Analysis of Rembrandt to Rembrandt
And there you are again, now as you are.
Observe yourself as you discern yourself
In your discredited ascendency;
Without your velvet or your feathers now,
Commend your new condition to your fate,
And your conviction to the sieves of time.
Meanwhile appraise yourself, Rembrandt van Ryn,
Now as you are—formerly more or less
Distinguished in the civil scenery,
And once a painter. There you are again,
Where you may see that you have on your shoulders
No lovelier burden for an ornament
Than one man’s head that’s yours. Praise be to God
That you have that; for you are like enough
To need it now, my friend, and from now on;
For there are shadows and obscurities
Immediate or impending on your view,
That may be worse than you have ever painted
For the bewildered and unhappy scorn
Of injured Hollanders in Amsterdam
Who cannot find their fifty florins’ worth
Of Holland face where you have hidden it
In your new golden shadow that excites them,
Or see that when the Lord made color and light
He made not one thing only, or believe
That shadows are not nothing. Saskia said,
Before she died, how they would swear at you,
And in commiseration at themselves.
She laughed a little, too, to think of them—
And then at me.… That was before she died.
And I could wonder, as I look at you,
There as I have you now, there as you are,
Or nearly so as any skill of mine
Has ever caught you in a bilious mirror,—
Yes, I could wonder long, and with a reason,
If all but everything achievable
In me were not achieved and lost already,
Like a fool’s gold. But you there in the glass,
And you there on the canvas, have a sort
Of solemn doubt about it; and that’s well
For Rembrandt and for Titus. All that’s left
Of all that was is here; and all that’s here
Is one man who remembers, and one child
Beginning to forget. One, two, and three,
The others died, and then—then Saskia died;
And then, so men believe, the painter died.
So men believe. So it all comes at once.
And here’s a fellow painting in the dark,—
A loon who cannot see that he is dead
Before God lets him die. He paints away
At the impossible, so Holland has it,
For venom or for spite, or for defection,
Or else for God knows what. Well, if God knows,
And Rembrandt knows, it matters not so much
What Holland knows or cares. If Holland wants
Its heads all in a row, and all alike,
There’s Franz to do them and to do them well—
Rat-catchers, archers, or apothecaries,
And one as like a rabbit as another.
Value received, and every Dutchman happy.
All’s one to Franz, and to the rest of them,—
Their ways being theirs, are theirs.—But you, my friend,
If I have made you something as you are,
Will need those jaws and eyes and all the fight
And fire that’s in them, and a little more,
To take you on and the world after you;
For now you fare alone, without the fashion
To sing you back and fling a flower or two
At your accusing feet. Poor Saskia saw
This coming that has come, and with a guile
Of kindliness that covered half her doubts
Would give me gold, and laugh… before she died.
And if I see the road that you are going,
You that are not so jaunty as aforetime,
God knows if she were not appointed well
To die. She might have wearied of it all
Before the worst was over, or begun.
A woman waiting on a man’s avouch
Of the invisible, may not wait always
Without a word betweenwhiles, or a dash
Of poison on his faith. Yes, even she.
She might have come to see at last with others,
And then to say with others, who say more,
That you are groping on a phantom trail
Determining a dusky way to nowhere;
That errors unconfessed and obstinate
Have teemed and cankered in you for so long
That even your eyes are sick, and you see light
Only because you dare not see the dark
That is around you and ahead of you.
She might have come, by ruinous estimation
Of old applause and outworn vanities,
To clothe you over in a shroud of dreams,
And so be nearer to the counterfeit
Of her invention than aware of yours.
She might, as well as any, by this time,
Unwillingly and eagerly have bitten
Another devil’s-apple of unrest,
And so, by some attendant artifice
Or other, might anon have had you sharing
A taste that would have tainted everything,
And so had been for two, instead of one,
The taste of death in life—which is the food
Of art that has betrayed itself alive
And is a food of hell. She might ha
Scheme | AXBCXDCXBXEXXXXBFXXXXGHIXJFXHK FAXLMXBXXNXXXBKKXOJXGMXPXXNBLBHXAIQFMFXXXK RDNXMPXXBEQXXXXIOFMXXGXDMXXRRMXXX |
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Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 0111011111 0101110101 0101000100 0111011101 0111010111 0101010111 10101111 1111100111 0100010100 0101011101 11111111110 111011100 1111111111 1111111101 1111110111 111101 01001010111 11111111010 1001000101 110100010 110111011 1101111101 0111011011 11110111001 1111110101 11111011 0111111111 001101 1101011111 0111110111 0111011111 1111111111 1101110111 110110010010 11110101010 111100100 01010101010 1011111001 0111010101 1101011011 110110111 1111110111 1111010011 0101011101 010101111 0111010101 1101111111 0101010001 0111011111 0111111101 10010011011 11011111010 1111111111 011110111 1101111101 1110010101 1111101111 110111 01110101010 100101001010 1111010111 11101111111 1111110111 1111010101 01010100101 1111001101 11110101010 11110101011 110101111 1101110101 11110101 1111010111 01110111110 111111011 1111010101 1111110111 0101110101 010101011 1001001111 01011101 1101111101 11111111110 0111110111 1111010101 010001111 11010100 110101111 11011110111 1001111101 1101100111 11111100010 110101100 1111000111 011101010 1001010111 1111110111 01000100110 0101010101 0111010100 1101111110 011111010 0111110111 0111011101 1111010101 010111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,394 |
Words | 834 |
Sentences | 30 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 30, 42, 33 |
Lines Amount | 105 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,126 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 276 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 4:10 min read
- 144 Views
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"Rembrandt to Rembrandt" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10020/rembrandt-to-rembrandt>.
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