Campana’s poem “Poesia Facile” or
“Just A Poem” is a somber story of a narrator who is sad and alone while
waiting for his or her soul to awaken and experience more of life. Water seems
to be an element of the narrator’s gloomy, depressed state, as the narrator
says, “far across the unknown sea” and emphasizes the vast and immense area of
the indefinite (109). The narrator also writes, “In a great harbor full of soft
sails/ Undulating smoothly ready to weigh anchor/ On the blue horizon” which
resembles that the narrator feels that he or she is lost in a crowd, anchored
down, and lacking purpose in life (107). Then, the tone shifts and after saying
“I dream,” the narrator addresses the reader, “O when O when in a fiery
morning/ Will my soul, free and trembling,/ Awaken to the sun, to the eternal
sun” (109). The narrator’s diction, using “fiery and “sun,” is the opposite of
the diction describing the lonely sea. The narrator’s dreams will result from a
change in his or her life and Campana shows this yearn for a new beginning by drearily
describing the current dream-like state that the narrator is experiencing and the
exciting beginning that the narrator would love.
Water can be interpreted in a variety of ways in poems. Interpretations such as life, death, calmness or calamity are just a few popular interpretations. The interpretation that the water, in this case ocean, is the indefinite is a different outlook. The narrator troubles with the idea that life is definite and there is in fact an end to it. His life seems to be full of doubt of what will come in the near and far future. He knows that at some point the ocean will end, once it reaches another shore but for the time being, it is indefinite just like his life will end but for now it is questionable if it ever will.
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