“No Swan No Fine” is a fourteen line free verse poem written by Marianne Moore for the 20th Anniversary issue of Poetry Magazine. It was rumored at the time that the magazine would end its year, suggesting that the poem was a swan song for the magazine (the swan song is usually written to celebrate the brilliance of a period that is about to end to give the welcome to the new). , but at the same time, implying that magazine production must give way to the new.
To further discuss a free-flowing analysis of Moore’s literary work, a formalist approach might do the job. The formalist approach, or simply formalism, is one of many literary approaches to analyzing or criticizing a work, be it prose or poetry. In prose, formalism analyzes the structure that makes it a prose work: the main elements of a fiction: setting, characters, plot, conflict, theme, and moral. In poetry, on the other hand, formalism also analyzes its structure, that is, it identifies the rhythm, the rhyme scheme, as well as the images, allusions, rhetorical figures that help to understand the real meaning or the message that the poetry conveys. literary work. These images, allusions and rhetorical figures, together, make up the so-called “objective correlative”.
An objective correlative, from the first word “objective” (object), is an extension of an object that represents or correlates its characteristics with those of what the writer implies. In Moore’s poem “No Swan No Fine”, several objective correlates are presented.
The first objective correlative appears in the second line of the first stanza, that is, “Versailles.” Versailles is known to be a palace in France that became popular for its bright light. On the other hand, Moore pointed to “Versailles” as an object that magnifies the still waters of dead fountains (man-made fountains). He compared the current state of Versailles with that of the dead fountains: still and silent. In the same vein continuing with lines 3 to 4, Moore also noted that the swan is haughty and ridiculous once, that is, when it glides on the water it looks great, but then it loses its elegance when viewed from above. under the water beds. In the fifth line Moore’s comparison of a swan to a “Chinese china” continues. “Chintz” is a Hindi word meaning multiple colors or shine. Along these lines, it is clarified that Moore is actually talking about a “real” or “live” swan as opposed to a multicolored “porcelain” swan, an imitation of the “real” swan. In line 8 Moore also mentioned the “necklace” and described it as “jagged gold”. As mentioned above, Moore describes Chinese porcelain which, while not having the “living” independence and self-existence that the “real” swan has, is presented as superior (gold). This, therefore, leads to the determination of what Moore really meant by the “real” swan being “*askance”: the painted perfection of the “china” swan eclipses or suspects the memory of the “real” swan. . * ask means of doubt or suspicion
In the second stanza, Moore begins with a description of a pair of Louis XV chandeliers adorned with flowers and Dresden porcelain swans, this work of art is still alive, but the king at the time it was made is long dead ( Line 14) ; thus, also affirming that his palace was actually Versailles.
To sum it all up, what Moore is trying to imply (in my personal opinion) in his free verse poem is that everyone gets a chance to have the so-called “time of their lives”; but just as man-made fountains still appear, how Versailles shone so brightly, how the “real” swan loses its elegance when seen under the waters, and how it loses its perfection when compared to a multicolored “porcelain” swan. , and how the pair of ornate candlesticks had perched when the king died long ago, everything has an end, and each end welcomes the new to come.