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AROUND THE FISH Paul Klee. Around the Fish (1926). Tempera and oil on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ceaseless search. Yet one cannot read the poem without being made aware of the author's ambivalence toward such a quest which may lead to no other result than the "ambiguous exhortations to each duration when the act arose and grew." The fish (compared to the movement itself) is destined to seek her passageway among resplendent beams (presumably closer to the surface), but the horoscopes of streams remain "lightless" (literally "dark" or "obscure" in the Ukrainian original) anyhow. Does the poet consider this endless search to be irrelevant? Most likely not. This may be seen as a contradiction, not of the poem, but of life itself which is unfathomable and resistant to rational explication. And Zujewskyj's "Around the Fish" is an invitation to further reflection on this mystery of human existence. Another example of Zujewskyj's metamorphic "translation" from the language of painting is his sonnet "A Lament for Ophelia" (cycle "Kassiopea"), which echoes the picture of Victorian painter J.E. Millais’s “Ophelia,” (Fig. 2) which is in turn based on the episode described in Act IV, scene vii of Hamlet. We can hardly regard Millais's work as a mere illustration to the well-known play. Having taken the idea from Shakespeare, Millais tried to reinforce the symbolic significance of the episode by depicting species of vegetation, chosen mainly for their meanings in the "language of flowers". Only some of them are taken from the text of the play; the majority are Millais's rather than Shakespeare's. Millais's picture contains daisies (symbolizing innocence), forget-me-nots (which carry their meaning in their name), pansies (standing for "love in vain"), violets (signifying chastity and the death of Neither a leaf's mould nor commandment fables, Like map or branch extended into murkiness And throwing back its horizontal levels To signs of space for tenuous epiphanies, Have yet aroused, amassing all their forces, Another likeness out of painting found anew, Save only for ambiguous exhortations To each duration when the act arose and grew. And hence the fish, having declared her contour, Seeks her passageway among resplendent beams, While the bright yellow sun which hangs above her Protects the lightless horoscopes of streams. (Translated by Bohdan Rubchak) the young), the poppy (a symbol of death), etc. The fact that all of these flowers are unlikely to have been simultaneously in bloom is simply ignored by the painter.2 Abundant fresh greenery, depicted on both river banks and in the water, as well as on Ophelia's body, is symbolically opposed to the notion of death, which is explicitly present in the canvas. Ophelia is painted as still alive although her death is inevitable; her wet, heavily embroidered garments will soon pull the poor girl to the bottom. For Millais this symbolic opposition is an important compositional and stylistic device. His painting suggests that the death of such a lovely young creature is an extremely unfair and shocking event. Zujewskyj's poem does not seem to be completely in tune with Millais's painting. First of all, the symbolic lavish vegetation "in all its microscopic detail"3 on Millais's canvas is not presented with such meticulous delineation in the poem. The poet uses generalizing words instead ("the leaves", "love itself with wreaths"). Furthermore, Ophelia herself, so young, innocent and beautiful in Millais's canvas, lacks any individualized characterization - she becomes, in Zujewskyj's "translation", a symbol of love. Her name is mentioned in the title but not in the poem itself. Moreover, Ophelia's death - which is referred to as "flowing toward morning in startled dream" - is represented as an almost unnoticeable event in the sequence of an ordinary life routine. It does not seem to have an effect on the surrounding world. "The stream is still murmuring" and life goes on. This is the one thing the poet cannot accept. Meditating on the frailty and vulnerability of love, of which Ophelia is a symbol, the poet revolts against 16 ’’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, КВІТЕНЬ 1997 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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