My Blue Piano Analysis.edited

Name:
Professor:
Course Title:
Date:
Analysis of ‘My Blue Piano’
Introduction
In his translation book, Eavan Boland comprehensively covers the plight of women poets in their literary works of war poetry. Else Lasker-Schuller’s ‘My Blue Piano’ is an excellent piece that depicts the art of translating tragedy into art in such a remarkable way. Else was born on February 11th, 1869. Lasker-Schuller was displaced from Zurich due to war and forced to exile in Palestine. In her literary work, ‘My Blue Piano,’ she expresses her loneliness and the loss that arises from tragedies such as war. Out of her experience from the Nazi movement and the periods of war in Germany, Lasker-Schuller covers the question of survival in this poem. Moreover, she presents her work as any other helpless human being, a woman of that age; whom war injures and excludes in a manner.
Analysis
Lasker-Schuller uses imagery in his art to express the effects of tragedy and how the loss remains embedded in our memories and blood. She uses the piano as an image as well as the speaker of the poem. In the first line, the poem reads “At home, I have a Blue Piano…”(Lasker-Schuller, 102) Lasker proceeds to introduce a conflict that reflects how her life has been torn to bits due to war. She tries to imply that war can make the simplest errands to become enormous endeavors. In the second line, she says “But I can’t play a note” “It’s been in the Shadow of the cellar door Since the world went rotten.” (Lasker-Schuller, 102) Unlike other poems in the ‘war poetry’ genre which specifically address the landscape of war such as Korea or Vietnam, Lasker-Schuller focuses on the impacts of war rather than the war itself.

She employs the word ‘rotten’ to express the hardships of survival in a supremely difficult world at her time.
In developing her themes, Lasker-Schuller exemplifies an intersection of both public and private person. She covers the themes of guilt, desire, humanity and death as a private person. She says “I weep for what is blue. Is dead” to express her grief at losing her son in a manner that speaks for the monumental loss many women of her time faced as a result of war. She presents a woman as a being that is disadvantaged by inhuman actions of war hence depicting a devastated mindset of a survivor so accurately. As a public person, she covers the theme of hopelessness for humans. She uses the demise of the piano to symbolize the lost hope for humanity just like the piano in its shambles. In the first stanza three; “Four strands play …Now only Rats dance to the clanks.” (Lasker-Schuller, 102) This implies that in happier times the piano was alive with cool music but due to war only rats dance to the music; hence, the hopelessness of life in the aftermath of war. In the last lines, she expresses her unreasonable desire to indicate the burden of survival left to women in the period of war. She can’t help but wonder why she survived only to carry the burden that the dead are unaware of. She says “Sweet angels I have eaten…such bitter bread…Push open the door of heaven…For me. For now…Although it’s not allowed.” (Lasker-Schuller, 102)
Conclusion
As discussed above, ‘My Blue Piano’ is an excellent art that illustrates the effects of war and tragedy. In her experience in exile and the moments of the Nazi movement, Lasker-Schuller successfully tackles the themes of hopelessness, humanity, death, and desire. However, in the poem the reader is left to wonder if Lasker-Schuller gained hope in transforming her grief into words; since the lines depict that she can’t find anything good in her loss. All in all, Lasker-Schuller, a Kleist prize winner, presents a remarkable art in ‘My Blue Piano’ that contributes to the ‘war poetry’ genre.

Work Cited
Lasker-Schuler, Else. My Blue Piano. Syracuse University Press, 2015: 102.