4/5 (305 Views . 33 Votes) Ultimately, the poem/letter is meant to remind her husband of her role as his wife, of her existence, of their relationship. It is meant to be a gentle way of telling him not to forget, or betray her. Remember, she is a river-merchant's wife in eighth-century China. Click to see full answer.
Imagery can also suggest emotional states, such as happiness, sadness, or anger. Ezra Pound based “The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter” on a poem by Li Po (701-762), in tribute to the great Chinese poet. As you read the poem, notice how simple words are used to evoke vivid images.
Ultimately, the poem/letter is meant to remind her husband of her role as his wife, of her existence, of their relationship. It is meant to be a gentle way of telling him not to forget, or betray her. Remember, she is a river-merchant's wife in eighth-century China. This is like being a traveling salesman's wife today.
Summary. 'The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter' by Ezra Pound describes the relationship between a sixteen-year-old girl and her merchant husband. The young wife is the speaker of the text, and she begins by informing the reader that she was married when she was only fourteen.
A lonely housewife hasn't seen her husband for five months, so she decides to write him a letter. In the letter, she recalls her first memory of their meeting. Then she recalls how she acted after they first got married—at the tender age of fourteen.
Lines 7-10 The second stanza places the girl and the boy, the "I" and the "you," as a woman and man in the adult world. In ancient cultures, and in some cultures today, early marriages are customary, and it is often also the custom for the wife to refer to her husband by a respectful title.Oct 5, 2015
free verse"The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" is a four stanza poem, written in free verse, and loosely translated by Ezra Pound from a poem by Chinese poet Li Bai. It first appeared in Pound's 1915 collection Cathay. It is the most widely anthologized poem of the collection.
In these closing lines of the poem and the “letter” the river-merchant’s wife reaches out from her lonely world of sorrow to her husband in a direct request: Please let me know when and by what route you are returning, so that I may come to meet you. This, however, conveys more than it would at first appear. Her village is a suburb of Nanking and she is willing to walk to a beach several hundred miles upstream from there to meet her husband, so deeply does she yearn to close the distance between them.
This translation, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,” is structured into 5 stanzas: the first of 6 lines, and the second, third, and fourth of 4 lines each. Each of the first four stanzas is image-centered, focusing an emotional point in the history of the relationship between the river-merchant’s wife and her husband. The final stanza of 10 lines and a dropped half-line begins with the presentation of a similar central image that collects an enhancing detail in each line until line 25 shifts into direct emotional statement. The last four lines mix this direct letter-writing style with the final image closing the physical and emotional distance between the river-merchant and his wife.
The second stanza places the girl and the boy, the “I” and the “you,” as a woman and man in the adult world. In ancient cultures, and in some cultures today, early marriages are customary, and it is often also the custom for the wife to refer to her husband by a respectful title. In the case of this poem the formality of the title is softened by the direct address of “you” added right after it.
“ The River -Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” was published in 1915 in Ezra Pound’s third collection of poetry, Cathay: Translations, which contains versions of Chinese poems composed from the sixteen notebooks of Ernest Fenollosa, a scholar of Chinese literature. Pound called the poems in English which resulted from the Fenollosa manuscripts “translations,” but as such they are held in contempt by most scholars of Chinese language and literature. However, they have been acclaimed as “poetry” for their clarity and elegance. They are variously referred to as “translations,” “interpretations,” “paraphrases,” and “adaptations.”
In 1948, Ezra Pound won the Bollingen Prize for the best volume of poetry published that year. Many people were highly critical of this award since he had been accused of treason during World War II by the U.S. government. Evaluate both sides of the controversy and explain which position you find most convincing.
In line 22 the sadness of the river-merchant’s wife is again reflected back to her by the natural world, by the falling leaves and wind of autumn. This image becomes more defined with her observation of the butterflies in the garden, for they are
Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, in 1885, and raised in Philadelphia, the son of Homer Loomis Pound and Isabel Weston Pound. He made his first visits to Europe with his family in 1898 and 1902. He attended the Cheltenham Military Academy when he was twelve and soon after attended the Cheltenham Township High School. Just before his sixteenth birthday Pound entered the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1903 he transferred to Hamilton College, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1905. He taught Romance languages at Wabash College in Indiana for a short time in 1907, but was dismissed after a scandal involving a stranded actress that he allowed to stay overnight with him in his room. After this and a failed courtship with Mary S. Moore, Pound decided to leave for Europe, where he privately published his first volume of poetry, A lume spento, in Venice in 1908. He then moved to London and by 1911 was immersed in the literary and intellectual milieu and was a respected critic and poet. Around this time Pound founded a poetic movement called Imagism , which linked techniques derived from the Symbolist movement and Oriental poetry, such as haiku.
The river-merchant's wife, who is still a young woman, writes a letter to her absent husband, the river-merchant, reminiscing about a time when she wore her hair cut short and played outside picking flowers. Her husband, who was still a boy at the time, played on stilts, pretending to be a horse and picking plums.
Continuing her reflections, the wife recalls how she stopped frowning a year after her marriage. She wanted to be with her husband "forever and forever, and forever." Now she asks why she should climb a lookout tower.
The wife remembers that at 16, her husband traveled to Ku-tō-en by a treacherous river. He left five months ago and he has not returned. As the wife reflects, she listens to the sad noises of monkeys.
The wife remembers her husband's reluctance upon leaving. She watches thick moss growing up and covering the gate. It is autumn, and leaves begin falling from the trees. The breeding butterflies turn yellow. "They hurt me," the wife writes. And, "I grow older."
For his translation Pound uses free verse, a poetic form with no metrical rules. His choice to avoid rhyme and meter reflects one of the three basic tenets of imagism: poets should "compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome." Pound uses plain, simple words arranged into clear, concise sentences.
The power of "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" derives partly from the deeply nuanced characterization of the speaker. The changes in the river-merchant's wife over time, and her feelings about them, stand at the center of the poem.
In the third stanza Pound transforms the wife into a lonely, grieving woman. The wife describes her husband's journey "into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies." She does not openly say she fears for her husband's safety, but the description sounds dangerous, perhaps potentially deadly.