Essay on "Defense of Poetry"

Essay 2 pages (711 words) Sources: 2

[EXCERPT] . . . .

In Tschinag's poem, though, the love between the narrator and the object of desire is almost secondary to the overarching theme and imagery of nature.

The first line reads, "Now I stood behind you within range." The word "range" has a double meaning, signifying mountains as well as "within range" of hearing or vision. Thus, the poet immediately establishes the connection between man and nature; or, as Tschinag puts it, the "interrelation between Nature and Man." The following line in the poem reads, "a load of storm your new hunter." Here, the storm is the natural metaphor and it represents the desire of the narrator for the beloved. "With the first snow I came to you," the narrator then states. As Tschinag states in "Defense of Poetry," snow and other elements of the Mongolian landscape are inextricably entwined with the Mongolian psyche. Thus, imagery of snow is indispensible in poetic verse. The narrator continues, "and in your presence I swore to heaven / to blow away all the traces of foreign winds on you." Ironically, the narrator reverts to the egotistical "I" point-of-view, by does not break the connection between man and nature. After all, the reference to heaven shows that the narrator has developed a sense of animistic power, feeling that heaven is skyward but immanent in all natural objects. This sense echoes Goethe's sentiment in "Wanderers Nachtlied II," in which the narrator uses the second person point-of-view to convey a sense of spiritual wonder at nature. The narrator is present, and yet the poem is not necessarily about the narrator's state of mind but about reconnecting the reader with ancient roots.

Works Cited

Bly, Robert. "A Meditation on a Poem by Goethe." In News of the Universe. University of California Press, 1995.

Hacken, Richard. "Images of Migration and Change in the German-Language Poetry of Galsan Tschinag." Retrieved online: http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu//tschinag/migration.htm

Tschinag, Galsan. "Defense of Poetry." Retrieved online: http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/collection/article_item/int_article/363/Defence-of-Poetry-1999-Galsan-Tschinag READ MORE

How to Reference "Defense of Poetry" Essay in a Bibliography

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