March 2nd, 2007
I love “People”, it conveys the subject of death free from sentimentality but with truth and dignity. The tone is as final as death itself, yet it isn’t depressive. It offers an alternative to the scramble to achieve something “meaningful” for posterity; it presents the world that we create as being enough.
Here’s the whole poem, as I will be taking it lines at a time:
And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.
Originally a Russian poem, you can tell it was translated. It does sound definite but not beautiful–the Russian word for “obscurity” probably sounded beautiful. However in English you do get tautological rhyme, which is usually cheating, but the above shows how it can be used to create an impact. Another good example of tautological rhyme would be the way it creates the sense of bathos in Larkin’s Homage to a Government.
To each his world is private
and in that world one excellent minute.And in that world one tragic minute
These are private.
The repetition of “private” and “minute” and the general repetition of the structure of the sentences creates a feeling of utmost sincerity. The poem implores you to listen to what it is saying in careful, measured, tones. For me the excellent and tragic minutes suggest the main parts of meaning in life: though we may spend many years living, minutes are what we will ultimately remember.
In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight
it goes with him.
In relation to the last stanza, the minutes would be the “first snow”, “kiss” and “fight”. These moments are intimately personal therefore will cease to exist when we are no longer personal.
There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery
Whose fate is to survive.But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.
The impersonal “painted canvas” and “machinery” suggests they are of less worth than what they seem. Masterpieces are just paint on canvas. Philosophically I think worlds do die with people. “I think therefore I am” proves that you exist, but nobody else. You have no way of knowing that your surroundings are not just an elaborate simulation, however improbable that may be.
We who knew our fathers
in everything, in nothing.They perish. They cannot be brought back.
The secret worlds are not regenerated.And everytime again and again
I make my lament against destruction.
You can’t ever know everything about someone. We communicate through language and other physical interaction, which can be controlled, as opposed to thought, which defies control. You may know someone “in everything” but actually you know nothing. Another reading of this line is that your perceptions cease to exist when the person ceases to exist, though it depends on which viewpoint you take: the father, or the child.
The last line saves this poem from resembling the nihilistic: that if everything is gone after you die then–why bother? The “lament against destruction” is refusing to take this bleak stance on life. The poem doesn’t dismiss the sobering gravity of death, neither does it provide a happy heavenly ending. To me it advocates toil and emphasises the value of life that doesn’t exist forever. I see it as an elegy to the “man” who lives in “obscurity”: the common person. Yet it’s also a wry reminder to the person who lets grandeur overtake humanity; lest we forget, even the grandest monuments crumble in time.
March 4th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
More poetry analysis by Alex B. I’m writing a paper on Anglo-Saxon Britain… such a sweet time period that was. Makes me want to go back in time and play knights and casltes (even though that’s midieval). I love English and European history from 410-ish through 1400… it’s awesome!
Yeah… I want to go to London sometime soon too… any places you think I could stay over there? When will said trip happen… a good while into college if I don’t go to Italy first.
Peace, dude.