What I find intriguing about the Lucy poems is that
they seem outwardly to be so wrapped up in Lucy—she is absent but she is the
driving force in each poem, and has a presence through her absence, her death
becoming an inspiration or just a reason for the speaker to write—but at the
same time, the speaker never addresses Lucy directly. The poems feel at points
like they are not so much about how much the speaker loves Lucy, or how sad he
is about her death, but that they are more about his chance to write about
Lucy, and see nature through Lucy—their relationship being the medium through
which he is able to understand the natural world and cycles of life.
In “Strange fits of passion have I known,” the
speaker starts out suggesting that his “fits of passion” (1) are for “the
Lover’s ear alone” (3), but then he goes on to describe what I, at least, take
to be one of his fits of passion in the rest of the poem. He says in the second
line “I will tell,” which suggests that the rest of the poem will be a
description of one of his fits. But then, why is the poem not addressed to
Lucy? Lucy is “she I loved” (5) for the speaker, but he tells the story to
someone else, immediately contradicting his claim in the first line that it was
only for his lover’s ears. The construction suggests that the speaker finds a
kind of lover in the act of writing and his composition of the poem, one that
makes Lucy more of a representation of the concept of a lover than an actual
lover. While in “She dwelt among the untrodden ways” the speaker claims it
makes a difference to him that she is dead, he also says there were “none to
praise/And very few to love” (3-4)—while he expresses his love for her in the
poem, he doesn’t exactly praise her, or at least claims he doesn’t, though the
next stanza acts like praise.
In “Strange fits of passion have I known” there is
also a growing comparison with Lucy and the moon, which appears to represent
the natural cycles of both night and day and life and death for the speaker—as
he travels and sees the light of the moon move and fall he comes to the
conclusion that Lucy may be dead (odd that he knows this while he’s going to
see her, by the way—the poem doesn’t explicitly confirm it on its own, of
course, but the rest of the poems suggest that Lucy is, in fact, deceased and if we think about them as a group the sort of premonition in this one is strange—unless
all of the poems are no more than “wayward thoughts” (25) in “a Lover’s head”
(26) exploring the idea of Lucy’s death).
The connection with nature is also explicit in
“Three years she grew,” in which the speaker personifies Nature into another of
Lucy’s lovers, almost aligning nature with himself. Nature’s assertion that
Lucy will own “the silence and the clam/Of mute insensate things” (17-8)
reflects the place of silence that the speaker gives Lucy in his poems, and
also draws a nice parallel to the final lines of “A slumber did my spirit seal”
where she is one with “rocks, and stones, and trees” (8).
The most description of Lucy that we get is really
when Nature is describing what she will be like dead in “Three years she grew”—Lucy
seems to be most inspiring for the speaker when she is representative of the
natural world and its cycles. The speaker’s own place among nature is
interesting, as well—he says he has “strange fits of passion,” and in the same
poem describes himself following the moon, perhaps displaying a kind of lunacy
that is also connected with Lucy (not just because the names also sound alike…but
there could be a connection there). The passion and love that the speaker is
able to express through all the poems contrasts intensely with Lucy’s silence and
inability to express, or apparently feel, any passion, except through Nature,
which clearly has power over her. The speaker appears to be outside of or above
this influence at times, but his passions in connection with the moon/natural
world and Lucy perhaps demonstrate the way in which he lives at the mercy of
Nature as well, though there is no explicit reference to his eventual death.
I also had trouble with the timeline/ confirmation (lack of) in Strange fits of passion have I known --- I initially read the opening stanza as him whispering the poem into his lover's ear, which would make it strange that he later had these "wayward thoughts." But perhaps the initial stanza is another thought he is having and not actually something contributing to the context
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Kathleen. I like how carefully you read these poems, and your central point that Lucy remains silent. One might even say that it is one of her defining features--her being remote, inaccessible, unheard, unseen. So what is she?! I think you are right to notice the contradiction in telling the poem to the "Lover's ear alone," but not to Lucy, but this can be explained as suggesting that the poem is weird enough that only another lover--i.e. a person truly in love--will be able to understand it. Or something. Notice that he calls himself a "Lover" at the end of the poem, as though this were a species of being.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your point that these poems "are more about his chance to write about Lucy" because of the footnote that someone brought up in class today, which includes deleted lines that begin with, "I told her this: her laughter light." To me, these lines reveal a certain truth the Lucy is not necessarily even dead or dying, but rather that the speaker of the poem merely wanted to write about Lucy, and thought that the only suitable way to discuss her would be in the context of loss. I also found your observation about Lucy being compared to the moon interesting, especially in the context of John's favorite line regarding "insensate things" (18), because the moon is incredibly powerful and vital to nature, but also lacks physical sensation. What I think this says Lucy's relationship to the speaker is that the speaker sees Lucy as a crucial component in his life, the way the moon is crucial to the tides, but that Lucy is only important in how she impacts others. All of these poems, as you point out, fail to address Lucy as having any quality that satisfies herself. In each there are characteristics that she is endowed with by the speaker and by nature itself, but all of these, for example her flowerlike beauty, are only relevant in the presence of others.
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