Hello Scott,
Thanks for your feedback. To answer your question, no, this piece is not a homage to the well-known statue in St.P although the description I´ve used is obviously drawn from it. I should emphasise `drawn´ because the statue in the poem is not the statue in St.P. I´m conscious of a difficulty here in using `real´ locations as a basis for a poem, it´s come up with reference to some others that I´ve posted recently. Virginia Woolf has this to say on the subject:
A writer´s country is a territory within his (sic) own brain; and we run the risk of disillusionment if we try to turn such phantom citiees into tangible brick and mortar.
I hope it´s not a problem if readers are reminded of the real life source of the image but I think it would become a problem if they focus exclusively on that source. Incidently, the Bronze Horseman in St.P does not have a raised arm so to that extent at least the reader should be alerted to a gap between the real and the imagined. I hope my horseman doesn´t appear about to string anyone up though. I had something rather different in mind, although it is an established fact, I understand, that sooner or later we will, indeed, all return to stardust.
Best wishes, mike
--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
Is this piece your homage to Pushkin's "Mednij Vsadnik"? To Russians the Bronze Horseman is a symbol of the West, Peter the Great punching his window to the world, forcing Russia kicking and screaming into modernity. Here, the horseman (Peter) reaches for the sky as if to string it up as well - a symbol for the future, as if we all will return to the stardust whence we came.
--
--------- Original Message ---------
DATE: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 14:19:54
From: Mike Horwood <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
>The Bronze Horseman
>
>As if stone had become articulate
>after its journey from interstellar dust,
>across the galaxy, through ore and metal
>to alloy, the body of his horse,
>balanced on its hind legs and tail,
>grows out of rock from which it rears up.
>Granite springs into the upward surge
>of starting muscles and bursts like Ariel
>out of rigid space into the movement of bronze.
>He sits astride the beast, the pinnacle and triumph,
>his arm raised along the line of stone´s leap,
>metal´s surge, the force that placed him there
>to shout into the night, strain to reach
>for the sky, those very stars whence he came.
>
>
>
>Mike
>
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