Paradiso

If there is a poet with whom I find myself connected to, perhaps more so than any other poet, then it is Robert Lowell. While his Pulitzer winning books of poetry Lord Weary’s Castle (1946) and The Dolphin (1973) are best known among readers (and these are indeed magnificent works) then it is, quite consistently, his ‘For Lizzie And Harriet‘ (1973) I find myself return to, almost obsessively. And I have done so for years.

Reading through For Lizzie And Harriet, which happens to be Lowell’s wife (Elizabeth) and daughter (Harriet), one clearly sees the journey of not just a father, and a husband, but of the ‘self’; akin to Walt Whitman in Walter Whitman Jr’s Song of Myself, to Dante the Pilgrim in Dante’s Commedia, to Dickinson in her best poems, to Hamlet and King Lear in their respective tragedies. I am well aware this is stupendous praise, but I dare say Lowell deserves it.

‘For Lizzie And Harriet’ consists of some 46 sonnet-like poems each of which represents the growing up of Harriet, Lowell’s marriage with Lizzy, and an internal voice (our dynamic poet) that is partaking, reflecting, developing, — watching, if you will, with great intensity.
Each poem should be seen as making up a corpus that in its totality is a representation of the endless shades of our psychology. Our poet Lowell, or father, or husband, is navigating through summer camps, Christmases, sorrows, finding a turtle, sleep, vacations, anniversaries, and more. And he is doing so with a consciousness that is in a wild, sprawling growth, but only subtly (albeit masterfully and beautifully) articulated.

One poem in particular, rather like Dickinson at her best, demonstrates that Lowell can pack more into a handful of lines than what ought to be possible. In 15 lines and 105 words “NO HEARING 3” represents cognitive originality, psychological depth and imaginative capabilities that can rival any of our greatest poets, period.

NO HEARING 3

“Belief in God is an inclination to listen,
but as we grow older and our freedom hardens,
we hardly even want to hear ourselves. . .
the silent universe our auditor —
I am to myself, and my trouble sings.
The Penobscott silvers to Bangor, the annual V
of geese beats above the moonborne bay —
their flight is too certain. Dante found his path
even before his first young leaves turned green;
exile gave seniority to his youth. . .
White clapboards, black window, white clapboards, black window, white
clapboards —
my house is empty. In our yard, the grass straggles. . .
I stand face to face with lost Love — my breath
is life, the rough, the smooth, the bright, the drear.”

Before delving into the poem, I implore you, the reader, to stick with the text until the very end. Lowell’s poetry can be difficult, for some obscure, but once you get to the end, it is, truly, like finding yourself in a clearing.

l 1-3:
The first three lines are profound. The one who is inclined to listen to God will be rewarded with what but the greatest divine ‘gift’, that is to say, one will be heard. If one does not listen, one cannot be heard. As we age, our “freedom hardens“, our freedom will, naturally, be restricted, which limits our ability — or inclination — to listen. This seems the conclusion most logical; but, in line 3, Lowell does something interesting. We are not, it seems, merely restricted by the environment in which we are situated (work, marriage, mortgage, kids, etc.); no, Lowell points out we “hardly even want to hear ourselves. . .“

This is important. We are not passively unable to hear ourselves (from a life of extreme distractedness and responsibilities), but there is an active component to this: why do we not want to hear ourselves? can we actually hear ourselves? and the adverb “hardly” implies that there are times when we want to hear ourselves, but more often than not, we do not wish to. One may see it as a form of self-loathing, or, as we will see soon enough, as a process of living in time in conjunction with one’s growing children and spouse. This process requires listening and hearing (hence the title NO HEARING), if not, then we are destined to be alone (l 13-15).

l 4:
Line 4 connects the previous three lines: “the silent universe our auditor“. It is an interesting way of showcasing that one who is not inclined to listen will not receive the blessing of “belief”; hence the universe remains silent — yet an auditor! — and we must create our own meaning (we see this in Camus especially as ‘the human struggle’).
Another valid interpretation is that whether or not we choose to listen we cannot escape the auditor, who remains silently situated; “watching” if you will, judging, measuring, weighing. The inclination not to listen therefore, is a choice not to be heard, and not to want to hear.

l 5:
Line 5: I am to myself, and my trouble sings, is lyrically beautiful, existentially worrisome, but also interestingly stimulating. If you are to yourself, do you need to listen to God at all? The sentence isolated, “I am to myself” has an almost Whitmanian or Hamlet-like implication of self-rootedness, of self-consciousness. However, Lowell adds the “and my trouble sings“, which seems to tell us that you may tell yourself that you are to yourself, but your trouble is there, it is open, it is potent, it sings. It is an interesting follow-up on the previous discourse on the inclination to listen as a means to find belief in God.
One can almost imagine the tension between not wanting to listen to one’s self (a refusal) and the self-confirmatory statement (an affirmation) “I am to myself“, as the beginnings of a great Shakespearean soliloquy; which, in the end, with a dash of tragicomedy, reeks the speaker’s trouble. . . “my trouble sings.“

l 6-10:
The imagery of The Penobscott silvering to Bangor, of the annual flight of geese, is beautiful. It proceeds with “Dante found this path” that is to say the path of exile he has in common with The Penobscott and the geese, “even before his first young leaves turned green; exile gave seniority to his youth.” There was an ageing, a radical one, as Dante was forced into exile. The ageing he experienced is a telling image that builds on l 2: “as we grow older and our freedom hardens.“

Think of Dante’s restriction of freedom in exile, think of the “hardening” he experienced; yet, as an opposition, Dante, as his freedom was hardened, listened to God, he wrote his Commedia in exile. Lowell sets up a lovely and important Dickinsonian contradiction.

Or perhaps it is no contradiction at all? If marriage is what Lowell refers to as an exile — from bachelorhood? from freedom? from liberty? — then Lowell’s child, Harriet, is his Commedia? The life he has built up, with his wife Lizzie, is it his grand achievement? The final lines, however, seem to contradict this interpretation.

l 11-15:
Our poet is in his empty house, the yard is full of straggled grass, and he “stand face to face with lost Love” — one can almost feel the palpable loss (but of what? Lizzie? Harriet?) and loneliness within our poet; as if his house is his exile. He is trapped, — seen from the outside, behind “white clapboards, black window, white clapboards, black window (…)“

It is important to be mindful of this poem being presented at the end of For Lizzie And Harriet, meaning we are reaching the point in which his daughter is growing up, and his divorce with Lizzie in 1972, a mere year or so before the publication of this book. Is his “lost Love” then the sudden change of not having his child about him as he is used to? is it the poet experiencing his exile after his wife has left him? or is it, to return to l 2, the poet’s growing age which hardens his freedom — hence exiling him?

As is typically the case, Hegelian logic asserts that it is a bit of each, and it is somewhere in the middle.

It is a bumpy ride, this life, this development of the self in isolation, this development of the self in conjunction with one’s children and with one’s spouse, it is truly “the rough, the smooth, the bright, the drear” path takes takes its peculiar twists and turns. Rather like what Dickinson struggles with in From Blank to Blank —:

“To stop — or perish — or advance —“

As a final reflection, and possibly the most important, one is probably eager to ask the question that has been looming with obviousness since the beginning: what happens if we replace “God” in line 1 with our child? with our spouse? What if the inclination to listen is not in the divine, not in God, but rather, to our nearest loved ones?

Suddenly our child or our spouse becomes the silent auditor, the reason why “we hardly even want to hear ourselves. . .” — why? Because of the shame since we never listened in the first place (Hence the title, “NO HEARING”). A refusal to listen to this “God”, that is to say, our child or spouse, because, in our arrogance, we said: “I am to myself” despite the trouble singing and singing, results in loneliness and exile. Suddenly when time has gone, and we have gained seniority, we are confronted with the empty house, the straggled grass, we “stand face to face with lost Love.”

You are not to yourself, but you are to each other. As Lowell subtly injects, we have to listen. If we refuse, the universe will go silent, the house will be empty, and all the life there is left to you is but the most obvious of all: “my breath“.

Lowell, I am in awe of you!