A Personal and Spiritual Reflection:
‘Last Night When I was Sleeping’ by Antonio Machado (1903)
(translated from the Spanish and read by poet Robert Bly, Four Seasons production)

Read translated poem here

  • Note how both the imagery of the poem and the visual texts are drawn from nature. What might be the effect if this poem were illustrated using highly urbanized images or contexts?

  • What is the effect of coupling the image of the waterfall with the apostrophe to water: ‘Along which secret aqueduct,/ Oh water, are you coming to me,/ water of a new life/ that I have never drunk?’ Does the visual text simply reflect the meaning of the original, or does it create new meaning? Would you make a different textual choice? If so, what might it be?

  • What place does music and sounds from nature (birds and water) have in creating meaning for the poem?

  • Note how the changing visual images provide a counterpoint to the repetition of the lines. What effect does this create?

  • What is the combined effect of the slowing down of the reading pace, the poem’s shift in tense (‘as I was sleeping’ and ‘I slept’) and the moving image of the rose opening in the last lines?

  • What if the makers of this text had decided to use the original Spanish with captions or subtitles? How might this affect the meaning of the multimodal text? Justify your response.

  • How does Robert Bly’s voice add to or detract from your experience of the poem? What difference to the meaning might it make to have a woman or child delivering the lines?

  • Look at the still image (right) taken from the digital poem. It accompanies the lines:

    'I dreamt - marvelous error! -
    that a fiery sun was giving
    light inside my heart.'

  • What is the effect of coupling this image (which obscures the sun) with the lines of the poem?

  • Notice how, despite the overall darkness, the rays of light draw the eye to the intensity of light. How does this support or enhance the poem’s meaning? Is this use of the visual text more or less successful than the above example of the ‘source’ and waterfall? Justify your answer.