URBAN AND RURAL EPIPHANIES: RECAPTURING NATURE WITHIN A RUS IN URBE SETTING

Abstract

The contemplation of cityscapes often leads to poetic mirages of the urban oasis: a place that is constructed as a bricolage of the poet’s experience within a rural setting. The poet as a castaway from the safe country landmarks of their poetic material becomes aware of new creative potencies. This paper considers John Archer’s ideas on the rus in urbe phenomenon about its manifestation in the poems of Patrick Kavanagh and Dimcho Debelyanov. The analysis of several poems follows the recaptured texture of the rural within the urban as a form of epiphany, where the poet reaches beyond the established tropes of longing for the lost countryside of the past and settles into a world of pristine contemplation of the present. The synthesized experience of the rus in the urbe setting lends a new perspective on a poetic past and offers a re-evaluation of the image and conceptualization of the city and its attributes.