Audiobook · read by volunteers
Winter: A Dirge
Robert Burns (1759–1796)
Read by Andrew, Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010), Betsie Bush, Caitlin Teresa, Clarica, Délibáb, Dario Cruz, Jc Guan, Kim Cutler, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021) · 20 chapters · 29 min
About the book
Robert Burns turns to the dark side of the year in “Winter: A Dirge”, a poem that opens with the line “The wintry west extends his blast”. A dirge is a song of mourning, and the title sets the tone. The language is plain and direct, and the feeling is strong, with a melancholy that Burns handles with great simplicity. Here the poem is heard in twenty separate recordings by LibriVox volunteers, a rich variety of readings. Some may lean on the Scottish colouring of a few words, others on the gravity of the theme, and listening to several in a row shows how the same words can sound very different. The collection is short, but it offers a surprising range of moods. Short, sombre and strangely beautiful, it gains a new colour with each reader.
Introduction
Robert Burns, born in 1759 and died in 1796, is Scotland’s national poet. The son of a tenant farmer in Ayrshire, he rose to fame with a volume of poems published in 1786, and he wrote and collected songs that are still sung today, including a version of Auld Lang Syne. His verse, much of it in Scots, celebrates love, friendship, nature and the dignity of ordinary people, and it also contains sharp satire.
Winter: A Dirge is an early poem, usually dated to around 1781. It is written mostly in English, with a few Scots words, and its imagery is bleak and its tone sorrowful. The poet contrasts the cold of the season with a deeper suffering, finding in nature an echo of human trouble. Short as it is, it shows the young poet already at ease with strong emotion and clear, striking images.
The recording is part of a weekly poetry project at LibriVox, held in January 2008. In these projects, each volunteer reads the same poem, so that listeners can compare their choices. This edition contains twenty versions, and the total listening time is about half an hour. It makes a remarkable study in the art of reading aloud, and a good introduction to a poet whose work can be enjoyed in many different voices.
If you are curious about how a performer approaches a poem, this is a fine place to experiment. Listen to the first few versions, then skip to a later one, and compare how the sorrow of the lines is expressed. The brevity of the poem means that you never have to commit more than a few minutes to each reader.
Public domain
Robert Burns died in 1796: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text