Post-colonialism In John Burnside

John Burnside uses his poem "The last man to speak Ubykh" to express his concerns with how language is used within the colonizing mission and directive. Language is the limits of our world according to Wittgenstein, and in this respect the imposition of language upon the cultural `other` is a reshaping of their mode of thought; a colonizing of the mind. Burnside uses this interplay of language and territory in the poem as an opposition through which to express his anxiety about language and power.

The title, "The last man to speak Ubykh" foregrounds key ideas with relation to the development of language which I would like to explore within the poem. The epithet "last man" positions the character of the final speaker of Ubykh as a monumental figure. "Last man" is a title, given to him so that he may be expressed in the poem an almost mythical, solitary keeper of language. This is furthered by the image of "the graves that he swept"; "graves" foreshadows the death of the language and that of the man. However, in the act of sweeping, the man is positioned as a caretaker of the language long after its decline from usage. Moreover, this can be applied to Burnside's role within the creation of the poem. Burnside preserves the memory of the man, and the language he embodies through using the poem as a form of elegy or lament. Language, embodied by the "last man", is constructed as a carrier of history and culture. The fragmented sentence structure of "his father's hands, the smell of tamarid/inklings of milk and blood" displays scenes of the man's past in an imagistic way. Through not dwelling on each image, and instead using a cinematic style to cut between images, Burnside both gives the past carried in language a fleeting, irretrievability, whilst enacting the fragmentary and elusive nature of memory itself. However, the sensory diction of "milk and blood", evoking the concept of mothering through the link to breast milk, and a physicality, or density, in the image of "blood" yokes the image back to the present. Moreover, "inklings" -though suggesting at a literal level the small impulses felt- can also be read as an allusion to the act of poetic creation; "Inklings" suggests the ink of the page and poem. Thus Burnside is again acting as the caretaker of the language and the history it carries.

However, this is undermined by the use of "man" within the title. 'Man' both connotes a similarity between the persona of the poem and the speaker of Ubykh; they are both men, human and thus equal. The speaker is not different than the persona, which suggests empathy and reciprocation from the persona. It also suggests that no language, no matter how established is immortal, through the universalising identity of "man". Moreover, 'man' is the persona's imposition of an identity onto the speaker or Ubykh, he is defining him within his own language. In this respect the writer, recreates the "man" within his own frame of reference; de-constructing his previous identity and recreating him in a foreign way. Thus, the title foregrounds questions of identity in relation to language and how this identity is proliferated through literature. It is interesting that the 'linguist' is named, and the 'last man' is not. This alludes to the idea of language in relation to social standing and/or class' the linguist, a studier of language is given the privilege of a name, whereas Tevfik Esenc -the speaker- is not. In addition, the diction of "speak" poses certain questions about whether language must be spoken, and have a receiver, to be legitimate. "Speak" implies a conversation, or communication, but if he is the "last" then there cannot be any interaction. Therefore, the title suggests that language is a part of the self, not a device with which we communicate.

The poem constructs a divide between the idea of an image and the word to express it. Naturalistic concepts such as "tree" or "frog" evoke the world as an organic entity, only expressed in words. The man has to "think of the word", which suggests a fracture between the object and the word. This can be extended to the idea that language itself is a translation of the world, a reduction into an understandable code in which to communicate. The diction of "denote" indicates a representation, an imitation and not the ideal image. The form of the poem mirrors this idea, as Burnside writes in the English language he is unable to articulate "the word".

This is furthered by the aporia at the end of the poem, where the word is said to mean either "death" or "meadow grass" indicates ignorance of the language through the juxtaposition of two inconsolable ideas; "meadow grass" is a bucolic and idyllic image of peace, which sharply contrasts with the emptiness represented by death. This indicates the void in knowledge of the language which is left behind after its 'death'. The image of the void is also suggested in the metaphor of the "folded.sheet". A "sheet" is a comforting image, suggesting the solitary pleasures of bed. This is furthered by the link to "childhood", alluding to bedtime stories and the oral transition of language from elder to younger. The "mother tongue" of the bedroom is a maternal figure, endowing the child with speech and thus creating the identity of the self, and that of the world. In contrast the false mothering act of having "folded" the sheet, a domestic duty usually associated with mothers, is instead a marginalisation of the language. Furthermore, this is enacted in the final line of the stanza. "And tucked away" ends short, leaving a gap in the meter of the stanza which acts to represent the gap in language expressed in the poem. Likewise, the "away" is unstressed, a soft syllabic sound which blurs into the silence, suggesting to the reader an almost insidious loss. This could also be read as the language of the poem petering out, in parallel to the language of the "man". The "perhaps" emphatically enacts the nonchalance with which the persona talks of the language. However, within the act of writing the poem, Burnside performs an act of remembrance, opposing the final line; "nobody remembered". The poem acts as the "last man" does within the title, it is a monument to the language. "Nothing he said was legend", suggesting that he has fallen out of memory, is inverted through the creation of the poem.