The Satyr in Kelly’s poem is stone and separate from the reproducing flowers surrounding him, but somehow he takes on the heart of the garden. As the poem progresses the Satyr is headless, he doesn’t have a heart. And yet, the poem is meant to reveal his heart. There is the contrast of the world quickly changing and the stillness of the statue. There is the wind “fingering” the twigs, when the wind does not have fingers. One line sets up the expectation of hearing the bird’s sound, and the next line falls on the bird “crying”. The contrast between the smell of the fruit and the smell of the coins, the sweetness and sadness of the earth, are held within the Satyr’s heart. Kelly focuses on the Satyr as both a part of nature, surrounded by nature, and yet also separate from it.
This is close to the original idea that the Greeks would have had about the Satyr. As part animal, he was part of nature and what the Greeks would have considered chaos. The Man’s world is the world of order. The Satyr might have been considered the guardian of the forest, and yet that did not mean he made the forest a friendlier or less chaotic place.
A Satyr often embodied the nature of which he was a part. The forest originally seemed to offer the traveler a path, but then the weather changed and the forest betrayed and endangered him. As part human the Satyr is separate from nature. Therefore, the Satyr is conflicted. He offers help to the Man, but he is so afraid of what he does not understand that he withdraws that help. Both the forest and the Satyr interact with the Man in the same way, and the Satyr is only slightly more morally culpable for this than the forest is. The fable explains what Man can expect from Satyrs, they will be as chaotic as the nature they embody.
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