“The Faber Book of Modern American Verse,deast le W. H. Auden. (Faber & Faber. 21/ -)

Is tric a chuala sinn Ameireaganaich a’ moladh an tìr fhéin is gach nì a tha tighinn aisde, ach chan fhiosrach sinn gun cuala sinn duine aca a riamh a’ moladh am bàrdachd fhéin, ged a tha i, is dòcha, nas airidh air cliù na iomadach rud a tha tighinn thugainn as an dùthaich mhóir, bhrais bheothant tha sin. Chan eil fhios nach b’ fheàirrde an saoghal e nan tugadh iad tarraing air Parnassus a chur an ionadWall Street.agus air inbhe nas àirde a thoirt do ’n Cheòlraidh na tha iad, am bitheantas, a’ toirt do Mhammon.

Air an làimh eile bu chòir dhuinne cuimhneachadh nach eil Ameireaga cho falamh de bhàrr gorm an spioraid ’s a tha sinne de bhàrr uaine an dollair! Bheir an leabhar so cuideachadh nach beag dhuinn anns an dòigh sin.

Chan eil sinn a’ dol a dh’fhiachainn ri mion-sgrùdadh a dheanamh air an leabhar. Tha W. H. Auden air dàin a thaghadh á obair ceithir fichead bàrd, is tha e nàdurrach gum biodh cuid de na dàin sin cho eadar-dhealaichte bho chéile ’s a tha an duine dubh bho ’n duine bhuidhe. Ged a tha iad uile am Beurla, chan e bàrdachd Shasunnach a th’ innte: mar a tha Stephen Vincent Benet ag ràdh mu’n Cheòlraidh Ameireaganach:

They tried to fit you with an English song
And clip your speech into the English tale.
But, even from the first, the words went wrong,
The catbird pecked away the nightingale.

Tha spionnadh is smuais is beothalachd anns a’ bhardachd so. Ged nach eil a freumhaichean a’ dol cho domhainn ri bàrdachd na Beurla tha doimhne fòidhpe is fàs mun cuairt di, is co aig tha fhios nach i an fhìrinn a tha aig Robinson Jeffers anns an dàn“Summer Holiday”:

When the sun shouts and people abound
One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze
And the iron age; iron the unstable metal;
Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the towered-up cities
Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster.
Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them,
Then nothing will remain of the iron age
And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem
Stuck in the world’s thought, splinters of glass
In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain—

Is fhiach do dhuine aig a bheil ùidh ann am bàrdachd an leabhar so a chnuasachadh.

R. McT.

[Sanas]