The Spear : 無料・フリー素材/写真
The Spear / Giles Watson's poetry and prose
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
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| 説明 | The SpearY GwaywI saw a girl, with hair gold,Shallow waves that glint, foldAnd wash her form head to toe,Twice as radiant as the glowOf dawn, in Bangor yesterday:The choir of the Mystery PlayOf Noah’s Ark. The deluge swirled:Sufficient grace to drown the worldWith Fflur’s allure. Sick I swooned,Writhing with a mortal wound:Pierced by seven-sided spear,Spur for seven songs of sheerAgony: a poisoned tip,And Eiddig has me in his grip.A sharp barb which no man’s artCan extricate from my heart,And mortal man never madeA spear so fierce, nor any bladeSo clear of colour, primed to smite,Nor could any poet writeSuch piercing keenness into verse.I cringe, creep, and bear the curseOf Gwynedd’s candle, bright as Mair,The weeping wound aflame with fireHas scorched my youth, etched my jowlWith lines. I smile a poisoned scowl,Skewered through the entrails, nailedTo grim love, by lust impaled.Esyllt’s peer has cleft – and blessed – The ruptured rooftree of my breast.My ribs shattered, struck my spire,Rafters augered with desire.Treason’s gimlet in your grasp:Screw it deep and watch me gasp.Source material: Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. Although she is not named, it seems likely that this poem is Dafydd’s record of his first encounter with the golden-haired Morfudd, one of the two great – and competing – loves of his life. The other was Dyddgu, whose hair was dark, and who was, on Dafydd’s own reckoning, a more suitable recipient for his affections, especially given that Morfudd appears to have been already married (in another poem, ‘Morfudd a Dyddgu’, Dafydd explicitly chooses to love Dyddgu in preference, but it is clear that he wavered in his resolve). All of this assumes, of course, that the poems are autobiographical. The main piece of evidence to suggest that they are is the clear identification of Dyddgu’s father as Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, and a poetic contention between Dafydd and the rival bard Gruffudd Gryg, who may well be the Eiddig, or love-rival, in the present poem. The setting is Bangor Cathedral, founded by St Deinioel, where Morfudd is first noticed by Dafydd whilst she is listening to the choir at a Mystery Play. Mystery Plays, which re-enacted stories from the Bible, were a very popular form of entertainment throughout Wales and England in the Middle Ages. There is evidence to suggest that the plays were often remarkable spectacles, with adventurous stage effects being employed to re-enact scenes of miracles. It is possible that the stage for the production of Noah’s Flood was awash with water: a visual experience which may have prompted Dafydd to compare the onset of love to a deluge. Since Christ’s passion was often also enacted in Mystery Plays, it is possible that the spearing of his heart was the source of the conceit that dominates the poem, and Dafydd certainly seems to echo the erotic suggestiveness of writings on suffering by Christian mystics. The fifth-last line of the poem is my attempt to render in English Dafydd’s punning use of the words ‘cledr dwyfron’ (breastbone): ‘cledr’ also means ‘rafter’ or ‘beam’. Fflur and Esyllt are both literary allusions: Fflur was the beloved of Caswallawn fab Beli, and Esyllt is a Welsh spelling of Iseult, beloved of Tristan. |
| 撮影日 | 2009-08-06 14:17:01 |
| 撮影者 | Giles Watson's poetry and prose , Oxfordshire, England |
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| カメラ | E8700 , NIKON |
| 露出 | 0.077 sec (1/13) |
| 開放F値 | f/2.8 |