发布时间 : 星期五 文章Theme Analysis of to Paint a Water Lily更新完毕开始阅读b66d13a82cc58bd63186bd74
Theme Analysis of to Paint a Water Lily
To Paint a Water Lily, by Ted Hughes, is one of the poet’s best early works written in a modernistic manner. From the title, we might think that it talks about the scenery around a lily flower and process of painting it. However, after appreciating this poem, I’ve got more than I expect for I think in this poem it sets forth the truth of both nature and artistic creation.
Firstly, the poem shows the dual character of the nature. On the one hand, nature is beautiful, just like what the poet has observed : “A green level of lily leaves; Roofs the pond's chamber and paves”. The poet might be attracted by the beautiful long-necked water lily when he looks at it. However, on the other hand, nature is full of violence and veil. In the poem, the pond becomes the dragonflies' furious arena. Some of them are flying in the air like bullets, eating meat or standing in space to take aim; Others are humming, dangerously combing under the trees. All these make battle-shouts and death-cries everywhere hereabouts. How horrifying it is. But it does exist in the nature world. As there is a Chinese image, “lotus growing out of mud”, we can know that nature is the combination of good and evil. It is might also true that , everything, everyone and even every aspect of the whole world are existing with contradictions. So we need to see thing from the surface to the centre with a sense of dialectics so as to get a comprehensive view.
Secondly, it also reveals the main task of the artist--to go beyond the surface of the natural scenery in order to create the artistic work. The poet is aware of the beauty of the waterlily as well as the violence of the dragonflies. What’s more, this view also reminds him of sight in the pond-bed and even the looks of those dragonflies in the prehistoric bedragoned times. But what he need to do is focusing on the creation of the painting. Regardless of the beauty or the horror or his endless thoughts, he pays his attention to the color of those dragonflies and “(r)ainbow their arcs, spark, or settle(c)ooling like beads of molten metal”. That is how an artist make his artistical creation--to get the key idea though the experience in nature. As what we get from the
Artist and the World by Joyce Carry: one of the main task of artists is to find the meaningful things through the intuition or inspiration in the chaotic world, the paintings are the achievement that painters get from nature[1]. And the poet himself also gets the idea from nature to write this poem. All these reflect the essence of artistic creation.
In conclusion, this poem is really a masterpiece of Ted Hughes which is worthy thinking deeply. By analyzing the theme of this poem, we can find out the the dual character of nature and maybe the ubiquitous paradoxes in the whole world, thus teaching us to see and think dialectically. Besides, we learn about the truth of the artistic creation, in which the artist discover his inspiration from the complex and disordered nature world.
Reference :
[1] 杨自伍，《英国散文名著欣赏》， 上海外语教育出版社，20013