《文学讨论》好多蛾子

2、论诗歌

　　How does the poet communicate the power/ beauty/ role of the nature to inspire/ teach/ remind us of our mere mortality?

　　To be mortal is to possess the ability to die, mankind has always been vulnerable and insignificant compared to the wider world. In “On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book” Charles Tennyson Turner conveys this idea of mortality and insignificance by his use of extended metaphor, contrast between lines, and vocabulary choice.

　　“The book will close upon us…just as we lift ourselves to soar” These lines are condemning and insinuates the inevitable death that await the readers as they progress along life. The use of collective pronouns such as “us” includes the readers into this dooming future. Turner is making a parallel between the fly and mankind when he uses “the book”, a weapon causing the fly’s death, instead of more common ways which people die from, such as “the knife”, or “the guillotine”, to foretell the readers’ deaths. By making this parallel, we are reminded of the trivial death of the fly in the preceding octet. The murderer, described only by generalisations such as “some hand”, makes the readers overlook the culprit of the fly’s tragic death, emphasising on the fly’s insignificance. Once the readers are provoked to make the connection between their mortality and the end of a lowly insect’s life, the lack of description concerning by whom and how the fly was crushed, shocks and alarm them. The message that distresses the readers is not the fly’s death or even, their own death, but the idea of the readers, themselves, passing away but making no impact upon the world they have lived in. Turner emphasises that mankind are no different to the fly which has been crushed, knocking the readers into the realisation- we are only an minute speck of nothingness compared to the larger picture, and that the universe will not stop cycling, or even pause at our destined deaths.

　　Turner makes the readers realise their mere mortality even more by demeaning their mortality compared to the fly’s death. “Yet leave no lustre on our page of death” is the final line in the sestet, it is definitive that the readers casualty will not even be as glamourous as the fly’s residues, making the readers sense of self-importance diminish. The use of the metaphor “page of death” shows how mankind’s existence, and death, is only a small part of the whole. Not much different to how a page is only part of a book, but minuscule by itself.

　　Unlike “On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book”, “Any Soul to Any Body” is not a poem demeaning human mortality, but a poem communicating the imminent death that will fall upon us all, regardless of what we were or what we achieved before the axe falls. Cosmo Monkhouse portrays the idea of mortality by his use of metaphors, syntax, and use of past tense throughout the poem.

　　The poem begins with the definitive “So we must part”, instantly finalising the idea of mortality and departure in the first line. The reader immediately feels the persona’s compulsion to leave and move on. To emphasise the idea of moving on, Monkhouse isolates “the body” by two commas, encouraging the reader to pause and creates a feeling of discarding a corpse. Monkhouse portrays the idea of reluctance to depart, of the soul, from the body, by using “clove and close”, the sense of clinging and stickiness is reinforced by the alliteration. The fate of the body is then mentioned to be lying “quietly beneath a stone”, there is euphemism in this phrase and the use of “stone” instead “tombstone” or “memorial”, makes the death seem common and unimportant. The use of the personification of “the hungry legions of decay” creates the sense powerlessness, like a lone man against the legions of an empire, of mankind under the natural cycle of nature.

　　Monkhouse then emphasises about the inevitableness of mortality by demonstrating an example of departure throughout the stanzas. A sense of loyalty between the persona and its body builds up through stanzas one to four, the use of “from winter unto winter, wet or dry” makes the length of companionship between the soul and the body seem long and everlasting. The readers is slowly engulfed by the fond and casual tone from stanza two to four, taken from a friend’s perspective, built up by the use of contraptions such as “who’ve”. The review of the persona and its companion’s past reinforces the atmosphere of comfort and faithfulness. Light jokes such as “’Tis true you’re not as handsome as you were” emphasises on the closeness of the two involved. Just as the readers are being drawn into the close partnership between the persona and its companion, Monkhouse starts stanza five with and adjunct “but”. This is then followed up by the persona saying “you must stay… and I go”, the grief of this inevitable departure is enlarged by contrast between the present stanza and the preceding four. The comfortable atmosphere which Monkhouse slowly developed in the previous stanzas, like a frog in a heating Jacuzzi, is only for preparation for the last and final impact- the departure. Monkhouse reminds the readers about their mere mortality under the power of nature by showing how, even the most loyal and intimate companion, such as the soul and the body, must go on their own separate paths under the shroud of death, however reluctant. This overall idea of death is emphasised by the use of past tense throughout the whole poem, this does not only finalise the departure of the two partners but also finalise mortality. Showing that, being part of the natural cycle, death is unavoidable.

　　The readers are reminded of their mere mortality in the two poems “On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book” and “ Any Soul to Any Body” by the use of contrast between stanzas, choice of vocabulary, and the use of extended metaphor. Both Monkhouse and Turner makes the idea of mortality relevant to the readers by provoking empathy between their personas and the readers.