Originally Posted by
MoROmeTE
The first part of the poem presents the idea behind the lyrical composition. The poem is but a call of an empty and unsatisfied artist to the muses, represented in the impersonal form of the “Year”, which is not suited to offer gifts but of which the author nevertheless requests a gift. To address the call to such a force implies a certain level of despair on the part of the artist who cannot live up to the standard she sets for herself, as an artist and as a human being.
This standard has a form, an impersonation. This impersonation is that of her great grandmother, a figure of times past, a legendary devotee to the arts and also a great woman. The fact that the great great grandmother is an example to the author is evident from her description. She “has eight children, which quickly but thoroughly describes her fulfillment as a woman, in an age long gone when women were rejoicing in having children, but she was also a legendary devotee to the arts, who still found the resolve and the power to paint in grievous circumstances, that are described in the body of the poem. [Add some comments about that description here, if you want]
The causes of the failure to be of the author are of personal as well as social origin. We can discern some of the social causes from the implied glorification of a old forgotten timeframe represented by the great great grandmother, when people could be art lovers, drifting out of reality into imaginary, and also fulfilled women and men. The present of 1940 is greatly opposed as the arts ceded room to the expectations of reality, and of a painful reality, that of war. The personal reasons are linked with the impossibility of the author to have the same spirit as her great great grandmother in the circumstances of the 1940. She cannot be as still and devoted to the arts as to paint, with words, the picture of grim reality. She wants the power her ancestor had and so she cries out to the muses, the year, to give her the firmness of the hand that her great great grandmother had, so that she can fulfill herself as an artist even in the circumstances of the day.