THE
RIVER MERCHANT’S WIFE: A LETTER
1915
While
my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At
fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Whyshould
I climbthelook
out?
At
sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of
swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You
dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
By Rithaku
(Li T’ai
<(http://www.uv.es/fores/poesia/cathay.html#letter)>
The
poem which I am going to analyse, “The River-Merchant’s wife: a letter”
was published in 1915 in Ezra Pound’s
third collection of poetry,
Ezra
Pound was inspired in pre-Raphaelite poetry and other 19th century
poets and medieval Romance literature. He also began to reject archaic
poetic language and forms in an attempt to remake himself as a poet. Some
time before the First World War, Pound was largely responsible for the
appearance of Imagism (group
of English and American poets writing from 1909 to about 1917, who were
united by their revolt against the exuberant imagery and diffuse sentimentality
of 19th-century poetry) and Vorticism
(short-lived English movement in art and literature that arose in
1914 and was heavily influenced by cubism and futurism). The most peculiar
statement of Pound which he uses in all his 20th century poetry
was “Rhythm is a Form cut into time”<(URL://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound)>
According
to the construction of the poem, it is structured
in 5 stanzas the first of 6 lines, and the second, third, and fourth of
4 lines each one.
In
all the poem there are many symbols and “clues” to try to guess what the
author wants to say us. For example the first stanza mainly indicates that
the “wife” is a child. He author mentions many elements to represent the
childishness of the wife and husband; firstly “While
my hair was still cut straight across my forehead” is the mark of an adult
woman, in the ancient Chinese culture it was elaborate arrangements of
long hair. <(http://www.english.uiuc.edu)>.
Secondly the repetition of the verb “to play” in lines
In
the second stanza, wife starts to grow up; she is 14 years old, and it
situates her in an adult environment. The wife calls her husband “My Lord”
(line 7) as a symbol of respect and confidence. In lines 8-9 the author
talks about the “child-shyness” of wife.
In
the third stanza the wife continues growing up and now she is 15, not only
the wife grows up; also the love between them is becoming stronger. In
this stanza the author makes a comparison of feelings with the first stanza
because in the first stanza the only sensation which she felt was innocence
and now, in the third stanza she starts “to stop scowling”. Pound remarks
it with the repetition of “forever” in three times (line 13). I think that
in this stanza her love is deeper than in the first one.
But
in the poem also we can observe the sorrow of love; in the fourth stanza
when the husband goes out to explore the waters of the River Ku-to-en.
His wife is alone, physically and psychologically. She compares her pain
with the monkey’s noise (line 18). This stanza gives us an image of isolation
and separation.
The
author in the last stanza treats more
thoroughlythe
absence of husband. In line 19 the poem says that when he went out, he
carried everything with him, the different mosses have grown but she won’t
cut them if her husband doesn’t come. They are now too deep to clear them.
In line 20, she names “a gate” which possibly is the same gate they played
of when they were children.
In
line 22 the author continues describing the sadness of the wife with the
falling of the leaves and also that the time is passing etc (line23).
Pound
also makes a comparison between the wife and the paired butterflies (line
23). The author says that the butterflies have her own pair and hey change
to yellow with time, but the wife has not got her pair, she is alone, she
can’t change nor grow up with her husband because he is not there. Butterflies
are a symbol to emphasize the pain of the wife.
Finally
I think that the last lines indicate the desperation of the wife who asks
her husband when he will come back to go to meet her. She is so distressed
that she is looking for the way to shortening the large distance between
them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ezra
Pound Achieve, www.wikipedia.org,
Ed, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, last visited
)>
The
River-Merchant’s wife: a letter Ezra Pound, www.cs.rice.edu,
Ed, Jane Hautanen,
last visited 16th August 2006. <(http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/70.html)>