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1. Leda and the Swan
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swan |
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... This poem incorporates several powerful allusions to mythical literary figures, which the author then associates with his own created myth of the swan. ... The swan, evoked in the title of this poem, is not just any other animal or winged creature. The elegance of the image it elicits, the whiteness of its plumaged, equates the swan in literary tradition with idea of beauty itself, especially the beauty of literary, musical, or poetic art. ... "(87 Cherix) Moreover, the swan is an animal usually situated in a luscious natural habitat of country lakes and streams, an image which opposes that of city life. ... In the context of the poem the swan is in fact seen in a "menagerie," a term directly associated with the nobility, because this type of exotic zoo was inaccessible to all but the kings and their courts. An association can be made between the image of the swan as the symbol of the poet and Baudelaires dedication to Victor Hugo. ... ) Since the relationship between the swan and Hugo is evident, Baudelaires dedication functions by adding a second dimension to that of the sublime image evoked by the swan: the painful and estranged dimension of exile which will be repeated through out the poem. ... The swan, image of beauty, appears here liberated from the constraints of society. Reading on however, the swan seems to be in an even more difficult and hostile situation then the one he might have known in his cage. ... (Benjamin) On the square that the poet is mentally observing there is now a stream without water which, in the sixth stanza, the swan attempts to bath in driven by his instinct. It is noteworthy, here, that the poet has ceased calling the swan, "cygne," instead using the term "bete. ... 20) By doing this he is stripping the swan of its symbolic potential and reducing it to the status of animal. It is interesting that poet emphasizes the animal aspect of the swan right before swan surprisingly speaks: Et disait le coeur plein de son beau lac natal: "Eau, quand donc pleuvras-tu? ... 22-23) So in his apparent escape and liberty the swan wishes for water to rain and fill the dry city stream. A parallel can once again be drawn here if the reader recalls the first stanza: for the swan the city stream is to the "beau lac natal" what, for Andromache, the fraudulent Simois is to the real one. Furthermore, both the swan and Andromache are exile in a sense; the swan was captured and placed in a menagerie in the center of Paris while Andromache became slave to Pyrrhus. The swan escaped his cage to find himself in a river without water while Andromache escaped to marry Helenus. By giving the swan the ability of speech Baudelaire affirms the symbolic nature of the swan as representative of a man or poet. In this way he personifies the swan; the reader now confronts a swan with human characteristics who is pining for the absent reality of the native lake which he is lost to him. |
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Title: swan
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