Poetry
Izay ho feoko eo am-pialana aina
Not translated into English
Samuel Ratany · 1927
Synopsis
My last breath: the speaker presses with questions the breath that illness assails, the grave that will carry his flesh into darkness, Death, who has pity on no heart, and asks what wage fate has paid him. Then he grows calm: the body is only dust and a clod of earth, but the heart, which the grave will not overcome, has only to spread its wings to take the paths that are no longer of this world.
Context
The poem was written in August 1926, a few weeks before the illness that carried off its author in October; Rabearivelo attended his last moments. It appeared in the journal Tsarahafatra on 26 April 1927, and his friends read in it the announcement of his own end. Ratany had also worked to bring the oral forms of Malagasy poetry into writing, an example followed by the poets of the Mitady ny very circle in the thirties. The text was reprinted in 1993 in the collection of his poems published in Fianarantsoa.
Who it is for
In Malagasy; the text can be read online with a French translation by Raharimanana, and in the posthumous edition of 1993.
Prizes and reception
Read by his contemporaries as the announcement of its author's death; translated into French for Île en île by Raharimanana.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.