Robert Lowell's Language of the Self by Katharine Wallingford

Author:Katharine Wallingford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

We must be careful not to force a ridiculous comparison here, but it is nonetheless true that as Anne freely associates from reverie to fantasy to memory throughout this long poem, she returns again and again to the reality of the cards that she holds in her hands and the Bible that faces her across the table, and their physical presence, like that of a therapist or any friendly “other,” causes her either to stop and reflect on what has gone before or to change the direction of her associations.

The structure of the poem itself reinforces our impression of interrelated subjects acting one upon the other, as Lowell gives words now to the narrator, now to Anne, in a seemingly random, conversational order. The narrator begins by describing those elements of the setting that will be important as starting points for Anne’s associations. Down the hill from the garden in which she sits is “a ruined burlap mill,” which will act to remind her of the history of Harry’s family: the glory of their beginnings, their commercial exploitation of the environment, their cruelty to the Indians, their subsequent decline (readers of Lord Weary’s Castle may recognize this combination of elements from the earlier volume, in which Lowell’s own ancestors were characterized in much the same way). Near the ruined mill stands a statue of Persephone, who will figure largely in Anne’s fantasies; Staples has pointed out that Anne is “ambivalent in all things, and for such a divided nature, Persephone, herself subjected to an alternating cycle of life and death, identified with the recurring seasons, is a fitting symbol.”28 (Again, the reader familiar with Lowell’s biography may think of the cycles of mania and morbid depression that had already, at the time of the writing of this poem, begun to affect the poet.)

Near where Anne sits is her husband’s grave, and it is this physical object and the associations to which it leads that form the bulk of the poem, and to which the poem will return at its end.

The lady drops her cards. She kneels to furl

Her husband’s flag, and thinks his mound and stone

Are like a buried bed. “This is the throne

They must have willed us. Harry, not a thing

Was missing: we were children of a king.[”]

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