In any case, it is clear that there is nothing she wishes for after the death of her husband, so deep is her love for him now. Pound divides her poem in three stanzas and each one represents a memory the narrator has with the river-merchant. For her it is the scene of the beginning of his absence. Lines 11-14: The central image of this stanza is the growth of love between the young husband and wife. The wife is considerably young.
This implies that before leaving for months, the river-merchant walked reluctantly away from his house as he did not want to leave his wife. Being away from her husband for such a long period has made her sad. In ancient cultures, and in some cultures today, early marriages are customary, and it is often also the custom for the wife to refer to her husband by a respectful title. While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. Get Help With Your Essay If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help! This suggests that she has stared so much at the wilderness in hopes of spotting her husband that she has forgotten about time; as the wind blows the colors of life away, she thinks about how lonely she is in her darkened world of separation from her husband. And we went on living in the village of ChĹkan: Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
The vows of the marriage ceremony, "till death us do part," are evoked in lines 12 and 13 and poignantly reinforced by the triple repetition in line 13 of "forever. Copy to Clipboard Reference Copied to Clipboard. The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. The wife's statement of the length of his absence is expressed in one line, giving it full and emphatic force. Butterflies cannot cause harm to a person.
The narrator then says that the river-merchant begins his journey at age sixteen. At sixteen you departed, You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies, And you have been gone five months. Therefore, the deep moss implies that the river-merchant has been gone for years. Her face, which in the first stanza has the bangs of childhood across her forehead, in the second stanza is averted and unsmiling, "stops scowling" in the third stanza. Lines 7-10: The second stanza places the girl and the boy, the "I" and the "you," as a woman and man in the adult world. It is possible that because she never asked for marriage, she feels sad for she does not want to be with the river-merchant. However, the wife is somewhat optimistic that the conflict will eventually resolve itself.
Instead, she possibly wants to say that she is sad without saying she is. There is no way that mosses can grow deep enough for one not being able to get rid of them because they have weak stems and with their short height, they can easily be removed Brain 185. Then, the autumn leaves fall earlier than usual because of wind. She is a teenâfourteen, to be exactâwhen she marries. Her village is a suburb of Nanking and she is willing to walk to a beach several hundred miles upstream from there to meet her husband, so deeply does she yearn to close the distance between them. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs. In the third stanza, she recounts how her husband left for work as a fisherman and left her behind.
You dragged your feet when you went out. He has gone now for five months and even the monkeys in her village seem sorrowful to her. Discussion: The River Merchants Wife: A Letter. Lines 26-29: In these closing lines of the poem and the "letter" the river-merchant's wife reaches out from her lonely world of sorrow to her husband in a direct request: Please let me know when and by what route you are returning, so that I may come to meet you. Monkeys are similar to humans and they do feel sadness, but they express it through body language and not through sorrowful noise. As the girl is staring at them, it is possible that, just like the butterflies, she wishes to be with her husband and have a good time with him. There are no humans around for her to interact with.
Ezra Pound's translation of Li Bai's poem " The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is a four stanza poem, written in free verse, and loosely translated by The poem is written from the perspective of a girl married to a river merchant, and describes her gradually increasing affection for him and the pain she feels when he is away. Copy to Clipboard Reference Copied to Clipboard. Lines 22-25: In line 22 the sadness of the river-merchant's wife is again reflected back to her by the natural world, by the falling leaves and wind of autumn. Because Ezra Pound was born in 1885, the poem probably happens during the modern age, but the reader does not have enough information to precisely know the time period. Months later, the gate has grown moss so deep that it is impossible to get rid of it. Find Out How UKEssays. And in line 18 the effect of this long absence is brought to full comprehension by the use of the natural image of the sounds of the monkeys that reflect back to her the sound of her own sorrow.
Maybe the river-merchant has experienced complications in his work because many years have passed in the poem and he is not back from his journey. Lines 15-18: An image of separation is developed in these lines as the husband takes on his role as a river-merchant and travels the waters, conducting his work in the world on a distant island. This image becomes more defined with her observation of the butterflies in the garden, for they are "paired" as she is not, and they are becoming "yellow" changing with the season, growing older together. The last date is today's date â the date you are citing the material. Her frank, sweet retelling of their lives together evokes both the joys of love and the pains of separation. In the case of this poem the formality of the title is softened by the direct address of "you" added right after it.
This implies that the narrator is in a need to see her husband because she would travel hundreds of miles just to meet him. When the wife turns sixteen, her husband departs. It also means that she misses him. She might want to see her husband as soon as possible, but when a merchant is gone trading, the latter is gone for a long time. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
The turns fifteen years old and she starts to love her husband; she wants her dust to be mixed with his forever. The sounds that monkeys make are generally interpreted as chirping, happy sounds, but the weight of the wife's sorrow is so great that she can only hear the monkeys' noise as "sorrowful. Pound first published this poem in his 1915 collection Cathay. It is possible that the river-merchant is gone trading goods along rivers because that is his job and the time has come for him to leave his wife behind to make money. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.