[LETTERATURA] "The soldier" Rupert Brooke - TRADUZIONE e analisi

Da **Totta** Ven Set 30, 2011 6:03 pm

"The soldier" Rupert Brooke

Traduzione della poesia

Se dovessi morire, pensa solo questo di me:
che c’è qualche angolo del campo straniero
che sarà per sempre Inghilterra. Ci dovrebbe essere
In quella ricca terra una più ricca polvere nascosta;
una polvere di cui l’Inghilterra si fece, si formò,
s’informò,
diede, una volta, i suoi fiori all’amore, le sue vie
al vagabondaggio,
un corpo inglese, respirante aria inglese,
lavato dai fiumi, benedetto dal sole di casa.
E pensa, questo cuore, tolto tutto il male,
un battito nella mente eterna, nondimeno
restituisce da qualche parte i pensieri dati dall’Inghilterra;
le sue visioni ed i suoi suoni; sogna felice come il suo giorno;
e la risata, imparata dagli amici; e gentilezza,
nei cuori in pace, sotto un cielo inglese.

Commentary and Analysis

“The soldier” belongs to the sonnet sequence “1914”, written during the first phase of the war. In melodious conventional lines, it expresses what generally englishmen felt in the autumn 1914, a sense ofpatriotism against the enemy and in defence of the country, and the idealization of those who died in battle. It does not describe anything precise, but only present a vague generalization of the “war, self-sacrifice, glory” equation, which so deeply affected the young people of those first years. The form itself (a smooth and sweet classical Petrarchan sonnet with a regular rhyme pattern) reflects an abstract view of the war, with no hint at actual horrors or at death, except for the death of the poet himself who, in his romantic idealization, pretends that earth of the “foreign field” where he lies will be “for ever England”.

Brooke observes the sonnet form (14 lines of iambic pentamater, divided into an octave and a sestet). The octave is rhymed after the Shakespearean/Elisabeth rhyme scheme (ababcdcd), the sestet follows the Petrarchan/Italian rhyme scheme (efgefg). Both the octave and the sestet make the reader imagine the blissfull state of the fallen soldier. “The Soldier” is the culmination of Brooke’s sonnet sequence “1914″. In “The Soldier” the poet combines the idea of spiritual cleansing, of inviolable memories of the dead, of hero’s immortal legacy. The poet also invokes the idea of resurrection (“And think, this heart, all evil shed away / A pulse in the eternal mind”).[quote]