The Cistern (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Giorgos Stylianou Seferiades
- First Published: 1932
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Suffering, Poetry or poets, Human race, Death or dying, Painting or painters, Life, philosophy of, Dams or reservoirs, Greece or Greek people, Water
The Poem
“The Cistern” is a lyric poem of twenty-five stanzas (if one counts the blank twenty-third stanza); each stanza contains five lines. The variable rhyme scheme utilizes off-rhyme in a resourceful and modern way.
“The Cistern” is prefaced with a quotation from the Cretan painter Doménikos Theotokópoulos, called El Greco, who worked in Toledo, Spain. The quotation is from the artist’s inscription to his View and Plan of Toledo (c. 1609). The significance of the quotation has to do with the artist’s poetic license to change reality to fit his...
[The entire page is 1491 words long]
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