In 1696, Tsangyang Gyatso was publicly named the sixth Dalai Lama of Tibet. He was appointed at the age of five but died in 1706 at age twenty-three; he never received the full powers of the position. Until Gyatso was deemed capable to receive authority, he was placed in the hands of a regent. A regent is an individual appointed in a society to minister when the leader is incapacitated. In his youth Gyatso began to write poetry; some of these poems reflect the disgust that the young man felt towards his regent. A significant example is the eleventh poem in his series of Love Poems of the Sixth Dalai Lama. His frustration with his regent can be found in the following passage:
Rock and wind kept tryst
To abrade the vulture’s plumage;
People fraught with deceptive schemes
Fray to me the very bone (#11, 1-4)
Within this passage Gyatso uses words and phrases like “tryst”, “vulture”, “plumage”,“fraught with” and “fray”. There is significance in Gyatso’s choice of words, and there are hints that indicate to the reader that the poem was written about Gyatso’s regent.
If the reader divides the selected passage at the semicolon, two strong metaphors are apparent. The first metaphor appears in lines 1 and 2:
Rock and wind kept tryst
To abrade the vulture’s plumage (1-2)
By definition a “tryst” is a planned meeting or rendezvous usually between lovers. The verb “abrade” has a similar meaning to “erode” or “wear away”. The “plumage” of a bird refers to the feathers of the animal as a whole—this can often be attributed to the magnificent tail-feathers of the bird, that are remarkable even in a considerably “ugly” bird like the vulture. To say that the plumage was “abraded” means that the feathers were plucked, removed, or...
... middle of paper ...
...raries, the sixth Dalai Lama did not see the necessity to make his poetic observations verbose. . It is often tempting when reading Gyatso to glance over the short poems and write the works off as the quick ramblings of a young man; however Gyatso’s Love Poems, though short, are full of passion. If the reader slows down and reads each poem with care, it becomes apparent that Gyatso chose his words carefully. As seen in the eleventh poem, the young Gyatso employed the use of metaphor and double meaning to convey his feelings. The extra care that he took in selecting his words resulted in deep insight into the mind of the young Dalai Lama.
Works Cited
Gyatso, Tsangyang. “from Love Poems of the Sixth Dalai Lama” #11. The Longman Anthology
of World Literature. Eds. David Damrosch & David L. Pike. 2nd Edition. Volume D.
New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 558-561.
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
The tile of the poem “Bird” is simple and leads the reader smoothly into the body of the poem, which is contained in a single stanza of twenty lines. Laux immediately begins to describe a red-breasted bird trying to break into her home. She writes, “She tests a low branch, violet blossoms/swaying beside her” and it is interesting to note that Laux refers to the bird as being female (Laux 212). This is the first clue that the bird is a symbol for someone, or a group of people (women). The use of a bird in poetry often signifies freedom, and Laux’s use of the female bird implies female freedom and independence. She follows with an interesting image of the bird’s “beak and breast/held back, claws raking at the pan” and this conjures a mental picture of a bird who is flying not head first into a window, but almost holding herself back even as she flies forward (Laux 212). This makes the bird seem stubborn, and follows with the theme of the independent female.
There are more clues and subtle hints that reinforce these statements, most correlating to her mental illness and self-perception. The statements made through the use of said symbolism turns this story into an interesting viewpoint of a psychological breakdown.
...ut the raven winging/darkly over the doomed will have news” (lines 3023-25). The disloyalty and cowardice of the Geats means that there communal life is over.
1 Geoff Childs Tibetan Diary From Birth to Death and Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) 41.
Literature shows us the changes of our society from time to time. It also gives us an idea about people, culture, politics, gender traditions, as well as an overall view of previous civilizations. As a part of literature, poetry introduces us to different cultures with different perspectives. Ancient Egypt and ancient China may differ in terms of culture, politics, economic stability, tradition, or even in religious belief. However, in poetry, especially in love lyrics both Egyptian and Chinese poems portray common area of describing women, social attitudes toward love, sexuality and the existence of romance or selfishness in relationships. . If we look at the Egyptian poem “My god, my Lotus” and the Chinese poem “Fishhawk”, we will see both poems have similarities in describing relationships. Also, they have the similarity of imagining the lovers and their expression of love toward each other. However, both poems have some significant differences in terms of representing female sexuality, gender disparity and the display of love.
In the 4th, 5th, and 6th line of this poem the poet portrays a major simile stating “the truth’s superb surprise, as lightening to the children eased with explanation kind.” In the first part of the simile saying “the truths superb
Contradicting to an even further extent, the attitude of the work, the final stanza seems to ridicule the previous: "Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; / The worlds revolve like ancient women / Gathering fuel in vacant lots," (CPP, 13). Concerning itself with the world as a whole, the lines utilize a simile to characterize the inevitable persistence of meaningless action, action that sustains persistence, inturn sustaining a spiritually defunct society.
One of the literary techniques most prominently featured throughout the passage would be that of imagery. The author takes great care to interweave sentences comparing the traits
Through her use of the words “dreamed”, “sweet women”, “blossoms” and the Mythology of “Elysian fields” in lines one through three, she leads the reader to the assumption that this is a calm, graceful poem, perhaps about a dream or love. Within the first quatrain, line four (“I wove a garland for your living head”) serves to emphasise two things: it continues to demonstrate the ethereal diction and carefree tone, but it also leads the reader to the easy assumption that the subject of this poem is the lover of the speaker. Danae is belittled as an object and claimed by Jove, while Jove remains “golden” and godly. In lines seven and eight, “Jove the Bull” “bore away” at “Europa”. “Bore”, meaning to make a hole in something, emphasises the violent sexual imagery perpetrated in this poem.
The current Dalai Lama is the 14th incarnation of Chenrezig, and assumes the role of Bodhisattva of compassion. After the death of the 13th Dalai Lama, the Tibetan monks began their search for the new Dalai Lama. They found the child they were looking for in Taktser, a small farming community in northeastern Tibet. The child that was to become the 14th Dalai Lama was born on July 6th, 1935, and was recognized as the new Dalai Lama at the age of two. The Tibetan monks were able to dete...
Rinpoche, Samdhong. Uncompromising Truth for a Compromised World: Tibetan Buddhism in Today’s World; forward by 14th Dalai Lama. (Tibet: World Wisdom, 2006), 264.
The image developed in the first stanza is especially striking, with its suggestion of once tame and friendly animals who have reverted to wildness and will no longer risk the seemingly innocent taking of bread from the speaker's hand. This stanza establishes at once the theme of change, a change from a special, privileged condition to one of apparent mistrust or fear, and the sense of strangeness (no explanation is given for the change) that will continue to trouble the speaker in the third stanza. Strangeness is inherent in the image itself -- "with naked foot stalking in my chamber" - -- and the stanza is filled with pairs of words that reinforce the idea of contrast: "flee"/"seek," "tame"/"wild," "sometime"/"now," "take break"/"range." Most interestingly, we are never told who "they" are.
The two roads presented in this poem represent difficult decisions we are faced with in life. He uses the relationship between the paths and real life decisions throughout the whole poem. This is an example of extended metaphor, which is used to help the readers understand the analogy between the two. The man in the poem said: “long I stood” (3), which lets us know the decision was not made instantly. It was hard for the man to make a final judgment.
Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, supports the view that kindness ultimately results in good