Louise Glück – Persephone: A woman will return, looking for the girl she was

Louise Glück’s poem “The Myth of Innocence”, from her poetry collection “Averno”, published in 2006, really chimes with me these days. The name of the poetry collection, Averno, comes from the lake Averno or Lake Avernus which is a lake west of Naples and in old Roman mythology it was supppose to be a place where one can enter the underworld. The poem itself deals with the myth of Persephone and her descent to the underworld. The poem deals with the themes of love, change, desire, maturing and loss, and it describes a journey, a bittersweet journey of growing up and changing, forever. In the beginning of the poem Persephone is looking at her reflection in the water and there is a “horrible mantle of daughterliness still clinging to her”, and she laments on never being alone, never being herself but always something; a daughter and then a wife. Persephone, a girl on the meadow picking flowers, is taken by Hades, the God of the Underworld, and in the underworld she eats a pomegranate and therefore she cannot leave the place. On the earth her mother Demeter is grieving the loss of her daughter and eventually Demeter and Hades reach an agreement that Persephone will spend six months on earth and six months in the underworld with Hades. The single moment of Persephone being taken by Hades changes everything, at once she has transitioned from a girl to a woman, and nothing will ever be the same for her; “The girl who disappears from the pool/ will never return. A woman will return,/ looking for the girl she was.” Simone Pignoni’s seventeenth century rendition of the theme is very beautiful and it conveys the feelings expressed in the poem well. Persephone, or Proserpine in Roman mythology, is shown as an innocent, unassuming maiden with pink and red flowers in her hair, and the dark, moody and mysterious God Hades (or Pluto in Roman mythology) is grabbing her arm and will pull her into the underworld with him in a second. She is taken and there is no going back. In vain she keeps going back to the pool to see her reflection; the girl picking flowers exists no more. Just like Persephone, these days I am haunted by a feeling that nothing will ever be the same and the change, once it has occured, can not be undone. Powerless, the only thing that remains is for me to also find a source of water and to trace the reflection of my old self there.

Simone Pignoni, The Rape of Proserpine, 1650

The Myth of Innocence

One summer she goes into the field as usual

stopping for a bit at the pool where she often

looks at herself, to see

if she detects any changes. She sees

the same person, the horrible mantle

of daughterliness still clinging to her.

 

The sun seems, in the water, very close.

That’s my uncle spying again, she thinks—

everything in nature is in some way her relative.

I am never alone, she thinks,

turning the thought into a prayer.

Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.

 

No one understands anymore

how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.

Also that he embraced her, right there,

with her uncle watching. She remembers

sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

 

This is the last moment she remembers clearly.

Then the dark god bore her away.

 

She also remembers, less clearly,

the chilling insight that from this moment

she couldn’t live without him again.

 

The girl who disappears from the pool

will never return. A woman will return,

looking for the girl she was.

 

She stands by the pool saying, from time to time,

I was abducted, but it sounds

wrong to her, nothing like what she felt.

Then she says, I was not abducted.

Then she says, I offered myself, I wanted

to escape my body. Even, sometimes,

I willed this. But ignorance

 

cannot will knowledge. Ignorance

wills something imagined, which it believes exists.

 

All the different nouns—

she says them in rotation.

Death, husband, god, stranger.

Everything sounds so simple, so conventional.

I must have been, she thinks, a simple girl.

 

She can’t remember herself as that person

but she keeps thinking the pool will remember

and explain to her the meaning of her prayer

so she can understand

whether it was answered or not.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine, 1874

Emily Dickinson – Amherst Maiden in White

Shy, introverted, eccentric and immensely prolific American poet Emily Dickinson was born on this day in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poetry is perpetually enigmatic and misunderstood; her genius wasn’t recognised in her time and when later eras took interest in her poetry, it only brought sentimental views on her verses, ignoring the rawness and vigour they possess. In her book “Sexual Personae”, Camille Paglia devotes the last chapter to Emily Dickinson and calls her “Madame de Sade from Amherst”. Paglia refers to her poems as prison dreams of a sadomasochistic imaginative mind which imprisoned itself, and she goes deep into her poetry revealing its layers of darkness, morbidity, violence and sexuality, which are all themes one would not immediately connect to a Victorian era spinster. Dickinson possessed a unique imagination, especially for a woman of her time. Still, with her poetic work put aside, Dickinson was an interesting individual: she lived almost as a recluse, developed a penchant for dressing in white, was rarely seen in Amherst, her social life restricted to correspondence thorough letters; when someone paid a visit to her family home, she’d only answer from the other side of the door; she studied botany and kept a detailed herbarium which is still preserved. She often mentioned flowers in her letters and poems, and connected each flower with a certain emotion or an idea. Violet was a flower she particularly cherished; this needn’t be strange for it is a delicate little flower that holds beauty both in its colour and fragrance.

Emily Dickinson, December 1846 or early 1847; This is the only authenticated portrait of Emily Dickinson later than childhood. “Heart, keep very still, or someone will find you out.” (From a letter to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, 5 April 1852)

Since the Amherst Lady in White is celebrating her birthday today from the depth of her tomb, why not read a few of her poems? These are some of my favourites:

They might not need me – yet they might

 They might not need me – yet they might –

I’ll let my Heart be just in sight –

A smile so small as mine might be

Precisely their necessity.

***

VII. With a Flower.

I hide myself within my flower,

That wearing on your breast,

You, unsuspecting, wear me too —

And angels know the rest.

 

I hide myself within my flower,

That, fading from your vase,

You, unsuspecting, feel for me

Almost a loneliness.

A page from Emily Dickinson’s herbarium. You can read about it here: “The photo facsimiles of the herbarium now available to readers at the Houghton Library still present the girl Emily appealingly: the one who misspelled, who arranged pressed flowers in artistic form, who with Wordsworthian tenderness considered nature her friend.”

The Tulip.

SHE slept beneath a tree

        Remembered but by me.

I touched her cradle mute;

She recognized the foot,

Put on her carmine suit, —

        And see!

***

Heart, we will forget him!

Heart, we will forget him!

You and I, tonight!

You may forget the warmth he gave,

I will forget the light.

 

When you have done, pray tell me

That I my thoughts may dim;

Haste! lest while you’re lagging.

I may remember him!

Violets from Emily’s herbarium.

XIX. I noticed people disappeared

I noticed people disappeared,

When but a little child, —

Supposed they visited remote,

Or settled regions wild.

 

Now know I they both visited

And settled regions wild,

But did because they died, — a fact

Withheld the little child!

***

If I may have it, when it’s dead (577)

If I may have it, when it’s dead,

I’ll be contented—so—

If just as soon as Breath is out

It shall belong to me—

 

Until they lock it in the Grave,

‘Tis Bliss I cannot weigh—

For tho’ they lock Thee in the Grave,

Myself—can own the key—

 

Think of it Lover! I and Thee

Permitted—face to face to be—

After a Life—a Death—We’ll say—

For Death was That—

And this—is Thee—

 

I’ll tell Thee All—how Bald it grew—

How Midnight felt, at first—to me—

How all the Clocks stopped in the World—

And Sunshine pinched me—’Twas so cold—

 

Then how the Grief got sleepy—some—

As if my Soul were deaf and dumb—

Just making signs—across—to Thee—

That this way—thou could’st notice me—

 

I’ll tell you how I tried to keep

A smile, to show you, when this Deep

All Waded—We look back for Play,

At those Old Times—in Calvary,

 

Forgive me, if the Grave come slow—

For Coveting to look at Thee—

Forgive me, if to stroke thy frost

Outvisions Paradise!

Edgar Allan Poe – Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe died on this day, 7th October, in 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. “Annabel Lee” was his last completed poem, published on 9th October 1849. This beautiful and very well known poem is a real jewel and, typically for Poe, it tells the tale of a beautiful maiden and a love that transcends even death. I decided to accompany the poem with a painting by a contemporary artist Stephen Mackey because it has a similar mood as Poe’s poems and stories, macabre and romantic at the same time. Take a moment out of your evening and think of Poe, he deserves it!

Stephen Mackey (b. 1966) The Moon’s Trousseau

It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
   I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
   Went envying her and me--
Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we--
   Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in heaven above,
   Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea,
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.