Question by whats the answer: are there any allusions in the poem “the fish” by elizabeth bishop?
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
–the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly–
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
–It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
–if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels–until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

are there any allusions? if so explain what words and where. thanks so much

Best answer:

Answer by John W
I was going to say no … but then I caught myself ‘cuz that’s not how the lit game works …

the phrase “beard of wisdom” is a reference to Horace (the Roman poet) … I dropped a link to the passage in the sources window … the phrase became a “tag” in Latin … an oft-repeated little phrase that everyone knew from their Latin classes in school …

Sapientum pascere barbam = [Latin] = To grown the beard of wisdom.

Horace actually ridicules the idea … suggests it’s pretentious to throw over the world and become a big ol’ bearded philosopher …

Elizabeth Bishop, on the other hand, seems to be using the term without any of the suggestions of play-acting …

So, I dunno, is that an allusion? At the very least, it’s a phrase that has a very specific literary and cultural history …

————————–

There’s a generalized mock epic tone to the poem, huh? Mock heroic? There’s a clear contrast between the kind of heroic epic language. She’s crafting epic similes like Homer … but then (as tends to happen in mock heroic) there’s a sudden intrusion of the decided non-heroic …

like in those lines:

I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,

The phrase “little rented vote” undercuts the fine heroic language of “I stared and stared/and victory filled up”

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!