UNIVERSITY OF EL SALVADOR

SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

LITERATURE II GROUP 03
LIC. DANILO HERNÁNDEZ

Assignment: Poems Analyses.

Student: Silvia Melissa Aguilar Fernández.

AF06015

San Salvador, May 16th 2019

 Introduction

Poetry analysis is the process of investigating a poem's form, content, structural

semiotics and history in an academic way, with the aim of enhancing the understanding
and appreciation of the work.
In this assignment it is been proposed the analysis of three poems from different
authors whom origin is diverse as their historical framework. Some of them are not just
poets but also authors from different literary genres, that enriches their legacy and that
nowadays we can enjoy and study their work in major depth.
The three poems have been selected based on the “fluency” they have had when the
poem intersected my personal history and somehow I have felt at home.
 Poems analyses.
Mario Benedetti.
Lovers Go Home is a work of Mario Benedetti, an Uruguayan writer who is best known
for his short stories. He was born to a prosperous family of Italian immigrants, on
September 14, 1920, in Paso de los Toros, Uruguay; and he died on May 17, 2009, in
Montevideo.

LOVERS GO HOME
Ahora que empecé el día
volviendo a tu mirada
y me encontraste bien
y te encontré más linda
ahora que por fin
está bastante claro
dónde estás y dónde
estoy
sé por primera vez
que tendré fuerzas
para construir contigo
una amistad tan piola
que del vecino
territorio del amor
ese desesperado
empezarán a mirarnos
con envidia
y acabarán organizando
excursiones
para venir a preguntarnos
cómo hicimos.

Analysis: Lovers go home

Ahora que empecé el día
volviendo a tu mirada
y me encontraste bien
y te encontré más linda
The poem is presented in blank verse since it has no set of stanzas nor line length. The
poet is apparently reunited with a woman, perhaps an old love. Both are still attracted
to each other. Nevertheless, I wonder: have they been apart? I think that they have
surpassed the passion and their love has been strengthened.
 ahora que por fin
está bastante claro
dónde estás y dónde
estoy

Self-aware, Independence, and self-knowledge. They both know who they are, what
they have lived and at what moment of their life's journey they are. They know where
they come from, personally and as a relationship. They might have gone through
situations that needed to heal and that in the current moment fortify the building of
their love relationship. To heal the personal life history provides freedom, strength, and
clarifies the horizon and purposes in life.

In these stanzi of the poem, we are not yet clear of what kind on love is being
described when the author gives details of their reunion, the love that the author is
describing might not be an eros love but a fraternal love. Nevertheless, on the third
paragraph, the author provides a detail that let us know which kind of love they have.

sé por primera vez

que tendré fuerzas
para construir contigo
una amistad tan piola
que del vecino
territorio del amor
ese desesperado
empezarán a mirarnos
con envidia
y acabarán organizando
excursiones
para venir a preguntarnos
cómo hicimos.

It is now when both can desire a relationship, a life in common. This is a special and
strange experience. They are not just lovers, they are something much deeper.
Benedetti is not just describing the relationship but also providing the possibility of
that their love might be a testimony for others to be eager to follow:

y acabarán organizando
excursiones
para venir a preguntarnos
cómo hicimos.
Is the time? Is the distance that makes these two people mature over time?, to get to
know each other better and really know what they want? A chance meeting and
destiny, at the best moment, the answer, and the communication they have is reflected
to be permanent but also rediscovered and awaken.

This poem not only might speak of a reunion between two people who, having
separated time well, return again to live a love story. This text tells us about how the
human being is changing to a measure that will pass his life path, when time passes
and we heal our life history to transcend us ourselves.
Virginia Woolf.
Virginia Woolf was born on January 25, 1882 and died on March 28, 1941. She was a
British writer born and raised in London, England. Ms. Woolf was one of the most
famous writers of the modernist era and she wrote many best-selling books such as
Mrs. Dalloway, A Room of One's Own and To The Lighthouse.

On this extract from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, we can notice that the author creates
a paradox when she compares her human existence as a more difficult one from the
existence that an animal might have.

I need solitude.

On the first stanza we find a sigh, a complaint, wishing a moment for herself. This is the
theme, her need.

I need space.
This metaphor on the second stanza reinforces her idea to cry for help, so others leave
her alone, to stay away. To respect her decision. She feels imprisoned.

I need air.

Her third stanza projects imagery since her need of air in this case provides a mental
picture of how she’s feeling. The stanza also alludes that something else, something
outside of her is leaving her without breathing. Something or someone is imprison her
until the extreme of feeling without breath.
I need the empty fields round me; and my legs pounding along roads; and sleep; and
animal existence.

A set of metaphors are presented on this other stanza. Woolf provides yet another way
to say that she needs, she wants to be alone but feeling free enough to move. To go to
another place, without restriction. To go away without giving any explanations, just to
enjoy her existence; even to sleep without anxiety, without excess of the future.

She also creates a simile, “Animal existence”; we understand that animals don´t worry
for what they have to do, what they didn’t do, or what might happen next. They just
live. Woolf wishes to live freely and enjoying her life at the present without regrets nor
concerns. Yet, this might be also an irony, since there are animals that can’t live alone.
So, she needs the existence of others but she does not want them with her.
Victor Hugo.
Victor Marie Hugo was born on February 26 th, 1802 and died on May 22nd. 1885. Hugo was a
French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. This French author is
considered to be one of the greatest and best-known French writers. Outside France, his most
famous works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (French:
Notre-Dame de Paris), 1831. In France, Hugo is known primarily for his poetry collections, such
as Les Contemplations (The Contemplations) and La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the
Ages).

Demain, dès l'aube

Demain, deè s l’aube, aè l’heure ouè blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.
J’irai par la foreê t, j’irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeux fixeé s sur mes penseé es,

Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbeé , les mains croiseé es,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe,

Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j’arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyeè re en fleur.

Tomorrow, at dawn

Tomorrow, at dawn, at the hour when the countryside whitens,

I will depart. You see, I know you wait for me.
I will go through the forest and over the mountains.
I cannot stay far from you any longer.

I will trudge on, my eyes fixed on my thoughts,

Ignoring everything around me, without hearing a sound,
Alone, unknown, back stooped, hands crossed,
Saddened, and the day will be like night for me.

I will neither see the golden glow of the falling evening,

Nor the sails going down to Harfleur in the distance,
And when I arrive, I will place on your tomb
A bouquet of green holly and flowering heather.
Analysis:
When the reader enters in this poem, there is an atmosphere and story that surrounds
the one who has contact with it. Tomorrow, at dawn is presented in an epistle form.

Tomorrow, at dawn

Tomorrow, at dawn, at the hour when the countryside whitens,

I will depart. You see, I know you wait for me.
I will go through the forest and over the mountains.
I cannot stay far from you any longer.

The author writes in rhyme, and thought it has a rhyming scheme in french, it is not
actually rhyming when the poem is translated into another language; so that beautiful
and calmed sound is lost in translation.
Nevertheless we can say that the type of rhyme is Quatrain: The poem has three
paragraphs with 4 stanzi each one where pairs of alternate lines rhyme.
First paragraph:
campagne - montagne
attends - longtemps
Second paragraph:
pensées - croissés
bruit - nuit
Third paragraph:
tombe - tombe
Harfleur - fleur
In the first paragraph, Hugo describes the time when he will leave. And when he says
that he will part when the countryside whitens, he gives a metaphor. Not only the
countryside whitens due the fog but other aspect that will whiten is his state, his state
of mind besides his physical place, so we understand what that change in his life will
mean.
“I will go through the forest and over the mountains”, another metaphor. He will do
whatever it takes to go through and to get where he wants to be.
“I cannot stay far form you any longer”, a person? And idea? A state of life? A place?
What does the author means?
 I will trudge on, my eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Ignoring everything around me, without hearing a sound,
Alone, unknown, back stooped, hands crossed,
Saddened, and the day will be like night for me.

“I will trudge on, my eyes fixed on my thoughts”, starts the second paragraph and this
stanza gives a metaphor, his eyes will be fixed on his thoughts, so we understand that
nothing else matters.
Metaphor in the second stanza of the second paragraph: “Ignoring everything around
me, without hearing a sound” nothing else will matter but to achieve what he is willing
to fight for, to live or to die for.
On the third paragraph a simile is written when the author says:
“Alone, unknown, back stooped, hands crossed,
Saddened, and the day will be like night for me.” And the day will be like night for me.
Even on the light of the day he felt meaningless, without purpose, without reason.
Hugo provides a description of how he felt, no without hope but trying to say that it
will be stopped as he writes on the third paragraph. A paragraph full of hope and
strength. He now feels with a purpose in his life.

I will neither see the golden glow of the falling evening,

The darkest moment of the night is the one just before dawn and the most lightly
moment in the day is the golden hour, the moment before the sunset. The golden
glow means something more beyond the nature aspect, but in his life as well.
However in this moment the author has changed the situation. He was, he is in the
darkest moment raising from that darkness when suddenly:

Nor the sails going down to Harfleur in the distance,

And when I arrive, I will place on your tomb
A bouquet of green holly and flowering heather.

The whole poem has been a metaphor of the author to say that he is now prepared to
die, providing at the end something that might be also taken as an irony, since he will
place on a tomb “a bouquet of green holly and flowering heather.”; how come?
“I cannot stay far from you any longer.” Who? Someone who has already died: “And
when I arrive, I will place on your tomb…”
So, as in his work Contemplations, this poem is also a memory of a soul, of his soul;
where “Hugo addresses the solitary discovery of the self and the universe.”
 Conclusion

Through the process of the analysis of the poems there has been possible to practice
the theory provided on the Literature II course related to the Poetry topic.

Even though this assignment presents a set of analyses, it is understood that even it’s
an introduction to a more profound analysis this has been a significant exercise in the
learning process we are going through.

To choose the poems was the first task and it was hard to choose among so many
authors and works that are truly amazing. Going beyond by taking a closer look of
them on so many details has change the perspective of the poetry reading that I had. It
might have been a superficial perspective, appealed by the theme but without
transcendence as it has now been noticed by taking into account the study of the
different elements, of the details that a really short or a really long poem engraves in it;
and that even from a writer that might not have any relation with us nor our reality has
many things in common once transmitted his or her legacy through words.