Читать книгу A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015 - Группа авторов - Страница 16

Ambiguity in history is central to Harwood's poem. Title and epigraph enact the equivoque of the rest of the poem. What is the sinking colony? Is the end and insubstantial nature of empire announced by it? Why is the epigraph a quotation from a translation of André Gide's Les Faux‐monnayeurs? Is the factitious nature of any account signaled from the very start?

The poem itself is a designedly broken thing, the meaning of which—apart from brokenness—must remain unclear. It is divided into six sections. Sections 1, 2, 3, and 5 are in prose, without any obvious phonological or rhythmic patterning. A majority of sentences are without terminal punctuation (12 out of 21). Section 2 also contains three lines of broken verse (six noncohesive phrases, with a space between each of the first pair and the second pair). Section 4 consists of verse, but the lines are irregular in length (from 14 to 4 syllables) and in numbers of main stresses per line (from 7 to 2). It is very hard to see any traditional metrical patterning. The same is the case with the verse in section 6.

The speaker in the six sections is unstable: an “I” and a “we.” Although all sections have narrative elements, there is no coherent narrative over the whole poem, and any narrative in any single section is elliptical and incomplete. Section 1 is set in British India. Section 2 refers to mountains and foothills, but whether these are those of section 1 is not clear. Similarly, the rains mentioned in section 3 may or may not be Indian rains. Are mansion, crops, and rain in section 4 those of earlier sections? Are they Indian or English? Old or modern? Section 5 shifts unambiguously to another part of the Empire, to Canada, and to another kind of weather. Section 6 with its violence may follow on from section 5, although one cannot be sure. The gate recurs here, although it is hard to see why there is a gate in a Canadian clearing.

However, there are elements of coherence in the text. The verse is not quite as disordered as it seems. The last four lines of section 4 contain two quasi‐end rhymes (“alternating / skipping,” “days / face”), and other lines end in echoes (“grounds / storms,” “machinery / dry”). The same intermittent semi‐rhyme is notable in section 6: (“shot / knots / padlock,” “all this / in this”). A certain framework is offered by the recurrent motifs of rain, gate, crops, and mansion. Action, too, occurs in central parts of the British Empire (India and Canada). Two expeditions are referred to, in sections 1 and 5.

Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that fragmentariness and a concomitant obscurity mark the poem. History (events, accounts) is a matter of incomplete and inconclusive narratives, impressions (section 4), and reflections (section 3). Unease is recurrent: the speaker in section 1 has limited possibilities; the speaker in section 2 is “unnerved”; section 3 is entitled “The ache?”; there is a “sigh” and “pain” in section 4; there is violence and “little comfort” in section 6. There are hints of coherence (mentioned earlier), but mostly “There were complexities” (section 3) and, as the speaker has it in section 5, “I cannot work it out.” Empire—England?—is fragmented; the colonial power is sinking.