Sister and mother and diviner
love,
And of the sisterhood of the
living dead
Most near, most clear, and of
the clearest bloom,
And of the fragrant mothers the
most dear
And queen, and of diviner love
the day
And flame and summer and sweet
fire, no thread
Of cloudy silver sprinkles in
your gown
Its venom of renown, and on your
head
No crown is simpler than the
simple hair.
Now, of the music summoned by
the birth
That separates us from the wind
and sea,
Yet leaves us in them, until
earth becomes,
By being so much of the things
we are,
Gross effigy and simulacrum,
none
Gives motion to perfection more
serene
Than yours, out of our own
imperfections wrought,
Most rare, or ever of more
kindred air
In the laborious weaving that
you wear.
For so retentive of themselves
are men
That music is intensest which
proclaims
The near, the clear, and vaunts
the clearest bloom,
And of all the vigils musing the
obscure,
That apprehends the most which
sees and names,
As in your name, an image that
is sure,
Among the arrant spices of the
sun,
O bough and bush and scented
vine, in whom
We give ourselves our likest
issuance.
Yet not too like, yet not so
like to be
Too near, too clear, saving a
little to endow
Our feigning with the strange
unlike, whence springs
The difference that heavenly
pity brings.
For this, musician, in your
girdle fixed
Bear other perfumes. On your
pale head wear
A band entwining, set with fatal
stones.
Unreal, give back to us what
once you gave:
The imagination that we spurned
and crave.
It’s hard not to read the first stanza as a direct and
even perhaps mawkish address to his literal mother. Who else of “fragrant
mothers” would be “most dear / and queen”? Who else (with the inclusion of his
sister) would be “most clear, most dear” of “the sisterhood of the living dead”?
They live inside him, even though they are dead – this is not a difficult
concept. That his imagination is colored by his loving memory of them is also
pretty straightforward – perhaps so much so it seems beneath Stevens to be so
easy to follow.
Yet to hear many critics tell of it, the identity of the
goddess muse figure this poem is dedicated to is akin to that of the mysterious
“dark lady” of the Shake-spear sonnets, completely opaque. Stevens himself may
have contributed to this, with these characteristically reticent responses when
his publisher asked him in 1935 the seemingly simple question: “who is the
sisterhood of the living dead?”
It is a muse: all of the muses
are of that sisterhood. But then, I cannot say, at this distance of time, that
I specifically meant the muses; this is just an explanation. (Letter 297)
Nothing in this “explanation,” of course, detracts from
the above. In true lawyer’s fashion, he withholds the actual identity of the
muse, while pontificating mightily about whether the muses were part of the much
more poetically vague sisterhood.
He apparently thought better of that explanation, writing
back one day later:
The purpose of writing to you
this morning is that, as I copied the [poem] last night, I felt that the
figures in the sisterhood had never been any clearer in my mind than they are
in the poem … No muses exist for me. The One of Fictive Music is one of the
sisterhood; who the others are I don’t know, except to say that they are
figures of that sort. I felt as though I should have to say this to you in
order to enjoy Thanksgiving properly (Letter 298)
Copying (by
hand) a 12-year old poem already published twice in book form almost immediately
after being asked about it? Not being able to enjoy Thanksgiving properly
without providing an even vaguer response? Clearly something in this exchange,
as they say today, triggered Stevens. Understand that the poems he was writing
in 1935 were ALL about how “no muses exist for me.” The easy identification with
art, the imagination, knowledge, other people and poetic tradition on display
in his first book Harmonium had,
after seven years of silence, turned into profound doubt about whether a world external
to his imagination existed at all. Thus when he says “the figures in the
sisterhood had never been any clearer in my mind than they are in the poem,” it
is not as simple as “I had a vague idea but nothing more.” The mother, the
sister, the muse, none of them can be said to exist outside the boundary of his
imagination. The poem, as a product of the imagination, expresses who they are
most clearly. He had, in fact, reached a similar conclusion as early as 1928,
when in another letter he said the point of the poem was that “the imaginative
world was the real world” (Letter 252). In other words, the grief and
reflection that had motivated the composition of the poem had been transmuted over
time into an understanding that, again as they say today, “it was all me.”
Actually, the progression from identifiable figure to
imaginative construct (who is both the creator of fictive music and fictive
herself) is in the original poem (one of the last composed for the original
edition of Harmonium). Ironically for a tribute to females, Stevens
relies heavily on the diction and style of his two go-to male poetic role
models, De Vere and Shelley, neither of whom were strangers to addressing the
fictive muses. As such, there’s an elegant awkwardness to the expression here, and
an overwrought philosophical grandeur that lulls the reader into believing it’s
an exploration of the question “what is poetry?” when in fact there’s something
far different going on.
The poem starts – as muse poems often do – with an enumeration
of the qualities the deified female has that are essential for poetic
cultivation. She is free of the “venom of renown” and is not honored as queen
with a crown other than her “simple hair.” Women, in other words, never get the credit
for making men chase down their heart. Poetry is “music summoned by the birth /
That separates us from the wind and sea, / Yet leaves us in them ...” The
purpose of this muse is to mediate the interchange between the corporeal and
non-corporeal. Until, that is, the life that is in the non-living makes the
living world seem dead (“… until earth becomes, / By being so much of the
things we are, / Gross effigy.” Another problem: The art created on earth by
mortals is built “out of our own imperfections,” not out of the “laborious
weaving” of perfection worn by the inspiring figure from the other side.
The reason for this is that man impulsively chases the “near”
and “clear”, two qualities the speaker had earlier ascribed to the heavenly
mother figure. Men (figuratively or literally) are “so retentive of themselves”
they seek objects around themselves to value, and of the “obscure” only
apprehend that which is already named or pictured. This results in the women
who are unattainable – either as objects of desire or, as in this case, have
passed into the inaccessible space – are seen only in terms of superficial
feminine qualities (“among the arrant spices of the sun”) and the men, instead
of transmitting these women’s higher and more sacred knowledge, become shrubbery
(“O bough and bush and scented vine, in whom / We give ourselves our likest
issuance”).
Still, there’s a “little” left over that’s not
earth-bound, “to endow / Our feigning [pretending] with the strange unlike …”
It is this ineffable sign of spirit in the work of earthly art that makes
humans worthy of sympathy (“…, whence springs / The difference that heavenly
pity brings”), presumably because man is both clueless and aware enough to know
how little he knows. The “music” of poetry is how the heavenly mourn the
pathos of the mortal. Man is both of the heavens and hopelessly separate, just as humans are shaped by their parents and ancestors but may be
forever separated from them in life.
“For this,” the speaker continues, turning suddenly from deference
to demand, the heavenly “musician” should give us “other perfumes,” different
kinds of inspiration, and wear a headband as if dramatizing themselves as a “pale”
human, “set with fatal stones,” doomed like humans to fall and die and be (in
the original usage of the word fatal) “destined by fate.” Only then,
presumably, could humans reach –even in their minds – the sources of their inspiration.
Thus, the muses are “unreal.” And so, the speaker asks
they “give back to us … the imagination that we spurned.” The poem ends on this
note of silence between the realms and an unbridgeable distance. There is no
happy conclusion, like “since the Goddesses won’t cooperate, we might as well
imagine everything into existence,” or even “I’ve reached closure with the fact
that you will no longer speak to me.” It’s a request into air.
And that’s where the poem rises from the countless English
verses to Greek muses and other thinly-disguised female objects of desire. The
fictive muse has been revealed to be a femme fatale, who misleads but can’t be
turned away from easily. When one does, there is only the cry into the void,
where those on the other side – here, his mother and sister – are the
only ones who can provide the wisdom he needs in order to create.
That is a difficult position indeed. Just as the world
becomes imagination (as Stevens in his letters suggested), there is no source for
the imagination but the memory of what is no longer there, that – taking the
implication a step further – one never really had or knew in the first place.
Stevens’ poetry, seen in this way, is not quite the
triumph over imaginative limitations it has seemed but something altogether
more tragic, an attempt to capture the trace of the real in a sea of
nothingness. It is all him.
