The Man, The Myth, The Bird

edward thomas:the owl. 

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;

Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof

Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest

Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,

Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.

All of the night was quite barred out except

An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,

No merry note, nor cause of merriment,

But one telling me plain what I escaped

And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,

Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice

Speaking for all who lay under the stars,

Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

“The Owl” by Edward Thomas is a poem, like many from its World War I era, that draws on experiences from the front lines. A traveler's misery is recounted as he stops for the night and the poem finds its heart in the narrative of a forgotten person who takes comfort in the cries of birds. There are many structural, sound and figurative elements that help to create the poem's tone of dismay and its resolution of hope.

Thomas' structural elements give one the feeling of organization and reassurance – as though mirroring the feeling of the soldier's walk along a straight path. It is narrated in the first person and the traveler is not talking to anyone in particular: he simply recounts. The poem is broken down into four quatrains with similar line lengths. Each stanza is neat and compact and takes on the same general shape, with every new line capitalized regardless of whether or not the sentence ended at the line break. For the most part, line breaks do not come at the end of sentences – the 1^st, 3^rd and 4^th quatrain are composed of one sentence with a period at the final word of the quatrain. The 2^nd breaks this by having two sentences, one ending on the 2^nd line and one on the 4^th. Due in part to this, the poem's rhythm is somewhat unpredictable. However, there are many end-stopped lines and only a few enjambed lines, which helps to give the poem a feeling of stability.

The poem's rhythm is also unpredictable due to its unequal meter. For example, the first line of the word of the poem “downhill” is an iamb while the second line begins with “cold,” a lame foot. There is not predictability or reason to the meter's scheme which adds to the poem's theme of loneliness and unease that the traveler feels – one is not quite sure what to expect. However, the poem still has a sense of purpose for the reader's mouth due to its concise lines of similar lengths and its thoughtful sound elements, as though the poet is trying to keep a panicked feeling under control. The poem follows a “B/B” rhyme scheme – the second line always rhymes with the fourth in each quatrain. The last quatrain sees a sudden abundance of alliteration – “salted, sobered, speaking, stars, soldiers” and adds a soothing quality though the poem's tone is bleak.

The poem's interpretations are many, but the language and structural elements help to narrow it into more concise terms and modify the mood. At its surface, “The Owl” is about a soldier who is traveling, tired and is ready for comfort. Though desperate, he is still holding onto shreds of hope, as seen in lines such as “hungry, and not yet starved” and “Cold, yet heat within me that was proof against the North wind.” The traveler is able to face the elements and keep his head up, despite his bleak conditions and weary state and yet the wind is so cold, he wants to be inside – “rest...the sweetest thing under a roof.”

The traveler stops at an inn where the bodily needs he spoke of before are met: he has “food, fire and rest.” When he lays down to sleep though, an owl's cry penetrates. Here is the repetition of the title within the poem and here the importance of the poem's meaning begins to emerge. The opening two quatrains merely set the scene. The owl's cry is long and sad (“no merry no, nor cause of merriment) but the soldier is reminded, in this moment, that he is alive to hear the cry and thus, has escaped a fate that many of his fellow companions did not. The cry seems to remind him that he is here in the world; it brings him back to the world, whereas before he seemed to be within himself, almost unaware. It is a bittersweet reminder, for the solider seems to be grateful that he is still alive, yet saddened to be reminded of the others who have died, when it could have easily been himself. The last stanza seems to go further into the owl's cry. The word salted is repeated twice, referencing first food and then the soldier's repose. The salt is perhaps a signifier of tears, which are salt-water. The solider is “salted” by the bird's voice – the atmosphere turns bitter and sad and even his food doesn't taste right. Then, within the bleakness, the final two lines contain a shred of hope. The bird “speaks for all who lay under the stars...unable to rejoice.” Those unable to rejoice could mean people such as the traveler, who finds himself mourning his losses, or could also represent those who have died, those who “lay” under the stars in graves – the owl, in some cultures, is a symbol of lost souls.

As such, the owl's cry is the center and hope of the poem. It is a symbol of mourning and melancholy, a sad sound, as well as a symbol of beauty and life. The owl will always cry out no matter how many people have died in a war and it signals the comfort that life will go on and the world will still exist, no matter how bleak things may seem.  

To Translate or Not to Translate?

The act of reading Death Fugue by Paul Celan in several translation versions impressed upon me the difference that one translator can make. The poem remained fairly similar in idea and thought but even the slightest word change could add a totally different feel to the poem's line.

One section that stuck out to me in the translation by John Felstiner was:

He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then in smoke to the sky
You'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped

In contrast, the same three lines have many different word choices in Jerome Rothenberg's:

He calls play that death thing more sweetly Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland
he calls scrape that fiddle more darkly then hover like smoke in the air
then scoop out a grave in the clouds where it’s roomy to lie

It fascinates me that an original poem can be translated in so many ways and also shows how word choice in poetry is so important. One word can make all the difference. Felstiner uses "he shouts" instead of Rothenberg's "he calls"; Felstiner's version adds a violence and harshness to the line, while the use of the verb call reminds one of a beckoning, which creates a much gentler image.  Rothenberg uses "gang-boss" instead of "master," which gives one the impression of slang, or a more informal feel. The second line in both is very similar, with just a  few altered words. In Rothenberg's version, we get a specific object, a "fiddle," while in Felstiner's, we just know that someone plays "strings." Felstine's image of "rising like smoke to the sky" is more immediate than Rothenberg's "hover like smoke in the air," yet both give the effect of something slow and thick gathering. As for similarity, it is interesting that both choose to use the word scrape, when they could have picked any number of verbs. Finally, I personally think Rothenberg has the vivid image down pat, while Felstine could use a little work. This is seen in the last line, when Rothenberg uses "scoop out a grave in the clouds where it's roomy to lie." The line has a delicious image, especially because to scoop out the sky immediately brings an unconventional image to mind. Felstine simply says, "You'll have a grave there in the clouds, you won't lie too cramped," and perhaps this is because he did not take as many liberties with the translation and tried to stick to the original as closely as possible.

In conclusion, the translations are both talk about Death and images of the sky and smoke that characterize dying but I personally like Rothenberg's version better due to his use of interesting imagery.

On the heels of a mourning weekend, this poem has brought some comfort, perhaps because it reminds me that in a world of imperfections, to hurt is to eventually heal.

Notes by Nijinsky

an excerpt from September 1, 1939 
by Auden


The windiest militant rash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.


For me, this stanza compared a longing for love to a rash,something aggressive and easily spread, something that cannot be contained. It also compares the human heart to a mad man writing about his lover - that humans have the ability to love in spite of imperfections with complicated, messy relationships. In essence, this stanza is about how love cannot be controlled and all we really want out of life is to be loved unconditionally by one person. We just want to be loved at all. But in the end, we "cannot have" exactly what we want.

As far as language, while the lines lengths and rhythms are irregular, the language itself is very precise. It sounds nice due to devices such as slant rhymes (have/love, man/have, wrote/heart, rash/wish) and one exact rhyme (bone/alone). There is also a certain backbone given to the poem by the capitalization of each beginning line.

I think the stanza adds a breath of air to the bleakness of the poem's contingencies about war and national suffering. While it is still a stanza tinged with sadness, it reminds us that love cannot be stopped, even in the most difficult of times, that it will always spread and grow without fail - even a mad man cannot help but love. While we may crave a kind of love we cannot have, there will still always be the need and there will still always be the effort to try.
Auden seems to be reflecting on this need even in the midst of a war and a country in shambles.


~


NY Times Article: a 62-year-old poem finds rebirth


I think it is wonderful when a poem can resurface after so many years and find ground in a situation that occurred even after its penning. It shows the power of poems and words themselves, that a poem with no connection to 9/11 can still burrow its way into the event and signal for people a meaning and also be a comfort.

However, while the poem was celebrated, it was also picked apart -- as violating politics and government and pride, as a poem that ignores politics altogether -- and I believe this is where readers may have been in the wrong. Maybe the poem attacked politics and was "unpatriotic" but people need to remember that the poem was not written for this time -- it was written decades ago, when politics and such would have been different. To pick apart a poem because of these so-called problems would be missing the point. It talks about the towers in the darkness. It talks about a mad culture and what schoolchildren learn and the strength of collective man. Yes, some parts might be offensive to some people. The important thing is that Auden's  gift to the world some years ago meant something to some person struggling to find footing in a difficult time. This is what poetry is meant to be -- if it makes a difference to one person, then I think it is a gift.

Religion: Like Water Up to the Ankles

Catching Fish in Church

Best talk I ever had was early morning,

somewhere in the midwest, still dreaming, notes

holding the pew benches together like warm spit.

It was not a conversation with words but the silence

made by throat and tongue alike. Nothing was said

but I folded my hands and closed my eyes, as though speaking

through the mottled lampshades of my lids, and forgot

the words and knew this was how it felt

to send a string up to the broken spine of the sky.

Like when I was five and trailing sticks through the solitude

of the water, not waiting for my life to begin

but instead plunging my hands into pregnant discs of light

belly-up on the rocks, all the world caught under the pink skin

of my suit. There in the pew I wanted to make myself small,

as I once stood in that river

and threw my stick, and watched it arc against the bodies

of leaves before coming back down.

This poem came out of two free-writes: one a church experience and the other a religious or happy childhood experience. As I wrote, I reflected on where I most feel God -- is it sitting in a church pew or outside in nature or through other people? I think as my faith continues to expand, I realize that I find God most in daily life, when I least expect, rather than in the routine of church -- though church is a very important part of my spiritual life. Faith and how we find it is an unanswerable question that can never be answered but I believe that thinking about it is a step in the right direction.