Emotion as a Call to Action
Ritsos’ ‘The Barracks’
Traditionally, structural conventions went hand in hand with poetic emotional effect. When Wordsworth argued that a poet feels, expresses, and transfers his emotion to readers, his readers likely assumed that that poetic experience would involve a particular poetic form. However, since the emergence of free-verse and less structured poems around the turn of the 20th century, this assumption is no longer as explicit; in fact, we are led to wonder if form plays any role in the emotional effect produced by a poem. I would argue that regardless of obvious layout and structure, form by definition plays a role in the successful expression and communication of emotions. An excellent example of form that is more subtle in nature but impactful in effect is the poetry of Yiannis Ritsos. One of his poems, “The Barracks,” is a short poem of only sixteen lines that hides a deep complexity of implicit rhythm, sensitive repetition and vivid imagery that leave the reader feeling deeply pained and moved. “The Barracks” works in two parts; the first evoking positive emotions associated with childhood serenity and the maternal presence of the moon, and the second evoking fear, pain, and perplexity that are heightened by the former illusion of safety. This effect is significant as it causes the reader to feel confusion and pain at the arbitrarily violent nature of humans, ultimately encouraging the reader to sympathize with Ritsos’ own pacifist political beliefs.
In order to understand the effects Ritsos produces through form, let us look first at how Wordsworth argues that poetry helps us to feel more. He regards life as a sort of persistent state of languor that can only be broken by very violent stimuli. Poetry acts as that stimuli, causing us to feel according to roughly this six-step program:
1. The poet feels an emotion
2. The poet expresses the emotion
3. The reader experiences emotion vicariously
4. Because of this, the reader gets practice at feeling something
5. This allows the reader to get better at feeling their own feelings
6. Thus, the reader lives a better life (Wordsworth par. 8)
Wordsworth suggests a sort of conversation between the poet and the reader. To him, art provides an almost existential release through fleeting moments of connection and lucidity. This is achieved through poetic elevation of mundane things: “to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect” (Wordsworth par. 5). While Wordsworth focuses on emotional effect, this process necessarily involves form because good poetic form is necessary in order to accomplish steps two and three. If a poet’s emotion is not communicated clearly, the reader may not be able to experience that emotion vicariously. Form also facilitates the kind of practice Wordsworth envisions through the exercise of implanting feelings, because it structures the way, order, and intensity with which those feelings are felt, rendering it a tool for not only provoking emotions, but teaching us how to feel them.
The vicarious experience of Ritsos’ “The Barracks” starts with his evocation of familiar, child-like emotions through the mother-like personification of the moon. The poem begins:
“The moon entered the barracks
It rummaged in the soldiers’ blankets
Touched an uncovered arm” (Ritsos and Manolis lines 1–3)[1]
As the stanza develops, it becomes clear that we are witnessing a peaceful scene. With the touch on the uncovered arm, it seems as though the moon is a mother figure tucking her children into bed. Further, the diction evokes the protected emotions of childhood. In the final line, he says “Κοιμήσου κοιμήσου” (Ritsos 4). This is the Greek imperative for ‘sleep’ or ‘go to sleep.’ This combined with the touch to the arm/hand (Manolis chose ‘arm,’ but the Greek word is, again, ambiguous) evokes a very intimate and specific emotion of your parent telling you to go to sleep. The first stanza evokes a child-like sensation of innocence, drowsiness and security, the ultimate state of vulnerability, rendering the reader acutely sensitive to whatever comes next.
The second stanza continues the peaceful theme of the first, establishing trust and a sense of fading into calmness through imagery and repetition of ‘someone’ that allows the reader to easily slip into the scene. The Manolis translation goes:
Someone talks in his sleep Someone snores
A shadow gestures on the long wall
The last trolley bus went by Quietness
Greek doesn’t distinguish between ‘is talking’ and ‘talks,’ but the poem appeals to a second sense (hearing) to lend further sensual context to the scene. The reader is stirred up by memory; while Manolis ends this stanza with ‘Quietness,’ the implication from the Greek is that ‘it’s all quiet now’ — the last tram has gone, and all fades to silence. The reader feels intently a moment of expectation — of what? Of sleep? Further, the use of the unclear ‘someone’ creates an unnamed, non-threatening figure allows the reader to slip into the world of the poem, while simultaneously maintaining the role of a tranquil observer. The repetition of ‘someone’ solidifies this effect, since the someone ceases to be an ‘other,’ but a more aggregate role which the reader can dissolve their identity into. This is the most calming part of the poem where the reader feels so soothed that they are prepared to be swayed in whatever way Ritsos wills.
The third stanza departs abruptly from the calming tone, plummeting the reader into ambiguity and darkness by associating the quiet idea of sleep with death. The rough transition from good emotions to bad heightens the experience of the bad emotions. In the Manolis translation:
“Can all these be dead tomorrow?
Can they be dead from right now?” (Ritsos and Manolis 7–8)
But it’s significant that these lines can be translated to either a question or a statement, as the original doesn’t provide punctuation or grammatical differentiation. The alternative:
They may all be dead tomorrow
They may be dead right now
This appeals to the chaotic emotion regarding life felt in the viewer, causing them to feel violently disconnected from truth; a question (poses possibility of solution or escape) versus a statement (a deterministic view). In addition, note the repetition and reflection of the original:
Μπορεί όλοι αυτοί
Να ’ναι αύριο πεθαμένοι
Μπορεί από τώρα κιόλας
Να ’ναι πεθαμένοι
The repetition of Μπορεί (acting as either the ‘can they’ or ‘they may’) parallels the repetition of Να ’ναι (abbreviated, ‘to be’). This juxtaposes an implied question or possibility in Μπορεί with a finality of existing, Να ’ναι, imposing confusion on the author — are you sure about what you’re saying or not? In addition, it confuses the line between sleep and death, and causes us to look with new eyes on the previous scene. Does death refer to sleep? To a mindset, in the suggestion that they are already dead? Significantly, the poem’s original sixteen lines are divided into four stanzas; the unity imposed by a mathematical perfect square is juxtaposed with the ambiguity imposed in this, the third stanza. This fracturing emotions suggests to us, the reader, that we rest in sweet emotions, but these emotions are a lie.
In the final four lines (the last stanza of the original poem) Ritsos ties in the initial child-like emotions of the mother with the painful reality of the third stanza, causing the reader to feel great pain and see the scene established by the first stanza with clearer eyes.
“A soldier wakes up
He looks around with glassy eyes
A thread of blood hangs from the moon’s lips” (Ritsos and Manolis 9–11)
Whereas the soldier sees with glazed eyes, the reader’s eyes have been cleared and suddenly feels the emotion of sadness. This effect is persistent, the image lingering with the reader at the end of the poem and causing them to experience or practice, like the soldier, waking up to a new emotional state and new reality. These soldiers, portrayed in the first two stanzas as sleeping children, could die or are already as good as dead. He leaves it ambiguous whether death is sleep, mindset, possibility, reality, or some combination of these. Many readers feel the emotional, familial connection to a bleeding mother weeping over her children. The soldiers are portrayed almost as the children of mother Hellas; in this way, we not only learn how to feel emotion, but we are directed towards how to use that emotion: to have nationalistic sympathy for Greece and a disgust towards violence against its citizens. By mobilizing the reader’s emotions in this way, Rtisos generates a rhetoric of leftist political resistance against the militaristic, authoritarian leadership of Greece (Ioannis Metaxas), demonstrating the power of emotion for upholding political cause.
Ritsos complicates Wordsworth’s emotional communication by adding a direction for how the reader should use their newfound emotion. Applied to the earlier sequence (Ritsos’ theoretical additions to Wordsworth in bold):
1. Ritsos feels grief and other negative emotions about the violence afflicting young Greek soldiers.
2. He expresses this emotion first by portraying his emotions of how he pictures a perfect Greece to be, with the children of Greece safe; then by portraying the negative reality that causes him so much pain.
3. The reader vicariously experiences first happiness/calm, the pain and shock through the ambiguity of Μπορεί and of death versus sleep.
4. Because of this, the reader practices the feelings of pain, shock, etc. accompanying the sudden opening of the eyes and the shattering of the illusion of peace.
5. This allows the reader to get better at feeling pain, grief, shock, etc. Further, it allows them to associate those emotions with the same nationalistic, pacifist end as Ritsos.
6. Thus, the reader lives a better life, and one that perhaps is more inclined to become involved in righting political wrongs because of the emotion evoked in the poem.
This shows that not only can emotion be cause for personal growth, like Wordsworth suggests, but it can be a form of resistance and a political call to action. This exposes an issue in the original 6-point program listed above, namely that it functions as a mere vessel through which true meaning (in an ethical/political cause) can be given by a specific intent. In other words, while Wordsworth seems to intend to evoke any emotion, Ritsos evokes a specific emotion toward a specific end. That’s not to say that all poetry is propaganda, but that all poetry elevates the passions of its author (even if that passion is to convey beauty/emotion) to some extent and conveys that passion to the reader.
Ritsos calls upon maternal language to summon good emotions in order to heighten the effect of negative emotions he summons by invoking the imminency of death; thus, he engages emotion to teach people to have the emotions he thinks they should have toward a political end. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — in this case, Ritsos makes a case against national violence. Emotion as a rhetorical device or even are as rhetoric aren’t new inventions, but the brilliance of Ritsos’ work is combining that with his ability to evoke the most intimate and vulnerable feelings to trigger even more broken, desecrated, painful emotional state. Ritsos shows not only how poets can teach people to feel their own emotions in the Wordsworthian sense, but how those poems can be harnessed for good; or, for that matter, evil as well.
Works Cited:
Ρίτσος, Γιάννης. “Ο Στρατώνας Στιχοι.” Στίχοι Ελληνικών Τραγουδιών, 1939–1940, https://www.artsandthecity.gr/stixoi/.
Ritsos, Yannis. “The Barracks.” Yannis Ritsos: Poems, edited by Apryl Leaf, 2nd ed., BC, Libros Libertad, 2018, p. 113.
Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” Bartleby, 1801, www.bartleby.com/39/36.html.
Notes:
[1] This essay refers to both the original text of Ritsos, and the translation by Manolis. Note that the translation has different line numbers than the original; to distinguish references for the translation are listed as ‘Ritsos and Manolis’ and references to original cite only ‘Ritsos.’
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