Water, Rushes and the Moon (Siv, vand og måne) perfectly illustrates the major themes of Bjørnvig’s mature work: his love and respect for pristine nature, his abhorrence for what he called “the filth in the landscape,” and his belief that art and spirituality allow one to transcend mortality.

A quietly lyrical description of nature illustrated by the moonlit scene in the first stanza sets a mood of serenely philosophical harmony. The poet, contemplating an ancient Chinese painting, is swept into a state of spiritual exaltation where he becomes one with both nature and art: “The wind in the rushes calls forth dreams / they sprout on the bottom, grow up through the water.” Like the rushes that pierce the water and blossom to the moonlight, the poet also opens to the mystical beauty of the scene, and glorifies in the moonlight, dewdrops quenching his thirst for beauty.

In the second stanza the poet focuses on a fisherman asleep in his boat. In harmony with his surroundings, the fisherman, “his face resting on folded arms, half out of / the rush-plaited tent,” belongs to the scene as much as the heavens, the water, and the rushes. The spirituality infusing the poem is therefore not of any specific faith; instead, it springs from the certitude that every human, every animal, every blade of grass is a necessary cell in a larger cosmic order: “In front, and above the boat—rushes / and all the rushes with their delicate wisp-like flowers / stretch past the sleeper up toward the moon.”

The poet queries his reader and himself about reality in the final stanza. Dropping the dreamy distance of the first parts of the poem, he challenges all to ponder the fate of our world: “Is this the Earth? Am I seeing the dreamer in a dream?” The poet provides an answer when he prays that the Earth is “not a screeching gull-invaded refuse dump or smoking volcano” and that he is not merely dreaming when he dreams of “water, rushes and the moon.”

An interesting and pertinent area of further reading could be about the world tree of Norse mythology, since it inspired the title of the collection that includes Water, Rushes and the Moon. In Norse myth the world tree, the source of all life, is the Yggdrasil. Its destruction heralds Ragnarok, or the end of the Earth. Inasmuch as Thorkild Bjørnvig was 75 years old when he authored The World Tree, the poet’s ruminations on the possible end of serene nature certainly mirrors his awareness of his own mortality.

Categories: Literature, World Literature

Tags: cosmic harmony in literature, Danish modernist poets, dream imagery in Thorkild Bjørnvig, eco-criticism in Scandinavian literature, lyrical nature poetry analysis, mortality in modern poetry, nature in Thorkild Bjørnvig works, Norse mythology in poetry, Scandinavian poetry themes, spirituality in Danish poetry, Thorkild Bjørnvig biography, Thorkild Bjørnvig critical study, Thorkild Bjørnvig poetry analysis, Water Rushes and the Moon analysis, Water Rushes and the Moon character study, Water Rushes and the Moon criticism, Water Rushes and the Moon interpretation, Water Rushes and the Moon poem meaning, Water Rushes and the Moon summary, Water Rushes and the Moon themes, Yggdrasil symbolism in poetry