Robertson’s “La Stanza Delle Mosche” conveys something of an entire world within a single space, and in a matter of thirteen lines. Nothing particularly dramatic is the subject. In fact, there is virtually no real event, feeling, or action of any overt meaning as the subject. It is instead a moment in time captured in an anonymous place, as an unseen and unnamed narrator takes note of the flies within his space. At the same time, the poet is making a statement in as indirect and subtle a way as may be conceived.

Documenting so little, he is able to say a great deal. This statement relies on imagery, beyond any other device, and the narrator sets the state immediately: “The room sizzles in the morning sun” (L 1). The language is not poetic in the traditional sense, but the reader has a sense of a familiar environment and excess warmth. The largely factual quality of the line also suggests routine, and/or the narrator’s acceptance of the room as, most likely, a work space. He then immediately relates the sole activity within the scene: “A tinnitus of flies at the bright windows,/ butting and dunting the glass” (ll 2-3).

The lines are both economical and poetic, in that the sparse information presents a distinct picture of something certainly capturing the narrator’s interest. The poem is blank verse but, the consistent use of imagery notwithstanding, the poet employs other devices, as in the assonance in the third line. More importantly, these first few lines already provide an awareness of something more meaningful than flies at a window pane, and if only because the subject itself is usually not a commanding one. The reader is introduced to a trivial reality, yet one that must have import, so the total effect is one of contrast.

Imagery commands the rest of the poem, and there is also a mild use of metaphor, as in the fate of one fly: “One dings/ off the light, to the floor, vibrating blackly,/ pittering against the wall before taxi/ and take-off” (ll 3-6). Clearly, the narrator is fixated on this fight for freedom and life, yet there is no expression beyond the recording of what he witnesses. The language has depth to it, but no feeling whatsoever is related as he watches the futile efforts of the insects: “They drop on my desk, my hands,/ and spin their long deaths on their backs” (ll 8-9). There is nothing left to note, and the only additional observation translates the flies to things not even alive; they are: “Tiny humming tops that/ stop and start” (ll 11-12). It is then all the more remarkable that this brief poem has the power it reveals.

Not technically a literary device, it is simplicity that generates the meaning. More exactly, had the poet drawn an analogy to the desperate and mindless struggles of the flies with the human condition, the impact would be greatly reduced by the obviousness of the comparison. Through understatement, however, the reader is motivated to make this connection. Simply, that which is alive will do whatever it must to continue living. Flies do not learn. Each keeps making the attempts leading only to death. The implication seems clear, even as the narrator makes no reference to his own being as, perhaps, as frustrated and doomed as the flies’ brief existences. They die trying to escape into the air and the sun, knowing nothing else to do, and guided by no other drive. The poet then leaves it to the reader to decide if this is sad and noble, or misguided and foolish.