Lamenting Daffodils: Poetry as Metaphor and Euphemism

Dolores O'Riordan was easily one of the greatest songwriters of the twentieth Century, with her band the Cranberries' song "Zombie" often cited as one of the defining songs of the early 90's, with its antiwar message and grungy sound. And that's not even mentioning the classics "Dreams" and "Linger" from their first record. However, when you speak with many die-hard Cranberries fans (myself included), you'll often hear the argument that while their hit songs were certainly fantastic, if you listened to their records as a whole, you'd find quite a few "hidden gems" as it were. Which leads us directly into my personal favorite Cranberries song: "Daffodil Lament."

"Daffodil Lament" is the twelfth and penultimate track on the Cranberries second full-length record No Need to Argue. From what I can tell (the song is quite abstract, which is part of the reason I love it so much), the song follows a narrator as they break up with a neglectful partner after presumably weeks of no contact, though the partner used to be much more responsive and caring. Throughout the the course of the song, the narrator begins to see daffodils as they get further away from said partner, and as they say so many times, "the daffodils look lovely today" (O'Riordan). However, with each step further away, they also doubt themselves, and the narrator wonders if they had any part in the distance that grew between the former couple.

Now, we could discuss the linguistic and artistic meaning of these lyrics until the heat death of the universe (Personally, I think it is a metaphor for the actions of the IRA in the early nineties hurting more people than it helped, like a less blatant version of "Zombie." The entire record roughly surrounds this concept, with the name No Need to Argue being a massive understatement about how there is no need for the IRA to act so horribly.), but I think that it's rather a part of the abstract nature of the song - in fact, of all art - to not have a definitive answer. Each person will ascribe a different meaning or metaphor to every piece of abstract art they ever see, because, as stated in "A Thinkpiece about Analysis," people are different. No, when it comes to this song, I would rather use it as a jumping-off-point to discuss poetry itself, and how the use of flowery words and a rhyme scheme can make anything palatable, bringing us back to the title; poetry as metaphor.

Aside from discussing the greatest rock band that ever came out of the British Isles (Sorry, the Beatles are tied in second place with Queen.), there's typically one person I like to jump to when discussing poetry as metaphor (if only because he wrote shorter works than Shakespeare): Edgar Allen Poe. Now, it's not exactly unknown, even among people who haven't read his work, that Poe was incredibly depressed (as well as disturbed). His life was wrought with incidents that would send anyone into a depressive spiral, and his writing often reflected such. I'm going to do us all a favor and not quote the Raven, but instead his popular (and very poetic, it counts) short story the Cask of Amontillado, in which a nameless narrator of the Montresor family leads one Fortunato into his cellar in order to kill him by means of starvation. The Cask of Amontillado is laden with imagery of descending, sadness and revenge, as though Poe is lashing out through his text at what had hurt him. In this interpretation, Fortunato (lit. Lucky) is symbolic of those Poe views as fortunate, and as such, Fortunato's death is what Poe wishes would happen to those people. This is the idea; the words on the page are not literal. Poe describes the revenge of some aristocrat, and O'Riordan describes a relationship ending.

Other than Ridley Blue is a long-winded asshat who doesn't know when to shut the hell up, what does all of this mean? Well, I think this brings us to a discussion of palatability of media itself, and of course, that means we're going to have to talk about avant-garde cult cinema. Oh, and content warning for those are a tad squeamish.

Cannibal Holocaust is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by one Ruggero Deodato. It depicts gruesome scenes of a missing documentary film crew being hunted and eaten by an Amazonian cannibal tribe, and is often cited as one of the most disgusting films ever made. The internal organs of  real animals were used to replicate those of humans, and were displayed in full color on the big screen. Multiple actors left the film during production as the shots they had to participate in were too horrible to bear. The film discusses themes of white invasion of native spaces and assumed white superiority.

Are you disgusted?

Cannibal Holocaust could be seen as the furthest art might go to be unpalatable to audiences, and though it made a lot of money in the box office, many critics today still cite it as exploitative and a horrible display of film going too far. In contrast, the Disney film Pocahontas discusses similar themes to Cannibal Holocaust, but has withstood both the critical onslaught and the test of time better than Cannibal Holocaust ever did. What's the difference?

Palatability.

One of these films depicts a cute cartoon princess and her animal friends fighting against the invasion of her society by colonists, whereas the other depicts the very gruesome and realistic ingestion of a white film crew. Pocahontas is the Cranberries, whereas Cannibal Holocaust is Nickelback.

When we coat horrible things with pretty words, people will sit down and listen, and maybe even learn. It's euphemism at its very best. In the same way as Pocahontas described the invasion of colonists into native spaces, "Daffodil Lament" discusses the horrible acts of terror committed by the IRA and turns it into a beautiful song that I listen to on cool spring mornings. O'Riordan laments those daffodils, not because they withered away in the winter, but because they were killed in a horrible attack intended to make a statement.

Don't the daffodils look lovely today?

Album I listened to while writing this: Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion by Fight Like Apes

Best Track: "Tie Me Up With Jackets"