The poem Het kind en ik was written by Martinus Nijhoff. In the poem different aspects of form and an underlying idea emerge.
The child and me
I’d fish out for a day
I felt despondent.
I made between the irises
a hole in the duckweed by hand.
Light rose from below
from the black mirror ground.
I saw a garden untrodden
and a child standing there.
It was at his writing table
to write on a slate.
The word under the pen
I recognized, was mine.
But then it wrote,
without haste and without hesitation,
all i have of my life
dream ever to write.
And whenever I do
nodded that I knew
he made the water tremble
and it was obliterated.
Content
The I-person tells about a moment when he planned to go fishing near the water. In the first stanza he tells that he was going to go fishing and he pushes the duckweed aside. In the second stanza he tells what he sees now that he can see the bottom. He sees a child, himself, in a garden. In the third stanza he tells what the child does, it writes. He recognizes what the child is writing (after all, he once wrote it himself). In the fourth stanza he tells that the child is writing something that he has not yet written, but would like to write. In the fifth stanza he tells that the letters are erased as soon as he knows what it says.
Form aspects
All stanzas have the rhyme scheme abab, so crossed rhyme. There are no assonances or alliterations. In the last stanza the word is referred to twice. In line 18 it refers to what the I person wants with their life. In line 20 it refers to what the child has written. There are many comparisons in the poem. By fishing he means to think about the past. By wak he means a train of thought. With black mirror ground he means his thoughts. By untrodden garden he means that the child is not yet spoiled, is still pure. The child also represents purity, which is exactly what the I-person is looking for.
Underlying meaning
The underlying idea is that you can look for the purity that you still have as a child, but that you will not find it. The moment you almost know, you just won’t find out. An adult is simply shaped by society and cannot be as ignorant, pure as a child.
Most characteristic phrase
I find what I dream of writing in my life the most characteristic sentence because this sentence shows that the adult very much wants to go back to his childhood time, to the time when society had no influence on him yet.
Own opinion
I think this is a beautiful poem, I especially like the choice of words. I really like the words water tremble in line 20. As if the child does it on purpose so that the I person doesn’t know anymore. Probably because as an adult you can no longer live a pure life, because you are a more important part of society.