the law of the jungle. The violence of ‘beast on beast’ can justify according to the law of nature, the law of jungle. Yet it cannot be applied to the ‘upright man’ who are stretching out themselves to reach the ‘divinity’. Apart from the task of stretching themselves to reach ‘divinity’ they end up with ‘inflicting pain’ which is killing and which is the law of jungle; killing for prey. They call for the massacre they create by killing as war. Ironically, wars between people are described as following the beat of a drum — an instrument made of an animal hide stretched over a cylinder. Though the natives think the act of killing white men brings them ‘courage’ it ends up with fear. Moreover the poet emphasizes the fact that though the natives justify their task mentioning it as a ‘brutish necessity’ and considering it as a national cause they just clean their hands with ‘the napkin of dirty cause’. So the poet suggests the fact that the natives’ cause is dirty and ugly though they consider it as right and nationwide.  He sees a comparison with the West Indians who had their share of harsh experiences with Spain. The fight is just as the gorilla wrestles with superman. The gorilla in this context is compared to natives and superman is compared to white men.  The last two lines indicate the situation of the poet, as he belongs to both cultures how he feels inferiority regarding the situation. The mixed heritage of the poet makes him unable to decide to which he should be partial. The title itself too indicates the state of mind conflict of the poet, a cry from a great distance away and moreover it shows the alienation and the inferiority of the poet. The poem ends with a picture of violence and cruelty and with the idea of searching for identity.   Form and tone The poem is written in free verse. It is presented in two stanzas one consisting of twenty one lines the other consisting eleven. It does not follow a strict rhyming pattern, although end rhymes feature prominently throughout the poem. The effect of this is that the poem has a stilted, disjointed feel which mirrors the feelings expressed within the poem. The rhythm is also inconsistent, although the line lengths are similar the beats in each line alter which again adds to the sense of discord. The poem is deeply rooted in Africa. The language used helps to make the poem feel culturally African. The title The title is in itself fairly interesting. It certainly has a double meaning. The obvious meaning is that it is using the phrase which means that the events are “far removed” from what you expect in Africa, but actually I think the title is subversive and is supposed to be taken very literally. Meaning that in Africa there are people crying. Analysis Lines 1-4 The first two lines reference the Kikuyu. This is one of the biggest tribes in Kenya. There is an interesting use of imagery here as they are described as being “as quick as flies” the poet talks of them being massacred, In the fourth line he makes a really striking comparison between the Veldt area which he considers a paradise and the fact it is littered with corpses. Rhyme is used in the opening section with a ABAB pattern. This might make you come to expect that to be a reoccurring pattern, but this is not the case and this helps give the poem a “stilted edge”. Lines 5-9 In the fifth line we see the use of alliteration. Worms are “picked on” here, being referred to as the colonel of Carrion. The suggestion being that where you find rotting flesh, you find worms. He personifies them though and gives them an almost militant voice as they exclaim ‘Waste no compassion on these separate dead!’ this gives them a villainous quality. In the 8th line he refers to the locals as salient, this is a clever piece of imagery it gives the impression that these people are isolated. It also has a double meaning with military connotations. I think that the point the poet is trying to make is how the colonials use their data and skew (distorcono) facts in order to portray the Kikuyu as savages. Of course this doesn’t tell the full story. I guess then that this whole begging section is laden with irony, maybe even dramatic irony as an informed reader would realize that these views aren’t an accurate description of the issues that have existed in Africa. Lines 10-13 In the tenth lines we see a very powerful metaphor as Walcott draws on a comparison between the atrocities being committed here and the ones committed by the Nazi’s during the Second World War. At least that’s what one would assume by referring to Jews as expendable. Once again the poem turns to imagery and the use of nature. Here Ibises are used and their cries referenced. I feel this is probably a metaphor for the repeated slaughter and genocide of civilizations highlighting that this is an issue that has been prominent throughout the history of mankind. Lines 14-17 The next four lines follow what have come before in creating a really visceral image. Walcott uses repetition of the word beast here in order to cement his comparison. The suggestion • When we step back, we see the speaker (the son) indoors, pen in hand, and outside, the father works digging at the rocky soil. Those are two very different activities. Stanza 3 • Our speaker watches from the window as his dad bends, digging among the flowerbeds. • The father seems to be working pretty hard. He is "straining," after all. • Flashback alert! In line 7, when the speaker's dad comes up from his gardening crouch (you know, that squatting position you're in when you're in the garden – super attractive), the speaker imagines him twenty years away, which we take to mean twenty years ago. • But before we jump back in time, take note of what his father is digging here: flowerbeds. That information might come in handy later. • So what was happening twenty years ago in our speaker's mind? His father was digging potatoes, that's what. Potato drills, by the way, are evenly spaced rows of potatoes in a field. Nothing too confusing there. But it also refers to the act of drilling into the earth to make a hole in which you plant the potato. • It seems the rhythm of the father bending and rising in his garden has sparked this flashback – it's the same pattern he used to follow in the potato drills, dipping down into the ground, then coming back up. • Okay, so if the speaker is the son, and he's having a memory of his father twenty years ago, it's fair to say that the son is grown up, and the father is probably an old man now, right? • Also, note the shift to the past tense here. Before this moment in the poem, we've been working in the present tense, but this shift to the past tells us we've entered a memory. • Oh, and before we forget. Instead of flowerbeds, which are decorative, his father is now digging for potatoes, or food. Stanza 4 • The coarse boot belongs to the father, and it's probably coarse because it's a beat-up old work boot. A lug (manico?) refers to the top of the blade of the spade, which sticks out on either side of the shaft (asta), or handle. Stepping on the lug and putting all your weight on it helps sink the tool into the ground, so you can dig your hole. • When he says the shaft is levered firmly on the inside of his father's knee, it just means that he's got a good hold on it, so he won't lose his balance when he digs the spade into the earth. • All right, so far here's our tool count: pen, gun, spade. Is it just us, or do you think this poem might be deeply concerned with work, and the tools it takes to get that work done? • The "he" still refers to the father, and we're still in that memory from twenty years ago, which we can tell because the speaker is still using the good old past tense. • The speaker's old man is still working on the potato drill. "Rooted out" means he found the potato tops by digging them up. • The "bright edge" is the edge of the shovel's blade, and our speaker probably calls it bright because it's made of some sort of metal, as most spades are. • What's up with all the alliteration here ("tall tops"; "buried the bright edge")? Do these repeated sounds at the beginning of words change the way you read this line? We think it almost makes it sound more mechanical: as if his dad is a machine as he works. • Up until this point, our speaker was talking about his father as if he were alone, but "we" pops up in Line 14. Looks like the father and son are doing this work together. Or at the very least the son is hanging around while the father works. • The "cool hardness" refers to the way the potato feels when it's pulled from the earth, almost like a rock. Note, too, that again the speaker is talking about the way something feels in his hand, only this time instead of a pen, it's a potato. Stanza 5 • Okay, there are two things to notice here, but before we talk about them, let's get a grip on what these lines are actually saying. It seems our speaker's father was really good at digging up these potatoes, and apparently his grandfather wasn't too shabby in the fields either. • First, we've got another comment about tools and trade. The speaker seems to think the ability to work with one's hands is a good thing; he's paying his father and grandfather a compliment. • Second, check out the first two words of line 15. "By God" is an exclamation (without the exclamation point). It grabs our attention and shows us just how much enthusiasm and admiration our speaker has for his father and grandfather's skill. Not only does work seem important to our speaker, but tradition, too – or work as part of the family tradition. He comes from a long line of diggers, and he seems pretty proud. • Also, check out how these lines are their own stanza. We take that to mean they're pretty important. Stanza 6 • Our speaker is reaching even further back into the family history to the time when his grandfather dug for turf, and evidently, was very good at it. Is there anything these men can't do? • A bog (pantano) is a patch of wet, muddy ground, covered in peat, or turf, which forms the grassy top layer. The peat makes for a great fuel and fertilizer, so Irishmen used to (and some still do) harvest the peat by cutting it from the bog and saving it for later use. • What's so awesome about these lines is Heaney's mention of a place called "Toner's bog." Of course we haven't heard of it, and for all we know, it's entirely made up. But it's a specific place, a local place and his mention of it gives the poem an "insider" feel. In other words, the speaker seems to be addressing those in the know, or people who are familiar with the traditions of potato farming and peat harvesting. It's as if we, too, are part of this Irish community and history. • Plus, note that the grandfather is digging neither for flowers nor for potatoes. He's digging for peat. So instead of decoration or food, he's digging for fuel. Interesting. • Our speaker enters the scene with his grandfather now, and he's probably quite young in this memory. It looks like the speaker takes him fresh milk with paper shoved in the top as a stopper while his grandfather works in the bog, and his grandfather takes a brief break from all his hard work to have a sip. • What's up with the paper cork? Have you ever heard of that? Well, for one thing, this tells us that this is an old, old memory. It's from a long time ago, when something like a paper cork wasn't unheard of. • Plus, if you think about it, it creates a small, subtle connection between the grandfather's work (peat harvesting), and the work our speaker ends up doing (writing). It's a sneak peek into the future of the young boy's life, and what he has to contribute to this tradition of work. • Heaney describes how he cuts into the ground with his spade – "nicking and slicing neatly." It seems as though it's not just hard labor, but takes a good amount of technique, too. The grandfather's technique and efficiency are similar to what we saw from the father earlier in the poem. • Also, check out how this line is enjambed from the one before it. That means that there's no break between the two lines: it's all one, continuous phrase, separated only by a line break. It's a little tricky because the line before ("He straightened up") seems like it could stand on its own. But here we have the rest of the thought. • Jumping right from lines 22-23, we see the grandfather continuing to toil away in Toner's bog, chucking the turf over his shoulder as he goes. The "good turf" he's after is the nutrient rich stuff that's good for using as fuel or fertilizer. • Check out the way Heaney puts it: "down and down…Digging." His phrasing sort of reenacts the steady and difficult process. And just in case you didn't notice, the grandfather is digging. Always digging. • Both the father and the grandfather seem to be pretty hard-working, tough men, and these lines continue to emphasize that fact by calling our attention to the grandfather's constant effort. Stanza 7 • These lines are the first half of a sentence that will be completed in line 27, so for now, let's just think of them as a list. But of what? • Of the smells and sounds of digging for potatoes and peat – that's what. He brings up the smell of potato mold (terriccio), the sounds of the peat bog, and the cuts of the spade as it digs down into the earth. • Now that we've got that down, what else do we notice about these lines more specifically? • For one thing, it's interesting to say that a smell is cold, because we usually associate hot or cold with our touch sense. But still, this mixing of our smelling and feeling senses doesn't seem to be too far of a reach. For example, when it's about to snow, there's a smell in the air that you could associate with coldness. The smell of fire might also bring up a feeling of warmth. In this case, for the speaker, the potato mould (mold) is a cold smell, probably because it's pretty cold in Ireland. • So overall, we've got a lot of senses going on here. Our speaker is making use of sight, smell, sound, and touch imagery to give us a sense of how this memory makes him feel. • Diving into the details a bit more, we see that these lines just sound really cool, too. First, we have the internal rhyme of "cold" and "mould" – what does that do to the lines? • And don't forget the awesome alliteration throughout and the crazy use of onomatopoeia. We can just hear the "squelch" of the peat and the "curt cuts" into the ground. • All the things he just listed in lines 25-26 pop up in his head. That sounds simple enough – after all, he's watching his father dig, so why not remember these things? But what's the deal with the phrase at the beginning of the line – "through living roots"? • As it turns out, this line has a whole lot more going on below the surface (pun intended). Of course he's talking literally about the roots of a plant – flowers, potatoes, etc. But you could also definitely read "roots" to mean the roots the speaker has to his father and grandfather's work – as in origins, or heredity, or tradition. They are "living roots" because the memories are alive in him, our speaker, as he watches his father in the flower bed. • Key line alert! Up until now, we've been reading about the father and the grandfather and all their tireless digging. But here, we turn in a different direction. • Based on how much he admires his father and grandfather, it would be easy for us to assume that the speaker would follow in their footsteps and become a digger, too. • But alas, that's not to be. The speaker, we learn isn't like his father or his grandfather because he doesn't have the proper tool for digging. It's all in the tools, it turns out. So without a spade, our speaker is not a potato farmer or a peat harvester. He's something different entirely. • While at first we thought our speaker was a part of his family's tradition, we're now seeing him as a bit of a black sheep, or outsider. But we're still not sure why. Stanza 8 • Wow, what an ending. First, like a boomerang, the speaker circles all the way back to where he started and repeats the first two lines of the poem. • In doing so, he manages to show he is following in the tradition of his father and grandfather. He's just using a different tool and a different method. While his dad and grandpa dug with spades, our speaker plans to dig with his pen. • When Heaney writes "I'll dig with it," we see that yes, our speaker is different from his father and grandfather in what and how he digs, but he is also similar in that he is trying to "get to the bottom" or "unearth" certain things too. And just as his father and grandfather dig down into the earth, perhaps our speaker wants to dig down into his past, his roots, to give proper recognition to awesome men like his elders. • The last lines of the poem show how the speaker carries on the tradition of work and "digging" in his own work, different as it may be. Symbolism Tools This poem deals a lot with men (of three generations), their work, and their tools. The repeated references to the spade and shovel, and all the hard work that goes into putting those tools to use, allow Heaney to emphasize the value of manual labor. Our speaker speaks of his dad and grandpa's work with admiration and pride. But he has pride in his own work, and his own tool, too. The speaker uses a pen to dig, because he knows he has no skill with a spade. He plays to his strengths and finds value in his own work, even though it's not quite as physical as that of his elders. A pen's just as good for digging as a spade. Earth (dirt) We discover earth in many different ways in this poem. Heaney talks about the sound, texture, and smell of it, and it seems to have left quite an impression in the speaker's mind in association with his father and grandfather. Earth, in its many different forms, seems to represent what the speaker is tied to, or rooted in, and the association of earth to his father and grandfather is undeniable, so feel free to insert any of these adages to describe their relationship: They make him feel grounded. They are the salt of the earth to him. Their family was rooted in farming. You get the picture. The earth, because it was so important to his growing up, is where the speaker feels he comes from. Let's take a closer look. • Lines 4, 17, 22, and 26: "gravelly ground," "turf," "sods," and "soggy peat" are all different kinds and terms for dirt, or earth, and they pop up quite a lot, which tells us they're probably pretty important. But why so much dirt? You might notice that each time dirt appears, it's in the context of the father's or grandfather's hard work. The father and grandfather dig up the earth to