Analysis of Sometime at a concert hall, in recollection...
Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)
Sometime at a concert hall, in recollection,
A Brahms intermezzo will wound me-I'll start,
Remember that summer, the flowerbed garden,
The walks and the bathing, the tryst of six hearts,
The awkward, shy artist, with steep, dreamlike forehead,
Her smile, into which one would dive for a while,
A smile, as good-natured and bright as a river,
Her artist's appearance, her forehead, her smile.
They'll play me some Brahms-I will shudder, surrender,
And in retrospection the sounds will evoke
That faraway summer, the hoard of provisions,
My son and my brother, the garden, the oak.
The artist would stuff in her overall pockets
Her pencils, and objects with fanciful names,
Or would, inadvertently dropping her palette,
Turn much of the grass into colourful stains.
They'll play me some Brahms-I'll surrender, remember
The stubborn dry brushwood, the entrance, the roof,
Her smile and appearance, the mouth and the eyebrows,
The darkened verandah, the steps and the rooms.
And suddenly, as in a fairytale sequence,
The family, neighbours and friends will appear,
And-memories crowding-I'll drown in my weeping
Before I have time to have shed all my tears.
And, circling around in a swift intermezzo-
Embracing the song like a treetrunk at noon,
Four families' shadows will turn on the meadow
To Brahms's compelling and childhood-clear tune
Scheme | AXAB XCDC DEXE XXXX DXXX XXXX BFXF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (43%) |
Metre | 1101010010 01111111 0101100110 01001001111 01011011110 01011111101 011110011010 01001001001 111111110010 00101101 110110011010 11011001001 01011001010 01001011001 11010010010 111010111 111111010010 0101101001 01001001001 010101001 01001001010 0100101101 010010110110 01111111111 0100010011 0100110111 1100111101 1100100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,318 |
Words | 217 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 38 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 152 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:07 min read
- 48 Views
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"Sometime at a concert hall, in recollection..." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4533/sometime-at-a-concert-hall%2C-in-recollection...>.
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