The seductive elliptical style

hot summer –

through the phone only the rain

seems close

Eduard Ţarǎ

 A versed reader feels what a haiku communicates in a syncretic way, that is by bringing together and merging with ease the heterogeneous elements and situations. By spontaneously understanding and savouring the global meaning of the poem. Rereading, together with progressive and analytical highlighting of its layers, and of the way they intertwine to achieve full complexity always brings, however, supplementary satisfaction.

An innocent reading, browsing through the poem, can bring us to readily understand that in the lengthy heat of summer the pressing need for rain starts to be felt. This would be the background, against which the second part brings variations: through/ on the phone, it seems that the much coveted rain would be announced. It is drawing near. Or is it just an illusion?

It should be noted, however, how the phone marks the switch to an elliptical style. It is the inflection point of the composition, wherein the formulation through the phone (and not on) already produces a shift in the site of action. There is a new and strange place, which diverts the default interest towards the telephone conversation and to the characters involved in it. On the phone only, introduces a restriction, an enclosure: the texture, the plot is no longer on the outside, it has retreated into the private space.

The word only represents the spring board that transforms the previous elements. Allegorically, hot summer is just a doublet of the soul, of the inner droughts belonging to one of the callers, the rain (which we never hear) must be the refreshing words that the interlocutor’s voice drops like a balm on the soul spied until that moment by dryness. The rain through the phone is genuine and effective, summer can wait outside.

One word with a noun phrase meaning, the phone, together with a preposition, through, and two adverbs, only and close, have built out of hints, using an allegorical transfer, a scene and a situation that are explicitly non-existent. He gave, in the elliptical style, just some minimal clues. But which are enough to guide our imagination.

Or has my own imagination become too ardent?

(essay by Corneliu Traian Atanasiu)