Poem Found Here: "A Gas Butterfly" by Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky
A feeling or emotion on the tip of the tongue but cannot be named in a single idea or word -- that's the feel I get from this poem. "Tell me what's happening to me? / Why is my heart beating so fervently?" Two thoughts came to mind when I read the first two lines. Do the rhetorical questions lead to a concept of "love" (questioning of heart beating)? Or do the rhetorical questions refer to something more sinister? I was thinking a gas butterfly would be a romanticized idea of war, especially with the images in the next line of, "Why has this madness, like a wave, / Broken through the rock of habit?"
However, the poem doesn't go toward definition through questioning, rather there's a stream of consciousness about trying to understand what is going on. And trying to figure things out sometimes comes through contradiction "Is it my strength or just my torment" and/or admittance of a mental break "I'm too disturbed to tell:" which leads to an acknowledgement of not knowing the exact phrase or word to encompass this feeling and time from within, but, at this point, trying to grasp the concept through another, hopefully, similar concept "From the shimmering lines of life / I extract a forgotten phrase..."
"Is it a thief who turns his lantern / Upon the crowd of dreary letters?" I'm not sure what this phrase means. I'm not sure the speaker know what this phrase means, "I can't help reading the phrase / But haven't the strength to go back..." The line feels cursory as though the lines are an internal joke and struggle with the speaker. But how? It isn't explored. Rather the focus is still trying to define what is happening and what is going on, but it's still undefinable: by words and by emotion.
"It really had to flare up, / But it only harries the darkness" The light against the dark cliché, but what intrigues me is the lack of definition of light and dark in the context of this poem. That is until we get to the last two lines, "All night, like a gas flame butterfly / It trembles, but cannot escape..."
The usage of the ellipses in the last three stanzas builds this kind of hesitancy -- as though the speaker can find the right words, but is afraid to write it out or doesn't want to confront what is happening to him. At this point, there's a definite argument to make that this poem can be about war with the violent imagery, especially towards the end. But the allure of this poem is the title, "A Gas Butterfly" and the image reminds me of trenches and gas masks which parallels an internal struggle of such caliber that it's inescapable in the chaos. I don't need to know what this poem is about, the decent into doubt seems enough.
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