Thursday, October 2, 2008
Fatality
It's weird to see this perspective on life; the preference to feeling nothing at all rather than the pain of existence. There's almost a suicidal quality to the poem, Darío most likely was not a suicidal man, but this poem is certainly something of a buzzkill. The poem also gives me a sense of maybe the...opposite of masochism, I guess; that feeling anything is the worst thing possible. I also realize everyone made the connection to Eden, but i just didn't see it. I realize Darío is all about the allusions, but the happy tree and then cool grapes really just seemed like more reasons why feeling is worse than being numb. This poem seemed very out of Darío's style in that sense, not being riddles with unnecessary allusions. I feel like I could actually read this poem without having the encylopedia Mythica open in front of me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
I´m with you Charlie. A lot of the time it´s difficult to appreciate Darío without a library on hand. "Fatality", on the other hand is a gem. I also agree about whether or not there is a reference to Eden. If it´s there, it´s indirect. I suppose it´s difficult to write about existential questions and a tree without invoking the Garden of Eden for some people.
I totally agree with everything you say Charlie. When we first began to study the works of Dario, we began with the poem "Springtime". As I was reading that poem, I observed optimistic feelings, lots of positive nature symbols, and pretty much just had a nice rhythm or musical structure to that poem. In other words, after reading this first poem, I automatically assumed that all of Dario's poetry would be optimistic and would generally have the same tone as his first poem. In contrast, when I was reading "Fatality", I could not believe that this was written by the same poet. I agree with you Charlie when you say that this poem does in a way have a suicidal feel to it. It lacks those references to nature that make the tone of the poem sound optimistic. What I like about this is that the reader can easily notice how Dario's opinions change. Not many poets tend to show this change throughout the course of writing poems, but by doing this, Dario is offering more insight to his opinions.
I agree with you on the inability to see the connection to Eden. The only connection that I can see is where it says, "for the flesh which tempts with its fresh grapes." It is symbolic of the story where Adam and Eve are tempted by a serpent(the devil) to eat the apples from the forbidden tree. The analogy ends there as there is no one eating the apples and being forced into mortality. On another note, I agree with you that this was very out of Dario's character. He is acting very pessimistic and displaying how life is full of torment. He is essentially stating how each day he is trudging along painfully, and wishing to feel nothing (Like the fortunate rocks).
I am not saying one way or another, i feel like most of the time writers do not intend the connections that are made. however i can understand the relation to the garden just because of knowledge.
If you see our difference between rocks and trees as a level of knowledge instead of feeling the reference makes more sense. In the garden adam and eve became mortal and unhappy and sickly because they gained the knowledge of evil, before that they had no knowledge of evil things and they were happy, like a tree would be happy just sitting there growing. Once that knowledge was bestowed upon them they fell.
Again i am not saying there is a clear connection but i definitely can see it kind of.
Regardless it is an interesting view of the poem to think that we gained feeling and knowledge with choice (like the garden), its interesting. Humans have doomed themselves, and are the benefits of feeling worth the pain? that is the question i get from the poem.
Post a Comment