As another Educator has already mentioned, Tomas Tranströmer wrote in Swedish. So, when we look closely at the literary features of his works in their English translations, some of what we’re looking at is not original to Tranströmer but rather is a representation of the translator’s best efforts: efforts to listen for the sounds and rhythms of Swedish, and efforts to transform those sounds and rhythms into English. This is not an easy task!
Still, I believe that the translator’s work deserves a great deal of credit and that a carefully rendered translation transforms the poem into an English piece worthy of our appreciation, with its own literary features of sound and rhythm. After all, a translator of poetry doesn’t just slap the text into Google Translate, copy and paste the results, and call it a day, right? Of course not. The translator chooses words and phrases with great care.
(By the way, it was Robert Bly who translated “The Scattered Congregation” into English. He has translated a great deal of poetry and is a well-known poet himself.)
Please refer to thanatassa’s response below for an explanation of the poem’s large-scale literary features, including themes, symbols, and allusions.
Let’s add to that response and explore the features inherently tied to the English translation, to the particular English words and phrases chosen by the translator.
First, let’s enjoy the paradox in the poem’s title. (I'll call it a paradox, since it's a contradiction of ideas. If you want to focus on how it's a contradiction of terms, call it an oxymoron.) The scattered congregation? That’s self-contradictory, like “the living dead.” By definition, a congregation is a group of people who have congregated, or gathered. Okay, so the title contradicts itself. Why does that matter? By titling the poem this way, Tranströmer signals the paradoxical nature of a group of churchgoing people, telling us that they are somehow both flocked together and yet dispersed, alerting us to the fact that more paradoxes, or at least an exploration of this paradox, will lie ahead in the poem.
Next, let’s look at similes. The church “pillars and vaulting” are “white as plaster,” the speaker says before tacking on a second simile: “like the cast around the broken arm of faith” (stanza II). By comparing the physical features of the church to, first, a building material (plaster) and, second, a cast for a broken arm, the speaker of the poem invites us to see the church as something both moldable and rigid. (Hey! A paradox, just as promised by the title!)
Let’s consider alliteration, too. It appears just once, in the phrase “begging bowl” (stanza III), a phrase short enough to make us suspect mere chance rather than purposeful alliteration. Is it chance, though? The translator, Bly, could have called this item a “begging vessel” or a “donation bowl” or an “offering container” or any other non-alliterative label. Tellingly, he didn't call it a “collection plate,” the term used by many churches. He called it a “begging bowl,” the double “b” sounds popping gently in our ears and calling our attention to this important object in the poem.
Finally, let’s enjoy the imagery. Stanza II’s white “pillars and vaulting,” stanza III’s bowl that “lifts from the floor” and “floats among the pews,” and finally the stark image in stanza IV of “church bells” “hanging in sewage pipes”—all of these images should haunt us, unsettle us, as we grasp Tranströmer’s point that the church, or rather its attendees, are in some way unwholesome or spiritually incoherent.
Taken together, these literary features enrich “The Scattered Congregation,” enough to make us appreciate the translation work done by Bly perhaps as much as the original work done by Tranströmer.
https://aqreview.org/the-scattered-congregation/
One of the key literary elements of any good poem is imagery. A great poem gives you a picture which you can form in your mind as you read the rest of the poem.
In "The Scattered Congregation" by Tomas Transtömer, the second stanza creates that image for us. There are key details which help create this image, such as "pillars," "vaulting white," and "plaster." These are all familiar descriptions which help the reader connect to the poem.
The fourth stanza of this poem gives some interesting symbolism. By saying that the church bells have gone underground, the poet might be addressing the state of the church, or faith, as a whole. The entire poem, but this stanza especially, is less about the literal church building and more about the congregation—the people who make up the church.
Robert Frost famously stated that "poetry is what is lost in translation." Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (15 April 1931 – 26 March 2015) wrote in Swedish. What you quote is an English translation. Many of the literary devices of the original poem, including assonance, alliteration, and rhythm, are not, of course, the same in the original version as in the English one.
The poem is divided into five four-line stanzas, each consisting of three lines. The poem describes a church, but it is a modernist poem, and so it isn't focused on a literal description of one individual church but rather uses imagery to convey something about the state of religion in general.
The first stanza gives us a sense that although early Christianity was a religion of outsiders and the poor, now many Christians and the luxurious churches they build have outer wealth, something the poet here associates with inner poverty. Thus we have the central Christian paradox adumbrated: the poor in material goods are rich in spirit and the wealthy are poor in spirit.
The begging bowl is a description of the plate passed around in churches to collect offerings. It evokes two things: first the literal level of collecting alms, and second the notion that a begging bowl should be what gives a poor beggar sustenance. The second creates a paradox—the church is depicted in the role of a beggar. This is parallel with the notion of the real church being hidden underground and the metaphor of the sewer pipes and church bells.
Nicodemus is a Jewish rabbi who appears in the Gospel of John (3:1–21) and visits Jesus. He has a discussion with him about the meaning of being born again. He also brings myrrh and aloes for embalming Jesus's body after his death. He is venerated as a saint.
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