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The first man on mercury

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1) The original poem documents the first contact between explorers from Earth and the native inhabitants of Mercury, told through a dialogue in the explorers' and natives' incomprehensible languages. 2) Over time, the explorers and natives start adopting words from each other's languages but are unable to truly understand or live with one another. 3) A rewrite of the poem tells the same story from the perspective of one of the astronauts, documenting his changing and contradictory thoughts over time about being the first man on Mercury and his inability to improve relations with the natives. The rewrite references and builds upon the original poem.

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The first man on mercury The First Men on Mercury’ is one of Edwin Morgan’s science fiction poems fizzing with ideas and bubbling with invention. It’s simultaneously fascinating, funny and just a little bit disconcerting, as we witness first contact between the brave explorers from Earth and the native inhabitants of the planet Mercury. The First Men on Mercury, first published in 1973, produced here by Glasgow-based designers Metaphrog and educational charity ASLS. The form of the poem makes it ideal for adaptation into comic-strip form. The poem, being largely dialogue based. In the poem there is no narration, but we all thought that for the comic to work as a story, it would be necessary to show the arrival of the Earthmen on Mercury. This we kept silent. The original text was of course kept intact. We were highly aware that by adding any images we were simultaneously going to be taking something away from a reader's own visual interpretation of the poem read as pure text. Poem is written in free verse. In the first stanza, men say that " We come in peace from the third planet." third planet symbolizes "earth" and "come in peace" means this poem was written during war period and peace was not found on earth. " Will you please take us to your leader" leader symbolizes they are not happy in the guidance of earth leaders. they want to live in the guidance of Mercury leader. because Mercury leader keeps his planet in peace. Is this a poem?" may be the first question one can ask while discovering "The first men on Mercury" by Edwin Morgan. Indeed, its dramatic structure - a dialogue presenting two voices without the intervention of any narrator - looks like a play; the main difference is the absence of stage direction. The punctuation constitutes the only indication about the manner the words are pronounced by the characters. The reader has to take elements from the direct speeches to imagine the setting, the characters, and the possible actions that surround the dialogue. Another very puzzling element is the presence of an incomprehensible language. The beginning of the text looks completely non-cohesive. Although the cues seem to be independent, we shall see that there are cohesive devices tying elements of the text together. The title helps to clarify the situation, announcing that the dialogue is the first encounter between 'Earthmen' and 'Mercurians'. The formers initiate the conversation by introducing themselves. The latter's answer is undecipherable but we can notice the repetition of some words, either
identically like "bawr", or with variation - maybe "declined" or "conjugated" - like "gawl", "glawp", glawn". This draws a helpful link between these illegible words. The question marks also suggest that there is a question-answer pattern, even if we do not understand their meaning. The most interesting feature in the poem is the exchange of words from one language to the other which gradually leads to a complete adoption of the other's language. The 'Mercurians' echo the word "men" (l.15), then "thmen?" (l.19), the end of the word "earthmen". They transform the noun group "your leader" into a single noun "yuleeda" (l.20), obviously keeping its meaning. The Earthmen also take some "Mercurian" vocabulary: "benner" (l.21), "stretterhawn" (l.22). This progressive change gives the reader a chance to assume the nature of the alien words (noun, adjective) and to guess what they could mean. However the main point is not to understand this language, but rather to witness how quick the characters adopt the other's language and that nevertheless, this is not sufficient to really understand each other and to be able to live together. The rewrite deals with the same themes (the impossibility to communicate and difficulties to live together) and employs some words and expressions directly taken from the original text ("Nothing is ever the same now, is it?"). It also refers back to Morgan's poem with a metatextual allusion: "A thousand transcripts I had written" (l.2). By mentioning the transcript, it offers a new look on the original text and opens a further textual dimension. In opposition to the neutral report of the dialogue, the rewrite introduces subjectivity through the presence of a narrator: this is one of the astronauts (from the original poem) who is telling his own view of the scene relating it to his personal story. Avoiding the first person plural pronoun and keeping repeating "I", he places himself as alone against "the whole world" (also referred to as "they"). He wants to be identified as a victim thanks to the passive form in parallel structures (second stanza), where "I" is the grammatical subject and the agent of the action is unknown. It is all the more effective since this is combined with direct speeches reporting an imperative form ("stop") and an insult ("stupid ass"). Contrary to the original text, this poem only picks up some fragments of direct discourse, clearly identified between inverted comas. While Edwin Morgan's text witnesses the Earthmen's attempt and failure at establishing a communication, the rewrite describes the different stages the narrator has been through. The chronology of the events is easily identifiable since it follows the order of the text, and also thanks to the different tenses employed. Indeed, it starts with the past perfect ("I had pictured"), then switches to the simple past ("I didn't surrender And I was right") before coming to the present tense (here am I"), and it finally ends with the future tense ("They'll remember me"). The poem reports the narrator's thoughts as messy and contradictory as they are in his head: at first, he feels like a victim, then like a hero ("The first man on Mercury"). He becomes very
hopeful about the future, claiming "Nevermore!", an intertextual reference to Edgar Alan Poe's poem, "the Raven". But he is soon disillusioned and concludes declaring: "there's nothing I can do", which is also an intertextual reference to the lyrics of "Space Oddity", a song by David Bowie. An extreme example of his conflicting thoughts is when he switches from "Nothing is ever the same now" to "Everything will ever be the same". His radical changes of mind seem to be as disturbing as the use of the unknown language in the original text. The 'Mercurian' words have been chosen for their phonological similarities with English words: "cantantabawr" starts with "can't" which bears the idea of incapability; "warrabost" and "horraber" sound like "war" and "horror". At this stage, the narrator realizes the impossibility to improve his relation to "the whole world". The rewrite is built on (and around) Edwin Morgan's original transcript. The main topic is the same but it is explored from a different perspective. Instead of reporting a single event (Earthmen meeting Mercurians for the first time), it involves a wider scale in time and space since it covers the whole life of the narrator. However it presents a very personal viewpoint for it is a first-person narrative. The two texts are thus complementary.

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The first man on mercury

  • 1. The first man on mercury The First Men on Mercury’ is one of Edwin Morgan’s science fiction poems fizzing with ideas and bubbling with invention. It’s simultaneously fascinating, funny and just a little bit disconcerting, as we witness first contact between the brave explorers from Earth and the native inhabitants of the planet Mercury. The First Men on Mercury, first published in 1973, produced here by Glasgow-based designers Metaphrog and educational charity ASLS. The form of the poem makes it ideal for adaptation into comic-strip form. The poem, being largely dialogue based. In the poem there is no narration, but we all thought that for the comic to work as a story, it would be necessary to show the arrival of the Earthmen on Mercury. This we kept silent. The original text was of course kept intact. We were highly aware that by adding any images we were simultaneously going to be taking something away from a reader's own visual interpretation of the poem read as pure text. Poem is written in free verse. In the first stanza, men say that " We come in peace from the third planet." third planet symbolizes "earth" and "come in peace" means this poem was written during war period and peace was not found on earth. " Will you please take us to your leader" leader symbolizes they are not happy in the guidance of earth leaders. they want to live in the guidance of Mercury leader. because Mercury leader keeps his planet in peace. Is this a poem?" may be the first question one can ask while discovering "The first men on Mercury" by Edwin Morgan. Indeed, its dramatic structure - a dialogue presenting two voices without the intervention of any narrator - looks like a play; the main difference is the absence of stage direction. The punctuation constitutes the only indication about the manner the words are pronounced by the characters. The reader has to take elements from the direct speeches to imagine the setting, the characters, and the possible actions that surround the dialogue. Another very puzzling element is the presence of an incomprehensible language. The beginning of the text looks completely non-cohesive. Although the cues seem to be independent, we shall see that there are cohesive devices tying elements of the text together. The title helps to clarify the situation, announcing that the dialogue is the first encounter between 'Earthmen' and 'Mercurians'. The formers initiate the conversation by introducing themselves. The latter's answer is undecipherable but we can notice the repetition of some words, either
  • 2. identically like "bawr", or with variation - maybe "declined" or "conjugated" - like "gawl", "glawp", glawn". This draws a helpful link between these illegible words. The question marks also suggest that there is a question-answer pattern, even if we do not understand their meaning. The most interesting feature in the poem is the exchange of words from one language to the other which gradually leads to a complete adoption of the other's language. The 'Mercurians' echo the word "men" (l.15), then "thmen?" (l.19), the end of the word "earthmen". They transform the noun group "your leader" into a single noun "yuleeda" (l.20), obviously keeping its meaning. The Earthmen also take some "Mercurian" vocabulary: "benner" (l.21), "stretterhawn" (l.22). This progressive change gives the reader a chance to assume the nature of the alien words (noun, adjective) and to guess what they could mean. However the main point is not to understand this language, but rather to witness how quick the characters adopt the other's language and that nevertheless, this is not sufficient to really understand each other and to be able to live together. The rewrite deals with the same themes (the impossibility to communicate and difficulties to live together) and employs some words and expressions directly taken from the original text ("Nothing is ever the same now, is it?"). It also refers back to Morgan's poem with a metatextual allusion: "A thousand transcripts I had written" (l.2). By mentioning the transcript, it offers a new look on the original text and opens a further textual dimension. In opposition to the neutral report of the dialogue, the rewrite introduces subjectivity through the presence of a narrator: this is one of the astronauts (from the original poem) who is telling his own view of the scene relating it to his personal story. Avoiding the first person plural pronoun and keeping repeating "I", he places himself as alone against "the whole world" (also referred to as "they"). He wants to be identified as a victim thanks to the passive form in parallel structures (second stanza), where "I" is the grammatical subject and the agent of the action is unknown. It is all the more effective since this is combined with direct speeches reporting an imperative form ("stop") and an insult ("stupid ass"). Contrary to the original text, this poem only picks up some fragments of direct discourse, clearly identified between inverted comas. While Edwin Morgan's text witnesses the Earthmen's attempt and failure at establishing a communication, the rewrite describes the different stages the narrator has been through. The chronology of the events is easily identifiable since it follows the order of the text, and also thanks to the different tenses employed. Indeed, it starts with the past perfect ("I had pictured"), then switches to the simple past ("I didn't surrender And I was right") before coming to the present tense (here am I"), and it finally ends with the future tense ("They'll remember me"). The poem reports the narrator's thoughts as messy and contradictory as they are in his head: at first, he feels like a victim, then like a hero ("The first man on Mercury"). He becomes very
  • 3. hopeful about the future, claiming "Nevermore!", an intertextual reference to Edgar Alan Poe's poem, "the Raven". But he is soon disillusioned and concludes declaring: "there's nothing I can do", which is also an intertextual reference to the lyrics of "Space Oddity", a song by David Bowie. An extreme example of his conflicting thoughts is when he switches from "Nothing is ever the same now" to "Everything will ever be the same". His radical changes of mind seem to be as disturbing as the use of the unknown language in the original text. The 'Mercurian' words have been chosen for their phonological similarities with English words: "cantantabawr" starts with "can't" which bears the idea of incapability; "warrabost" and "horraber" sound like "war" and "horror". At this stage, the narrator realizes the impossibility to improve his relation to "the whole world". The rewrite is built on (and around) Edwin Morgan's original transcript. The main topic is the same but it is explored from a different perspective. Instead of reporting a single event (Earthmen meeting Mercurians for the first time), it involves a wider scale in time and space since it covers the whole life of the narrator. However it presents a very personal viewpoint for it is a first-person narrative. The two texts are thus complementary.