МНЕ ОЧЕНЬ НУЖЕН ОТВЕТ, ДЛЯ СЕСТРЫ... Я НЕ ПОНИМАЮ Seamus Heaney
Blackberry-Picking
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Notes: lust herе: greed (more commonly, "indecent or offensive sexual feeling"); Bluebeard the French fairytale character who killed his wives; the poet means that the blackberry juice looked or felt like blood; Cache a French word meaning something that is hidden.

Task 1. What is generally wrong about the situation described in the poem? 2. Children's berry-picking is normally seen as a nice and innocuous action. Why does the author introduce the shadow of Bluebeard? How are other words like "lust" and "cache" linked to this character? 3. What tense is used by Heaney? Did you have difficulties choosing the Russian verb forms for translation? Where and how does Heaney reveal that the situation happened more than once? 4. What does the little boy mean by "It wasn't fair". Do you agree with him? Discuss the idea.

exampllee1    2   16.06.2021 13:20    1