The Complex Nature of Truth

Karl Constantine FOLKES 1935 (Portland)



A murder most foul.
Perspectives of truth recalled.
A Rashomon tale.

About this poem

Rashomon is a classical 1951 Japanese film noir of the rape of a bride, Masako Kanazawa, and the murder of her samurai husband, Takehiro Kanazawa, as recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, Tajomaru, the bride, the samurai warrior’s ghost, and Kikori, a woodcutter. Determined to obtain the illusive truth, a court trial is held, and testimonies given by Tabi Hoshi, a priest; a commoner, a musician, a medium, and a policeman. In 1961, while enrolled as a student at Howard University in Washington, D. C., and in attendance as a drama student under the tutelage of Owen Dodson, professor in the Department of Drama, I became part of the cast of the play, Rashomon, and played the role of the samurai warrior. That play drove home to me quite literally, in a personal and intensely dramatic way, how complex the nature of truth is, as four people (we are all actors in our masked personas), through vivid flashback memories, and under sworn testimonies, recounted different versions of what had happened, with the truth remaining forever as an enigma. 

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Written on January 12, 2022

Submitted by karlcfolkes on January 12, 2022

Modified by karlcfolkes on November 02, 2022

3 sec read
303

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABC
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 68
Words 13
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 3

Karl Constantine FOLKES

Retired educator of Jamaican ancestry with a lifelong interest in composing poetry dealing particularly with the metaphysics of self-reflection; completed a dissertation in Children’s Literature in 1991 at New York University entitled: An Analysis of Wilhelm Grimm’s ‘Liebe Mili’ (translated into English as “Dear Mili”), Employing Von Franzian Methodological Processes of Analytical Psychology. The subject of the dissertation concerned the process of Individuation. more…

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