The Jolly Beggars”.

The Jolly Beggars (1785) was not known in his lifetime (He claimed to have lost the MS; or he may have withheld it for political reasons), but since its publication it has been considered his masterpiece. Its form is a cantata (a sequence of solemn airs (песня) and narrative recitative (речитатив), meant to emphasize some important event).

This poem is about beggars who drink and sing songs about their destinies, wishes, state. It is winter and the beggars in drags are sitting near the fire and drink. First a soldier sings his song. He was in a war and has many scars, he has no right arm and leg, but in spite of this he will be ready to go a war again if it starts. He has his lover who is with him. The soldier’s song has both end rhyme and internal rhyme (e. g. I am a son of Mars who have been in many wars,/ And show my cuts and scars wherever I come; /This here was for a wench, and that other in a trench, /When welcoming the French at the sound of the drum. ) And each stanza ends with the word ‘drum’.

After the soldier’s song comes his woman’s song. She is very fond of soldiers, and had many of them, when she saw this soldier she fell in love. Her song has end rhyme and every stanza ends with the word ‘laddie (солдат).

Then the song of the fool comes or Merry Andrew. Once he attended school but later began to drink and was sent to a prison because of it. Being a clown he earns some money.

Then a middle-aged woman sings about his beloved John, he was very beautiful, somehow he was sent to prison where was hung. And she drinks to him. He was a highland man (горец). Every line ends with the word ‘highlandman’.

The fiddler in his song sings about his love to this middle-aged woman. He says with his help she will forget the past. His occupation allows him to go anywhere.

Then the tinsmith (лудильщик) sings a song and offers this woman his love. He says that the fiddler is spiritually low and the fiddler doesn’t disturb. The woman embraces the tinsmith.

The poet is very optimistic. He is satisfied with his life. He says that complaints about life are sins. He is not interested in money but in love.

For these beggars a loss in life is not so important. They enjoy their lives and in spite of their failures they want to live. The most important things they have – freedom and love. Here Burns represents the low class of society and every man, even the worst, has something good about him.

“Tam O’Shanter”

Tam O’Shanter was written in 1790. It is told using a mixture of Scots and English. It is a narrative poem. It tells the story about a man, Tam, who stays too long at the pub. Hi sits and drinks with his friends. Earlier his wife warned him that he may be killed or hung. His wife seems to be a kind of authority. But Tam continues drinking and even flirts with one lady at the pub. But he has to go and rides off on his horse Meg. On his way he sees witches and devils dancing, opening coffins. Some withes take off their clothes. Tam pays attention to one witch whose name is Nanny, she dances in a short dress. He is so temptated that they notice him and rush after him. So his wife won’t see him anymore.

Analysis. By the use of Scots alongside English, and by the sheer power of his expression in both, Burns at the same time tells a good story, and makes points about alcohol, good and evil, marriage, sexual attraction, and relations between women and men in general, and indeed between a man and his horse. There are many dramatic tensions and ironies in the poem. The tensions between the fairly twee, ostensibly moralistic frame of the poem, and the relish with which Burns describes Tam’s disreputable tale, are obvious and lend the poem a lot of its power. Less obvious perhaps is the way Burns alternates Scots and English for effect. In this way, he seems to signal the irony of his own intention in writing the poem. To what extent Burns ‘believed’ in beings like devils, witches and warlocks is another question. He makes it clear in his quote from Gawin Douglas at the start: "Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke." that he is invoking the Scottish tradition of magic, and there is another irony there as to how much he believed in the Church of the time (not at all?), how much in the older traditions (he is supposed to have been a Mason, after all), and how much in the new spirit of science and rationalism that was sweeping the country at the time of the Scottish Enlightenment

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 1129