Three Poems about the Mountain – Analysis and Commentary

On Beauty by Simonides (6th century B.C.E.)

Original language Ancient Greek

Translated by Sherod Santos

As the ancient stories tell us, invisible

to mortal men, beauty dwells among

the high-capped rocks near a wind gap

arduous to climb. And you must almost

wear your heart out in the struggle

required to attain its height.

Mount Olympus

Translation was published in Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation, trans. by Sherod Santos (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005), page 71.

Traditionally, the mountain is a symbol of the divine. It is the place where God dwells and the locus of encounter with God. Practically all ancient cultures and civilizations conceive of the mountain in this way. The journey up the mountain is difficult, a struggle.

This Greek poem of the Classical period envisions the mountain as the habitation of a universally attributed aspect of divine being: beauty. The exposition is lyrical, terse, enduring.

Mount Liupan by Mao Zhedong (1893-1976)

October 1935

Original language Chinese

The sky is high, the clouds are pale,

We watch the wild geese vanish southward.

If we fail to reach the Great Wall we are not men,

We who have already measured twenty thousand li

High on the crest of Mount Liupan.

Red banners wave freely in the west wind.

Today we hold the long cord in our hands.

When shall we bind fast the Grey Dragon?

Long Live the Victory of Mao Zedong Thought (1970)

See:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/poems/poems17.htm

—Mao Zhedong, “Mount Liupan,” Marxist Internet Archive: Mao Zhedong

Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings: 1912-1949, Volume 5, Stuart R. Schram and Nancy J. Hodes, eds. (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1992) contains commentary that explains the figures of speech in the poem, for example, on page 33:  

 

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5. Traditional legend has it that during Han Wudi’s time, an army was sent out to Southern Yue. They asked Wudi for a long cord, promising to bind up and bring back the king of Yue.

6. “Gray Dragon” stands for the planet Jupiter, which is considered an ill-omened, evil force in ancient Chinese lore. Chinese commentaries on this poem state that it refers to Chiang Kaishek, although earlier translations of the poem have indicated that it may also stand for the Japanese invaders. The editors of the Shici duilian also state that this line alludes to a ci to the tune “Congratulating the Bridegroom” by the Song dynasty poet Liu Kezbuang, which contains the line “When will the long cord come into our hands/To bind fast the military commander?”

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Mao Zhedong’s poem represents the mountain not as a symbol of the spiritual quest but rather of the victory of Communist revolution. The author is the Great Helmsman, responsible for founding the modern Communist republic of China, ending decades of wracked political turmoil, and for tens of millions of deaths under an oppressive absolutist regime. Deep irony indeed that the cause of so much carnage should be conceived of in terms of a symbol of the transcendent.

Up on Top by Olav H. Hauge (1908-1994)

Original language Norwegian

Translated by Robert Bly

After stumbling a long time over impossible trails

you are up on top.

Hardship didn't crush you, you trod it

down, climbed higher.

That's how you see it. After life has tossed you

away, and you ended up on top

like a one-legged wooden horse on a dump.

Life is merciful, it blinds and provides illusions,

and destiny takes on our burden:

foolishness and arrogance become mountains and marshy places,

hate and resentment become wounds from enemy arrows,

and the doubt always with us becomes cold dry

rocky valleys.

You go in the door.

The pot lies upside down in the hearth,

it sprawls with hostile black feet.

“Ozymandias”

See: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/181327

—Olav H. Hauge, “Up on Top,” transl. by Robert Bly, Poetry (April 2008)

 

This poem about the mountain turns the motif on its head. Mountains are “foolishness and arrogance,” you climb them to get “up on top” of a “dump.” At the summit awaits jaded disillusion, symbolized by a pot overturned: “The pot lies upside down in the hearth, / it sprawls with hostile black feet.”

Twenty Poems about Silence (1 of 4) – Analysis and Commentary

This first group includes my favorite poems on this subject, all composed by poets widely recognized for mastery of their craft.

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Dr. W. E. McFarlane

The above famous poem dwells upon the dynamic between science and art—two divergent responses to the contemplation of nature.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Snowy woods

Another famous poem, the poet equally famous. The poem is not about silence, strictly speaking, but it is an unusually quiet poem—“The only other sound's the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” Natural bedfellows, silence and death are in this poem conjoined motifs.

The Habit of Perfection by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Elected Silence, sing to me

And beat upon my whorlèd ear,

Pipe me to pastures still and be

The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:

It is the shut, the curfew sent

From there where all surrenders come

Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark

And find the uncreated light:

This ruck and reel which you remark

Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,

Desire not to be rinsed with wine:

The can must be so sweet, the crust

So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend

Upon the stir and keep of pride,

What relish shall the censers send

Along the sanctuary side!

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet

That want the yield of plushy sward,

But you shall walk the golden street

And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride

And now the marriage feast begun,

And lily-coloured clothes provide

Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

Allegory of the Five Senses (1630) by Lubin Baugin

Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem expounds a series of contradictions. “Elected silence”—renunciation of the sense of hearing—is transformed into “the music that I care to hear.” The sense of sight that undergoes “double dark” is blessed with “uncreated light.”

Underlying the series is the theological conviction that self-denial undertaken for religious reasons reaps its corresponding spiritual rewards. The paradoxical motif applies to the five senses, and the poem ends personifying “Poverty” as the bride of the “spouse”—the Divine bridegroom—alluded to in garments “lily-coloured,” white standing for purity.

Peculiarly, the poem demonstrates “sprung rhythm,” the metrical system developed by Hopkins.

“Elected Silence” is the title of the UK version of Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). The original version of the autobiography was published in New York by Harcourt Brace. Elected Silence (1949), the version edited by Evelyn Waugh, was published in London by Hollis and Carter.

A callarse por Pablo Neruda

Ahora contaremos doce

y nos quedamos todos quietos.

Por una vez sobre la tierra

no hablemos en ningun idioma,

por un segundo detengamonos,

no movamos tanto los brazos.

Seria un minuto fragante,

sin prisa, sin locomotoras,

todos estariamos juntos

en una inquietud instantanea.

Los pescadores del mar frio

no harian danio a las ballenas

y el trabajador de la sal

miraria sus manos rotas.

Los que preparan guerras verdes,

guerras de gas, guerras de fuego,

victorias sin sobrevivientes,

se pondrian un traje puro

y andarian con sus hermanos

por la sombra, sin hacer nada.

No se confunda lo que quiero

con la inaccion definitiva:

la vida es solo lo que se hace,

no quiero nada con la muerte.

Si no pudimos ser unanimes

moviendo tanto nuestras vidas,

tal vez no hacer nada una vez,

tal vez un gran silencio pueda

interrumpir esta tristeza,

este no entendernos jamas

y amenazarnos con la muerte,

tal vez la tierra nos ensenie

cuando todo parece muerto

y luego todo estaba vivo.

Ahora contare hasta doce

y tu te callas y me voy.

KEEPING QUIET by Pablo Neruda

Original language Spanish

Translated by Alastair Reid

And now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth

let’s not speak in any language,

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines,

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victory with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about,

I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve,

and you keep quiet and I will go.

Grandfather clock face

See: http://spanishpoems.blogspot.com/2005/02/pablo-neruda-callarse.html 

 

—“Pablo Neruda -A callarse-,” Poemas en Inglés

Pablo Neruda received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Unfortunately, his poetry in Spanish is not very accessible to the English-speaking world. “No writer of world renown is perhaps so little known to North Americans as Chilean poet Pablo Neruda,” wrote New York Times Book Review critic Selden Rodman. See:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/pablo-neruda 

 

—“Pablo Neruda: 1904–1973,” Poetry Foundation

The above translation by Alastair Reid demonstrates Neruda’s lyrical flair, haunting imagery, anguished depth, and activist social vision.

Connotation of “guerras verdes” eludes me. Porque las guerras estan verdes?

Aware by Denise Levertov

When I opened the door

I found the vine leaves

speaking among themselves in abundant

whispers.

                  My presence made them

hush their green breath,

embarrassed, the way

humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,

acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if

the conversation had ended

just before you arrived.

                                           I liked

the glimpse I had, though,

of their obscure

gestures. I liked the sound

of such private voices. Next time

I'll move like cautious sunlight, open

the door by fractions, eavesdrop

peacefully.

Vine leaves

The above poem was published posthumously in Denise Levertov’s last book, The Great Unknowing: Last Poems (1999). Many copies of the poem appear online. See, for example:

https://allpoetry.com/poem/8503415-Aware-by-Denise-Levertov 

 

—Denise Levertov, “Aware,” All Poetry

In this poem we encounter Levertov’s aptitude for conveying keen insights using striking imagery about the ordinary and commonplace. It illustrates well what one critic has said of her poetry: “…she [was] often inspired by the humble, the commonplace, or the small, and she [composed] remarkably perceptive poems about a single flower, a man walking two dogs in the rain, and even sunlight glittering on rubbish in a street.” See:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/denise-levertov 

 

—“Denise Levertov: 1923–1997,” Poetry Foundation

Denise Levertov is not as famous as the four preceding poets. A quality biography is available here:

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/denise-levertov 

 

—“Denise Levertov: 1923–1997,” poets.org