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The Message of King Sakis and the Legend of the Twelve Dreams He Had in One Night
Overview
This poem expounds on twelve dreams a king, Sakis, had over the course of one night. These dreams have both positive and negative meanings, though there appear to be more negative dreams than positive ones. The ideas and images presented through the king's dreams foreshadow the beginning of the apocalypse for his people because King Sakis mentions images like heaven and “the devil's servants” when recounting his dreams (line 36).
The style of this poem is simple and easy to follow. Each dream is numbered and is followed by a description of what the king saw. The numerical ordering of the dreams leads the reader to believe that is the order the dreams happened in.
Commentary
Much of this poem's imagery inspires a dark feeling. The last line of the poem, for example, talks about an entity that many readers today would interpret as a demon. Nearly all of the dreams have this same kind of negative connotation. Only dreams 1, 4, and 11 contain positive imagery.
Context
This poem was written anonymously in Serbia during the 12th century. The original language of this poem was Serbo-Croatian. More information on Serbian literature can be found here: https://www.britannica.com/art/Serbian-literature.
According to Alcheringa this poem is considered a Serbo-Croatian folk poem. The poem, as it is presented here, is a modern translation by Charles Simic, a famous Serbian poet, who has won multiple Pulitzer prizes.
Bibliography
This poem has been included in multiple texts, including:
The Horse Has Six Legs: An Anthology of Serbian Poetry, edited and translated by Charles Simic in 1992. A review of the book can be found https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/the-horse-has-six-legs-an-anthology-of-serbian-poetryhere.
The third edition of Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania, edited with commentary by Jerome Rothenberg in 2017. Rothenberg's commentary on the third edition, which is also the 50th anniversary edition of the original book, can be found here:https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/29432/jerome-rothenberg-on-the-symposium-of-the-whole/
Other oral Serbo-Croatian Folk poetry can be found here: https://www.oraltradition.org/issues/6ii-iii/volume-6-issue-2-3-serbo-croatian-oral-tradition/
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— Mikenna 2021/06/28 14:49
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