An Appreciation of [Swedish] Ekelov's 'The Flower Sleeps'

An appreciation of the classic poem "Ekel?f - The Flower Sleeps"

The flower sleeps in the window, the light gazes

The window gazes dully into the darkness outside

The paintings relentlessly show what was entrusted to them

Flies stand still on the wall in their thoughts

The flower leans against the night, and the lamps of the complacency put out their humming rays.

The cat in the corner spins sleepy wool

The coffeepot on the stove snores complacently

The children whisper on the floor

The white tablecloth waits for someone

Whose footsteps never ascend the stairs

A train that penetrates the far-off silence

Doesn't reveal the secret of things

But fate, according to a ten-pointed scale, is the only one who knows the secrets.

And fate counts the ticking of the clock by the decimal place.

(Translated by Bei Dao)

Day is followed by night. The hustle and bustle of the sunlight fades away, and the people who go out of their homes return home in the twilight. The evening mist returns home. The night, with its fine rain, seeps silently into the windows of life, and plays another movement of life in the bright darkness. The poet always loves to lift the curtain of the night, the surge of poetry into the boundless starlight, flowing into the reader's heart.

See, this poem chooses "night" as the moment that makes one's mind fly. The inanimate objects and living creatures are anthropomorphized: flowers "sleep", lights and windows "stare", oil paintings "show relentlessly", flies "stand" in the air. The flowers "sleep", the lights and windows "stare", the painting "shows relentlessly", the fly "stands" on the wall "thinking". The static image is suddenly dynamic, suggesting that the unoccupied interior has left traces of human life. Of course, the poet's intention is to write about the silence, which is emphasized in the last line of the stanza: "The flies stood still on the wall and pondered". Emphasizing the word "quiet" and contrasting it with the second stanza makes the poem tumble in the midst of change. The second stanza is a scene of "noise". This "haunting" is also emphasized by the use of anthropomorphism: "Flowers leaning against the night, the lamps of pleasure letting out a buzzing light", the cat "spinning" wool, the coffee pot "snoring", the cat "spinning" wool, the coffee pot "snoring", the cat "spinning" wool, the coffee pot "snoring". "snoring". Some of the flurry of "noise" in the poem is naturally emanating from the objects, such as "the coffee pot on the stove snoring complacently", while others are the poet distorting the appearance, but only psychologically felt, such as "the cat in the corner spinning sleepy wool", "the cat in the corner spinning sleepy wool". For example, "The cat in the corner spun the wool of sleep" was originally "The cat in the corner slept quietly". This drastic distortion constitutes a picture with a strong sense of action, almost absurd, *** the reader's aesthetic senses. Another contrast with the first stanza in this interior scene is the clear presence of human voices, not so much implied, as "children whispering on the floor".

The two scenes in the same interior are similar and everywhere *** heterogeneous, for the reason that, as an ancient Greek philosopher said, we cannot step into the same river twice. In the same way, a poet observing two scenes cannot be in the same space-time. As is the case with four-dimensional space-time, man's destiny is even more rapidly changing, hence the punch line, "And fate counts the ticking of the clock by decimal degrees." Man still doesn't know himself (both self and others), hence the line "A white tablecloth waits for someone / Whose steps never make it up the stairs," which seems to come out of thin air. Because of the poet's deep sense of the unknowability of fate and the unknowability of man's knowledge of himself, rather than lamenting that "a train that penetrates the distant silence / does not reveal the secrets of things," the poet speaks of a harsh reality: a train that penetrates the distant silence (which means that it passes through the more distant future) does not reveal the secrets of things. The poet uses such imagery to give the poet a sense of the secret of the world. The poet's use of such imagery casts a veil of mystery over the whole poem. It can also be used as a key to understanding the poem. The poet is not trying to reveal or explain anything, but to make full use of the possibilities of the subconscious mind to provide a poetic background for creative imagination.

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