LIGHTHEARTED I walked into the
valley wood
In the time of hyacinths,
Till beauty like a scented cloth
Cast over, stifled me. I was bound
Motionless and faint of breath
By loveliness that is her own eunuch.
Now pass I the final river
Ignominiously, in a sack, without a sound,
As any peeping Turk to the Bosphorous.
There are two conversions perhaps, and a pointed contrast between them. The first is the poet's seizure by beauty 'in a valley wood', in which he is 'stifled', rendered 'motionless and faint of breath' by the visual beauty of the flowers and their scent. This experience presumably took place in his 'light-hearted' youth. The second conversion concerns his death, stifled again and motionless ('in a sack without sound') arriving at the 'final river', which I take to be the Styx. An ignominious end then for someone who in his youth experienced such ecstasy. This very brief analysis does not really do this enigmatic poem justice but is intended to entice others into commentary on a poem I have always found somewhat perplexing despite its clarity in image and diction. What is the point of the final line, the image of 'the peeping Turk' at the Bosphorus? I mean why a 'peeping Turk'?
ReplyDeleteThe poem can be seen as presaging (unconsciously of course) its author's own 'ignominious' death on the Western Front in 1917 at the age of 34, a death which denied its author a career as a poet and a philosopher of aesthetics (i.e. as a practitioner in the experience and appreciation of beauty).
As transcribed above, the text of the poem contains minor spellings and inaccuracies.
I mean minor misspellings! e.g. "Bosphorous'! which only a retired school teacher with nothing better to do would criticise.
DeleteAs far as I can research Bosphorus is right. And thank you for seeing the age component. I did not see it. As for the 'peeping Turk" perhaps it is a reference to divide between Europe and Asia that the Bosphorus marks. Perhaps the known and the unknown, good old Blighty and the Orient.
ReplyDeleteSee the comments under the title "Light-hearted I walked...' at the top of the column on the right.
ReplyDeleteGoogled 'sack' and 'Bosphorus' and look what I have come up with: a Sultan used to get rid of any member of his harem by putting her into a sack and throwing her into the Bosphorus. Who guarded the women in a harem: eunuchs!
ReplyDelete