A Modernist Menagerie: Representations of Animals in the Work of Five North American Poets

Emily Essert Department of English McGill University, Montreal June 2012

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

© Emily Essert, 2012

Table of Contents

Abstract / i Abstrait / ii Acknowledgements / iii Dedication / iv

Introduction: Modernism and Animality / 1

1. (Un)Gendered Creatures: / 39 Animals and Identity Politics in Moore and H.D.

I. Marianne Moore: Humility and the Struggle Against Domestication/ 40 II. H.D.: Rejecting Binaries, Imagining Likeness / 79

2. Impersonal Animals: Theory and Poetic Practice in P.K. Page and T.S. Eliot / 117

I. Animals and Human Animality / 116 II. Impersonality Revisited / 126 III. Eliotic Affinity: A Vexed Relationship / 143 IV. Early poetry / 152 V. Later Poetry / 187 VI. Conclusions / 207

3. Thus Spake the Animals: Indirect Prophecy in Moore and Layton / 211

I. Marianne Moore’s Response to the Depression and Impending War / 214 II. Irving Layton’s Response to the Holocaust / 251

Conclusion / 293

Works Cited / 299 Abbreviations / 332

Essert i

Abstract This dissertation considers the representation of animals in Canadian and American modernist poetry. In investigating the relationship between the proliferation of animal tropes and imagery and experimental poetics, it argues that modernism is fundamentally concerned with reconsidering human nature and humanity’s place in the modern world. By employing a blend of socio-historical and formalist approaches, while also incorporating theoretical approaches from animal studies, this project shows that the modernist moment is importantly post- Darwinian, and that the species boundary was an important site of ideological struggle. This project also makes an intervention into the New Modernist Studies by proposing “North American Modernism” as a coherent area of inquiry; too few studies consider American and Canadian writers together, but doing so enables a richer understanding of modernism as a complex, global movement. Chapter one argues that animal tropes and imagery form part of a strategy through which Marianne Moore and H.D. challenge prevailing conceptions of femininity. Building upon theoretical work that considers sexism and speciesism as interlocking oppressions, it offers a sharper picture of their conceptions of gender and their feminist intentions. Chapter two considers impersonality and animality in the work of T.S. Eliot and P.K. Page. Like the concept of impersonality, Eliot’s influence on Page is often taken for granted in the critical literature; it argues that impersonality (in Eliot’s formulation) relies upon embodied personal experience, and on that basis offers an account of Eliot’s anxieties about embodiment and Page’s lapsus. Finally, chapter three investigates Marianne Moore’s and Irving Layton’s representation of animals to communicate indirectly their responses to global crises. Both poets felt a strong compulsion to comment on social and moral issues, but found it difficult to do so directly; images and tropes of animals enabled Moore to produce modernist allegories, and assisted Layton in depicting human ferity.

Essert ii

Abstrait Cette thèse examine la représentation des animaux dans la poésie moderniste du Canada et des États-Unis. En étudiant la relation entre la prolifération des tropes et d’imagerie animale et la poésie expérimentale, je soutiens que le modernisme est fondamentalement préoccupé par la reconsidération de la nature de l'être humain et sa place dans le monde moderne. En utilisant un mariage d'approches socio- historiques et formaliste, tout en incorporant des avances théoriques provenant d’études animales, je démontre que le moment moderniste est post-darwinien de façon significative, et que la frontière des espèces était un champ de bataille important de la lutte idéologique. Mon projet fait également une intervention parmi les nouvelles études du modernisme en proposant le «modernisme nord-américain» comme un espace cohérent; trop peu d’études considèrent les écrivains américains et canadiens dans un ensemble, mais cela permet une compréhension plus riche du modernisme comme étant un mouvement complexe et mondial. Je soutiens que les tropes et l’imagerie animale font partie d'une stratégie à travers laquelle Marianne Moore et H.D. contestent les conceptions dominantes de la féminité. En m'appuyant sur les travaux théoriques qui considèrent le sexisme et l’espècisme comme oppressions entremêlées, j’offre une image plus nette de leurs conceptions du genre et de leurs intentions féministes. Ensuite, je considère l'impersonnalité et l'animalité dans les travaux de T.S. Eliot et P.K. Page. Comme le concept de l'impersonnalité, l'influence d'Eliot sur Page est souvent prise pour acquis dans la critique littéraire; je soutiens donc que l'impersonnalité (dans la formulation d’Eliot) s'appuie sur l'expérience personnelle incarnée, et sur cette base, je mets en évidence les inquiétudes d'Eliot et les lapsus de Page. Enfin, j’examine la représentation des animaux chez Marianne Moore et Irving Layton qui communiquent indirectement leurs répliques aux crises mondiales. Les deux poètes ont ressenti une forte compulsion pour commenter les questions sociales et morales, mais ont trouvé difficile de le faire directement; les tropes et les imageries de l’espèce animale ont permis à Moore de produire des allégories modernistes, et ont soutenues Layton pour dépeindre l’animalerie humaine.

Essert iii

Acknowledgements “acknowledgements seem only honest”—Marianne Moore, “A Note on the Notes”

“You mentioned the cat-fog in Prufrock in your seminar paper. What if you wrote about animals?” Without Miranda Hickman’s fortuitous question several years ago, I would never have dreamt up this project, which has allowed me to expand my intellectual horizons and my understanding of some of my favourite poets. My first thanks are to her, la miglior fabbro, for years of lessons in how to read, write, and teach modernism, and for her patience, generosity, perceptiveness, and careful attention to detail. I would like to thank Brian Trehearne for his interest in this project, and for his astute and helpful comments on chapters two and three; his rigorous approach to Canadian literature is truly exemplary, and my understanding of it would be much poorer without him. I am grateful for Allan Hepburn’s very productive questions and comments about my compulsory research project, and for the opportunity to broaden and sharpen my knowledge of modernisms by participating in his reading group. I suspect that Paul Yachnin’s Shakespearan Animalities course planted the germ of this project, and I look forward to hearing his thoughts about my twentieth century animals. I would also like to thank the members of the examining committee for their work on my behalf. No dissertation writer can get by without a little help from her friends. Among these, I would like especially to thank Joel Deshaye and Michele Rackham, for being generous readers, patient interlocutors, and model scholars, and for sharing their enthusiasm for Layton and Page with me. I am grateful for the friendship of the “ladies who brunch”—Sarah, Karen, Hilary, and Jennifer—who have offered practical advice, constant encouragement, and a safe space to vent, over the course of this degree. I would also like to thank Cléa Desjardins for translating my abstract, and both Cléa and Alexa Shaw for the many ways they have helped to me stay sane during this process. I would like to thank my family for their unflagging support, for never asking me when I was going to be finished this degree, and for reading stories and poems to me and with me while I was growing up. Essert iv

Finally, I want thank my husband, Michael Ethen, who has walked and talked through this project with me. I am more grateful than I can say for all the times he has listened, edited, and commiserated. Having trod the path before me, he made my journey easier. Without him as my ballast, the sailing would not have been so smooth.

***

Dedication

For Oma, who knows animals differently. And for Papa, who would be very proud.

Essert 1

Modernism and Animality

I.

Given a moment’s reflection, any scholar of modernist literature could conjure a significant animal image from his or her objects of study; the modernist canon is replete with representations of non-human creatures. This raises the central question of this dissertation: why do so many modernists write animals? This dissertation investigates the relationship between modernist poetics and animality by focusing on the work of three American and two Canadian poets. I argue that an analysis of representations of animals enables a richer understanding of both the motives for and nature of modernist poetic innovation.1

Recuperating the socio-historical context of modernism’s development suggests an explanation for the significance of animal imagery in modernist texts. In

“A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis” (1917) Freud asserts that “the universal narcissism of men…suffered three severe blows from the researches of science”: the cosmological (associated with Copernicus), the biological (associated with Darwin), and the psychological. He notes that Darwin and his collaborators

“put an end” to humanity’s “presumption” that we are “different from animals or superior to them” (139-40). Human narcissism,2 or what is now often called anthrocentrism, was severely challenged by Darwin’s discoveries, because they

1 Throughout this project, I use “representation” as a broader term which encompasses animal tropes, imagery, symbols, and so on—in short, all the ways in which animals can appear in the work of this project’s featured poets. As I discuss further below, such language is situated at an important distance from actual, living creatures. 2 Freud’s use of the term “narcissism” was complicated, and is elaborated at greatest length in his essay “On Narcissism: An Introduction.” There, he distinguishes between primary narcissism—a developmental phase in which “infants take themselves as their love object and feel that the whole world revolved around them”—and secondary narcissism, in which the libido is directed outward, and “self-esteem coexists with object love” (Quinodoz 128). Quinodoz’ language suggests to me that Freud is in this instance referring to a kind of primary narcissism that promotes the collective delusion of human uniqueness and superiority. Essert 2 implied that homo sapiens was a product of the same process of natural selection that had created all other species. An important assumption of this dissertation’s inquiry is that modernist writers of the early twentieth century were born into a world still grappling with reconceptualization of “the human” demanded by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Other cultural shifts, particularly a rise in agnosticism and the first wave of the feminist movement, along with the international crisis of the Great War, further destabilized prevailing notions of humanity.3 Thus, in attempting to represent and respond to the human condition in the twentieth century, many poets registered these changes by giving careful consideration to the nature of modern humanity.

And in that project of reconsidering the human, animal tropes and imagery proved useful, because they enabled poets to creatively define, or elide, the boundary between our species and all others. Moreover, because these significant cultural shifts and historical events are interrelated, I argue that poetic animals often offer poets an effective way of commenting on issues such as feminism, war, and morality.

It may seem ahistorical to emphasize the significance to literary modernism of Darwin’s theoretical breakthrough, given that The Origin of Species was published in

1859, twenty-seven years before H.D. (the eldest poet in this study) was born.

However, it took decades for the deeper implications of his theory of evolution to exert significant influence on public opinion. According to Michael Ruse, the initial reception of Darwin’s theory was characterized by two major trends:

First, people overwhelmingly accepted the idea of evolution—the fact

of evolution, that is. There were exceptions, and some never became

3 Susan Stanford Friedman has referred to a “crisis of belief” during this period (Psyche Reborn 97-8). For other accounts of rising agnosticism as it relates to the development of modernism, see Lewis, Whitworth, and Sim. Essert 3

evolutionists—some today do not accept evolution. But in Britain,

Europe, and America, evolution become more and more acceptable,

often very rapidly. Second, people overwhelmingly rejected the

putative Darwinian mechanism for evolution—natural selection. (17)

Natural selection was the most destabilizing aspect of Darwin’s theory, because it implicitly undermined both the religious belief in divine creation, and the secular belief in continual progress. Carrie Rohman points to “an overinvestment in the notion of progress” as an important “coping mechanism” for Victorians; the result was that Darwinism’s “radical blow to anthrocentrism… was not immediately or consistently registered” (3, 5).4 Larry A. Witham offers an account of the American debate between evolutionists and creationists, which is still ongoing; the Scopes

Monkey Trial may be the most prominent instance of this debate during these poets’ lifetimes, but it was neither unique nor conclusive. With respect to Canadian cultural history, Suzanne Zeller has argued for the slow, cautious acceptance of evolutionary theory over the course of the late nineteenth century, situating it within the context of a new and uncertain (and so temperamentally conservative) nation and

“Canadians’ changing images and experiences of the northern land they inhabited”

(114).5 Evolutionary ideas seem to have been unevenly diffused across Canada (as is indicated by Irving Layton’s anecdote, below), and there appears to have been little of the violent disagreement and public debate that characterized Darwin’s reception in the United States. In short, the social milieu in which all of these poets were raised

4 Monographs by Rohman and Richter are discussed further below. Their initial chapters, and the initial chapter of Lois Cuddy’s T.S. Eliot and the Poetics of Evolution, provide nutshell accounts of the popular reception of evolution. 5 Zeller’s article summarizes and builds upon the major research on the reception of Darwin in Canada, and thus represents the current scholarly consensus. Essert 4 was not necessarily one that accepted the deeper implications of evolution, particularly its non-teleological character and our biological proximity to other animals. While some of this project’s poets held clear and definite opinions about evolution, for their culture as a whole it was not a settled issue. Accordingly, the idea of evolution prompts these poets to explore humanity’s relationship with other animals, and to consider its implications with respect to other pressing social issues in their representations of modern humanity. Rather than presenting a definite or consistent position, they investigate the nature of the human, often using animal tropes or imagery to blur the human/animal boundary. These poets thereby evince an awareness of humanity’s evolutionary proximity to other creatures, but their work often inscribes anxiety or ambivalence about such kinship.

II.

In emphasizing the impact of evolutionary theory on modernist poetry, this project takes a cue from much of the existing criticism on animals in modern literature. Although animal studies is an emergent field, attention to literary animals is not altogether novel. As early as March 1936, PMLA published an article by

Elizabeth Atkins on “Man and Animals in Recent Poetry,” which began with a simple assertion: “In American poetry written since the World War one of the most significant new developments is now seen to be the fascination which animal life holds for the poet” (263). Atkins links this proliferation of “earnest and philosophical poems about animals” to the theory of evolution, which by this time had “become part of the unconscious background of men’s thinking, so that its subtler implications might color the poet’s moods.” The result is “a carefully literal poetry, which sees man and animals in perspective against a vast background of Essert 5 evolutionary aeons. It regards the animal as the elder brother of man, more at home on the earth, yet an intimate comrade on our strange and perilous journey through time” (263). Such a reading underscores the fact that, in Anglo-American culture, thinking and writing about animals in the twentieth century necessarily differs from all that preceded it, because the cultural understanding of the human relationship to animals had shifted so dramatically. Atkins’ major contention is that the surge in animal poetry results from a desire to escape from, or perhaps to repair, “a sick civilization”: animals lack those flaws that plague humanity (such as the “pathology of self-consciousness”), or represent virtues that humans supposedly lack or might emulate.6 This anticipates one of this project’s central contentions: that representations of animals provide modern poets with effective ways of registering their anxieties about gender, embodiment, war, morality, and the nature of the human.

Despite the ample evidence amassed by Atkins, A. Lytton Sells’ Animal Poetry in French and English Literature and the Greek Tradition (1955) concludes by asking why

“the present century” had “produced little [animal poetry] of great note” (296). Since

Sells proposes as his object of study “that kind of poetry which attempts to portray the animal, bird, or insect objectively, and sympathetically,” it is difficult to imagine how he might have arrived at such a conclusion (xiii). But another critic of the 1950s did notice a proliferation of poetic creatures: Robert Langbaum’s “The New Nature

Poetry” observes that “nature poetry has enjoyed a revival” among contemporary

American poets, but it has not been recognized as such because “it is so often about animals rather than landscapes” (324, 331). Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore

6 Interestingly, this contention closely resembles DeKoven’s comments about animals and ethics, cited below. Essert 6 serve for Langbaum as examples of poets who are “trying to rescue nature, as it is in itself, from the outmoded concept” of it, as found in eighteenth and nineteenth- century poetry’s use of the pathetic fallacy (324-6). Langbaum posits that animals are integral to this renewal of nature poetry because “The poet is less likely to commit the pathetic fallacy with animals, for they have a consciousness of their own. Then animals do for the landscape what the older kind of nature poet had to do for himself—they bring it to life. They are the landscape crystallized into movement and consciousness” (331-2). Langbaum discusses numerous poets, but his pairing of

Moore and Stevens, whom he contrasts with Robert Frost, is especially useful for its emphasis on the realism and precision of their representations of nature.

There are few book-length studies of animals in modern literature. Margot

Norris’ Beasts of the Modern Imagination (1985) focuses on “a small group of thinkers, writers, and artists, who create as the animal—not like the animal, in imitation of the animal—but with their animality speaking” (1). Its primary subjects are Charles

Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Max Ernst, and D.H. Lawrence: in each case, their “biocentric writing” is read as a critique of the anthrocentrism that dominates modern western philosophy and art. Focusing on form, Norris investigates her subjects’ attempts to invent “artistic and philosophical strategies that would allow the animal, the unconscious, the instincts, the body, to speak again” (5), strategies that would create “a physiological or aphrodisiac art, an art that stimulates rather than persuades, that communicates viscerally rather than intellectually” (15).

Such art is contrasted (in the penultimate chapter) with that of Hemingway, who she contends is “an aesthete masked as a beast, who actually subordinates life to art and Essert 7

Nature to representation” (2).7 Because such work investigates “writing as the animal,” whereas the present project focuses on representations of animals, they are horses of a different colour. My subjects do not strive to become animal, nor do they develop radical artistic strategies that would allow them to access their animality.

Instead, they employ animal tropes and imagery to address very human questions.

However, Norris’ work emphasizes the importance of animality for two modernist writers, and links their interest in animals to Darwin’s discoveries, in a way that was exemplary for this project.

Two more recent books illuminate the socio-cultural context of modernist animals and the impact of Darwinism on modernist literature.8 The historical and philosophical material in the opening chapter of Carrie Rohman’s Stalking the Subject:

Modernism and the Animal (2009) not only provides valuable context for literary animal studies but also makes clear its particular relevance to modernist studies. Rohman begins with a reminder that “the animal problem takes on a particular charged valence” for modernist studies, “since modernism comes on the heels of Darwin’s catastrophic blow to human privilege vis-à-vis the species question” (1). Although historical evidence indicates that “even after Darwin’s stunning claims about human origins … compensatory theories of progress and cultural superiority allowed for a relatively uninterrogated notion of the human to remain in place,” the late Victorian

7 Norris’ notion of biocentric writing has much in common with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s idea of “becoming animal,” found in chapter ten of A Thousand Plateaus. It was published in French in 1980, but was not translated into English until 1988; Norris does not appear to read French. 8 Several other recent works in the field were discovered too late to be integrated into this project. Figuring Animals: Essays on Animal Images in Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Popular Culture (Pollock and Rainwater, eds.) collects a diverse array of essays on animals in Western culture, with an emphasis on the twentieth century. Max Payne’s The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination compares poetic animals from various historical periods. John Holmes’ Darwin’s Bard: British and American Poets in the Age of Evolution, focuses on more immediate responses to evolutionary theory from poets working the late nineteenth century, but does extend into the early twentieth century. Essert 8 and modernist literature examined here reveals “the lurking anxiety that this view of human privilege cannot be maintained” (Rohman 5). Rohman argues for “animality as a fundamental locus of identity construction and complication throughout the period” (11), and her examination of discourses of race, gender, Freudianism and imperialism as they intersect with the problem of the animal in the work of Joseph

Conrad, T.S. Eliot, H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence, and Djuna Barnes is innovative and enlightening. Though the readings of these texts are occasionally reductive—greater consideration of the wider context of the author’s oeuvre might have prompted more nuanced claims or even different conclusions9—they provide a valuable point of departure for future work. For example, Rohman claims that Lawrence’s poetry

“acknowledges the radical alterity of the animal other and deconstructs the typical humanist subject-who-knows by framing the limits of human epistemology” (64), and that his novels associate animality with “spontaneity, the unknowable, the bodily, and the pure … a being that rejects mechanistic forms of self consciousness and embraces radical mystery” (101). Such readings are provocative, because they suggest criteria by which other poets’ representations of animals might be assessed; this, in turn, helps to establish important commonalities among this dissertation’s poets.

Virginia Richter’s Literature After Darwin: Human Beasts in Western Fiction 1859-

1939 (2011) is the latest monograph to consider representations of animals during the modernist period. As its title indicates, Richter focuses on fiction that can be read as a direct response or reaction to Darwin’s theory; nearly a third of the book is devoted to an account of the cultural impact of evolution. By “Human Beasts,”

9 Rohman appears to miss the ambiguity of Eliot’s animal tropes: she reads Sweeney as a repugnant beast, and argues that Eliot’s animal imagery supports the case for his work as misogynistic and anti- Semitic. Essert 9

Richter seems to mean the many hybrid or liminal figures—zoomorphized humans, anthropomorphized animals, and other ambiguous creatures—which appear frequently in the literature of this period. Unlike Rohman, Richter is not interested in the literary-historical category of “modernism.” Nonetheless, in historicizing these fictional beasts—significant texts include Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels,

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, stories by Rudyard

Kipling, and novels by H.G. Wells (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Island of

Doctor Moreau)—Richter also offers significant concepts that may be applied to modernist poets and poetry. She argues for the existence of widespread

“anthropological anxiety,” an anxiety about clearly defining or delimiting “the human”:

Positive definitions of the human … were always problematic; they

had to be supported by negative definitions, the delimitation against

groups identified as non-human or less-than-human. These

mechanisms of separation became extremely precarious after

Darwin’s intervention. Darwinism constituted an important catalyst

for the expression of fears concerning the definition of the human,

but it was by no means the sole factor. Anthropological anxiety was

also fuelled by social changes brought about by the industrial

revolution and by the contact with other cultures and peoples

through trade and colonisation. It formed a ubiquitous theme in the

literature of the period …. (Richter 8)

She refines this analysis by borrowing a distinction from Susan Bernstein, in which such concerns may be divided into two categories: “an ‘anxiety of assimilation’, i.e. Essert 10

‘distress over the fusing of divisions’, and an ‘anxiety of simianation’, i.e. ‘discomfort over evolutionary ties between humans and other primate species’” (Richter 14).

Richter’s texts are grouped according to which of these they evince, and so the concepts are clarified by example. Particularly with respect to its analysis of Eliot, this project is indebted to Richter and to Rohman for an awareness of the way that evolutionary theory can produce intense anxieties which are registered in literary texts. The importance of Darwinian evolution to these analyses of modernist animals is crucial in shaping the present investigation.

III.

In the last decade, there has been a surge in critical activity on the subject of animals in literature; I have discussed here only a few studies that have been especially influential for the present project. However, while the survey above indicates a number of studies of modernist and/or twentieth-century representations of animals, and studies of poetic animals, I am not aware of any study which focuses exclusively on animals in modernist poetry, considering the relationship between modernist poetics and shifting notions of the human/animal boundary. Accordingly, the parameters of this study allow it to fill an important gap in existing scholarship. I argue that this gap is a significant one, because there is an important affinity between modernist poetics and the question of the animal.

Wittgenstein held that “a poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information” (§160). I.A.

Richards assumed a similar stance in Principles of Literary Criticism (1924): “It is evident that the bulk of poetry consists of statements which only the very foolish would think of attempting to verify. They are not the kind of things which can be verified” Essert 11

(255).10 Understood in this way, there is an affinity between poetry—which is preoccupied with posing questions and provoking thought, rather than with verifiable information—and the exploration of the complex, even irresolvable, issue of the human/animal boundary. The poets considered in this project also wrote essays, and the declarative statements found in such prose contrast sharply with the exploratory ethos of their poetry. Though I read Moore’s poetry as dedicated to social and moral commentary, I also emphasize her careful avoidance of dogmatic declarations. Similarly, Layton’s strong assertions can mask the fact that he is ultimately provocative rather than definite.

Modernist poetics is especially suited to addressing “the problem of the animal” because of its radical formal innovation. Pastiche and allusion in Moore and

Eliot, classicism in H.D., persona in Layton, impersonality and surrealism in Page: these techniques, indicating the struggle to write a new kind of poetry, also suggest the struggle to think and see differently. They are, fundamentally, devices of defamiliarization —devices that present, and so encourage readers to understand, familiar objects and experiences in a new way—and they therefore permit new ways of writing and thinking about animals and humans. Often such experimental forms enable poet and reader to hold contradictory ideas in suspension, rather than offering any kind of easy resolution. If challenges to the prevailing understanding of human nature to some extent shaped modernist poetics, then modernist poetics, in turn, proved capable of interrogating assumptions about humanity by offering novel representations of humans and animals. If modernist poetry offers a new art for a

10 In Science and Poetry (1926, 1935) Richards expressed this difference by calling poetic statements “pseudo-statements”; this was widely misunderstood and consequently rejected by his fellow critics (see, for example, his preface to Poetries and Sciences, the 1970 reissue of Science and Poetry). Essert 12 new age, that new age included an anxiety about or interest in the human-animal boundary. What follows traces how the forms of modernist poetics enabled these poets to register their anxieties, and to pursue their interest in the pressing question of what constitutes human identity.

In its examination of modernist poetics, this study focuses particularly, though not exclusively, on figurative language involving animals, particularly on the tropes of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism. Although anthropomorphism is a variety of personification, in this study both devices are frequently considered as kinds of metaphor, with metaphor in turn understood in two ways. At play in the analysis of such figurative language are both the similarity view and the interaction view. The similarity view, which M.H. Abrams and Geoffrey Harpham describe as

“the traditional way of analyzing metaphors,” holds that a metaphor is “a condensed or elliptical simile, in that it involves an implicit comparison between two disparate things” (212). This prompts my readings of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic language as suggesting similarity or proximity between human and animals, either as an insult or as an attempt to elide species boundaries. This contrasts with the interaction view, first proposed by I.A. Richards, according to which a metaphor consists of a tenor (the principal subject) and a vehicle (the object whose attributes are borrowed for the description), and the “common characteristics” between them are called the grounds. But the ground of the metaphor is not always obvious, so that we may distinguish between “metaphors which work through some direct resemblance between two things, the tenor and the vehicle, and those which work through some common attitude which we may … take up towards them both”

(Richards The Philosophy of Rhetoric 118). It is on this basis that Richards argues against Essert 13 the comparison view, and instead claims that “the co-presence of the vehicle and tenor results in a meaning (to be clearly distinguished from the tenor) which is not attainable without their interaction. … vehicle and tenor in co-operation give a meaning of more varied powers than can be ascribed to either” (The Philosophy of

Rhetoric 100). For Richards, metaphors are about the clash between similarities and differences, about the meaning generated by the interaction of disparate ideas.

This helps to explain why zoomorphic or anthropomorphic metaphors are so important to the poets featured in this study, who seek to explore the human/animal boundary: metaphor enables play with likeness and difference. Metaphor permits readers to hold both in suspension simultaneously, to imagine or consider them together. It is precisely this kind of figurative language that makes poetry an important form for investigating species difference and finding new ways to represent other species Although metaphors appear in prose, other characteristics of poetry (such as rhyme and lineation) and the reading practices associated with poetry

(such as more deliberate reading) serve to make such figurative language a focal point in poetry more than in prose.

Of course, modernist fiction is also radically innovative in certain ways, and may also have recourse to figurative language. The strongest motivation for this project’s focus on poetic animals has to do with the ways that they differ from figurations of animals in prose. Animals in prose are usually embedded in a diegesis: they are characters in a narrative, participating to a greater or lesser degree in the world of the story. As a result, readers can more easily forget that they are creatures of the writer’s imagination. They therefore demand a different mode of readerly attention than do poetic animals; in poetry, the reader becomes more aware of the Essert 14 formal constraints (present even in free verse) which shape and create the textual animal. Even when it is inspired by an actual animal, the poetic animal comes across primarily as a linguistic construct or a figure to think with; because poetry advertises its artifice, its animals are further removed from their flesh-and-fur models.

Therefore, because I am primarily interested in how animals serve as figures for thinking through major socio-cultural issues and events, I have chosen to focus on poetic representations and figurations, rather than those found in prose.

IV.

My subjects include three American poets—T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and

H.D.—and two Canadian poets, P.K. Page and Irving Layton. Though Page and

Layton belong to a later generation of modernists than the Americans in my study

(both published their first books in the 1940s), all these poets share important traits which transcend this generation gap and their diverse citizenship. Page’s concern with nature broadly construed has much in common with that of H.D., and the impersonality of much of her poetry is evidence of common cause with Moore and

Eliot. Layton’s work is cast in a different—more subjective or lyrical—mould, and indeed, his poetry shares most in common with that of D.H. Lawrence and E.E.

Cummings. But his interest in ethical problems, in the role of the poet, and in the limitations of language makes him more like Eliot than he would have admitted.11

Likewise, his use of animal imagery to address moral and social issues links him to

Moore, and is the primary grounds for his inclusion in this study. Given the frequent

11 Like Eliot, Layton wrote many prose pieces that discuss the nature of poetry and the place of the poet in society; unlike Eliot, Layton often included these as prefaces to collections of his poetry. As for the limits of language, one might compare a Layton poem like “Whom I Write For” with passages from Eliot’s Four Quartets. The tone differs dramatically, but the awareness of limitation is similar. And yet, Eliot is often the target of Layton’s ire or derision, as in “The Modern Poet,” the Foreword to Balls for a One- Armed Juggler, or the Preface to The Laughing Rooster (Collected Poems 147-8; Engagements 105, 108, 119) Essert 15 appearance of animals in modernism, the following paragraphs offer a sketch of each poet’s personal and poetic interactions with animals, so as to make explicit this project’s principles of selection. The biographical evidence in each case indicates that these poets were highly sensitized to animals and animality in their personal lives; their personal practices show a pattern of interest that also manifests itself in their poetry.

Animals are ubiquitous in Moore’s poetry: of the 125 poems in her Complete

Poems only 20 make no mention of an animal.12 Equally remarkable is how few of her representations of animals were based on experiences of interacting with the creatures in question: “Peter” and “Bird-Witted” are certainly based on direct observation, but the same cannot be said of other poems in Moore’s oeuvre. Moore had plenty of chances to observe animals at close range. According to Donald Hall, during her childhood Moore “had pets, kittens and puppies and an alligator, Tibby, whom she says she tended ‘as if he were a little deity.’ This was the first of Miss

Moore’s pet alligators. She had another one in the 1960s which she kept in her

Brooklyn apartment” (16). Moore’s letters also mention a pet raccoon (SL 98), and

Charles Molesworth notes that Moore and her mother owned a pet bird in the 1930s

(250). More often, however, Moore’s interactions with animals involved forms of mass media and mass entertainment: she was a fan of zoos, circuses and (especially) the American Museum of Natural History; she was also a voracious consumer of books, articles, and films about animals. Many of her letters contain detailed accounts of her visits to the AMNH, zoos, and circuses. It is these mediated interactions, and

12 This statistic is adapted from Malamud (102), who refers to the 1967 edition of CPM. Essert 16 the information gleaned from them, that most often weave themselves into the fabric of her poems.

H.D.’s interactions with animals appear to have been both intimate and intensely affective. In HERmione, one of her four romans à clef, the H.D. character is represented as having a strong attachment to the family dog, Jock. Biographical evidence also suggests that companion animals were deeply important to H.D. In the early 1930s, Bryher’s villa in Switzerland (Kenwin), was home to H.D., Bryher,

Kenneth MacPherson, and Perdita, as well as two monkeys and a cat. H.D.’s letters from the period of her analysis with Freud (1933-4) contain numerous inquiries about the health and well-being of Peter (the cat), and Bill and Sister (the monkeys).

In one letter she writes: “I think so much of Bill [Kenwin Monkey] these days. How is he???? I dreamed last night you said his rheumatism was troubling him a little…”

(Friedman Analyzing Freud 97). In another letter, her exasperation clearly evident, she demands news: “I have asked at least a dozen times about Peter [Perdita’s Cat]. How is he?” (147). During H.D.’s first session of analysis, Freud’s chow Yofi had puppies, and Freud wanted to offer one as a gift to H.D.’s daughter, Perdita. This offer caused the Kenwin circle great concern: their discussion of the subject in their letters indicates that they did not take lightly the responsibility of caring for another animal.

Animals appear relatively infrequently in H.D.’s work; nonetheless, they play an important symbolic or metaphoric role in her texts when they do appear. Also significant is the habit among H.D. and her circle of adopting animal personae for epistolary communication; below, I elaborate on this habit, and compare it to a similar practice adopted by the Moore family. Essert 17

T.S. Eliot was also fond of adopting animal personae. Many people know that Eliot wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, if only because it served as the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical. Though critics have discussed his possum persona and its implications,13 other animal personae in Eliot’s oeuvre have received less attention. Eliot titled his notebook of early poems “Inventions of the

March Hare,”14 and wrote articles for The Egoist under the name of “Apteryx,” or even “T.S. Apteryx.”15 He was also nicknamed “the elephant” by his Faber and Faber colleagues (“‘In a Bloomsbury Square’”), and self-identified as such in a letter to

Moore (Carrington 149). Such an affinity for animal pseudonyms calls to mind instances of animal disguises in his poetry: in “Mélange Adultère de Tout,” the speaker plans to celebrate his birthday in an African oasis, dressed in a giraffe skin

(17-8); in “The Hollow Men,” the speaker wishes to wear “Such deliberate disguises

/ Rat’s coat, crowskin” (42-3). Indeed, once we begin to look for them, animals constitute a pervasive and important cluster of figurative and symbolic language in

Eliot’s poetry. Considered in this light, Practical Cats is not merely a charmingly anomalous children’s book, but rather the clearest example of an interest in creatures legible throughout Eliot’s work. On a biographical level, Practical Cats evinces Eliot’s love of felines, but he and Vivienne owned a dog as well as a cat, and he also had a deep appreciation for (and was knowledgeable about) many species of birds.16 There exists one monograph on his representations of other creatures—Marianne

13 See, for example, Michael North’s “The Dialect in/of Modernism: Pound and Eliot’s Racial Masquerade” (56) and Bonnie Kime Scott’s Refiguring Modernism (119). 14 This is clearly a reference to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. For more on this, see Sewell, and Ricks’ introduction to Inventions of the March Hare. 15 The apteryx, commonly known as the kiwi, is a family of birds found most commonly in New Zealand; in a letter to his cousin Eleanor, he mentions feeding a bun to one at the London zoo (Letters of T.S. Eliot 19-20). 16 See the discussion of Eliot’s bird in chapter two. Essert 18

Thormählen’s Eliot’s Animals (1984)—but questions of how and why Eliot represented animals merit reconsideration in light of recent developments in Eliot studies, modernist studies, and the emerging field of animal studies.

In his memoir, Irving Layton discusses his belief in evolution by way of anecdote about spending an unexpected gift of “a crisp American dollar bill”:

This was the time of the famous Scopes’ ‘Monkey Trial,’ and that year

[1925] the most sensational news was the progress of the trial with

the name of Scopes’ defending lawyer, Clarence Darrow, being linked

with monkeys as often as that of Darwin’s. The big question in

everybody’s mind was: were men descended from angels or from

apes? So when my eyes alighted on Darwin’s controversial Origin of

Species, I bought it with the dollar Harry had sent. … Now, I told

myself, I was going to find out what all the fuss was about. I’d even

seen my mother scowling and heard her Yiddishing the name of

Darwin. Her tone left no doubt as to where she consigned him. I got

the distinct impression from her and my sisters that he wasn’t too

popular with the rabbis either. … When I held up the book, nearly

shouting, ‘Ma! this man says we come from the monkeys!,’ she raised

herself up on her elbows, opened her eyes wide, and uttered the

words that have continued to ring in my ears until this day: ‘May your

bones rot under the earth with Darwin’s and the monkeys’ together!’

(Layton and O’Rourke 87)

Evidence of Layton’s will to apostasy, this anecdote also offers a motivation for

Layton’s convictions about human animality. His work often suggests that human Essert 19 behaviour can be explained by our biological proximity to other creatures. Layton’s understanding of human nature and human history was affected profoundly by such ideas. Slightly later in his memoir, he recalls questioning the heroic account of the

Great War that he was taught as a high school student: “I did not see it as a great patriotic effort at all. I saw it as the brawling of demented apes …. The Great War implanted a notion I’ve held onto ever since: man is a sick animal who gets his greatest kicks when he’s maiming and torturing other humans” (131). This suggests how a belief in evolution may have combined with the pressures of history to shape

Layton’s opinions. It also suggests that the frequent appearance of animals in his poetry may be related to his strong sense of kinship with other creatures.17 Like Eliot,

Layton seems to have been particularly fond of cats: in his memoir, he writes movingly and at length about Kotz, a graceful stray cat he adopted, and about her lame kitten Pussela (Layton and O’Rourke 97-8).

Finally, Page’s views on animality and relationship with animals appear to have been consistent, and consistently positive, throughout her life. In 1987, she told

Eleanor Wachtel that “For a city person, I’ve lived in the country a good deal—felt close to nature” (60). Her father was an officer in the Canadian Forces, and Page’s description of childhood summers spent camping on the Alberta prairies includes some significant recollections about animals and nature: “You could buy a horse from the Sarcee Indians very cheaply in those days so from the time I was in my

17 A cluster of references to primates in Layton’s early poetry reinforces this link between human animality and evolutionary theory. “Woman in the Square” (1948/1951) concludes its description of the woman by noting that “she seems / suddenly in the sun’s hot pallor / a female chimpanzee on whom bracelets glitter” (24-5). “Overheard in a barbershop” (1953) refers to man as “shaggy pitiless ape”; “Look, the Lambs Are All Around Us” (1954) contains a pun in “Primate”; and “All-Too- Human” (1954) begins “How stands this crafty animal / This ape sans pity or good sense.” Further examples occur in “Lusts Of The Spirit” and “Noblesse Oblige” (1955). The category of “ape” seem to be especially important for Layton, perhaps because it suggests puns on “ape” as a verb. Essert 20 teens I always had some kind of horse tethered on the prairie. I know the wildflowers of the Alberta countryside by heart, as it were, because I saw them year after year”

(Wachtel 44). Page’s early and important interactions with animals are also recalled in her verse memoir, Hand Luggage, and further evidence of her life-long appreciation of animals can be found in the many descriptions of birds and domestic animals in her

Brazilian Journal,18 or in poems such as “Domestic Poem for a Summer Afternoon.”

This appreciation makes itself apparent in her many poetic representations of animals; as in H.D.’s work, animals are often highly significant as symbols in Page’s poetry.

V.

Given that the representation and figuration of animals played an important role in the work of this project’s poets, a series of pairings presented itself as the most effective way to compare and contrast their diverse work. I initially chose to compare Moore and H.D. on the basis of their personal relationship. In studying their correspondence (held at the Rosenbach and the Beinecke), it became clear that the relationship was a significant one for both women: Moore never forgot H.D.’s role in promoting their early work, and the obstacles they shared (as women in a male-dominated milieu) created strong affective ties. They were not only astute critics of each others’ work, but also valued friends.19 However, what most convinced me to include H.D., and to compare her work to Moore’s, was a significant commonality in their intimate correspondence: the adoption of animal nicknames. I wanted to see

18 The Irwins’ residence was also home to Arara, a macaw; Benjamin(a) Fledermaus, a lion-monkey; and a Welsh Terrier named Duque. The new edition of the Brazilian Journal contains a detailed index of the “fauna” mentioned in the text, including more than twenty different species of birds. 19 Cyrena Pondrom, Peggy Phelan, Margaret Newlin, and Alicia Ostriker have considered Moore and H.D.’s personal relationship as a basis for comparisons of their poetry, and this chapter builds upon their work. Naturally, much work on H.D. mentions Moore, and vice versa; but theirs is the only work of which I am aware that takes a comparison of their poetry as its primary subject. Essert 21 whether this commonality would correlate with a particular attitude toward animals as manifested in their literary work; as the first chapter shows, it certainly does.

The Moore family (Marianne, her brother Warner, and their mother) made extensive use of animal nicknames throughout their lives. In the earliest published letters, written while Warner and Marianne were away at college, Marianne is

“Gator” or “Fangs,” while her brother is “Biter,” “Toad,” or “Turtle,” and their mother is “Fawn,” “Mouse,” or “Bunny.” The multiplicity of these nicknames points toward the playfulness they enabled, especially in the early letters, which often contain lengthy narratives in the third person about these animals. After 1914, when the family read Wind in the Willows, Marianne was Rat, her brother was Badger to

Marianne and Toad to their mother, and their mother was Mole (SL 76). Moore’s response to a question from Bryher—about what nickname she should assign to

Moore—indicates the richness of her family’s nomenclature: “I am in my family, a weasel, a coach-dog, a water-rat, a basilisk and an alligator and could be an armadillo, a bull-frog, or anything that seems suitable to you” (SL 137). Although the nicknames changed over time,20 “In all permutations of the family naming, Moore typically referred to herself as male, and is given a male pronoun by both her mother

(often) and her brother (consistently)” (SL 4). Given the non-traditional nature of this close-knit family, it seems likely that this practice of naming served a double- function: on the one hand, it constitutes part of a “private language” 21 which helped to consolidate familial bonds; on the other hand, it may have helped Marianne to

20 Later, their mother is often “Bear,” and Warner sometimes “Pago-Pago,” or “Bible Duck,” while “Moore frequently took for herself the name of the poem she was working on at the time or that she had recently finished, occasionally giving herself the same nickname that she used to refer to the poem” (SL 252). 21 The phrase is Linda Leavell’s, in “Marianne Moore, Her Family, and Their Language.” Essert 22 construct for herself an identity which bent, blurred, or ignored traditional gender binaries.

H.D. and her queer family engaged in a similarly extensive use of animal nicknames. H.D. was most often “Cat” or “Kat,” and sometimes “Lynx” or

“Horse”; Bryher was “Fido,” “Griffon,” “Small Dog,” or “Flea”; Bryher’s husband- of-convenience, Kenneth Macpherson, was known as “Dog,” “Dawg,” or “Rover”;

Perdita, H.D.’s daughter, was alternately “Pup” and “Puss,” and occasionally

“Lizard.”22 These are only the more common nicknames: there were variations on these, and some other close friends had nicknames that were used inconsistently.

These nicknames became personae, with Bryher, H.D. and Macpherson regularly referring to their own (or each other’s) “paws” “tails” and “whiskers”; to write is often “to bark,” a letter often a “paw mark,” and H.D.’s room is the “Kat bin.” Such practices imply that, for H.D. and her circle, the human/animal boundary was blurry, permeable, or even non-existent. These animal personae helped to strengthen the ties between members of this queer family, and are clearly related to play with gender:

Bryher’s personae are often gendered masculine in these letters.23 As chapter one will show, this zoomorphic habit of mind carried over into H.D.’s prose, just as Moore’s blurring of the human/animal boundary is evident everywhere in her poetry.

22 Perdita’s father, Cecil Gray, was not part of this queer family; Perdita did not meet him until she was in her late twenties (see her afterword to H.D.’s Bid Me to Live, 191-2). 23 On the issue of nicknames and “regendering,” see Miller, Cultures 66. Unlike the Moore family— who, with a few exceptions, assigned nickname only to the themselves—H.D. and Bryher extended nicknames, usually zoomorphic ones, to many of their close friends. Bryher’s analyst Hans Sachs was Turtle; family friend Blanche Lewin was Mouse; the writer Norman Douglas, a longtime friend of Bryher’s (and a frequent Kenwin guest) was Rhino[ceros], Walter Schmideberg, a troubled analyst, was Bear. As mentioned above, Marianne Moore was known for a time as Pterodactyl (or dactyl), but the nickname seems to have fallen out of use fairly quickly. Interestingly, H.D. is unable to settle on an animal name for Freud: she refers to him in her letters as an owl, a flea, a fish, a scorpion, and twice compares him to Bill the monkey. This information about nicknames was gleaned from Friedman’s Analyzing Freud. Essert 23

The pairing of Eliot and P.K. Page was prompted initially by Miranda

Hickman’s reading of Page’s “Portrait of Marina” as a response to Eliot’s “Marina,”24 but the second chapter’s shape results from the persistent focus on impersonality in the critical work on Page. Eliot seemed to be a kind of madman in the attic of Page studies, a very present absence who is mentioned or alluded to but rarely discussed at length, although his theory of impersonality is at the center of many readings of

Page. A sharper understanding of Eliot’s theory of impersonality, and of its reception and use by Page, therefore seemed an important contribution to the study of her poetry. Moreover, because the theory of impersonality is poorly understood in modernist studies more broadly, this pairing offered an opportunity for a more precise consideration of the subject, which would also illuminate Eliot’s application of it to his own poetry. In my reading, the theory of impersonality implies a certain view of embodiment and personhood; given its centrality to the modernist movement, a consideration of the relationship between impersonality and the representation of animals can also illuminate the puzzle of modernism’s fascination with animals.

Moore and Layton may appear to be an unlikely pairing: Moore’s reticent syllabics are nothing like Layton’s proto-confessional free verse or satirical quatrains, and Moore’s principled celibacy is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Layton’s several wives and many lovers. Yet they are united by their prophetic impulse: an unwavering belief that poetry can produce major social change by affecting the individual, and that the poet has the ability and the obligation to address moral issues. Layton’s poetry (particularly after 1953) is nearly as replete with animals as is

24 In her unpublished conference paper, “‘O My Daughter’ (or ‘His Dream’): On Impersonality in Page and Eliot.” Essert 24

Moore’s, and many of his poems take an animal as the primary subject or image.

Thus, this pairing allows for two significant lines of inquiry: the place of prophetic social commentary in modern poetry, and the usefulness of animal tropes and images for a literature of moral instruction. Modernist poetry has historically been accused of being distanced from reality, amoral, or apolitical. An account of how Moore and

Layton responded to the major crises of the twentieth century makes clear that these poets were unafraid to take clear positions or to raise difficult ethical questions in their work, and that they often raised such questions by way of animal tropes and imagery. Their pedagogical methods were vastly different, but prophecy (construed as a strongly-felt obligation to offer social or moral commentary) was central to both poet’s projects. Of course, there is a long history of using animals for moral instruction: the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine are touchstones in Western literature, and the use of anthropomorphic animals in children’s literature was and is a commonplace. But in the modernist moment, when poetry, morality, and our relationship with animals, are radically different from what they once were, how and why might these poets have chosen to use representations of animals to present their moral lessons?

VI.

In its selection and pairing of poets, this dissertation argues for a coherent

North American modernism. While researching Anglo-American and Canadian modernisms, I began to notice that whereas many studies of American or British modernism investigate authors of both nationalities (and often include Irish authors like James Joyce or W.B. Yeats), critical work on Canadian modernism deals exclusively with Canadians. Naturally, studies of Canadian modernists make Essert 25 reference to British or American authors, but they are of interest only in so far as their Canadian subjects read, responded to, and were influenced by them, so that the

Canadian authors in question remain the primary focus of study. While numerous anthologies contain work by both Americans and Canadians, there are relatively few studies that consider Canadian and American literature of any genre or period together.25 This dearth contrasts with the plethora of studies on Anglo-American modernism. An attempted explanation of these gaps in the scholarship is beyond the scope of this project; instead, what follows proposes a possible way forward. Making explicit what is implicit in the body of the dissertation, I offer three significant reasons why “North American modernism” is a definable, viable, area of inquiry.

Firstly, thinking transnationally should help critics break out of potentially limiting habits of study. This is not to say that essays or critical monographs investigating only Canadians are not valuable. Work on Canadian modernism has developed slowly, in part because of a prevailing opinion that we had none;26 and in part because of a set of reductive narratives prompting a too-narrow focus on the

McGill School of the twenties and the Montreal little magazines of the forties.27

Brian Trehearne’s The Montreal Forties paints a more nuanced picture of the latter literary milieu, and in the years since, other work has reopened the canon of

25 McGill’s library has only eight such studies, and most of these, like Katherine L. Morrison’s Canadians & Americans: Myths and Literary Traditions (2005), take the relation between literatures as their primary subject. Searching specifically for studies of poetry turned up two books by Steve McCaffery (North of Intention and Prior to Meaning); they are both collected essays, and McCaffrey tends to focus on a single author per essay, but putting authors of different nationalities between the same covers seems like important progress. Searching specifically for modernism, I found no critical studies that included both American and Canadian authors. 26 This is most infamously expressed in Robert Kroetsch’s opinion that “Canadian literature evolved directly from Victorian into Postmodern” (1). 27 This trajectory has been rehearsed repeatedly in the recent critical literature. See, for example, Trehearne’s “Afterword” to Canadian Poetry, 1920-1960, as well as the introductions to Canadian Modernists Meet, Editing Modernity and Wider Boundaries of Daring. Essert 26

Canadian modernism, revisiting and revising what we thought we knew about it.28

That so many works of Canadian modernism are out of print, and so few exist in scholarly editions, attests to how much work remains to be done in this field.29 And yet, work which considers Canadian authors alongside their American contemporaries—without making national literatures the primary subject of the inquiry—will be an important complement to more nationalistic projects, because new analytical contexts will help us read even the most familiar texts with fresh eyes.

Although many Canadian modernists were concerned about the quality of their national literature, their interactions with modernisms from other countries should prompt us to consider them as part of the global project of “making it new.”

A second compelling reason for studying Canadian and American modernisms together is the rich network of personal and professional associations that link authors from these two countries. Two exemplary instances of interpersonal relations are Marianne Moore’s efforts to promote the work of W.W.E. Ross;30 and

Louis Dudek’s relationship with Ezra Pound, which had an important influence on

Dudek’s poetic and cultural work and so on Canadian modernism more broadly.31

28 Perhaps most notable is the 2005 essay collection The Canadian Modernists Meet; recent monographs include Di Brandt and Barbara Godard’s collection, Wider Boundaries of Daring: the Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women’s Poetry (2009), and Dean Irvine’s Editing Modernity: Women and Little-Magazine Cultures in Canada, 1916-1956 (2008). 29 The Editing Modernism in Canada project seeks to remedy these problems. 30 Under the editorship of Marianne Moore, The Dial twice (in April and August of 1928) published poems by W.W.E. Ross, a poet “recognized as the exemplary Canadian Imagist” (Kizuk 53; Trehearne, Canadian Poetry 74). Moore was evidently quite taken with his poetry, as she later reviewed two of his books (Poetry: Laconics in August 1931 and Sonnets in May 1933 – see CPr 265-66, 296-97). The first review concludes in approbation: “The artists’ tendency is always to be seeking better explicitness and simpler simplicities, and the studious imagination that Mr. Ross has gives pleasure, besides suggesting a method” (CPr 266). Moreover, in June 1934 Moore forwarded some of Ross’ poems to T.S. Eliot, in the hopes that he would publish them in the Criterion, and in a March 1936 letter to Wallace Stevens, she includes Ross in a list of “our good minds,” along with Eliot, William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, and others (SL 325, 360-1). Ross’ poetry has thus far received almost no critical attention 31 It has been the subject of articles by Tony Tremblay and Frank Davey, and Pound’s letters to Dudek were published by Dudek’s D.C. Books in 1974. Karis Shearer is presently working on an Essert 27

We might also note, in this vein, Irving Layton’s relationships with William Carlos

Williams and Robert Creeley.32 Moreover, two Canadian little magazines—Contact and CIV/n—were marked by a commitment to cosmopolitan editorial policies, and their pages provided important meeting spaces for Canadian and American poets.33

Although the internationalist agenda of these magazines surely helped to foster dialogue across the Canada/U.S. border, then, as now, many Canadians also sought publication in American magazines, where they could reach a wider audience. To take only one prominent example, Poetry [Chicago] published poems by Page, Layton,

F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, and A.M. Klein.34 I’ve offered only the definite interactions of reviews, publication, and correspondence; the more nebulous contact of minds via the poetic page already receives some critical attention, though there is certainly room for more varied and nuanced work of that kind.

edition of the correspondence between Dudek and Pound, and her book, “Radical Pedagogy: Modernist Poets’ Interventions in Canadian Literature,” will include a consideration of the influence of Pound’s theories of education on Dudek and others. 32 Creeley’s Diver’s Press published Layton’s In the Midst of My Fever (1954), and Layton’s The Improved Binoculars (1956) appeared with a laudatory introductory note written by Williams. Layton and Creeley’s correspondence (published in 1990) spans a quarter of a century, and testifies to the significance of their relationship (Fass and Reed, eds). 33 Contact, edited by Raymond Souster and based in Toronto, appeared from January 1952 to March 1954 for a total of ten issues. CIV/n, which might be considered its sister magazine, was edited in Montreal by Aileen Collins, and ran for seven issues from Jan 1953 to “early winter” 1955. In a retrospective essay on the magazine, Collins noted that “Most of the copies of CIV/n 1 were sent out free of charge to a galaxy of Canadian and American writers: Margaret Avison, Earle Birney, Alan Crawley, Cid Corman, Roy Daniells, Ralph Gustafson, A.M. Klein, Douglas LePan, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Desmond Pacey, James Reaney, Robert Weaver, W.C. Williams, Miriam Waddington” (8-9). Collins also recalled that “CIV/n was first listed in the February 1953 issue of Trace [a little magazine about little magazines], and thus began a stream of manuscripts from U.S. poets”(9). CIV/n was staunchly international, publishing French and German poetry in translation, prose by Pound, and poetry by Creeley, Charles Olson, and Cid Corman alongside the work of Canadian poets (Irvine Editing Modernity 243-4). Contact published those same American poets (except Pound), as well as Denise Levertov, Kenneth Patchen, and Paul Blackburn; Canadian contributors included Avi Boxer, E.W. Mandel, Dudek, Layton, and Souster himself (Gnarowski). 34 Page sets the record with 28 poems appearing in the magazine, though Layton and Klein are close second, with 27 each (“Poetry Magazine: Historical Index.”); Page also received Poetry’s Oscar Blumenthal Prize in 1944 (Orange 223). Having mentioned A.J.M. Smith, I might also note that he kept Ross company in the pages of The Dial, and that his work appeared in other American periodicals, most notably Hound and Horn and The Nation (Smith 375-479). Essert 28

The third and final motive for the study of North American modernism is that Canadians and Americans (and thus Canadian and American authors) have more in common than we generally choose to realize. Granted, the conditions of production differ because the U.S. has a much larger population, and so Canadians published in the U.S. and read American authors far more often than the reverse. But

Trehearne has observed that the cultural conditions prompting young poets to literary innovation (i.e., an immediate precedent of rather mediocre poetry) were remarkably similar (Aestheticism 315-6), and essays like Marshall McLuhan’s “Canada:

The Borderline Case” remind us that we share certain basic ideas about identity and nature which are dramatically different from those found in Europe. In his discussion of animals in Canadian literature, John Sandlos observes that there are

“several good reasons not to push the Canada versus United States analysis too far.

… though there are discernible differences between artistic representations of nature and animals by authors in the United States and Canada, there are also many points of intersection” (79).35 There is, then, a strong case to be made for considering

Canadian and American poets together in the same study without making nationality the subject of inquiry. My hope is that this project will be exemplary in this respect, enabling new readings of poets across the continent, and further consideration of how our modernisms compare with those of other continents.

35 In support of this claim, Sandlos notes that “The American author Jack London was a contemporary of and influence on both [Earnest Thompson] Seton and [Charles G.D.] Roberts”; he also points to the centrality of animal characters in recent poetry and fiction of contemporary American writers, and to a shared literary tradition of landscape aestheticism (79). There are, of course, subtle socio-cultural differences between Canadians and Americans. But they are likely less jarring than those between people of any two other nations, and may have become more acute in recent decades. For a consideration of how Canadian representations of animals differ from their American counterparts, see Polk, Atwood, and the essays collected in Other Selves (Fiamengo, ed.). Essert 29

VII.

Animal studies offers a variety of theoretical perspectives which made possible this dissertation’s approaches to modernist poetry. Marianne DeKoven has argued persuasively that “Analyzing the uses of animal representation can clarify modes of human subjugation that ideology might otherwise obscure. A primary approach to the study of animal representation takes as its object the ways in which literary animals are used to reinforce the denigration of subjugated people or to point toward greater human equality” (363). She posits that “the turn toward animals” results in large part from the fact that they are a “locus both of the other who calls us to ethics and of many of the things that, in our various modes of ethics, we value: purity of affect, unselfish altruism, absence of genocide and infrequency of random, unmotivated violence, and connection to what is for us a source of powerful spiritual experience” (367). This captures much about the approach to modernism that animal studies has enabled in this project. Whereas H.D. seems to be using representations of animals to reveal the subjugation of women that has too often been obscured,

Moore most often seems to be using animals to code or obscure her critique, in order to engage the reader and avoid dogmatic statements. The consideration of

Moore and Layton in chapter three emphasizes the importance of animals for their writing about ethics, while both it and the second chapter are interested in the relationship between animals and “powerful spiritual experience.” This dissertation’s unusual focus has required, or perhaps enabled, a heterogeneous theoretical foundation. A few theorists and vectors of critical theory were particularly important to the final shape of my arguments. Essert 30

Foremost among these is the branch of feminist theory that considers the interconnected relationship of sexism and speciesism. The essays collected in Adams and Donovan’s Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations improved my understanding of the ways that these are “interlocking oppressions,”36 enabling me to see how they are built into our language and our narratives, and to historicize my consideration of these problems. Hélène Cixous’ essay “Birds, Women, and

Writing,” which I discuss in my first chapter, helped me to see how religion has played an important role in mediating the relationship between women and animals.

In a provocative essay about these issues, Marguerite Yourcenar suggests that “one of the chief causes of animal suffering, at least in the West, has been the biblical injunction from Jehovah to Adam before the Fall which showed him the world of animals, caused him to name them, and declared him their lord and master” (147).

She observes that “it would have been easy to interpret that ancient myth otherwise” given “those sublime legends which intermingle animals with men,” but Christianity

“got carried away with arid dogmatism and the priority given to human egotism”

(147-8). Laura Hobgood-Oster’s careful study of animals in the Christian tradition enabled a careful consideration of claims like Yourcenar’s, and a sharper understanding of the important role that animals play in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition.

Donna Haraway’s work has been indispensible to the present project because of its attention to boundaries and binaries. “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1991) argues that the breakdown of certain boundaries—such as that between organism and

36 Or, as Adams so succinctly expresses it on her website, “Species oppression is expressed through gender and gender oppression is expressed through speciesism” (n. pag.). Essert 31 machine—can imply or enable the breakdown of others, offering a powerful strategy for feminists. Like Adams, Haraway observes how oppressive dualisms are related:

certain dualisms have been persistent in Western traditions; they have

all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women,

people of colour, nature, workers, animals—in short, domination of

all constituted as others, whose task is to mirror the self. Chief among

these troubling dualisms are self/other, mind/body, culture/nature,

male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part,

agent/resource, maker/ made, active/passive, right/wrong,

truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man. (178)

But she goes on to argue that

High-tech culture challenges these dualisms in intriguing ways. It is

not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human

and machine. It is not clear what is mind and what body in machines

that resolve into coding practices. In so far as we know ourselves in

both formal discourse (for example, biology) and in daily practice (for

example, the homework economy in the integrated circuit), we find

ourselves to be cyborgs, hybrids, mosaics, chimeras. (178)

Haraway believes that there are “great riches for feminists in explicitly embracing the possibilities inherent in the breakdown of clear distinctions between organism and machine and similar distinctions structuring the Western self. It is the simultaneity of breakdowns that cracks the matrices of domination and opens geometric possibilities” (174). Haraway’s work illuminates how the women poets in this study represent animals as part of a challenge to such hierarchical binaries. Even early in Essert 32 the twentieth century, many of the dichotomies in the list above were under threat, and these poets seem to capitalize on those blurry distinctions to also reconsider the gender binary. Their work considers the way that hybridity (for which Haraway’s cyborg is a figure) can provide valuable oppositional strategies.

Haraway’s recent work focuses more directly on animals, and stands in dialogue with the late work of Jacques Derrida. In The Animal that Therefore I Am,

Derrida investigates the distinction between “the human” and “the animal” as it appears in the thinking of Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Lacan, and Levinas. He offers a potent reminder of how often the concept of “the animal” has been used to think through problems that are exclusively human, or to define the boundaries or nature of the human. These lectures, along with the philosophical texts collected in Wolfe’s

Zoontologies and Calarco and Atterton’s Animal Philosophies, have shaped my thinking about animals as a strategy of indirection for my poets. Derrida coins the term

“animot”—which in French is singular, but sounds the same as the plural word for animals, “animaux”—in order to consider the conceptual violence committed by the general singular “the animal.” The neologism’s play with grammatical number is intended to remind us that we cannot simply group all non-human creatures together into a single category separate from ourselves (47). “Animot” is intended to represent “an irreducible living multiplicity of mortals” which our common appellation of “the animal” makes homogeneous (41).

But the coinage embraces other aims as well: “The suffix mot in l’animot should bring us back to the word, namely, to the word named a noun…. The animal would in the last instance be deprived of the word, of the word that one names a noun or name” (48). Here, Derrida emphasizes that our experience of animals is Essert 33 necessarily mediated through language: our relations with animals are shaped by the names we give them and the words we use to talk about them. Our language has encouraged or enabled “the unprecedented proportions of this subjection of the animal” which is one of Derrida’s points of departure (25). This crucial philosophical move enables a greater awareness of the way that human language is complicit in our power relations with other species. Moreover, it encourages an interest in the relationship between actual, living creatures and the linguistic constructs found in poetry. I argued, above, that poetry foregrounds linguistic constructs even more sharply than prose; for me, this difference makes the concept of “animot” particularly relevant to poetic animals. “Animot” is a reminder that strategies of figuration and representation necessarily place the poet at a distance from real animals, regardless of any intention to elide or blur the species boundary. It emphasizes that animals made of words should not be confused with their real world correlatives.

And yet, for Derrida, there is an absolute limit between humans and animals.

According to Derrida, “Everybody agrees on this, discussion is closed in advance, one would have to be more asinine than any beast [plus bête que les bêtes] to think otherwise” and so “The discussion becomes interesting once … one attempts to think what a limit becomes once it is abyssal, once the frontier no longer forms a single indivisible line but more than one internally divided line” (30). While Derrida makes important progress beyond those philosophers he examines by realizing that on the other side of this abyss “there is already a heterogeneous multiplicity of the living” (31), he still falls prey to a certain kind of anthropocentrism or human exceptionalism. At no point does he characterize the limit between each animal Essert 34 species as “abyssal” in the same way as the human/animal limit; this unwillingness to see continuity between humans and nonhuman animals is deeply problematic.

Donna Haraway’s two recent books, which make the case for human exceptionalism as foolish and dangerous, have helped me think through this impasse.

She coins the term “companion species” to encapsulate her idea that we are constituted by our interaction with other species, that we do not exist separately from these interactions, and that our existence is a constant “becoming with.”37 She uses the notion of “companion species” to assist in the development of “an ethics and politics committed to the flourishing of significant otherness” (Companion Species

Manifesto 3-4). “Significant otherness” is another key term in Haraway’s thinking: it is meant to indicate that species difference must always be respected. If we treat our dogs as humans, we are doing them and ourselves a disservice, and we will be poor companions. Gaining a better understanding of the species with which we interact most often is an important step in making sure that these mutually constitutive relationships are rich and productive, rather than destructive.

Haraway’s notion of significant otherness is indebted in important ways to

Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of alterity:38 she emphasizes repeatedly that our ability to know or understand our companion animals is always limited, and that we must not presume too much. Though we cannot know them entirely, our encounters with animal others are vitally constitutive, just as the face-to-face encounter is for Levinas.

37 Haraway is aware this may prompt readers to recall Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “becoming animal,” and emphatically explains crucial differences in their project and approach. “The making each other available to events that is the dance of ‘becoming with’ has no truck with the fantasy wolf- pack version of ‘becoming animal’” in large part because Deleuze and Guattari are interested in sublime notions of animals, and so “we will learn nothing about actual wolves in all this.” She takes issue, in short, with their “scorn for all that is mundane and ordinary and the profound absence of curiosity about or respect for and with actual animals, even as innumerable references to diverse animals are invoked” (When Species Meet 27-30). 38 See, for example, section III of his Totality and Infinity, or his essay “Time and the Other.” Essert 35

Haraway’s thought moves in two directions: she seeks to collapse the human/animal boundary, in large part because as a biologist she is aware of how little evidence supports it. At the same time, inheriting and extending Derridian attention to difference, she wants to draw our attention to the diversity and heterogeneity of all the living things we usually conflate. “Significant otherness” is about accepting our vital interconnections with other creatures while also respecting their alterity.

Haraway’s use of terminology suggests another debt to Derrida, namely her understanding of the ways in which language shapes, even determines, human action: she mobilizes her key terms in order to help readers think differently about other species. Though Haraway borrows some of Derrida’s tools, she often challenges his conclusions.39 The debate between Derrida and Haraway has enabled this project’s consideration of the poets’ views on animals and the human/animal boundary, offering concepts and vocabulary with which to assess and describe their various

(and often shifting) positions.

VIII.

Chapter one examines representations and figurations of animals as they relate to representations of gender. It argues that animal tropes and imagery form part of a strategy through which Marianne Moore and H.D. challenge established conceptions of gender. Moore’s animal imagery is understood as integral to her poetics of humility, and as enabling indirect and non-dogmatic expression of her

39 Derrida tells us that his meditations on the problem of the animal began with a particularly disturbing encounter with his cat; for Haraway, this inter-species meeting represents a missed opportunity, since “Derrida failed a simple obligation of companion species; he did not become curious about what the cat might actually be doing, feeling, thinking, or perhaps making available to him in looking back at him that morning” (When Species Meet 20). For Haraway, Derrida does not “become with” or learn about his cat as much as he might have; the cat becomes merely a starting point for thinking through human problems.

Essert 36 feminism. Her affinity for and knowledge about animals seems to have entailed a belief in our kinship with other creatures; the category of “domestication” unites her concerns about women and animals, and is legible in her poetic form as well as in the content of her poems. Moore’s challenge to gender norms emerges from questions about epistemology and value which are implicit in her work; she seems to see gender as a specious distinction, and to argue that all human beings ought to be treated equally. H.D.’s challenge, in contrast, emerges through her sustained interrogation of identity: she represents identity as hybrid, dynamic, and mutable, and thereby indicates that stable, rigidly binary definitions of sexuality and gender are untenable. Animal tropes, particularly zoomorphism, play a significant role in such representations of identity, with characters in her novels being likened to a variety of creatures in order to capture their complex and changeable selfhoods. Similarly, the bird imagery that appears in many of her works is associated with the desire to transcend restrictive social pressures. In the course of this argument, the chapter traces differences across H.D.’s career and between her prose and poetry.

The second chapter considers impersonality and animality in the work of T.S.

Eliot and P.K. Page. It offers a careful reconsideration of Eliotic impersonality, arguing for the crucial role of embodied experience within that theory. Given Eliot’s belief in the proximity between humans and other animals, the body becomes legible as the locus of our animality; this implies that, in Eliot’s theory, art demands acceptance of our animality. Page’s struggles with impersonality are seen to stem from an initially limited understanding of Eliot’s theory, which appeared to demand the complete removal of the poet from the poem. The birds, dogs, and sea creatures in her early poetry are read as symbols or objective correlatives integral to her poetic Essert 37 consideration of personhood and the limits of impersonality. Eliot’s transition from anxiety about human animality to acceptance of it is paralleled by Page’s development, after her lapsus, of a more capacious understanding of impersonality.

The chapter argues, then, for their poetic animals as evidence of the worldview which prompted their author’s theories and methods, as an index of their shifting understanding of humanity and animality, and as the symbols or objective correlatives by which impersonality operates.

Chapter three investigates Marianne Moore’s and Irving Layton’s uses of animal imagery to communicate indirectly their responses to moral issues arising from the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. It considers the influence of each poet’s religious heritage on his or her poetics, arguing for prophecy as a crucial methodology for both poets. For both Moore and Layton, prophecy entails an obligation to respond to the social problems of the moment; but the voices and techniques with which they responded were dramatically different.

Building upon scholarship on Moore’s wartime and Depression-era poetry, I argue that Moore’s animals represent virtues that she believes will be useful in confronting present suffering and impending war. Rather than offering her moral directly, she avoids dogmatism by presenting the animal, and leaving it to the reader to glean a moral message. Layton’s poetry evinces a concern with human cruelty, and a certainty about our proximity to other animals. Human cruelty is often represented as cruelty toward animals, so that wounded or victimized animals appear frequently in his work. I argue that such representations permit Layton to address the problem of human cruelty—one of the major moral issues arising from the Holocaust— before he is able to confront the Holocaust directly in his poetry. Thus, animal Essert 38 tropes and images offer both poets a way to write about war by indirectly addressing certain underlying moral issues.

Essert 39

(Un)Gendered Creatures: Animals and Identity Politics in Moore and H.D.

The introduction referred to theoretical work that draws a connection between women and animals by considering the interlocking and mutually reinforcing oppressions of sexism and speciesism. Adams and Donovan summarize the historical basis for these inquiries:

Historically, the ideological justification for women’s alleged

inferiority has been made by appropriating them to animals: from

Aristotle on, women’s bodies have been seen to intrude upon their

rationality. Since rationality has been construed by most Western

theorists as the defining requirement for membership in the moral

community, women—along with non-white men and animals—were

long excluded. (1)

This tendency was certainly still prevalent in western culture in the early twentieth century: to cite just one contemporaneous example, F.T. Marinetti declared that “It is plain that if modern woman dreams of winning her political rights, it is because without knowing it she is intimately sure of being, as a mother, as a wife, and as a lover, a closed circle, purely animal and wholly without usefulness” (75). This chapter considers how the poetry of Moore and H.D. mobilizes this connection by writing animals in order to consider gender. It makes no claim for this as a conscious strategy on the part of either poet; neither Moore nor H.D. clearly articulated a belief that oppression of animals is linked to the oppression of women. Instead, this chapter considers the prominence of animal imagery in works that challenge gender norms. Moore’s advocacy for gender equality is often implicit in poems that are ostensibly about other creatures, or in the innovative poetic techniques she uses to Essert 40 represent animals. H.D.’s critique of binary conceptions of gender is more explicit, and is supported and enriched by her use of animal imagery.

I. Marianne Moore: Humility and the Struggle Against Domestication

Moore’s “A Fool, a Foul Thing, a Distressful Lunatic” (BMM 60) was first published in Observations in 1924.1 In this poem, Moore interrogates the stereotypes associated with three birds—the goose, the vulture, and the loon—which allow them to become synonymous (at least in western culture) with silliness, “a vile and rapacious disposition” (“vulture, n.”), and insanity. The poem is structured as four questions, the last two asking “why”; in each case, the virtues or mild character of the bird are contrasted with its cultural position, and the speaker asks why these creatures have been so “ignorantly designated” (3). The speaker evinces a concern with the way language is used by the powerful to malign less-powerful groups or individuals. Many common human insults involve animals, and the poem suggests that such language is doubly hurtful—it hurts whomever it is directed toward, and evinces a lack of knowledge about the species in question by reducing it to a mere caricature.2 And Moore’s point ramifies: the poem is concerned not only with the way such language denigrates avian species, but also with how language is used to insult a wide variety of “others.” Moore’s concern extends beyond animals, making the case for greater respect for all people, too. This poem, like many others by

Moore that will be examined below, comments on human/animal relations and thus, indirectly, on gender, race, and other types of human difference. The next section

1 The poem was written a decade earlier, and a very different version of it was published as “Masks” in the January 1916 number of Contemporary Verse. That version (so different that a variant table is impractical) is the product of Samuel Duff McCoy’s heavy editorial intervention. I therefore focus here on the version that appeared in Observations, which is much more likely to represent Moore’s intentions, and may closely resemble the earliest version (BMM 187). 2 Joan Dunayer offers an enlightening reading of such animal language as it pertains to gender. Essert 41 considers why Moore gravitates toward strategies of indirection, and advances an explanation for her frequent representation of animals; this forms a foundation for the subsequent discussion of her use of animals to challenge constricting gender norms.

“Humility” was an important watchword for Moore, and perhaps the single most defining characteristic of her poetry. As Jeredith Merrin explains, “humility [for

Moore] consists not merely of self-effacing modesty (though there is that) but also of a complex and often subtly combative attitude” (7). Such an attitude can perhaps be represented metonymically by Moore’s frequent use of quotation: the technique of pastiche results in poems which offer a variety of perspectives rather than making a declarative statement or strongly advocating for a particular position. The polyvocality of a Moore poem contributes to making her combative attitude a subtle one in most cases—Moore scholars are still learning to read the scathing social critiques suggested through the complex surfaces of her poems, despite her clear feminist and anti-racist commitments.3 A nuanced reading of Moore’s notion of humility must account for her consistent association of “humility” with both

“originality” and “armor.”

In commenting on Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry, Moore declares: “We look at imitation askance; but like the shell which the hermit-crab selects for itself, it has value—the avowed humility, and the protection. … We cannot ever be wholly original; we adopt a thought from a group of notes in the song of a bird” (CPr 328).4

Moore makes clear that borrowing is not imitation, and that artistic production

3 Chapter three contains a more extended discussion of Moore’s avoidance of dogmatism and declarative statement. 4 See part III of chapter two for P.K. Page’s very similar analogy. Essert 42 always involves acts of imitation. Thus humility is here associated with a circumscribed view of the capacities of the individual, one which acknowledges the individual’s necessary dependence on other members of the community. To imagine that one can create a wholly unique work of art would be to have a dangerously inflated sense of self. This passage indicates that “imitation” has value because it evinces humility, but also because it offers protection or a “shell.” Later, in

“Humility, Concentration, and Gusto,” Moore reiterates this point: “Humility, indeed, is armor, for it realizes that it is impossible to be original, in the sense of doing something that has never been thought of before” (CPr 420-1). I argue that

Moore views humility as a crucial virtue because it is armour against an inflated sense of self that might also be called egoism.5

Writing was a vexing vocation for Moore, because it required, to a certain degree, the very egoism she strove to avoid. In a letter written to her mother and brother while at Bryn Mawr, Moore observed: “You ought I think to be didactic like

Ibsen, or poetic like ‘Sheats’ [Shelley /Keats?], or pathetic like [J.M.] Barrie or witty like Meredith, to justify your embarking as selfconfidently as the concentrated young egoist who is a writer, must” (SL 45-6). This is sensible: to be an author, one must at least believe one has something to say that other people would like to (or should) hear. And yet, several of Moore’s poems represent egoism as a dangerous vice: among the new beatitudes in “Blessed is the Man,” we find “Blessed the geniuses who know / that egomania is not a duty” (9-10); a slightly later poem begins: “Tell

5 This analysis relies upon Merrin’s discussion of Moore and humility, particularly his claim that “it is humility, the self-conscious acknowledgement by an author of indebtedness or unoriginality, that paradoxically makes sincere expression or true originality possible. Humility can enable creativity by protecting the artist with a shell or a suit of armour” (9). It also builds upon Andrew Kappel’s discussion of Moore’s Protestantism in “Notes on the Presbyterian Poetry of Marianne Moore.” Essert 43 me, tell me / where there might be a refuge for me / from egocentricity” (1-3); and “In Distrust of Merits” refers to “the disease, My / Self” (25-6).6 The reference to George Meredith, in combination with egoism, calls to mind his novel The Egoist; its protagonist, Sir Willoughby Patterne, is ultimately jilted by his fiancée because his grossly inflated sense of self does not allow him to see her as anything other than a self-affirming accessory. Moore’s poetic references suggest that egoism is a common kind of human frailty, but the letter quoted above indicates that a writer might be even more tempted than others to succumb to this vice. An emphasis on humility, then, is Moore’s attempt to arm herself against the writerly tendency to egoism; it therefore enables her participation in a profession which would otherwise be spiritually dangerous.

Three aspects of Moore’s style contribute to her poetics of humility: her frequent integration of a heterogeneous body of quotations, her use of syllabic meter, and her attention to animals. The discussion above indicates the relationship between quotation and humility, which passes by way of Moore’s idea of originality—Moore’s technique of quotation indicates a willingness to acknowledge her position that poetry is never sui generis, but always dependent on the poet’s interactions with the world, including anything and everything she reads or hears. In Elizabeth Gregory’s reading, “Quotation as device in itself, along with the connotations of secondariness associated with the critical apparatus of quotation and notes, provides Moore with a modest and respectfully rigorous screen persona that affords her a comfort in speech that she would not otherwise feel” (Quotation 141). While Gregory appears to read

6 Unless otherwise specified, Moore’s poetry is cited as it appears in Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (Viking/Macmillan, 1981; issued in paperback by Macmillan/Penguin, 1982; reissued in Macmillan/Penguin’s Twentieth Century Classics paperback series, 1994). Essert 44 quotation as screening Moore’s “real” self, I argue that Moore’s public persona is to be found in the collection or sum of the positions expressed in her work. What

Gregory describes as Moore’s “double attitude of simultaneous self-effacement and self-assertion” is crucial for the way it allows Moore sufficient authority to speak, while disavowing pretensions to the kind of absolute potency which enforces its will on others (146). Moore invites other voices into the poem, suggesting that no one individual (or kind of individual) has a monopoly on a given issue. “Marriage” and

“An Octopus” are perhaps the best examples of this technique of multivocality.

These poems suggest that, especially in the case of complex issues such as matrimony and human interactions with nature, one must be willing to consider, and perhaps even encompass, a variety of opinions and perspectives. Moreover, Moore’s work suggests that one’s own thoughts are filled with and composed of the opinions and perspectives of others, culled from a wide array of sources—a position in keeping with her ideas of humility and originality as outlined here.

Moore’s preference for composing verses in syllabic form may also be related to the issue of humility. Margaret Holley’s account of Moore’s process of composition in “The Model Stanza: The Organic Origin of Moore’s Syllabic Verse”

(1984) remains unchallenged by Moore scholars. Holley provides ample evidence that Moore composed by writing a model stanza, in which the arrangement of words and phrases is allowed to dictate the lineation; in this stanza, the line breaks are coincident with the termination of phrases, and appear natural and unaffected. In composing the remainder of the poem, Moore forces her words to conform to the pattern established by the model stanza: this means that phrases, and often single words, will be split by line breaks, often creating a tension between form and Essert 45 meaning. David Anderson’s more recent consideration of Moore’s syllabics investigates why Moore adopted such a procedure, and argues persuasively that

Moore was motivated by a belief that “poetic constraints can be useful indirect strategies for composition, too, by helping to reduce self-consciousness” (103; original emphasis). Preoccupation with formal challenges makes composition an intellectual exercise, forcing emotion and ego to take a back seat. The idea that poetic creation involves a subjugation or abnegation of the self has a precedent in Keats’s description of the “poetical character” in his October 27th, 1818 letter to Richard

Woodhouse:

… it is not itself—it has no self—it is every thing and nothing—It

has no character—it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul

or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated—It has as much

delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous

philosopher, delights the chameleon Poet. … A Poet is the most

unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity—he

is continually in for—and filling some other Body… . (n. pag.)7

Anderson makes another link to the Romantic poets when he argues that Moore

“shared the Romantics’ belief that technique enforces moral discipline, and accordingly enhances perception and expression, ensuring that poetry will flow from natural needs rather than self-conscious desires” (95). Moore’s choice of syllabics, rather than any other constraint, may be attributed in part to the way this technique helps to “sustain readers’ attention throughout the entire poem rather than divert

7 This will call to mind Eliot’s theory of impersonality, to be discussed at length in chapter two. Essert 46 reader’s attention onto the form of the text” (87). Syllabics are useful for the way they direct the reader away from the poet, and the poet away from herself.

Beyond quotation and syllabics, a third aspect of Moore’s poetics of humility—her intense interest in and frequent representation of animals—might be considered as a special case of the modernist objective correlative. In coining the term, Eliot wrote: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked” (SP 48). Although Moore did not use the term herself, nor mention it in her review of The Sacred Wood, this is, indeed, a good way to describe how her poetry often works.8 Due in part to her use of quotation and her rejection of the lyric I,9 the emotion in Moore’s poems is almost never stated directly, but implied

(“evoked”) by Moore’s presentation of objects, situations, or events. Much like

Pound’s “wet leaf that clings to the threshold” (in his “Liu Ch’e”), or H.D.’s flowers,

Moore’s animals enable an indirect expression of emotions, through the use of an objective correlative. In “Marriage,” for example, Moore organizes and assembles an impressive array of quotations to represent the relationship between Adam and Eve, which stands as a synecdoche for all marriages. Although (as discussed below) the poem may be read as anti-marriage, it avoids declaring a clear and unambiguous

8 Celeste Goodridge’s study of Moore’s responses to Eliot contains no mention of her views on the objective correlative. A similar gap exists in other accounts of the Moore/Eliot relationship (see Kappel, Kearns, Kineke, and Carrington.) 9 See, for example, DuPlessis (“‘Corpses of Poesy’”), Zona, Costello (“Moore, Stevens, and the Modernist Lyric”), Holley (Poetry of Marianne Moore), and Miller (Questions of Authority). Essert 47 stance on marriage, and instead collects diverse statements about matrimony and gender.

In “The Monkeys,” Moore uses the situation of a visit to the zoo as an objective correlative to suggest a line of feeling about critics. Such techniques background the author’s emotions, and foreground the poem’s explicit and implicit subjects: in so doing, they draw attention away from the poet and toward the thing represented and the emotion it evokes.10 In this instance, the speaker’s rapid dismissal of the animals in the first half of the poem might evoke the same emotion experienced by a poet dismissed by her critics (which is, indeed, the emotion of anyone whose work goes unappreciated by her peers). In the second half of the poem, the feline replies to those who make assumptions about his intellectual abilities, expressing the feelings of (any)one who has been told he is incapable. Thus, this technique is part of Moore’s poetics of humility because it helps to avoid focusing on the merely personal: like white light, emotions are refracted through the prism of the objective correlative, and thereby rendered more chromatic, universal, and accessible to a reading public. Moreover, the technique demands that the poet look outside of the self in order to locate an adequate object or situation, thereby avoiding representations that are entirely self-centered.

But why does the animal kingdom so frequently provide Moore’s objective correlatives? Moore begins to answer this question herself in her foreword to the Marianne Moore Reader: “Why an inordinate interest in animals and athletes? They are subjects for art and exemplars of it, are they not? minding their own business.

Pangolins, hornbills, pitchers, catchers, do not pry or prey—or prolong the

10 Animals are used to similar effect in Moore’s “Critics and Connoisseurs,” which is discussed in chapter three. Essert 48 conversation; do not make us self-conscious; look their best when caring least” (CPr

552). Moore’s linking of animals and athletes characteristically blurs the line between human and non-human animals, while also suggesting that Moore’s appreciation of animals rests in their physical talents, or what she refers to later in the paragraph as their “miracles of dexterity.” Moore also expresses her appreciation for animals’ attitudes toward other creatures. They are not invasive or maliciously aggressive (in what follows, she offers an example of animal behaviour which lacks malice) and, unlike many humans, do not impose on others: they “do not pry or prey—or prolong the conversation.” But the last two clauses quoted are perhaps the most important: the value of animals for Moore lies in the fact that, because they mind their own business, they do not make us self-conscious. Moreover, they model unselfconsciousness for us, and, like humans, are “at their best” when they are least self-absorbed. It is this unselfconsciousness, above all, which makes them “subjects for art and exemplars of it,” and which makes them so crucial to Moore’s own poetic. Throughout Moore’s oeuvre animal tropes and imagery are used to exemplify a variety of virtues; what unites them all, in Moore’s eyes, is the virtue of humility.

Animals model for us a lack of egoism, and, because they are so fascinating, prompt us to direct our attention outside of ourselves. When we are watching animals go about their daily routine, devoting all our attention to observing them (just as an animal devotes their whole attention to the task at hand) there is little room for self- consideration. Moore suggests that paying attention to something outside the self is a sure way to avoid egoism and practice humility—there are things beyond the self that matter more than the individual. According to Moore, it is by being absorbed in the task at hand—and bracketing the ego—that one produces good art and lives the Essert 49 good life. The importance of humility leads Moore to a strategy of indirection because she must develop poetic techniques to avoid egoism, and the humility that

Moore associates with animals suggests that they were especially useful to her as objective correlatives. Animals are the primary image or subject of many of her poems, but the discussion thus far has emphasized that there is often a second subject that the poems address indirectly by way of animal imagery. The following section offers an overview of Moore’s feminism, in support of the claim that her animal poems often offer indirect commentaries on gender issues.

***

Moore was single and celibate throughout her life, and her spinsterhood was central to her late-life celebrity persona. With the exception of her time away at college, and a brief stint working in Lake Placid in 1910, Moore lived with her mother until her mother’s death in 1947; she never knew her father, and her brother

Warner was the most important man in her life. Although Moore was relatively reticent about her choice to remain unmarried, there is ample evidence to suggest it might be understood as “political” in the broadest sense—that is, as the result of her desire to retain her independence at a moment when marriage dramatically curtailed a woman’s liberty. Many critics have argued for Moore’s views as prompted by the progressive, feminist environment at Bryn Mawr, where she attended college from

1905-1909. Bethany Hicok draws attention to “the radical refashioning of the female subject that was going on at Bryn Mawr during Moore’s years” (58), and notes that the college “provided women with a variety of alternatives to marriage if they wanted to pursue careers. At the time, it was almost impossible to have both. Women were expected to give up the few careers open to them if they married, so it was clear to Essert 50 women of Moore’s generation that they must choose” (59).11 Hicok and Cristanne

Miller both note that the majority of Moore’s Bryn Mawr colleagues did not marry.

Moore was surrounded, in her adult life, by a network of women who lived with female companions or relatives, and many other women of her class and education level made similar choices. Linda Leavell notes that “The Moores’ small circle of friends in Carlisle consisted almost entirely of well-educated single women who lived with their mothers or with both parents” (“Politics of Celibacy” 222), while Miller observes that “In adulthood, many of [Moore’s] closest friends were lesbians or lived with female friends or family members” (Cultures 107).

In keeping with the gender-bending observed in Moore’s family correspondence, Miller and Benjamin Kahan link Moore’s college experience to what they read as her androgynous self-presentation; Miller offers an analysis of various portraits of Moore to support her claim that “Moore adopted a style of dress that rides the line between masculinity and femininity” (Cultures 103).12 Leavell, moreover, has argued that Henry James, as the quintessential “literary bachelor,” was an important model for Moore: “Henry James—as imagined by Moore—enjoyed both the emotional bonds of family that traditionally kept women at home and the freedom, traditionally reserved for men, to become a ‘passionate pilgrim’” (“Politics of Celibacy” 238). By these assessments, Moore appears to have sought non- normative models of gender and sexuality to help develop her sense of self, because the normative models could not accommodate her strong sense of literary vocation.

Moore acknowledged that the “bonds of family” too often prevented women from

11 David Bergman’s “Marianne Moore and the Problem of ‘Marriage’” advances a similar argument. 12 This is in keeping with Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ argument that Moore “situates her oeuvre as foreign to gender as normally constructed” (“No Moore of the Same” 10). Essert 51 engaging in public life. In a review of H.D.’s Hymen (published in 1923), Moore observes: “women are regarded as belonging necessarily to either of two classes— that of the intellectual freelance or that of the eternally sleeping beauty, effortless yet effective in the indestructible limestone keep of domesticity” (CPr 82). Moore was also a committed advocate for women’s suffrage: she took a strongly pro-suffrage stance in arguments with college friends, enthusiastically attended a suffrage meeting during her first visit to New York City, and later attended rallies and marches for women’s rights.13

Moore’s choice of a career rather than marriage, and her cultivation of a strongly independent, even androgynous, persona, occasionally becomes the subject of her poetry. Among her early work, “And Shall Life Pass an Old Maid By?” objects to “neat / delineations of the lady,” and suggests that, contrary to stereotypes, unmarried women can be happy (The Poems of Marianne Moore 40). Another early poem, Moore’s anti-marriage “Councell to A Bachelor,” ostensibly reproduces the text from an Elizabethan trencher:

If thou bee younge

Then marie not yett .

If thou bee olde,

Then no wyfe gett,

For young men’s wyves

Will not bee taught,

And olde men’s wyves

Bee good for naught. (BMM 349)

13 Miller’s Questions of Authority (especially 100-4) and Hicok include discussions of Moore’s involvement in and opinions on the suffrage movement. See also SL 30, 61, and 63-65. Essert 52

Moore may be objecting to the implicit misogyny of this statement; but in drawing our attention to it, she is also making an argument against matrimonial union on such terms. Moore’s most forceful statement on marriage and gender relations is certainly her long poem, simply titled “Marriage,” which depicts matrimony as a deeply problematic social practice. She refers to it as “this institution, / perhaps one should say enterprise,” “requiring all one’s criminal ingenuity to avoid” (1-2, 16). The poem suggests that marriage encourages our inherent egoism and is detrimental to both parties; the confluence of “liberty and union” (290) to which Moore alludes at the end of the poem is rarely achieved, though the poem suggests it may be possible.14

According to this poem, women seem to fare worse in marriage: the poem notes that

“experience attests / that men have power and sometimes one is made to feel it”

(195-7), and “‘Men are monopolists … unfit to be the guardians of another person’s happiness” (204-8). Moore chose to be the guardian of her own happiness, and I read this poem as implicitly encouraging others to do the same. And yet, “Marriage” is the most extended example of Moore’s technique of composing by knitting together quotations: she referred to the poem as “a little anthology of statements that took my fancy” (CPr 551). It is therefore an excellent example of the way Moore’s use of quotation can avoid egoism or dogmatic assertion, and direct attention away from the poet or speaker, by offering various (even contradictory) viewpoints on an issue. The remainder of this analysis argues for Moore’s use of animals as a similar strategy of indirection.

***

14 Detailed readings of this poem have been offered by Bergman, White, Leavell (“‘Frightening Disinterestedness’”). Essert 53

In representing animals, Moore’s poems often direct readers’ attention to the question of human/animal relations—to questions of ethical treatment, power imbalances, and the flimsiness of species divisions and of human claims to superiority. In so doing, Moore is also implicitly commenting on essentialist conceptions of gender (another specious distinction) and on male pretensions to superiority. Having examined Moore’s particular variety of feminism, it remains to discuss why animals are integral to her feminist representational strategies.

Robin Schulze has read Moore’s poetry about the domestication of plants and animals as gender commentary, and much of what follows extends her readings.

Of Moore’s “Injudicious Gardening,” Schulze notes that

Moore’s poem to [Robert] Browning, like many of her early poems,

draws a parallel between nature and human nature and concludes that

both are best left undomesticated by cultural forces that inevitably

suppress valuable instincts. Moore’s own rules for good poetry are

filled with references to the nature of the poet that put a premium on

being true to instinct. (“‘Injudicious Gardening’: Marianne Moore,

Gender, and the Hazards of Domestication” 82)

According to the OED, domesticate can mean “To make, or settle as, a member of a household; to cause to be at home; to naturalize” or “to attach to home and its duties”; but it can also mean “To accustom (an animal) to live under the care and near the habitations of man; to tame or bring under control; transf. to civilize”

(“domesticate, v.”). This third definition, and its contrast with definitions one and two, clarifies Moore’s concerns. As discussed below, Moore evinces the greatest concern for creatures who are deprived of fidelity to their instincts, and celebrates Essert 54 creatures and individuals who are free to live instinctually. Moore herself was well

“settled,” and her relative lack of travel suggests she was happiest at home (McCabe,

“‘Let’s Be Alone Together’” 623 and passim); she was acutely aware, however, of the

(mainly male) tendency to tame and control others, be they humans or plants.

Schulze supports her claim that Moore’s poems about nature “often bring gender issues front and center” with some historical context:

Given the widespread conversation throughout the Progressive Era

about issues of human domestication and breeding and the

fascination with the science of eugenics which equated human beings

with stock to be artificially culled and selected, Moore’s reflections on

the power relationships of the garden and the barnyard ultimately, I

believe, raise the issue of ‘injudicious gardening’ to the level of a

cultural problem that affects all living things, human or otherwise,

subject to the domestic sphere. (86)

Thus, the category of domestication illuminates important connections in Moore’s work between women and animals. The fact that women and animals share a vulnerability to domestication at the hands of male-dominated civilization makes animals useful for voicing the plight of women. The ostensible topic of Moore’s

“Sojourn in the Whale” is British oppression of the Irish, but the poem is often read as a scathing critique of male domination of women; ultimately, Moore expresses concerns about both issues. A similar situation occurs in certain representations of animals—it is not that Moore uses animals as a substitute, but rather that they are one half of an analogy. Her concern is for both women and animals. Essert 55

But why not address feminist concerns more directly? I have not found anything in Moore’s prose or letters that reveals her intentions on this matter, but given Moore’s poetics, and her historical situation, some possible motives suggest themselves. Writing about animals rather than about women directly may allow readers to consider the problem from a new angle, offering a fresh perspective on the much-discussed “woman question.” This would be in keeping with the modernist project of defamiliarization (of which Moore’s work offers numerous excellent examples) and with her epistemological concerns (as discussed below). Alternatively, indirection might allow Moore to engage readers who were unsympathetic to the feminist cause: the indirection may permit them to miss her feminist message.

By emphasizing that Moore’s concerns about animals focus on their domestication—and a particular vector of domestication, namely taming—rather than on “animal rights” construed broadly (i.e., in our contemporary sense), it becomes possible to understand why Moore might have related the problem of human/animal relations to the problem of gender relations. Moore’s feminism is primarily concerned with critiquing the domestication of women, which prevented them from being self-actualized individuals who use their talents and abilities to the fullest. In this way, animals become an obvious correlative for women—their shared vulnerability may well have played a role in Moore’s empathetic responses to other creatures. An account of Moore’s particular understanding of the human/animal boundary will illuminate her sense of a structural likeness between women and animals, enabling the readings of animal poems which follow.

*** Essert 56

With respect to the human/animal boundary, Moore’s choice of words in her essays is revealing. It is certainly significant that Moore’s rhetoric sometimes suggests that humans are a species of animal, as when she refers to “the animal part of one” in her review of Sweeney Agonistes, or as in an article on Elizabeth Bishop, when she states: “In trying to reveal the clash of elements that we are—the intellectual, the animal; the blunt, the ingenious; the impudent, the imaginative—one dare not be dogmatic” (CPr 327). Such rhetoric not only suggests that Moore viewed personality as complex or hybrid, but also indicates that Moore often conceived of humans as part of the animal kingdom rather than separate from and superior to it. This line of thought obviously has sweeping implications—significantly, it deprives homo sapiens of its uniqueness by making it one creature among many, however talented or powerful it may be.

It is consistent with such a position that, when considering Moore’s poetry as a whole, one feels as though Moore is attempting to combat idealized notions of humanity by repeatedly pointing to human imperfections and failures. I discussed above how “A Fool, A Foul Thing, A Distressful Lunatic” addresses human ignorance about and linguistic abuse of other species, and how Moore comments in numerous poems on the dangers of the human tendency toward egoism. Several other poems offer similar commentary on humanity’s flaws by pointing to the intensity and destructiveness of racism and other prejudices. In “England,” a poem about nationalism, the speaker observes that “to have misapprehended the matter is to have confessed that one has not looked far enough” (29), and that “the flower and fruit of all that noted superiority— / … / has never been confined to one locality”

(36-9). Likewise, human imperfections and pretensions to knowledge are central to Essert 57

“The Pangolin.” Here, the speaker draws attention to our propensity to accept received narratives and ignore facts, noting that “simpletons thought [the pangolin] a living fable / whom the stone had nourished, whereas ants had done / so” (49-51).

An earlier passage praises the beauty of the natural world and again comments on human imperfection:

Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast

each with a splendor

which man in all his vileness cannot

set aside; each with an excellence! (30-33)

In this passage, man is simultaneously vile and splendid, excellent and on equal footing with beasts.15

Moore’s poetic oeuvre also contains several instances of human/animal metamorphosis, moments that direct our attention toward species distinctions by imaginatively eliding them. In “Efforts of Affection” Moore writes that “Truly as the sun / can rot or mend, love can make one / bestial or make a beast a man” (17-9), and in “The Plumet Basilisk,” she refers to the “wish / to be interchangeably man and fish” (80-81).16 In “O to be a Dragon,” the speaker declares that “If [she], like

Solomon, … / could have [her] wish—” (1-2, ellipsis in original) she would wish to be transformed into that mythical creature. Again, in “Leonardo Da Vinci’s” the speaker observes that after living together harmoniously, Saint Jerome and the lion

“somehow became twinned; / and now, since they behaved and also looked alike, /

15 In keeping with this trend, Moore frequently uses animals as moral exemplars, making clear that we can learn lessons from other species (and thus suggesting our equality with them). This is discussed in greater detail in chapter three. 16 These lines also appear in a much earlier poem, “Ennui,” first published in Tipyn O’Bob in March 1909 (BMM 339). “The Plumet Basilisk” was first published in The Hound and Horn 7 (October- December 1933) (A-Quiver 75-82). Essert 58 their lionship seems officialized” (22-4)—and significantly, Jerome comes to resemble the lion, and not vice versa. Metamorphosis of this kind can be understood as based in likeness or similarity; thus, Moore’s ability to imagine changes of species suggests not only that identity is fluid or mutable, but also that there are more similarities between humans and other creatures than many of us assume.

Throughout her poetry, Moore focuses on similarities and differences between species by her persistent use of zoomorphic or anthropomorphic analogies.

The habit of analogy noted in her correspondence carries over to her poetry, where metaphors and similes are legible as implying similarity. Anthropomorphism is a contentious literary device. Marion W. Copeland’s definition of it as rhetoric which endows nonhuman animals “with qualities assumed to be solely human” suggests that our (potentially erroneous) assumptions about species difference are always involved in our use of such rhetoric (89). Similarly, Lorraine Daston and Gregg

Mitman define anthropomorphism as “the word used to describe the belief that animals are essentially like humans,” before observing that

it is usually applied as a term of reproach, both intellectual and moral.

Originally, the word referred to the attribution of human form to

gods, forbidden by several religions as blasphemous. Something of

the religious taboo still clings to the secular, modern instances of

anthropomorphism, even if it is animals rather than divinities that are

being humanized. (2)

For scientists working with animals, such modes of thinking were long considered an important category error that could lead to grave mistakes. Recent discussions in the field of animal studies have sought to recuperate it as useful and accurate, if Essert 59 employed judiciously;17 nonetheless, some of this taint may remain for those who examine literary representations of other species.

Moore’s use of anthropomorphism appears atypical compared to other uses of such rhetoric. To take two examples with which Moore was especially familiar, the

Fables of La Fontaine provide numerous examples of animals who talk, think, and act as humans would—such animals can be considered stock characters, with our common assumptions about these creatures being mapped on to figures who are otherwise identical to humans. The Wind in the Willows features animals who talk, wear clothes, decorate their homes, drive cars, and observe social niceties, among other behaviours performed only by humans. In contrast, when Moore anthropomorphizes, it is generally because she notices a likeness to human behaviour while observing or reading about an animal. Her fact-based analogies emphasize similarity rather than identity, and so avoid turning animals into humans. Instead, they make readers aware that humans share significant characteristics with creatures who are otherwise very different from us. The intense maternal solicitude she attributes to mockingbirds, ostriches, and paper nautiluses is derived from facts about these animals; the detailed physical descriptions included in the poems emphasize species difference, but the poems also offer evidence of familiar emotional ties. “Peter,” is, as Moore’s note informs readers, a poem about a “Cat owned by Miss Magdalen Hueber and Miss Maria Weniger,” who were the Moores’ neighbours (CPM 268). Peter “can talk, but insolently says nothing” (35), a reminder that humans may not be the only species with access to language. Peter has the same need for self-actualization as most humans—the speaker opines that he should be

17 See, for example, Copeland, Lockwood, and Burghardt and Herzog. Essert 60 able to “choose [his] employment” and that “an animal with claws should have the opportunity to use them” (31,40). Similarly, Moore’s comments in “The Arctic Ox” about the playfulness and intelligence of the muskox—who can “play in water with the children, / learn fast, know their names, / will open gates and invent games” (33-

5)—are, as her headnote indicates, derived from an article in Atlantic Monthly. Rather than pasting human characteristics onto animal bodies, Moore’s views on the human/animal boundary enable her to observe the similarities between species that provide the grounds for her metaphors.

Moore also employs zoomorphism to direct readerly attention to the relationship or boundary between humans and animals. The OED defines zoomorphism as “attribution of animal form or nature to a deity or superhuman being” (“zoomorphism, n.”), but I will be using the term in a more limited sense, to describe a rhetorical device that is the converse of anthropomorphism, that is, the practice of attributing animal characteristics to humans. Examples of brief zoomorphic analogies can be found throughout Moore’s work. In “Picking and

Choosing,” Moore apostrophizes the (typical) critic as a dog, drawing an analogy between canine and critical behaviours:

Small dog, going over the lawn nipping the linen and saying

that you have a badger—remember Xenophon;

only rudimentary behaviour is necessary to put us on the scent.

‘A right good salvo of barks,’ a few strong wrinkles puckering

the skin between the ears, are all we ask. (21-25)

Moore here suggests that a good critic and a good dog share a particular attitude or approach—namely, both serve to help others find what they are seeking (be it a good Essert 61 poem or a badger). Critics who do more than that, as critics often do in lavishing excessive praise or blame, are an over-excited nuisance, much like an exuberant dog.

Moore’s comparison, because it is not intuitive, demands that the reader think about dogs and critics abstractly to grasp their likeness. In “People’s Surroundings,” the speaker imagines the inhabitants of places like Utah and Texas as people who can

“by means of extra sense cells in the skin / … like trout, smell what is coming” (26-

27). Moore’s comparison captures a very particular quality of “those cool sirs,” which might be paraphrased as an acute responsiveness to their environment bordering on suspicion of anything new. In a later poem, “A Carriage from Sweden,” the carriage

(seen in a museum) comes to embody the virtues of an entire country. The speaker imagines, and then zoomorphizes, its former occupant: “And how beautiful, she / with the natural stoop of the / snowy egret” (22-4). Again, this comparison is not an equation—this woman is not, and does not look like, any bird; rather, the analogy helps to capture a particular line or curve of the imagined woman, and is predicated on a clear mental image of egrets. Such comparisons are powerful because they are so thoroughly idiosyncratic: the reader is forced to pause and consider what exactly the vehicle and the tenor (or the two halves of the analogy) might have in common.

Readers are thereby made aware that creatures of different species may share significant characteristics or behaviours.

Moore’s frequent, careful use of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism suggests her belief in a permeable human/animal boundary; if humans share so many characteristics with other creatures, a clear dividing line seems illogical. Such a view paves the way for new feminist readings of Moore, since a challenge to the human/animal hierarchies may also suggest a challenge to the gender hierarchy. A Essert 62 consideration of Moore’s prose comments about animals can sharpen our understanding of her concerns about domestication and instinct. Moore’s letter of

July 7, 1921, to Bryher has often been quoted as evidence of Moore’s reception of her Poems, published without her consent by Bryher, H.D., and Robert McAlmon.

But most of this letter is concerned with other matters, including Moore’s elaborate account of a recent trip to the Bronx zoo. Moore’s delight is evident in the length and detail of her description, and in statements such as “I also saw a mongoose, it has always been the ambition of my life to see one” or “we saw a majestic giraffe”

(SL 166, 167). This enthusiasm aside, she also notes the animals’ distress: she observes that the albino snake recently acquired by the zoo “has to be kept in the office as it was nervous when put on exhibition and wouldn’t eat”; similarly, she notes that a blue bird of paradise “kept uttering piercing cries from time to time and looking in a tense way toward the upper corners of the cage; I am afraid it will never get used to being caged” (SL 166, 167). Apparently, such concerns were insufficient to hamper her enjoyment. For Moore, this confinement of the animals may have been justified by the apparent contentment of most of the zoo’s inhabitants. This suggests that there was an important distinction for Moore between removing an animal from its natural habitat (sometimes, but not always, bad) and taming other creatures, which (as I discussed above) appears to be her primary concern.

A 1955 article titled “What There Is to See at the Zoo” helps to further clarify Moore’s position on the confinement of animals in zoos. In it, Moore notes a number of similarities between humans and various animals, the most surprising of which is the fact that many creatures seem to share our need for privacy. The article concludes as follows: Essert 63

We are the guests of science when we enter a zoo: and, in accepting

privileges, we incur obligations. Animals are masters of earth, air and

water, brought from their natural surroundings to benefit us. It is

short-sighted, as well as ungrateful, to frighten them or to feed them

if we are told that feeding will harm them. If we stop to think, we will

always respect chains, gates, wires or barriers of any kind that are

installed to protect the animals and to keep the zoo a museum of

living marvels for our pleasure and instruction. (CPr 475)

Moore’s precise rhetoric here is revealing. Her high regard for science is indicated by the fact that it is a “privilege” to be “guests of science,” and that the “instruction” gleaned from visiting the zoo, as well as our pleasure, appears to justify the confinement of these animals. Moore’s intense respect for the animals themselves is indicated by the fact that they are “masters” and “marvels”; one must be grateful to them for their presence which so “benefit[s] us,” and one must show that gratitude by protecting, and not harming or frightening, these creatures. Moore appears to be comfortable with the confinement of these animals, on the condition that they are treated well in their new homes.

Moore’s comments on other animal entertainments are consistent with this conclusion. In a “Comment” for The Dial, Moore describes a recent trip to the circus and opines: “Rashness and regality may not be teaching us anything; animals should not be taken from their proper surroundings, and in staging an act the bad taste of patrons should not be deferred to; but apparently this medicinally mingled feast of sweet and bitter is not poisonous; it is not all aconite” (CPr 220). It is possible that the circus animals are “teaching us,” and she cannot deny her pleasure in watching Essert 64 them, but Moore’s comment suggests that does not entirely justify the intense taming and training of animals that circus acts demand. Likewise, in an article for Close Up,

Moore praises Dr. R.L. Ditmars’ Strange Animals I Have Known because “the activity of the creatures is recorded under characteristic conditions, not under the stimulus of excitement or at temperatures inimical to them.” And yet, Moore’s keen eye notices emotions in the animals that others might miss: “It might be added, however, that photography, like the lie detector of the criminal court, reveals agitation which the eye fails to see—especially evident in Dr. Ditmars’ horned toads” (CPr 307-8). In other words, Moore is concerned that her enjoyment and edification not come at the cost of too much stress to the animals—thus evincing her intense respect for other creatures. And yet, her appreciation of such educational entertainments, which involve the confinement and commodification of animals, is a useful reminder that

Moore was not a post-humanist or animal rights advocate avant-la-lettre. By placing her views in a historical context which can be represented metonymically by the figure of the hunter/conservationist (Theodore Roosevelt being a famous contemporaneous example), her concerns about the emotional lives of these animals become legible as progressive for her era; they suggest an interest in the human/animal boundary, and can easily be related to her feminist concerns.

***

An early Moore poem, “Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight,”18 suggests an alliance between women and animals. Here, the challenges faced by the female artist are represented by her choice of a mode of transportation: when

“Locomotion arose / in the shape of an elephant; she clambered up and chose / to

18 I quote this poem and “To A Steam Roller” as they appeared (on their first presentation) in The Egoist 10.2 (October 1, 1915) (BMM 190). Essert 65 travel laboriously” (5-8). In the logic of this poem, her other option was a magic carpet; it being unavailable, she took what was there, opting for “substance” rather than “semblance” (12, 10). Such pragmatism will allow her to “outdistance calamity”

(3). The poem’s final lines, which initially appear to be a description of the elephant, may also be read as a description of the successful female artist, or perhaps of women in general: “tough-grained animals as have outstripped man’s whim to suppose / them ephemera” with an “ability to endure blows” (14-8). In its first publication in The Egoist, and in Observations, this poem was preceded by “To A Steam

Roller,” which reinforces these messages. It derides that titular machine for enforcing obedience to a norm: “You crush all the particles down / into close conformity, and then walk back and / forth on them” (3-5). This steamroller appears to be an allegory for those who seek to destroy individuality, and illustrates in another way the challenges faced by the female artist in “Diligence.” In Observations, “Diligence” is followed by “To A Snail,” in which Moore uses that animal to model the virtues she strives for in her poetry—another alliance between poet and animal, and another metapoetic statement made by way of animal imagery.

Animal tropes are also integral to “Silence” and “Sojourn in the Whale,” two poems that are consistently read as trenchant gender commentaries,19 and which appeared together as the final poems of Moore’s Selected Poems (1935). Animals appear only in the title of the latter: Jonah’s struggle in the belly of the whale is an implicit metaphor for the struggles of the Irish and women. In “Silence,” the father’s description of “superior people” (2) includes the declaration that they are “Self- reliant like the cat— / that takes its prey to privacy, / the mouse’s limp tail hanging

19 For example, Miller (Questions of Authority), Elizabeth Gregory (“‘Silence’ and Restraint”), Heuving, and many of the essays collected in Critics and Poets on Marianne Moore (ed. Leavell et al.). Essert 66 like a shoelace from its mouth—” (5-7). The simile comparing humans to felines may be read as problematizing the human/animal hierarchy by highlighting a similarity, thereby implicitly calling other hierarchies (e.g., man/woman) into question. Further evidence of the overlap of gender and animals in Moore’s work can be found in

“Peter,” Moore’s poem about her neighbour’s cat. Hicok notes that this feline

“revels in his own individuality and sensuality,” and that “The poem ends with a final celebration of Peter’s fierce independence” (54). Moreover, she argues that

Moore’s choice of words [in “Peter”] participates in the feminist

discourse that she heard at Bryn Mawr. It is “human” to allow

oneself to be “caged” by a “domestic” life, and it is distinctly

“unprofitable” for women, as Moore argued in many letters home to

her family. But it is not the life for Peter. … What is significant for

Peter is that, “It / is permissible to choose one’s employment,” not

something that could be said of most women of the period. (54)

Similarly, both Hicok and Miller have offered extended readings of Moore’s “Black

Earth” as a poem addressing the challenges of female selfhood.20

I argued, above, that some of Moore’s poems address gender issues indirectly by discussing human domestication of other species. In addition to “The Buffalo” and “To a Prize Bird,” both discussed by Schulze, “Pigeons” provides another significant example of an animal poem with an implied feminist message.21 “Pigeons” is in many ways very similar to “The Buffalo,” which Moore published a year

20 See Hicok 50-53, and Miller, Questions of Authority 115-7 and 141-6. This poem appears to be written from the point of view of an elephant. 21 I quote from this poem as it appears in A-Quiver with Significance 101-5. Schulze reads “The Buffalo” in “Marianne Moore's ‘Imperious Ox, Imperial Dish’,” and reads “To A Prize Bird” in “‘Injudicious Gardening’.” Essert 67 earlier.22 In both poems, Moore examines numerous varieties of a species, focusing on the ways in which human intervention (i.e., domestication and breeding) has led to variation, and often degradation, of that species. Moore may have made an uncharacteristic factual error in the “The Buffalo,” as the poem appears to idealize the Indian Buffalo as a less-domesticated relative of the many varieties of western cattle descended from the wild Aurochs—it is, in fact, a heavily-domesticated separate species.23 Nonetheless, the poem suggests that human domestication of oxen has created worse creatures, not better ones, as is abundantly clear in its description of the Aurochs’ descendants as “decreased / to Siamese-cat- / Brown

Swiss size” (17-9). The poem even goes so far as to suggest that the (apparently less- domesticated) buffalo “has met / human notions best” (24-5). Similarly, “Pigeons” begins with the observation that “the pigeon family is a ramifying one” (2-3). After mentioning some pigeon varieties and individual birds, it ends with a reference to

“the Gentleman of the / Feather Club”—making it abundantly clear who is responsible for the pigeon’s ramifying (119-20). The reader is reminded that humans not only invent new species, but also destroy existing ones: the poem offers two flightless relatives of the pigeon, the Dodo and the Rodrigues Solitaire, as examples, before trenchantly noting that “A new pigeon cannot compensate, but we have / it”

(94-5). The opening section of the poem focuses on the frequent heroism of particular pigeons, suggesting that, in treating them as possessions or objects (which

22 In “Survival of the Queerly Fit,” Susan McCabe reads the poem in the context of Moore’s interest in Darwin. 23 Alternatively, Moore may be making a point about our willingness to ignore or rationalize the consequences of our behaviour. Essert 68 can be bred to suit human needs or fancies), humans are not giving these creatures enough respect. 24

Two of Moore’s most famous poems, “The Pangolin,” and “The Jerboa,” introduce readers to rare wild animals; in doing so, Moore places a premium on wildness and freedom and points implicitly to the threat of domestication. Moreover, both poems associate the freedom of these animals with the freedom of human individuals, linking them as (potential or actual) victims of domestication. The opening gambit of “The Pangolin,” describing it as “another armored animal,” is often read as a self-reflexive reference to Moore’s choice of poetic subject;25 he is also described as a “miniature artist engineer” (5), further suggesting the alliance between poet and subject. As discussed above, this poem has much to say about human imperfection and ignorance. The pangolin is an “impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear,” but of whom we should hear more (7). What we do know about him is factually incorrect: the speaker observes that “simpletons thought

[the pangolin] a living fable / whom the stone had nourished, whereas ants had done

/ so” (49-51). Thus, the poem impresses upon its reader the necessity of avoiding assumptions about other creatures, and of the need for accurate facts rather than hearsay. The casual observer may think that this creature’s “Armor seems extra” but it is not, because he is “a true ant-eater, / not cockroach-eater,” and catching ants is dangerous business (8, 13-4). An earlier version of this poem notes that the pangolin

“is neither a prisoner / nor a god” (100-1), pointing to the freedom (and humility)

24 Moore’s prose piece “My Crow Pluto—a Fantasy” is also worth considering with respect to the domestication of animals; despite their harmonious cohabitation, the speaker ultimately decides she has an obligation to let the crow fly free (CPr 556-7) 25 See, for example, Molesworth, Struthers, and Quinn (in Willis, ed.). Essert 69 enjoyed by this creature.26 With this freedom comes perfect adaptability to his surroundings; amongst other features, the speaker praises its tail: “graceful tool, as prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped like / the elephant’s trunk with special skin”

(46-7). It is this fitness for its tasks, perhaps more than anything else, which makes the pangolin so graceful; and thus Moore makes an implicit comment about the need for creatures to remain untamed. The poem’s extended exploration of the nature of humanity, and its deliberate confusion of referent in the penultimate stanza, makes clear that Moore’s comments about other species have implications for humans.

Similarly, “The Jerboa” contrasts the greediness of Egyptians and Romans with the enforced parsimony of that desert rodent who is “not famous, that / lives without water, has / happiness” (92-4). The rodent’s freedom is again emphasized in a passage which links it to oppressed African-Americans:

Africanus meant

the conqueror sent

from Rome. It should mean the

untouched: the sand-brown jumping rat—free-born; and

the blacks, that choice race with an elegance

ignored by one’s ignorance (103-8)

Freedom, then, is closely tied to happiness, and it is ignorant and unjust to deprive others (whether human or animal) of their freedom. Again, the poem emphasizes this animal’s harmonious relationship with its surroundings, as when the speaker notes that “It / honors the sand by assuming its color” (141-42). The poem’s final stanza implies that this beautiful and free creature, whose rapid movements are

26 This is excerpted from the version of the poem that appeared in The Pangolin and Other Verse (Brendin, 1936), as reprinted in A-Quiver 27-31. Essert 70 suggested by the poem’s form as well as its content, is fit subject for art— perhaps the highest praise an artist like Moore can bestow.

Indeed, Moore’s strongest feminist message in her poems about animals may be conveyed through her selection of rare creatures. In bringing exotic animals to our attention, and in lavishing her attention on them, Moore makes clear that such previously-unknown creatures are worthy and fit subjects for art. She thereby demands that readers revisit assumptions about how, why, and to what societies assign value, in ways that are beneficial to undervalued people—including, and perhaps especially, women. Moore’s tendency to redirect readers’ attention, and thereby attempt change their values, finds a contemporary explication in Virginia

Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” (1919). Woolf notes that, for the modern novelist, “the accent falls a little differently; the emphasis is on something hitherto ignored” (192); moreover, she declares, “Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small” (190). Such a statement has obvious feminist implications: Woolf would bring those apparently insignificant details, often associated with feminine life, into the sphere of literature.

She thereby challenges the binary separation of life into “masculine” and “feminine” spheres, which leads to the devaluation of the feminine.

Similarly, Moore places emphasis on what was “hitherto ignored,” prompting questions about what merits cultural attention. “The Frigate Pelican” and “The Paper

Nautilus” are further examples of poems in which unfamiliar animals are the focus of

Moore’s attention, though these poems also have other messages for their readers

(about modern art and motherhood). “The Plumet Basilisk” introduces readers to a bewildering variety of rare lizards, while poems like “Pigeons” and “Snakes, Essert 71

Mongooses, Snake-Charmers, and the Like” seek to recuperate unpopular creatures.

A similar movement occurs in “The Arctic Ox (or Goat)” and “The Wood-Weasel,” in which the muskox and the skunk are re-named as part of an attempt to shift our opinion of them. In the following section, I will examine how the form of Moore’s poems reinforces the messages offered by their themes.

***

If Moore challenges what western culture generally attends to or values, her formal choices suggest that she is also concerned to shift how we look at and know other creatures. Teaching by example, Moore’s poetic methods of representing animals suggest ways of engaging with others without dominating or domesticating them. Her use of analogies and quotation, her syllabic form, and her attention to surfaces of animals, each make significant contributions to her critique of power and domestication.

Moore’s habit of analogy has important epistemological implications, which can be clearly linked to her feminist beliefs. As Miller observes in her reading of

“Peter,” Moore often describes a creature by surrounding it with a variety of analogies:

‘Peter,’ like most of Moore’s poems, contains detailed information

about the animal under observation, but this information is

interwoven with similes and metaphors linking the animal to several

others. … In its very nature, as Moore sees it, the cat resembles a

whole menagerie of animals in addition to a plant and a fruit. To be

human is to resemble several animals and some plants. To live

honestly is to use all characteristics one can imagine oneself as having Essert 72

in analogy to other things or beings in the world, not to find in

oneself some single essence. (Cultures 77)

Moore’s frequent use of analogies—especially, of many analogies to describe one object or animal—is not simply a quirk of her pattern of thought, but also a calculated technique that offers an implicit comment about what it means to be a living being. The identity of individuals cannot be easily described, in part because it is not unified or stable: one’s personality is, rather, a highly mutable bundle of diverse characteristics, always in the process of becoming something else. Miller relates this to the prevailing discourse of gender essentialism: by challenging ideas of identity as fixed and coherent, Moore also challenges the discourse which would reduce all women to representatives of easily-defined, “natural” categories. Schulze’s work, as discussed above, reminds us that such reductions may also be understood as the kind of domestication or taming which Moore rejects.

A description by way of rapidly-shifting analogies makes readers conscious of the difficulties of capturing the likeness of a creature, and thereby suggests the limits to our knowledge of them; to “master” them epistemologically would be to capitulate to the same impulse to capture and control that drives humans to dominate other creatures. Examples of multiple analogies, which increase the complexity of the animal and so the difficulty of envisioning or comprehending it, appear throughout Moore’s work. In “The Wood-Weasel,” the familiar skunk is defamiliarized (as part of the poem’s attempt at its recuperation) when it is described as wearing “sylvan black and white chipmunk / regalia” (3-4). Its coat is also described as “glistening / goat fur,” “chieftain’s coat of Chilcat cloth,” and as “otter skin” (5-6, 10, 13). The speaker of “He ‘Digesteth Harde Yron’” describes the Essert 73 ostrich by noting that “he is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard / as a hoof; the leopard is not more suspicious” (13-5) and by referring to it as “he whose comic duckling head on its / great neck revolves with compass-needle nervousness” (24-5).

These examples also remind us that, though Moore may favour comparisons to other creatures, there are many instances where animals are also described by comparison to objects or machines, and also to plants, trees, or flowers. The clearest instances of the latter are “Apparition of Splendor,” where the porcupine is all but lost beneath extended comparisons to rhinoceroses and pine trees, and “Rigorists,” in which the reindeer have “a neck like edelweiss or / lion’s foot—leontopodium more / exactly’”

(17-9).27 Victoria Bazin notes that Moore’s animals are frequently “machine-like creatures” (Marianne Moore 24), and this blurring between human and machine has (as

Donna Haraway observes) powerful consequences.28 When one foundational barrier is challenged (man/machine, human/animal, animate/inanimate), all others are implicitly interrogated as well—including that between men and women. Thus,

Moore’s analogic procedure not only implies a certain understanding of identity, but also blurs boundaries so as to suggest that entities assumed to be distinct are actually very much alike.

Randy Malamud has paid particular attention to the ethical implications of

Moore’s depictions of animals, and like Victoria Bazin and Bonnie Costello, reads

Moore’s poetry as avoiding certainty and possession. As he reads them,

Moore’s animals appear dazzling, overwhelming, enigmatic,

somewhat unknowable—or knowable only with considerable

27 Interestingly, this fussing over proper Latin names—which implies classification and control— raises some doubts about the use of animals that the poem at first appears to praise. 28 See my discussion of Haraway’s work in the introduction. Essert 74

difficulty, by the observer committed to intense examination of these

creatures. … This stance epitomizes, more broadly, an ideal

perceptual ethos towards real animals as they come into our cognitive

consciousness and as their lives intersect with ours. (Imaginary

Possessions 94)

The relationship between representation and behaviour is thematized in “A

Jellyfish.” The subject is “visible, invisible, / a fluctuating charm” (1-2): hard to see clearly, impossible to pin down, like many of Moore’s animals. As a result, by the end of the poem “You abandon your intent” to catch it (8)—that is, the reader accepts ambiguity, and by extension, the naturalist will agree to leave animals in their natural environments. Interestingly, this poem is one of a group of poems that Moore published in periodicals very early in her career, and then revised for inclusion in much later collections.29 Moore’s “The Fish” offers a similar message about looking and domination: it represents an underwater creature’s habitat rather than the creature itself, and offers a kind of “fish-eye view” which shifts focus rapidly. 30

Bazin argues that by devoting attention to form and surfaces, Moore develops an oppositional aesthetic which relinquishes the acquisitive grasp so common in western culture—the poet avoids attempting to conquer or consume an object or creature by needing to fully know or fully represent it. In Bazin’s reading,

Moore’s “focus becomes the texture of the object rather than its essence or content.

There is no attempt to capture it fully in representational terms, no sense that art can somehow replace the object world through precise reproductions. Moore’s response

29 Moore’s Complete Poems does not indicate that these poems are early works; this omission suggests that she valued the early statement as an accurate representation of her later views. 30 My thinking on this issue was also informed by the fourth and sixth chapters of Victoria Bazin’s Marianne Moore and the Cultures of Modernity. Essert 75 then is to indulge in surface effects” (Marianne Moore 104). By paying attention to surfaces, Moore reminds her reader that surfaces and appearances are all we have access to, and that they conceal a complicated content (complicated because multiple and mutable, rather than essential). It is impossible to know everything, and our ignorance should make us wary of presumptions. Moore’s attention to surfaces can be seen in nearly all of her poems about animals, but is especially notable in the animal poems from 1932-6. To consider two extended and particularly clear examples, the speaker in “Bird-Witted” describes baby birds this way:

Standing in the shade till they have dressed

their thickly-filamented, pale

pussy-willow-surfaced

coats, they spread tail

and wings, showing one by one,

the modest

white stripe lengthwise, on the

tail and crosswise

underneath the wing (21-29)

This lavishly detailed description of the appearance of the baby mockingbirds suggests at once that they merit careful attention, and that knowledge of them is limited to what is externally observable. At the end of the poem the speaker permits herself some slight inferences about the mother bird’s emotional response to the cat, but they are based in their observable behaviour. Similarly, the first published version of “The Jerboa” devotes four stanzas (twenty-five lines) to an almost scientifically precise description of that desert rodent (A-Quiver 64-70). This loving detail is a Essert 76 contrast to the imprecise cone (which could be a fir cone or pine cone, and so is neither) which is the focus of the poem’s first stanza, and which represents art in the service of exploitative power. The analogies discussed above also constitute examples of this technique, focused as they are on representing the appearance of the creatures in question.

Moore’s technique of quotation also contributes to the epistemological message implicit in her work, serving as another device to distance the reader from the subjects of her poems by complicating or multiplying the perspective. As critics consistently note, a defining feature of Moore’s extensive use of quotation is the heterogeneity of her source texts.31 Margaret Holley observes that in Moore’s polyphonic poems “The singular voice of the poet… blends almost indistinguishably with other little known or anonymous voices” (Poetry of Marianne Moore 141). As discussed above, Moore impresses upon her readers that her voice is merely one among many—her authority derives from her ability to weave texts together, rather than from any definitive proclamations. There is, then, a democratic, inclusive impulse at work in Moore’s use of quotations, which is in keeping with her inclusive choice of subject matter: rare animals, baseball, “‘business documents and / school- books’” (“Poetry” 17-8). Gregory provides a clear summary of how Moore’s principles of selection can be related to the challenge to authority that I have discussed throughout this chapter:

Moore borrows most often from pointedly unvaluable work,

including what Marie Borroff calls ‘promotional prose’[…] and such

little regarded sources as conversations overheard, park monuments,

31 In addition to Holley and Gregory, see Miller (Questions of Authority), Steinman, and Diepeveen. Essert 77

and books of the sort we generally consider ‘secondary material,’ such

as biographies, religious commentaries, and natural-history texts. […]

Moore emphasizes the secondary qua secondary, the pointedly

unauthoritative. (Quotation 129)

Thus, much as Moore’s rare animals or her careful attention to detail prompts us to consider what is valued and why, her choice of texts demands a similar reassessment.

Why are some texts “secondary” and “ephemeral,” and so less worthy? By including newspapers, spoken comments, or other ephemera in her poems, Moore rescues them from the dustbin and preserves them, adding value to that which is usually not valued (Bazin Marianne Moore 98). Gregory emphasizes the implications of Moore’s choices for addressing gender hierarchies when she observes that “the presence of quotations from ‘secondary’ sources in the middle of the poem (a site associated with high value) suggests the possibility that things considered secondary (her own feminine voice among them) might be reassessed” (132). This message is also suggested by Moore’s inclusion of both “authoritative” and “secondary” sources in a single poem, as in “Novices” which admits to borrowing from the Expositor’s Bible and the Decameron as well as from the Illustrated London News. Moore’s use of quotation for the purposes of social critique is highlighted by Jennifer K. Ladino’s reading of “An Octopus,” which, like Gregory’s work, pays careful attention to the discrepancy in meaning between the source text and Moore’s use of it.

Finally, Moore’s syllabic form also has implicit lessons for her readers, which reinforce the messages offered by the content of her poems. The first lesson has to do with Moore’s compositional process, particularly with the idea of the model stanza: Moore crafts a new form for each poem, based on how she arranges her Essert 78 phrases for the first stanza she composes (which may not be the first stanza of the poem). The form of the poem emerges organically, and is unique, and presumably uniquely suited, to its subject. Just as Moore’s jerboa “honors the sand by assuming its color” (142), Moore honors her subject by crafting a form especially for it: the form of “The Jerboa,” for example, with its relatively short lines, may mimic the rapid hopping motions of that creature. The correlation is rarely so directly representational, but the point remains that no two poems have an identical form or pattern. The second implication of Moore’s syllabics has to do with the reading process they demand. Because syllabics lead to the frequent use of enjambment, and to the division of phrases, and even words, by line breaks, normal reading habits are disrupted, and the reader is prompted to proceed slowly and cautiously. The disjunction between our ears and our eyes reinforces this necessity—our ears may not know that the phrase is broken up, but our eyes tell us it is. Stanza breaks may also cause us to pause at awkward moments, placing emphasis where there would otherwise be none. These formal features force the reader to proceed carefully: he must slow down and pay attention. Moore’s acts of attention are intended to produce readerly acts of attention, a potent antidote to modern distraction.

I have argued that Moore’s work interrogates, and even blurs, the boundaries between humans and animals, making an argument against human superiority that is also an implicit argument against gender inequality. Moore’s polyvocality is a potent reminder of the complexity of personhood, and is one of several techniques by which she conveys her ethics. For Moore, our opinions are (or should be) complex, and claims to complete understanding (of a person or an animal) evince a lack of humility. Though her androgynous dress and her family correspondence suggest Essert 79 gender bending, I find no evidence in her poetry that she was dissatisfied with binary notions of gender and sexuality.32 Instead, she seems to have been interested in challenging hierarchies, or in advocating for greater gender equality. H.D.’s work, in contrast, consistently and emphatically represents identity as hybrid, mutable, and dynamic. For H.D., a stable or strongly coherent self enables rigidly binary conceptions of gender and sexuality, which in their turn limit the possibilities for personhood by demanding that it conform to one or the other category. A mutable and dynamic self makes it difficult to clearly or permanently categorize an individual.

This promotes freedom from social constraints, which H.D. considered an important condition for creativity. As we will see, H.D. employs animal imagery in her representations of identity as hybrid and dynamic, and uses bird imagery to represent the capacity for transcendence of existing gender norms.

II. H.D.: Rejecting Binaries, Imagining Likeness

All three of the early novels of H.D.’s Madrigal cycle—Asphodel, HERmione, and Paint it Today—contain allusions to or quotations from Algernon Charles

Swinburne’s “Itylus.” These allusions cast the H.D. and Francis Gregg figures as nightingale and swallow, and allow H.D. to represent lesbian desire as “sister love.”

Swinburne’s poem relies on the myth of sisters Procne and Philomela, according to which Procne’s husband (Tereus) rapes Philomela and cuts out her tongue to ensure her silence; Philomela is able (by weaving a tapestry) to send a message to her sister, and Procne takes revenge on Tereus by feeding him their son, Itys (or Itylus). As the sisters flee from the angry Tereus, the gods transform them into birds to assist their

32 For me, Moore’s flirtations with androgyny have more to do with a desire for gender equality than with any dissatisfaction with binary notions of gender. Other accounts—most recently, Susan McCabe’s articles on Moore—suggest quite the opposite. Essert 80 escape: Procne is turned into a nightingale and Philomela into a swallow.33 As a result of this myth, western culture has generally heard the nightingale’s song as a lament, and Swinburne’s poem depends on this association, as its speaker, the nightingale, sings a lament for her sister swallow.34 The association of this myth with lesbian desire has been addressed by Cassandra Laity;35 here, I would like to emphasize the themes of metamorphosis and escape embedded in this myth. This is certainly not the only Greco-Roman story that represents metamorphosis as enabling escape—the myth of Daphne and Apollo offers another example—and such myths suggest that transformation may be an effective liberatory strategy.

The remainder of this chapter considers the role played by animal imagery in

H.D.’s career-long challenge to prevailing ideas of the feminine. As a writer, she consistently interrogated patriarchal norms and narratives. I argue that H.D.’s early texts represent identity as fluid, mutable, and multifaceted, in order to challenge the essentialist notions of gender identity prevalent during her formative years. H.D. rejected the idea that an individual’s identity was unified, coherent and stable, because this paradigm enables notions of gender as binary: a static self makes clearly- defined personhood possible. Traditional beliefs in “masculinity and femininity as mutually exclusive congenital essences,” which were reinforced in the early twentieth century by “true-sex” theories of sexology (Helt 83), dictated that the uniqueness of all persons was ultimately reducible to a known quantity, or to one side of a binary

33 In later Greek sources, such as Ovid, Hyginus, and the Bibliotheca, this is reversed (“Philomela (Princess of Athens)”). 34 Swinburne does not appear to associate the swallow with silence (a common inaccuracy), but does seem to presume (erroneously) that the swallow is migratory while the nightingale is not. 35 See Laity’s introduction to Paint it Today, her essay “H.D. and A.C. Swinburne: Decadence and Modernist Women’s Writing” or her book, H.D. and the Victorian Fin de Siècle. Essert 81 opposition.36 I argue that by blurring the differences between humans and animals— through zoomorphic comparisons or representations of interspecies community—

H.D. furthers the challenge to the male/female hierarchy that is explicit throughout her work. Her animal imagery helps to represent identity as mutable and hybrid, and therefore irreducible to “man-is-man…woman-is-woman” (H.D. Bid 136); her bird imagery in particular represents the plight of women under patriarchy, and figures the dream of escape or transcendence. I also argue that, in her later work, in which

H.D. seeks primarily to valorize the feminine, animals are used more symbolically; it is as though a clearer definition of “woman” also demanded clearly-defined animals.

***

H.D.’s early prose contains many instances where her female characters chafe or rail against gendered norms that prevent them from being fully self-actualized.37 In

Asphodel, as Hermione meditates on her wartime traumas (which included a miscarriage), she observes that what is permissible for the male artist is impermissible for women with similar aspirations:

You can’t say this… but they will say O she was a coward, a woman

who refused her womanhood. No, she hadn’t. But take a man with a

flaming mind and ask him to do this. Ask him to sit in a dark cellar

and no books… but you mustn’t. You can’t. Women can’t speak and

clever women don’t have children. So if a clever woman does speak,

36 Of course, such reductive thinking also had implications for race, and much scholarly work has investigated the rise of eugenics in the twentieth century, and modernist responses to it. As mentioned above, Miller and Schulze also comment on essentialist notions of gender in the context of their work on Moore. 37 For the sake of concision, I focus here on the novels of the Madrigal cycle, but ample evidence of these trends can also be found in the other early prose (both the novels and the shorter texts). In an attempt to avoid heavily biographical readings, and following Helt’s suggestion that these texts are generically closer to kunstlerroman than roman à clef, I have tended to use the broader categories of “text” and “novel” in my analysis. Essert 82

she must be mad. She is mad. She wouldn’t have had a baby, if she

hadn’t been. (113)

In Hermione’s experience, society recognizes the needs and abilities of men, while reducing women to producers of babies and rejecting the possibility that they may also produce important poetry. Shortly after this, Hermione recalls that “People had been asking her (just before the war) for poems, had written saying her things had power, individuality, genius. Darrington had done this” (114). These comments indicate Hermione’s feeling that male support was necessary for her entrance into the poetic community, and imply that wartime and biological imperatives have undone what progress she had made.

Similarly, in Paint it Today, Midget dreams of explaining to her mother that she feels she is “exactly ten years behind in my development, because I should have gone away from home when I was fifteen, into a shop; hats, dressmakers, assistant, anything, anything’” (40). What she is finally able to say to her mother is much less articulate, but Midget’s prepared speech suggests that she believes the codes of propriety for women of her class have prevented her from achieving independence and self-sufficiency. At the conclusion of that chapter, the narrator’s comments suggest that rigid gender expectations are the root of Midget’s problems: “She was defeated. She was not Orestes. She was a girl. Yet she was not Electra, the sister, who waited, though her heart was breaking to help Orestes. She was not Electra. She was not Orestes. Had she been one or the other, she would have won” (44). The struggle against gendered expectations in the preceding passage (and indeed, throughout the novel) makes clear that such conformity would be a very hollow victory, demanding that she be content with too little. H.D.’s texts continually challenge rigidly binary Essert 83 conceptions of gender, observing the ways they deprive individuals of the ability to be free and fully self-actualized.

H.D.’s representations of her analysis with Freud suggest that the concern with dyadic and hierarchical conceptions of gender evinced in her texts has its roots in personal experience. Freud’s diagnosis of H.D. as “bisexual” seems to have provided her with a great deal of psychological relief. She reports to Bryher: “I have gone terribly deep with papa [Freud]. He says, ‘you had two things to hide, one that you were a girl, the other that you were a boy.’ It appears that I am that all-but extinct phenomena, the perfect bi -. Well, this is terribly exciting” (Friedman

Analyzing Freud 497). This letter also makes clear that H.D. found it difficult to perform traditional femininity: “I can keep up being a ‘woman,’ even a ‘nice woman’ for about two hours, then I get terror of claustrophobia, this is no joke—and have to get to an intellectual retreat, book or pages—to prove I am man. Then I prove back again” (Friedman Analyzing Freud 498). These comments suggest that Freud’s vocabulary offered her a powerful space outside of the gender binary, and enabled her to understand gender as performed or constructed. H.D. elaborates on these issues in her next full letter to Bryher, “I have tried to be man, or woman, but I have to be both. … I have to be perfect (in balance), I get that in writing … O, I am so very grateful and happy” (Friedman Analyzing Freud 503). Such biographical evidence supports the claim that, at this point in her career, H.D. found comfort and liberty in the space between binary terms, or (to put it otherwise) in rejecting them in favour of a transcendent third option.38

38 And yet, as Friedman makes clear in her notes to Analyzing Freud, Freud saw homosexuality and bisexuality as evidence of arrested development. He believed that all human beings are psychologically bisexual, but normal development involved repressing the homosexual “object choice”; he also Essert 84

Brenda Sue Helt’s “The Work of Bisexuality in Modernist Women’s Writing” offers a persuasive argument for bisexuality as a liberating epistemology for H.D.

(and for other contemporary women writers). Helt traces the rise of sexology and the debate between “true-sex” and “third-sex” sexologists, providing a thorough account of the socio-historic circumstances that led to the dominance of true-sex theories, which reinforced limiting, dyadic notions of gender and desire. In her chapter on

H.D., Helt focuses on Paint it Today to argue for a bisexual, rather than lesbian, reading of that text and of H.D.’s work as a whole; she concludes that “In a cultural milieu increasingly preoccupied with ‘scientific’ delineating in order to categorize, to pin down, to control, sexual bisexuality seems to offer H.D. an epistemological space as yet untrammeled by either science or male-dominated sexual aesthetics” (248). In her reading, the psyches and desires of H.D.’s protagonists are “distinctively female and idiosyncratically unknowable, uncertain, insatiable, and in a constant state of flux” (248). In short, Helt suggests that the “third sex” of bisexuality was crucial for

H.D. because it suggested a path toward transcendence of the gender binary; it challenges that binary directly by creating a category of persons who are outside or beyond it.

In her chapter on “H.D. and the Vorticist Body,” Miranda Hickman offers a reading of Nights which argues that its protagonist longs

to escape from her everyday corporeal identity … into an alternative

state of ideal embodiment figured by geometry. Natalia’s persistent

geometric fantasies mark her continual effort to transmute her

associated same-sex love with self-love or narcissism. What was liberating for H.D. was a dangerous symptom for the analyst. Friedman also provides a thorough account of H.D.’s complex response to her analysis. Essert 85

ordinary bodily state into a transcendent one, and thereby to surpass

several different boundaries—the boundaries of her body,

conventional sexual practice, conventional womanhood, even

conventional humanity—en route to visionary consciousness.

(Geometry of Modernism 134)

The implications of H.D.’s representation of the geometric, which Hickman also observes in several of H.D.’s other texts, are clear and far-reaching. The dream of a refined or rarefied geometric body amounts to a “rejection of the fleshly, conventionally womanly body and the traditional notion of the maternal” (Hickman

Geometry of Modernism 136); but in addition to challenging the male/female binary,

H.D.’s rhetoric implicitly rejects the fundamental dichotomies of human/non-human and mind/body that underwrite it. Opening up a space between these categories, or shifting rapidly or fluidly between them, is an essential part of H.D.’s strategy for transcending the limits they impose. I argue that H.D.’s representations of animals serve a similar liberating function, as they imply a re-visioning of established dyads.

The work of Hickman and Helt can be situated within the field of H.D. criticism, much of which has investigated the way H.D.’s work challenged established norms and modes of perception. Annette Debo has also addressed these issues, from two distinct directions. Focusing on geography or location, Debo has argued that

H.D. understood identity as shaped by the environments that a person inhabits

(H.D.’s formative locales being coastal Maine, the Jersey shore, and Pennsylvania)

(“American Landscape”). Elsewhere, focusing on race, Debo has argued that H.D. sought to combat racism in her texts by representing “whiteness” as heterogeneous rather than monolithic (in HERmione), and by attempting (in “Two Americans”) to Essert 86

“subsume Americans of both European and African descent into the American race, making nationality into common ground where a black man and a white woman can meet” (“Whiteness” 156). Such claims reinforce the idea that H.D. saw identity as complex and mutable, although Debo also perceives vestiges of essentialist thinking.39 Similarly, H.D.’s Notes on Thought and Vision can be seen as challenging the absolute distinction between mind and body (foundational to post-Cartesian western thought). In that text, H.D. states that there are “three states or manifestations of life: body, mind, over-mind” (Notes 17), but, as Catherine A. Rogers observes,

the ‘over-mind’ state is clearly the most important, in as much as it is

the source of the spiritual ideas that constitute great art. … over-

mind seems to occupy a medial state or mode of existence, bridging

the gap between the traditionally opposed realms of spirit and flesh,

reason and passion. It is mobile and transparent, and thus ethereal,

but it is also localized and bounded by a kind of surface tension, and

thus corporeal. It experiences ‘a set of super-feelings’ (19) receiving

sensory impressions as the body, giving them expression as the mind.

It is, in short, a kind of embodied spirit. (94)

It seems clear, then, that H.D. consistently explores language that allows for the transcendence of limiting dualistic thinking. Below, I show how H.D. represents identity as complex and fluid in the early novels of the Madrigal cycle, before moving on to examine how animal tropes (primarily zoomorphic comparisons) contribute to this representation. I will also contrast this with her later work, which appears to

39 She notes that “HERmione participates in racist stereotyping at points when H.D.’s focus is class distinction’’ (“Whiteness” 166). Essert 87 represent identity as coherent or stable, as part of its project of recuperating female figures and empowering women.

***

We are six paragraphs into Paint it Today before we learn that the central character—the “child” being described in a series of snapshots or portraits—is named Midget. We later learn, rather indirectly, that her proper name is Margaret

Defreddie. The story is told largely in the third person, with the narrator occasionally intervening to speak in the first person. In chapter three, after an extended intervention, the narrator thoroughly blurs the boundary between herself and the protagonist of her story:

Myself, who was an unformed sort of nebulous personality at the

time of the wanderings around Frascati, shall have no name. People

called me Miss Defreddie, which was surely not a name, or if it was a

name it was a thing to be laughed at. … Myself who was an

unformed sort of nebulous personality shall have no name. You

might have called me Midget if you were very stupid, but I was not

Midget. Midget was an intense star, Midget was a reality. (25)

The author’s play with names here deliberately confuses the narrator with the protagonist. With this play, H.D. creates uncertainty about the boundaries of the narrator’s and protagonist’s selves, thereby challenging the idea that the novel’s protagonist (and by extension, that any individual) is a unified, coherent, and stable entity. The ambiguity this creates is never resolved, and so the figure of Midget is always at least doubled: there is the self that acts and the self that observes and reports. Further, the long duration of the novel, which opens with a series of Essert 88 portraits of Midget as a child and young woman, reminds us that the being called

“Midget” changes and evolves over time. As the opening passage has it, “You cannot paint today as you painted yesterday. You cannot paint tomorrow as you paint today”

(3). This recalls the Heraclitan notion that one cannot step twice in the same river; identity is dynamic, so that one is not the same artist (or person) across time.

Elsewhere, the narrative voice seems to taunt the reader to establish an absolute distinction between herself and Midget: “White lily of the valley. That is what I should, were I Midget with her magical gift of seeing… place at the feet of these two heroes…. I will not attempt to visualize the two as Midget saw them” (64). The speaker, who I read as an older version of Midget, will not presume to erase the differences between her present self and the self who looked at statues in the Louvre; the growth and change of the intervening years must be respected, and the complexity of personhood is thereby affirmed.

Asphodel similarly represents selfhood as a complex entity that is always in the process of changing or becoming. Hermione experiences moments of fragmentation or dissociation that suggest that there is no single ‘self,’ and that identity is neither coherent nor consistent. One evening, after a party, she almost literally loses herself in thought: “Self of self was so buried. Who had said ‘darling’? Hermione leaned standing against the table, leaned standing and leaned staring. Who had said what?

Who was she? Where was she? … Should she be the same underneath, after it was all over….” (125). Hermione appears to be divided here into at least two persons, and her mental or intellectual self is far enough removed from the present time and place

(her physical self) that she does not realize her husband is calling her. Elsewhere,

Hermione is so acutely fragmented that she must convince herself that the face she Essert 89 sees in the mirror is her own: “She was right here, face looking at you is right face for you Hermione. Your face now belongs to you, skin with a hint of burnt-honey brown…” (149). Her need to make such affirmations indicates a strongly incoherent identity. Although such moments often appear to distress Hermione, they also enable the capacity for reinvention that permits her alliance with Beryl at the novel’s conclusion. It is as though, for Hermione, creativity and happiness cannot be achieved until she acknowledges and embraces the complexity and dynamism of selfhood.

Other passages in Asphodel indicate that identity is further fragmented or multiplied by marriage, which adds new roles and responsibilities: “Hermione in Mrs.

Darrington turned and festered, was it the spirit simply? Trying to get out, trying to get away, worse than having a baby a real one, herself in herself trying to be born, pain that tore and wracked and what was there to do?” (145). Hermione’s married name seems to signify the gendered expectations associated with marriage, which appear to increase her sense of confinement. One further meditation on selfhood makes clear that it is understood as necessarily multiple and mutable:

But now she was being rude, holding herself in so many layers, so

carefully housed, self and self and all confused and blurred by the

cocoon state she was in. Self. What is self? Self is a lotus bud slimed

over in mud. … What is a self? She was too young to say that. …

What is self? Self is a great stone, a mill-stone, the intellect sunk and

self is the ripples of subconscious or superconcious gold over and

over and over. (179) Essert 90

Layers and ripples both indicate plurality, while the cocoon suggests a capacity for change and rebirth. “Self” seems to be negative (or egoist, to recall Moore’s terminology) when it is “static” like a mill-stone, and positive when it is dynamic like ripples.40

The tendency to emphasize the self as hybrid and dynamic is also legible in moments in HERmione, in which the eponymous heroine stands outside herself and observes and comments on her own behaviour, as in this instance: “Hermione heard

Hermione speaking, saying something out of a play, words had been written for her, she was repeating words that had been written” (94-5). Such passages again suggest that the self is fragmentary: a part of Hermione can watch while another acts.

Further, it introduces the possibility that one might surprise oneself, as it seems as though a previously concealed part of Hermione wrote the script which she now delivers. The context of the moment—an argument with her mother about

George—suggests that there may be a need to perform different selves in different contexts. An encounter in the teashop with George raises the possibility that some parts or versions of the self are more constructed and less authentic, and that some performances are emphatically gendered:

Something underneath me, that isn’t me, wanted George all the same

to like me. I am not playing false to George, not false to Fayne. I am

playing false to Her, to Her precisely. Her became an external,

objectified self, a thin vibrant and intensely sincerely young sort of

40 These novels appear to be ambivalent about whether the complexity of identity is negative—a kind of chaotic fragmentation signalling inner turmoil or conflict—or positive—with hybridity and fluidity enabling dynamism or growth. In general, HERmione seems to favour the negative interpretation, and Asphodel the positive, but the matter demands further study. Essert 91

unsexed warrior. The Hermione that sat there thought patronizingly

of that Her as from an endless distance. (187)

Although this perspective prompts Hermione to think “patronizingly” about herself, it may be that some critical distance on herself and her situation makes it possible for her to confront George about his affair with Fayne.

That identity is complex, hybrid, or mutable is also reflected in the use of names in these novels. HERmione’s opening paragraph indicates that the self may be too complex to be captured by a single name: “Her Gart went round in circles. ‘I am

Her,’ she said to herself; she repeated, ‘Her, Her, Her.’ Her Gart tried to hold on to something; drowning she grasped, she caught at a smooth surface, her fingers slipped, she cried in her dementia, ‘I am Her, Her, Her’” (3). In both HERmione and

Asphodel, Her repeatedly ponders the ideal that “names make people, people make names”—the phrase, or variations of it, recur in both texts. I take it to mean that names capture a particular version of a person’s identity, but that one also has (or should have) the capacity to change those names when they no longer suit. It is unsurprising, then, that these texts also investigate and play with naming, and that most characters have more than one name. In Asphodel and HERmione, the protagonist is named Hermione Gart, or Her for short. In Asphodel, she is also called

Undine and Dryad by her erstwhile fiancé George, Dryad by some of her friends, and Astrea by Jerrold, the man she eventually marries.41 But Hermione is not the only one with aliases: Josepha is more often called Fayne, Louise Blake is referred to as

Florient, and Mary Dalton goes by Merry during the war. For Hermione, nicknames

41 Interestingly, both Dryad and Undine suggest evasions of the human/nonhuman boundary: a dryad is a tree nymph—a semi-divine creature—while Undine is the name of a water nymph in European folklore. Both names suggest an undermining of tidy divisions—between divine and earthly, human and nonhuman—which is of a piece with Midget’s rejection of gender norms. Essert 92 become associated with particular times and places, which, in turn, suggest different identities or versions of the self. When a friend calls her “Dryad,” she has an intensely negative reaction: “She could scream simply. Delia had forgotten herself.

She had called her Dryad. People now didn’t call her Dryad. She had been Dryad in the old days before the earth opened and left part on one side, part on the other”

(116-7). Toward the end of the novel, when Hermione and her shell-shocked husband are quarrelling, she is angered by his use of an old pet name: “Astrea—how dared he call her that. He was mad obviously. Astrea was a name that went with al fresco suppers and the odd pear tree…” (200). This profusion of names and interest in naming is clearly related to Asphodel’s interrogation of the nature of identity and the boundaries of the self. If names are a reflection of personality and not merely arbitrary signifiers, and if the self is both mutable and dynamic, a name that was once suitable will later become inappropriate.

In HERmione, Her’s family calls her Birdie—a name that can be linked to that novel’s other avian imagery, discussed below—and George calls her Undine, but never Dryad. Generally speaking, the text engages in the same doubling or tripling of names found in Asphodel, and employs the same names for most continuous characters. Interestingly, HERmione contains some instances where Her ponders the relationship between naming and context, or the possible permutations of a name as they might relate to or express identities. She considers, for example, different version of her brother’s name: “Did Bertie really wish that? Bertie. I called Bertrand

Bertie. I never called Bertrand Bertie since Millie started calling him Bert. Bertrand.

Bertie. I called Bertrand Bertie” (37). She engages in a similar exercise with the name of her fiancé, based on national variations: “George is George. George or Georgio. Essert 93

George is not Georg (she pronounced it Teutonically, heavily stressed Gay-org).

Georg is too hard, he is not Georg. Georges (she softened it in the Gallic manner) better suits him. He is possibly Georges but he is nearer Georgio” (33). Though this last example suggests that certain names might suit better at certain moments, the multiple possibilities also signal a hybrid and mutable selfhood.

Names in Paint it Today are not so much multiple as they are uncertain. Here, confusion over names is added to conflation of narrator and protagonist, in statements like “I do not know that the child’s name was Althea but Midget called her that” (75). Also interesting is how the narrator often substitutes labels for the character’s names—“the fiancé” for Raymond, “the companion” for Basil, “the friend” for Althea. This substitution has the effect of emphasizing social roles, subtly suggesting that such labels involve cultural baggage, assumptions, and restraints. In light of the bisexual desire expressed in this novel, and in keeping with H.D.’s concerns about rigidly binary definitions of gender, it is significant that “friend” and

“companion” are both gender-neutral terms.42 Further ambiguity arises from

Midget’s use of the male pronoun when describing her “lover” in letters to Josepha, as we later learn (by the reference to the whortleberry blanket) that this lover is

Althea. All this is in keeping with the final chapter’s valorization of gender neutrality, best represented by this description of the nearly-epiphanic moment when Midget and Althea run through a summer storm: “Babies they were, girls or boys, with the wind about their bodies, with the slight shoulders set against the sometimes almost impenetrable wall of green that met them, with wind and slash of rain. … All the power of the wood seemed to circle between those two alert and vivid bodies” (83-

42 Indeed, the gender neutrality of the friend, Althea, is maintained for more than a page after her appearance (70-1). Essert 94

4). The indeterminacy of “girls or boys” and the emphasis on ungendered “bodies,” suggests that this text imagines happiness as involving transcendence of gender distinctions.

***

In these same texts, H.D. makes frequent use of zoomorphic comparisons, in which characters are described by being likened to one or more animals. In contrast to the nicknames employed by H.D. and her circle, which tend to define an identity within the group, I argue that the use of zoomorphic comparisons in H.D.’s prose contributes importantly to her representation of identity as hybrid and mutable. Such comparisons are nearly always multiple, either presented in rapid succession or changing over the course of a single text; the first technique reminds the reader that identity is complex and cannot be captured by a single comparison, while the later technique suggests mutability. As does Marianne Moore, H.D. uses comparisons for description because of their ability to capture a particular quality of an individual and

(when comparisons are multiple) to suggest the difficulty, even impossibility, of accurately and completely representing another person. In so doing, she implies a rejection of essentialist notions of the self, and especially of gender. Animal imagery, like the language of the geometric or the collapsing of the mind/body dichotomy, is powerful for its challenge to the hierarchizing dyads that underwrite or enable the privileging of male over female.

Throughout HERmione, as Hermione struggles to decide how she feels about

George and whether she should marry him despite her parents’ objections, she compares him to numerous animals. These comparisons appear to be revelatory for

Hermione: “She knew why she couldn’t love George properly. … the sea-green eyes Essert 95 that became sea-grey, that she saw as wide and far and full of odd sea-colour, became

(old remembered reincarnation) small and piglike. George being funny is pig-like. His eyes are too small in his face” (65). This passage suggests that the expansiveness and openness (indicated by the sea) which she appreciates in George is not constant: instead, it is sometimes replaced by something “small and piglike,” with the pig comparison here perhaps suggesting pettiness or closedmindedness (if pigs are imagined as being concerned only with eating and wallowing in mud). Thus, this description of a physical characteristic (pigs’ eyes do seem small relative to the rest of their face) also has symbolic weight. H.D. uses this animal imagery to capture

George’s complexly mutable, even self-contradictory, personality.

In keeping with this complexity, George, like other characters in the Madrigal cycle, cannot be defined by a single analogy. Another animal comparison helps

Hermione to understand that George’s hesitant, indeterminate nature is part of what makes him unappealing: “George was like a great tawny beast, a sort of sub-lion pawing at her, pawing with great hand at her tousled garments. George had been like a great lion but if he had simply bared teeth, torn away garments with bared fangs, she would have understood, would have put narrow arms about great shoulders, would have yielded to him. George was neither beast nor man” (85). While hybrid states in H.D.’s work are often associated with liberation from or transcendence of constricting categories, here the description of George as “neither beast nor man” suggests that he continues to be confined—he cannot fully embrace his animality, and Hermione feels this as unappealing cowardice. Later in the novel, George is said to laugh “like a goat” (136), and Hermione twice imagines him as a wolf, a comparison which, in contrast to the passage above, suggests a wild or predatory Essert 96 aggression (174, 193). Individually, these comparisons allow H.D. to suggest particular aspects of George’s identity, which may be understood differently by each reader, depending on their associations with these animals. Collectively, they indicate the complexity of George’s character and the difficulty of capturing or defining him: no single analogy would be sufficient, but together they offer a nuanced depiction.

Interestingly, Hermione’s father is also compared to a goat (91-2), as is Fayne (155), subtly suggesting that these three characters have some quality in common. That both men and women are compared to animals in this text (and in H.D.’s other novels) suggests an un-doing of the association of women and animals, and of the hierarchical separation of male/female and human/animal.43

A similar trend of zoomorphic comparisons is legible in Asphodel, where those close to Hermione are sometimes represented as multiple animals. Her husband, Jerrold Darrington, is compared to a puppy (133), and the personality change he undergoes as a result of his combat experience is registered as a species transformation: “Darrington was with her, beside her, a Darrington had crept out of the brown lean khaki, like a great moth, elegant in shape” (192). Similarly, Verene

Raignau, a cellist with whom Hermione develops a friendship or fascination, is likened first to a lady bug (32), then a moth (33), then a butterfly (34); and finally to a beetle (39). These are not the only examples in Asphodel, but they illustrate the ways that characters can be presented as hybrid and dynamic through an accretion of zoomorphic similes.

By far the largest proportion of zoomorphic language in Asphodel is used to represent Hermione’s thinking about herself. She tends to think of herself primarily

43 See also the passage from page 17 of HERmione, quoted below. Essert 97 as a bird (a tendency I discuss further below), but in certain instances she chooses a variety of other comparisons. In response to Jerrold’s accusation that she is cold, unloving, or unfeeling, she considers her modes of emotional experience using animal analogies:

Things are part of you as the threads of a deep sea creature, its

threads of feelers are itself. Butterfly antennae are the butterfly body,

more subtly, more intrinsically than the soft moth-belly of it. It was

her misfortune (sometimes her questionable strength) that she felt

outwardly with her aura as it were of vibrant feelers rather than with

the soft moth-belly of her body. … she realized that the tender

feelers of her being were in danger. Butterfly antennae to be withered

like the soft forward being of a moth’s breath. (148)

The jellyfish imagery recalls those H.D. employs in Notes on Thought and Vision, and in

“Murex” (from Palimpsest), where it is associated with painfully intense perceptive experiences. The shift to a new comparison suggests the difficulty of accurately capturing her experience—the second metaphor suits better, and she therefore expands upon it. The moth or butterfly imagery primarily suggests fragility or vulnerability, but it is important to note that Hermione herself is not certain if her butterflyness is a strength or a weakness. Certainly, the butterfly imagery suggests a capacity for renewal or mutability, which is positively valenced.

Similarly, in an earlier passage in which Hermione is chastising herself for not having done more to help Shirley, two contrasting animal comparisons are used to capture different possibilities for personal development: Essert 98

Myself wound round myself so that I was like a white spider shut in

by my own hideous selfishness. I should have been a bird, a sort of

white star or bird winging up and up and up… I was too small. I let

my own petty pain wind about me. I let myself be obscured by myself

and I became a white spider hidden in a web, a mesh of self. A grey

hideous web, I can almost see it. (103-4)

Unlike Moore, H.D. does not appear to value all animals equally. In contrast to the open signifiers discussed above, it appears as though the bird and the spider here model or stand for clear and distinct qualities, some of which Hermione wants to emulate, and others which she rejects. Spiders seem to be associated with self- centeredness or selfish concealment. Birds, in contrast, appear to symbolize the capacity for goodness and freedom, particularly in women; this passage suggests that achieving “birdness” would mean being a better, nobler person.

In the two passages from Asphodel quoted above, animal tropes help to describe a particular kind of selfhood: there is a choice between more or less accurate models, or better and worse versions of the self. But in Part II of the novel, there are instances of rapid shifting between zoomorphic analogies, as though it were impossible to settle on any single comparison. Interestingly, these appear to be associated with Hermione’s pregnancy, as though this event allows her a greater awareness of her own hybridity or mutability. Suddenly, she is unsure who or what she is, and cycles through a variety of possibilities for capturing her psychic or emotional state:

She was being disorganized as the parchment-like plain substance of

the germ that holds the butterfly becomes fluid, inchoate, as the very Essert 99

tight bud of her germination became inchoate, frog-shaped small

greedy domineering monster. The thing within her made her one with

frogs, with eels. She was animal, reptile. Animal, reptile, she still held

to the letter of convention … This is not what lizard-Hermione

wanted. This is not what eel-Hermione, what alligator-Hermione,

what sea-gull Hermione was after. She wanted what an animal wants,

what an eel wants, what even a bird must have. (158)

Having announced her pregnancy to Vane, Hermione experiences two things: her identity becomes fragmented or multiple, and she becomes part of a community of creatures, needing those most basic things which humans share with other animals.

The appearance of so many animal comparisons in rapid succession suggests

Hermione’s restlessness or uncertainty: she cannot settle on a single analogy because she does not, under these circumstances, know exactly who or what she is. This sense of her identity as hybrid or composite may also be related to her embodied experience of being two persons in a single body. Interestingly, the identity of

Hermione’s baby is also figured as multiple or mutable: “‘I don’t understand having a child. It seems to me that I must be having a colt, a frog. It seems to me I must be having a dragon, a butterfly’” (160). At this stage, Hermione seems in need of an alliance with other creatures, and to be acutely aware of the incoherence and complexity of her own selfhood; her pregnancy prompts her to meditate on her own identity, which in turn prompts an awareness of her own creatureliness.44 In

44 Hermione’s thinking about identity is most succinctly captured by the fact that, during this second pregnancy, she thinks of herself as Morgan, a sorceress from the Arthurian legend. LeFay is an ambiguous character, a powerful fairy who is in some accounts Arthur’s healer, but is his enemy in other versions of the legend. The allusion therefore suggests the impossibility of easy definitions, and indicates Hermione’s conflicted feelings about her affair and her pregnancy. Essert 100

HERmione and Asphodel, then, zoomorphic comparisons play a crucial role in the representation of identity as hybrid, mutable, and dynamic. They capture particular qualities without being over-determined, and collectively they illustrate the difficulty of describing or defining the individual.

There are only a few examples of such animal comparisons in Paint it Today, but in light of that novel’s disruption of the idea of coherent selfhood, discussed above, they read as significant. In the opening section, Midget is described as various animals: “the child itself, I would make dark cypress wood, rounded head, clawlike hands, an archaic, small Hermione, a nameless foundling sister of Princess

Minnehaha, a bird or intermediate, of a lost reptile race, clawing its way into the pear and wisteria tangle, to cling, to be lost, to defy worlds from there” (3-4). The mention of “Hermione” and “Princess Minnehaha” introduces two or three further human identities for the “child” who, two paragraphs later, is called “Midget.”

“Clawlike” agrees with both bird and reptile, and such comparisons serve, in tandem with the others offered here, to suggest that Midget cannot be easily understood or described: there is nothing definite, only the sense offered by the aggregate of the comparisons. The references to “archaic” and “lost…race” further suggest the difficulty of knowing by alluding to the difficulty of recovering the past. The narrator later described Midget as having “colt knees” (4), adding another species comparison to further complicate the portrait. And she is also referred to as a “brave scholar, a thing of hunched shoulders and sparrow claws” (5), thereby creating a surprising juxtaposition between human and animal characteristics. This descriptive technique is in keeping with the macro-level structure of the novel, which (particularly in its initial chapters) offers a series of portraits or vignettes, rather than a coherent Essert 101 narrative. In Paint it Today, the zoomorphic comparisons of the opening pages introduce both the character of Midget and the theme of identity as dynamic and complex.

***

Taken as a whole, H.D.’s animal imagery clearly includes more representations of birds than of any other kind of animal. Her work includes a variety of other creatures, but the prevalence of birds suggests a large-scale symbolic reading, which is ultimately in keeping with the interest in gender identity that has been central to my argument. In “Birds, Women and Writing,” Hélène Cixous explores the masculine biblical imperatives which make these three things “immonde.”

There is no precise equivalent for this in English; most literally, it means “outside the world,” but one might also translate it as unclean or, to borrow the biblical word, abominable. Working with Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H., Cixous seeks to recuperate the immonde as the place of joy as being “unclean with joy”: “joy is out-of-the world—this is what Clarice wants us to understand. It is true that what is really forbidden is enjoyment, jubilation” (117). As Cixous has it, “one has to choose between losing what is mund and losing the best part of ourselves that is called imund” (118-9). In short, what Cixous appears to be suggesting is a recuperation of and alliance with that which was formerly rejected or denigrated. It is not clear whether H.D. was familiar with the prohibition on eating certain birds, from

Leviticus, which is Cixous’ point of departure. But in the readings that follow, I offer evidence of a feminist-avian alliance in H.D.’s idiolect. While birds traditionally represent the human soul, for H.D. they appear to represent (more particularly) the soul’s capacity for transcendence, which might also be understood as the possibility Essert 102 of escaping the mundane (“Bird”). Such symbolism would be in keeping with the desire to escape social constraints and transcend limiting dyads, which I have been tracing in her work. It would also help to explain the bird imagery, borrowed from

Swinburne, which was the point of departure for this analysis. H.D. may have chosen

“Itylus” because the desire she seeks to represent transcends, and so challenges, prevailing codes of propriety and understandings of gender.

HERmione clearly associates birds with issues of gender identity. Early in the novel, Hermione attempts to analyze her relationship with her brother by comparing them to pairs of animals: “Hermione had no compass, no magnet, no iron-filings.

She did not know why and how she loved her brother. He did not know how and why he loved Hermione. They stared at one another like two hawk-moths, like two hummingbird beetles, like two long-throated cranes…” (17). The allusion to compasses and magnets—scientific tools—suggests that there are no definite, objectively verifiable answers to her questions. “He did not know…” indicates that

Hermione is not the only one mystified by and curious about the nature of these affective bonds. As for the trio of animal comparisons, it in fact evokes five animals: the compound names of the first two animals also invoke other species and suggest similarities between and among creatures.45 The multiplicity of comparisons suggests that no single simile can capture the nuances of their identities or of their relationship. That Hermione and Bertrand are always creatures of the same species suggests both likeness and equality. Here, the affinity between brother and sister appears to allow them to transcend or ignore their differences (especially their gender difference). The zoomorphic comparisons not only elide the species boundary, but

45 “Hummingbird beetle” must be an older colloquial name—I cannot find any information about this animal. Essert 103 also evoke birds, which can transcend earthly limitations just as Hermione would transcend her socio-cultural limitations.

Bird imagery is also integral to a scene in which Hermione has breakfast with her mother (Eugenia), and their conversation centers on gender roles and proper feminine behaviour. Eugenia praises Mrs. Lowndes for her “endearing manners,” and comments that Hermione’s habit of going to fetch the letters before breakfast was “a little unwholesome… a little erratic” (HERmione 121). Eugenia also observes that another woman is “well-bred” because “she shows she’s been about without seeming to say anything” (122-3). Throughout this conversation, Hermione is also watching the birds through the window, as in this passage: “A bird repeated its trapeze-turn across the window looking as if it were held aloft on movable wires, making just that odd mechanical curve that birds do make toward autumn. ‘Do birds make a certain mechanical flight toward autumn?’ ‘What, what, Hermione?’ ‘I was wondering about birds. Do they have a sort of flight toward autumn’” (123). She remembers Swinburne’s “Itylus,” and then begins to attach significance to the flight patterns of the birds:

Things out of the window, across the window seemed to be on the

window, against the window, like writing on the wall. Things, a bird

skimming across a window, were a sort of writing on a wall. ‘The

Greeks made birdflight symbolic. I mean the Greeks said this spelt

this. The sort of way the wing went against blue sky was, I suppose, a

sort of pencil, a sort of stylus, engraving to the minds of augurers,

signs, symbols that meant things. I see by that birdflight across an

apparently black surface, that curves of wings mean actual things to Essert 104

Greeks, not just vague symbols but actual hieroglyphics…

hieroglyphs. (125)

The birds appear to have the ability to communicate, a capacity which Hermione lacks—she and her mother talk past each other, and she has not yet begun to write.

Where Hermione is confined to the house, her behaviour limited by social conventions of femininity, the birds are free to fly and to produce language. Thus, they become associated with the escape or transcendence to which she clearly aspires.

The alliance between birds and women is also very clear in several passages from Asphodel, in which Hermione reflects on her pregnancy and stillbirth at the height of the war: “months and months when her flaming mind beat up and she found she was caught, her mind not taking her as usual like a wild bird but her mind- wings beating, beating and her feet caught, her feet caught, glued like a wildbird in bird lime” (113). Birdlime is a sticky substance used to catch birds; thus the bird comparison or metaphor captures the ways in which the free, self-actualized woman can be trapped by social constraints. This passage is followed directly by a meditation on gender roles and talented women (quoted at length above), in which Hermione laments that “Women can’t speak and clever women don’t have children” (113). This conjunction prompts readers to consider gender and species as related categories or problems, by suggesting that the same ideological system that permits the literal trapping of birds also permits the figurative trapping of women. The same figurative language is repeated later, in a passage which represents marriage, and Hermione’s married name, as contributing to confinement and self-alienation: “she was caught back into her body, caught back into the body of Mrs. Darrington, the person she Essert 105 was, it appeared, still, caught back, held into it, like a bird caught in a trap, like a bird caught in bird-lime, caught and held in it” (144). In this novel, birds appear to capture crucial qualities of Hermione, and perhaps of the female artist in general: an ability to soar to great heights, coupled with an intense fragility. Moreover, both birds and women are ultimately at the mercy of a male-dominated world. Though it would be too much to say that H.D. is concerned with the plight of birds, it seems clear that they offer her powerful figurative language for Hermione’s emotional situation.

Interestingly, this alliance between birds and women, and the idea of birds as symbolizing transcendence of social norms, is figured in another episode from

Asphodel.46 Pregnant with Vane’s child, and unsure what to do, Hermione refigures her pregnancy as a divine intervention, casting the nearby birds as oracles or messengers: “God had prepared the answer as he had prepared the question in her own mind. God was the answer and the question. God was her lover and the beloved. God was the union of God with God. ‘If a swallow flies straight in, now without any hesitation, just in here to me, I’ll have it’” (154). The bird does just that, and so Hermione informs Vane and Jerrold about the baby, and carries it to term.

She is clearly aware that, in doing so, she is flouting social norms: “You don’t go off to Cornwall in war-time and have babies. You see the manifest impossibility of the thing” (154). But she proceeds nonetheless, because “Something would happen, must happen, for God so simply had admonished her. God had swept one of his birds inward with a touch of his finger” (154). There is, therefore, a strong connection between bird imagery and the transcendence or rejection of the cultural scripts that would dictate proper female behaviour. As with Page and Eliot (as

46 There is a very similar episode in Hedylus (125-6), but in that case the messenger animal is a reptile, rather than a bird. Essert 106 addressed in the next chapter), birds here are also associated with the divine, as though there is a kind of “higher law” which trumps social codes.

***

Thus far, this chapter has been charting how H.D.’s work rejects a unified, coherent self and binary notions of gender, an attempt which, I have argued, is often associated with animal imagery that blurs the animal/human boundary. And yet, there is also a thread within her work that seeks to valorize and express feminine

(often lesbian) experience. Rather than challenging the category of “woman,” such texts recuperate and celebrate it. Sarah Graham has argued persuasively that Hymen

(1921) offers “the first fully realized example of the emphatically woman-centered poetry for which H.D. has become known: its free-verse lyric poems are preoccupied with revisiting patriarchal images of women” (113). Offering evidence of the collection’s critique of heterosexuality and male violence, and of its positive representations of same-sex love between women, Graham concludes that

Hymen is consistently focused on female experience, asserting that

women are sexual, self-determining beings who have historically been

silenced and inhibited by the norms of heteropatriarchy. … The

collection is particularly focused on the erotic potential of women,

which is emphasized through the poems’ sensual rhythms and their

imagery of heat and intense colour as much as their content. (117)

Though this pattern is legible in H.D.’s pre-war poetry, it becomes the dominant trend in her later texts.47

47 For the sake of coherence, I have excised from this chapter a discussion of the animal imagery in H.D.’s pre-war poetry. Though they appear less frequently than in her prose, they reinforce the trends I have charted in her early novels. “Toward the Piraeus” and “Leda” employ bird imagery in order to Essert 107

During and after the war, H.D. seems to have developed a new kind of creative confidence, or to have strengthened her belief in the power of the poet to improve the world. In the introduction to her edition of Trilogy, Aliki Barnstone describes H.D.’s wartime poem in a way that indicates her renewed energy and increased clarity of purpose: “Her poem, she implies, is an incarnation of God’s words, showing the path. She asks the reader to venerate both her voice and the figure of Woman as poet, mystical seer, and god” (vii-viii). This is, then, a strongly prophetic poetry, which speaks with confidence in its abilities to effect change; ultimately, H.D. intends for her works to unite people, to bridge the differences that lead to conflict (Barnstone ix). But it is also feminist prophetic poetry, in that it affirms the woman’s right and ability to see and to speak—such activities are not exclusively the purview of men, and this inequality may well be at the root of other damaging divisions between groups and individuals. As Barnstone explains it:

The poet wishes to ‘re-light the flame’ of womanly vision and of the

goddesses. … H.D. draws a connection between the denigration of

the goddesses as ‘harlots’ and ‘old flesh-pots’ and the disparagement

of women writers. She has high ambitions for poetry as a universal

healing and regenerative force. The exclusion of women from the

spirit world or the word implies a terrible ‘schism in consciousness’ to

use her words (xiv-xv).

comment on gender relations, while poems like “The Wind Sleepers” and “Bird-Choros of Ion” offer further evidence of her interest in bird language and birds as messengers. Many of H.D.’s poems with classical settings—such as “Phaedra” and the two “Thetis” poems—represent humans and animals as coexisting in a single community. Finally, “Calypso,” “Circe,” and “The Dancer,” employ zoomorphic comparisons and images of metamorphosis in their representations of identity as hybrid or mutable. Essert 108

The recovery and revaluing of goddesses and other figures, whose denigration enabled the silencing of female voices, is seen as crucial to bringing about peace and unity. H.D.’s recuperative project is not limited to her late poetry, though it is also central to Helen in Egypt. Her later prose works—The Gift, The Sword Went Out to Sea,

Majic Ring, and White Rose and the Red—can likewise be read as revisiting forgotten figures, examining history to find narratives of feminine strength, and affirming her own creative power as a woman poet. This valorization of the feminine—which differs significantly from the challenge to binary conception of gender legible in

H.D.’s earlier work—corresponds with a significant change in H.D.’s representations of animals. In the later texts, representations of animals are more likely to be conventional symbols; rather than acting as open signifiers, the animal images in these texts tend to be overdetermined by meanings derived from the larger cultural imaginary.

Clear examples of symbolic animals can be found in the first book of Trilogy,

“The Walls Do Not Fall.”48 In poem 4, “the shell fish: / oyster, clam, mollusc” (7-8) who “is master-mason” (9) becomes a figure for the artist’s resilience under pressure:

be indigestible, hard, ungiving,

so that, living within,

you beget, self-out-of-self,

selfless

that pearl-of-great price. (42-6)

In poem 6, the worm, soon to be a butterfly, is another symbol of the artist—more specifically, of the artist’s capacity to weather adversity and to reinvent herself. In

48 I quote from H.D.’s poetry as it appears in her Collected Poems, 1912-1944. Essert 109 poem 34, the speaker’s meditation on human nature in extremis involves the use of zoomorphic comparisons:

We have seen how the most amiable,

under physical stress,

become wolves, jackals,

mongrel curs;

we know further that hunger

may make hyenas of the best of us (1-6)

Although such comparisons may suggest a basic similarity between humans and these species, they do not represent humans as part of a community of creatures.

Instead, animality here is something to which humans descend when civilization crumbles. The frogs and rats of “May 1943” appear to operate in a similar fashion, suggesting a deterioration of human nature due to wartime stresses. In “Sagesse,” a later poem which appeared in Hermetic Definition, H.D. uses the figure of a “white- faced Scops owl” in the zoo to symbolize elusive wisdom, and to express her own sense of confinement while hospitalized with a broken hip.

A similar trend toward symbolic animals pertains in the later prose. The

Sword Went Out to Sea makes extensive use of symbolic animals. The most persistent animal image in Book One (Wintersleep) is that of birds and wings, which for Delia are associated with Lord Howell, the R.A.F and the Battle of Britain. Throughout the text, the dove, hawk, and albatross, along with the butterfly and the lion play their traditional literary roles. There are other symbolic animals, including the shellfish imagery which is similar to that in Trilogy (Sword 215). This is not to suggest that the zoomorphic comparisons found in the earlier work are entirely absent here, nor that Essert 110 the symbolic valences of animals are altogether absent from earlier texts. There is the

“squirrel-like face of [a] child” (54); Allen (the Pound figure) is compared to a lion

(82); and one of the narratives in book two includes a character nicknamed the Bear

(156). And yet, such instances are rarer in here, and are overshadowed by the instances of conventional symbolism. Majic Ring, this novel’s companion text, contains much of the same symbology.

Further examples of this pattern of symbolic animals can be found in The

White Rose and the Red, a generically indeterminate text that editor Alison Halsall aptly describes as a “fictional investigation of the Pre-Raphaelites” (xviii). Halsall notes the continuity of White Rose and the Red with H.D.’s other post-war works, which evince an interest in “reclaiming previously marginalized figures from Greek, Roman, and

Judeo-Christian myths, and repositioning them at the center of new cultural narratives,” and observes that “Of particular interest to H.D. [in White Rose] is the dismantling of a masculinist Pre-Raphaelite cult of beauty” (xix). The story of this artistic movement is told from the point of view of Eizabeth Siddall, who has generally been flattened or diminished by being understood as a tragic muse. By placing her at the center of this narrative, H.D. provides a more nuanced portrait that shows Siddall as a complex individual, and as an artist in her own right. The cat appears to be Elizabeth’s totem, as she is called feline nicknames repeatedly throughout the text, and seems to identify with them. Another nickname, given to her by Dante Gabriel, is clearly less suitable: at one moment she thinks of “the new dress of hers that made him call her the Dove and her objecting in herself to being called the Dove” (White Rose 51), while later she realizes clearly that “no, she was not the dove” (95). As in H.D.’s circle, some individuals are more difficult to pin down: Essert 111

Elizabeth appears undecided about whether William Morris is a Saint Bernard or a lion, and on one occasion also associates him with eagles (104, 126, 222). Horses appear frequently in this novel, generally in the context of Elizabeth’s vision or story that she calls “The Gold Cord.” In the context of that narrative, and because they are a mode of transportation, I read these horses as symbolizing escape (which is in this case an escape into history or fiction). Hawks, falcons, or generic birds are also part of this narrative, and signify similarly. White Rose and the Red contains numerous references to animals in the context of astrology and heraldry, contexts which heavily determine the meaning of various creatures—eagles are the most frequent instance here. Finally, Elizabeth is thrice associated with mermaids, in contexts which suggest that such hybridity is liberating. However, on the whole these animals lack the indeterminacy of the earlier representations, and do not suggest hybrid or mutable identity as did the zoomorphic comparisons of the earlier novels.

H.D.’s novel Bid Me to Live (1960) is the fourth and final novel in the

Madrigal cycle, and it is the only novel in the cycle that she chose to publish. There are important differences in style and content between Bid Me to Live and its predecessors, the most important of which may be that Bid Me to Live is strictly heterosexual in its concerns. There is no suggestion of lesbianism or bisexuality in this text; though its characters and situation resemble those treated in part two of

Asphodel, the plotline involving Beryl has been excised, along with any mention of

Fayne. Instead, Bid Me to Live focuses on overlapping heterosexual affairs: Rafe

Ashton’s affair with Bella, Julia’s briefer affair with Vane, and her unconsummated affair with Rico. The novel appears to be concerned with the ways men and women interact physically and emotionally, and it repeatedly addresses the importance of Essert 112 gender equality. In a pivotal scene, Rico criticizes Julia’s poem on the grounds that she should “Stick to the woman speaking. How can you know what Orpheus feels?

It’s your part to be woman, the woman vibration, Eurydice should be enough” (51).

Fortunately, Julia is able to reject this criticism as a theory that was “false” and

“creaked in the joints” (62). As Hickman has observed, the novel “celebrates the androgynous condition of the ‘gloire’ as Julia’s way beyond the ‘man-is-man, woman- is-woman’ cry of Rico, the character based on D.H. Lawrence” (“‘Uncanonically seated’” 19). Julia believes that the realm of creative “consciousness” “was sexless, or all sex, it was child-consciousness, it was heaven” (62); later, she describes the gloire as “neither red nor white” and as “both” woman-is-woman and man-is-man (176).

Thus, this novel takes a position on gender that closely resembles the focus on hybridity and mutability, and rejection of binary notions of gender, that I argue can be found in H.D.’s early work.

However, Bid Me to Live contains very few representations of animals—I can find no symbolic representations, and just a handful of instances of the zoomorphic comparisons which were so numerous in HERmione and Asphodel. Bid Me to Live is in this sense an outlier with respect to the trends observed above, though animals are similarly absent from other late works, such as The Mystery and Helen in Egypt.

Interestingly, most of the zoomorphic comparisons in Bid Me to Live are representations of Rico, a character modeled on D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence was fascinated by animals, as H.D. was certainly aware, and so it may be possible to understand the zoomorphisms in this light, as a technique for enriching the portrait of this character and signalling a tie to its real-world correlative. After Rico has made Essert 113 clear his desire for Julia, she attempts to act on their (apparently) shared feelings; in rebuffing her, he becomes a feline:

Now was the moment to answer his amazing proposal of last night,

his ‘for all eternity.’ She put out her hand. Her hand touched his

sleeve. He shivered, he seemed to move back, move away, like a hurt

animal, there was something untamed, even the slight touch of her

hand on his sleeve seemed to have annoyed him. … Yet only a touch

on his arm made him shiver away, hurt, like a jaguar. He was a

leopard, a jaguar. It was not she who had started out to lure him. (81).

This comparison captures the idea of fickleness and skittishness usually associated with felines—but since the image is of powerful wildcats, it also suggests that Julia associates Rico with potential danger. Some pages later, Rico is described as goat- like: “Rico was able to dart out, make his frantic excursions into any unknown dimension, because there, firm as rock, was Elsa. He cropped round and round, eating up field-flowers, grass; goat-like, his teeth made furrows in symbolic olive trees. When he had got his full, his genius would demand fresh fields” (89). Later, he is described as scratching “the back of his ear like a very fetching monkey” (97), and later still he is “a salamander in that fire” (158). The variety of animal comparisons used to capture Rico throughout the text suggests his interest in and community with the natural world, as well as the complex and multivalent nature of his character. It suggests, also, Julia’s ambivalence about Rico: although it is Rico who critiques Julia’s

Orpheus poem, and seeks to keep Julia to the “woman vibration,” he is also a source of inspiration. In the correspondence with Rico that concludes the novel, Julia wonders “Perhaps I caught the gloire from you. Was it your way of thinking? But it Essert 114 isn’t in your books, it was in your letters sometimes, when you weren’t angry with me” (176).

In contrast, animals are also used to paint a derisive portrait of Bella. Julia notes that Bella “moved with an awkward self-conscious gesture, like an animal tied up in clothes, pretty clothes, a deer, a gazelle, with her tilted eyes, that looked now as if she were suddenly (with all her veneer of self-conscious sophistication) frightened”

(91). A similar analogy is made again when Bella is said to be “brooding, like an animal, gazelle. Some brooding deer-like animal had been hurt” (99). Shortly thereafter, Julia thinks of Bella as a “foreign exotic, bright parrot, a bird that talked, that was uttering toneless words” (101). As with the examples from H.D.’s late poetry, these comparisons seem to demote Bella—whose appeal for Rafe appears to be purely physical—to the level of the merely animal, making her an instinctual creature deprived of depth or intellect. Perhaps because it is a re-writing of the earlier novels, this text evinces both earlier and late approaches to gender and animality.

***

In this chapter, I have argued that animal imagery forms part of a strategy through which both Marianne Moore and H.D. challenge binary conceptions of gender. Building upon theoretical work that considers sexism and speciesism as interlocking oppressions, I develop a sharper picture of their conceptions of gender and their feminist intentions. I believe that “strategy” is a key term: it suggests that these poets made calculated choices about the most effective ways to challenge patriarchal assumptions. It therefore emphasizes the subversive intentions of Moore and H.D., which are crucial to any analysis of their work. I began by referring to the way that patriarchal ideology associates women with animals, casting both groups as Essert 115 the inferior half of a hierarchical binary. This historical coupling provides excellent grounds for examining how women represent animals, and how animal imagery, and the woman/animal association, might be deployed for feminist ends. Moore and

H.D. came of age at a moment when “woman” and “animal” were both hotly contested categories, and so it is unsurprising to find that they write animals as part of their creative considerations of gender identity and gender politics. Their correspondence suggests that, in both cases, identity was understood as fluid and constructed, and playful use of animal nicknames often enabled a rejection of gendered norms. Unsurprisingly, a similar trend was legible in the work of both poets, though with important differences.

Humility plays an important role in Moore’s frequent choice of animals as objective correlatives. Her particular variety of feminism prompted a concern with domestication and discrimination: her poems about animals often refer to human mistreatment, suggesting that one ought to treat all “others” (including women) with greater respect. Her uses of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism elide the distinction between human and animal, rejecting the grounds on which they are treated as lesser beings. Thus, her animal poems are an implicit commentary, and her primary goal is greater equality. In contrast, H.D.’s work, as I read it, is interested in deconstructing notions of identity. Casting selfhood as always multiple and hybrid is of a piece with her rejection of binary notions of gender: a complex individual cannot easily be reduced to one category or the other. Her animal imagery participates in the project of re-visioning identity as dynamic (her zoomorphic comparisons are generally multiple), while her bird imagery in particular is integral to her representations of femininity under patriarchy. Later in her career, H.D. is invested Essert 116 in constructing a more positive notion of femininity by recuperating female cultural figures, and symbolic animals play an important role in that project too. Though

Moore and H.D. may have understood gender differently and represented non- human creatures dramatically differently, examining their work from this novel angle has emphasized understudied facets of their innovative methods and feminist aims. Essert 117

Humble Creatures: Animality and Impersonality in P.K. Page and T.S. Eliot

“Joe – half animal, half angel, as indeed we all are.” – Page, “Afterword to Nights below Station Street”

(FP 89).

“Dante’s railings, his personal spleen… his nostalgia, his bitter regrets for past happiness… his brave attempts to fabricate something permanent and holy out of his personal animal feelings… can all be matched out of Shakespeare” – Eliot, “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca” (SE 137)

I. Animals and Human Animality

Despite the ink that has been spilled on the subject, both in Eliot studies and in modernist studies more generally, impersonality remains a poorly understood concept. The few monographs which address the subject are uneven and opaque; the most useful commentary tends to be tucked away in chapters or sections of monographs on other subjects, and so is not easily discovered via the usual channels.1 The centrality of the theory of impersonality to the modernist movement demands that the subject be addressed frequently: a thorough account of any poet working in Eliot’s wake must situate his or her poetics relative to impersonality. But this is too often handled in a cursory fashion, deciding the issue of a poet’s impersonality quickly and leaving aside the nuances of the concept—both as formulated by Eliot and as understood by individual poets.2 It is a truth insufficiently acknowledged that theories of impersonal poetry vary widely between poets. Pound’s impersonality of pastiche and persona is dramatically different from the classical restraint that is H.D.’s impersonality, and yet both methods clearly derive from

1 This chapter employs all of the useful commentary on impersonality that I am aware of, but there is surely other good work tucked away in obscure corners. The trouble arises from the fact that chapter titles are not always indexed in search engines (so that I would have missed Timmerman’s useful chapters had I not been directed to that book by Professor Hickman), and from the fact that good commentary on impersonality can hide in places where the major subject is something else (as in Brian Trehearne’s Montreal Forties). 2 Though Eliot did not invent the term, he is largely responsible for its popularization, which was, in turn, an important basis for his popularity. Essert 118 similar impulses. It behooves us as critics to be attentive both to similarities and differences, rather than taking impersonality as “an indiscriminate bolus” (SP 39).

The reach of impersonality can be illustrated by the scope of this chapter: more than twenty years after its initial formulation, what Eliot had called the

“impersonal theory of poetry”—or, more precisely, a version of it—was a central tenet for a group of poets working in Montreal in the 1940s and early 1950s. Brian

Trehearne has called this period in Canadian literary history “A decade of largely impersonal poetics,” and has noted that “Eliot’s idea still made for powerful orthodoxy in 1942” (Montreal Forties 45, 72).3 Page was a significant figure in the

Montreal scene, and Trehearne claims that “Page’s early poetry also lends new vividness to our ideas of modernist impersonality. It was, in part, a dogma, and it appears to have been inherited as such by Canadian poets…. Page helps us to see that the idea of impersonality was not only powerful, hegemonic, as she began to write poetry, but attractive” (Montreal Forties 309). What Trehearne also illuminates in

The Montreal Forties is the particular understanding of impersonality that circulated in

Canada at the time Page began writing seriously. He observes:

In Eliot alone, as Maud Ellmann remarks, the ‘personality’

extinguished in the objectivity of great art involved, variously, ‘the

theological soul… the philosophical subject, psychological

consciousness, legal individual, or grammatical first person.’ Caring

little for the theorization of poetics, Canadian poets tended only to

3 Trehearne explains the central position of the Montreal poets in this period: “I believe, and this book tries to demonstrate, that the critical choices as to the direction of Canadian poetry in the forties and fifties were made primarily in the names of Preview and First Statement [the two Montreal little magazines of the period] by their poets and editorialists, and that the subsequent growth of Canadian poetry into a number of vital styles may be traced more or less directly to those choices” (13). Essert 119

identify the last of these for suppression, perhaps convinced that its

absence would guarantee the elimination of all other subjectivisms.

(71)

Elsewhere in his argument, Trehearne describes the “less compelling form” of impersonality to which Page and her contemporaries adhered as “the general avoidance of direct lyric expression” (Montreal Forties 312). This chapter argues that

Page’s struggles with this “less compelling form” were an important contributor to the creative difficulties which led to her middle silence, and in this sense relies upon existing understandings of Page. But I depart from those who see Page as abandoning impersonality in her post-lapsus work (i.e., from the late 1960s onward).

Instead, I argue that in her later work she developed a more mature or nuanced understanding of the theory, one which is closely aligned with Eliot’s formulation.4

This chapter, then, addresses the theory of impersonality from two complementary angles, the first of which is a revisiting of Eliot’s own formulation of the theory, matched against a later modernist poet’s reception and application thereof. It is useful to revisit Eliot’s own statements—especially those in the less canonical essays—so as to establish a clearer understanding of one of the most prominent versions of the theory of impersonality. But it is perhaps equally important to understand what the theory meant to practicing poets working in Eliot’s wake, for without understanding its reception we miss a great deal about the theory’s importance. The concept of impersonality has been a key term in Page studies; it is time to re-examine it from a new direction and to consider the influence of Eliot,

4 In her thesis on Page, Emily Ballantyne argues very convincingly that Page did not in fact have a prolonged period of creative silence. I regret that I discovered her work too late to fully integrate it into this argument. Essert 120 which is often mentioned but seldom discussed.

The second angle of approach involves examining both poets’ concepts of the human. Impersonality will be understood as predicated upon, or arising from, a particular view of the human; representations of animals will be analyzed for the ways they help to delineate this view. Animal tropes and imagery reveal much about a poet’s understanding of the boundaries between “animal” and “human.” This chapter investigates the ways that, for Page and Eliot, impersonality accommodates, even derives from, a view of the human as a kind of spiritual animal. As the chapter’s epigraphs imply, the work of both poets suggests that the human capacity for spiritual transcendence is the most significant (and perhaps the only) trait distinguishing us from other creatures. Their poetic animals therefore become legible as evidence of their views on the human/animal boundary and human nature, revealing the beliefs that underwrite each poet’s theories and methods. 5 Moreover, in many instances representations of animals are also the symbols or objective correlatives by which impersonality operates—the central position of animals in the literary tradition and our collective consciousness makes them powerful signifiers.

Thus, as both technique and subject, animals are an important piece of the puzzle of

Page’s and Eliot’s impersonal poetics. In support of these claims, this chapter will begin by elaborating each poet’s view on animality and humanity, and proceed to an investigation of their development and use of an impersonal theory of poetry, before examining particular poetic examples of animal tropes and images.6

5 It bears noting at the outset this is not an explicitly Christian view of the human: not all branches of Christianity share the same views on the human/animal boundary, and Page appears to have arrived at this viewpoint independently of Christianity. 6 It should be noted that “animality” and “embodiment” are used interchangeably throughout this chapter, as I believe they are synonymous for the purposes of this argument. Essert 121

Eliot’s poetry and prose consistently represent humans and animals as part of a single continuum or community. The contrast between “holy” and “animal” in this chapter’s epigraph suggests that the category of the animal often represents, for

Eliot, the gross, terrestrial, or embodied aspects of humanity, as distinct from the uniquely human capacity for spirituality. He expresses this clearly in “Second

Thoughts on Humanism”: “If you remove from the word ‘human’ all that the belief in the supernatural has given to man, you can view him finally as no more than an extremely clever, adaptable, and mischievous little animal” (SE 485). In other words, our spiritual life is the only difference between us and all other creatures. Indeed, a comment from “The Humanism of Irving Babbitt” makes clear that Eliot’s objection to humanism has to do with its negation of spirituality: “the humanist has suppressed the divine, and is left with a human element which may quickly descend again to the animal from which he has sought to raise it” (SP 278). The Humanist valorisation of the individual is the basis of Eliot’s rejection of that philosophy (Timmerman 22–3); for Eliot, human animality is cause for intense humility. The introduction discussed the socio-historical context illuminated by Rohman and Richter, whose work emphasizes that Darwin’s theories led to widespread “anthropological anxiety” and culturally-pervasive fears of descent or devolution. Eliot’s comments on the nature of the human suggest that his views on evolution led him to share these fears and anxieties, and further evidence can be found in his poetry.

Lois Cuddy’s study of Eliot’s responses to and uses of evolutionary theory contends that “Eliot accepted the doctrine of evolution, but he could not [as many contemporaries did] equate those principles with social progress as improvement in human life” (20). In a passage from The Dry Salvages, the speaker opines that a Essert 122 progressive view of history is “a partial fallacy / Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution / Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past”

(87–9).7 This same poem also suggests a belief in evolution, in its description of how the river “tosses / Its hints of earlier and other creation,” so it is clear that

“superficial notions,” rather than evolutionary theory itself, are the problem (17–8).8

Eliot’s attitudes toward animals, and toward humans, would have been shaped in part by this belief in evolution, which adheres closely to the non-progressive, non- teleological cast of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Thus, as is detailed below, the representations of animals in Eliot’s poetry often suggest a close proximity (if not identity) between humans and animals, rather than affirming human superiority on the basis of our spiritual capacities. In his early work, Eliot’s satire often targets those who believe that “civilization” makes humanity distinct from and superior to other creatures. Later in his career, when his spiritual beliefs had allowed him to establish the clear criteria of species difference articulated above, he offers representations of human/animal communion that are sometimes playful, and in other cases meditative. His increased use of symbolism also suggests a more confident understanding of animals and animality.

Eliot’s early poetry displays a consistent uncertainty, even anxiety, about the boundary between humans and animals. Although biographical readings must be approached cautiously, there is at least a correlation between this literary uncertainty

7 Unless otherwise noted, Eliot’s poems and plays are quoted as they appear in his Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (Harcourt, Brace, 1952). With the exception of The Rock, I have provided page numbers, and not line numbers, for quotations from Eliot’s plays. 8 Cuddy provocatively relates this position to Eliot’s particular notion of tradition in literature, which led to a “method of inclusion” that involved “embracing all of Western Culture in his work” (21). In the same essay in which Eliot outlines this theory, he also declares an ambivalent position on the issue of aesthetic progress, namely that the poet “must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same” (SP 39). Essert 123 and the self-contradictory view of human nature offered by his upbringing. Eliot was raised in the Unitarian church, which preached a strongly humanist doctrine of progress, good deeds, and the perfectibility of man; and yet, his family was also

Puritanical in temperament, leaving him with a strong belief in Original Sin (Spurr

Anglo-Catholic 3). In the early poetry, aspects of human embodiment, particularly sexual appetites, are associated with animals in order to suggest that our embodied desires are base or gross, and must be repressed or repudiated.9 And yet, Eliot’s early poetry also associates animals with vital energy and freedom, suggesting that we repudiate our embodiment at our peril. This more positive view of animality can be traced to the poet’s fascination with the primitive, and particularly to the tight link between the animal and the primitive in contemporary discourses.10 Initially, Eliot’s poetic voice appears uncertain about what, if anything, separates humans from beasts, and worries at the implications of this near-identity.11 In contrast, after converting to Anglo-Catholicism in 1927, Eliot was gradually able to adopt a theological view that allowed him to come to peace with the human animality which so troubled him, and so to adopt a more accepting view of animals. Passages in Four

Quartets imply that humans and animals are part of a single community of creatures, and his later uses of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism suggest harmonious

9 I have discussed Eliot’s anxious relationship to sexuality and the body in a forthcoming article, “T.S. Eliot Among the Animals”; there, I draw upon the work of Lyndall Gordon, Carol Christ, Cyrena Pondrom, Gabrielle McIntire, and Patrick Query. 10 Marianna Torgovnick’s study of modern western notions of the primitive sensitizes us to the ethical implication of “primitivist discourse,” the shifting collection of tropes which became associated with “a generalized notion of the primitive.” Even if, as in Eliot’s case, the primitive is held up as a model rather than denigrated, it is important to bear in mind that this discourse claimed to be based on scientific observation, but in fact refers to an imagined entity with no correlative in reality. Eliot’s interest in and knowledge of anthropology, and the resulting fascination with the primitive and his rites and rituals, has been well documented by Crawford, Harmon, Chinitz, Manganaro, Patey and Bush. 11 To return to Richter’s terminology, Eliot evinces an “anxiety of simianation” and perhaps also an “anxiety of assimilation” (14). Essert 124 communion rather than anxious interrogation of difference. His religious disposition also explains the largely symbolic representations of the later work, which can be situated within the history of Christian animal symbology. Below, I argue that these shifts in Eliot’s views on animals and animality correlate with developments in his theory of impersonality.

This chapter’s epigraph from Page indicates that she viewed humans as situated between (or as a combination of) the animal or earthbound, and the angelic or divine. She expresses a similar sentiment in her “Address at Simon Fraser”:

“though we are / trapped in the body of an animal, / we’re half angelic” (22–4).12

Despite what “trapped” might imply, Page’s work suggests that we must strive to value both aspects of our nature, and to achieve a synthesis or harmony between them. This is a classically humanist position, but Page’s early work suggests that harmony was not easily achieved in the context of a theory of impersonality that appeared to reject personal, embodied (i.e., “animal”) experience as fit subject for poetry. Below, I show how Page’s early bird imagery figures the dream of transcending limiting subjectivity; moreover, her canine imagery suggests some ambivalence about human animality, while imagery of water and sea creatures indicates her desire for fluidity of perspective.

As discussed below, Page’s later work often represents communion between humans and other creatures (and thus a synthesis of the conflicting aspects of humanity), but also suggests that our kinship with other creatures has its basis in evolutionary proximity. Page was aware that, at least in some systems of thought, evolution is a very old idea: she told Eleanor Wachtel that “Rumi, a twelfth-century

12 Unless otherwise specified, Page’s poems are quoted as they appear in Kaleidoscope; generally, poems are quoted from another collection because they are not included there. Essert 125

Afghan poet, proposed a theory of evolution eight hundred years before Darwin”

(Wachtel 59). Page’s poem “Anachronism” (1970) suggests a belief in the slow, gradual development of life on earth:

The wind plucked a dying leaf from a palm tree.

It fell like the feather of a giant bird,

superimposed pre-history upon the third

month of the year nineteen sixty-three

and made an anachronism of me. (1–5)

These lines indicate a nuanced understanding of humans as relative newcomers on the planet, and of the world as a complex, changing, and non-teleological organism.

Similarly, “Cullen in the Afterlife” (2009), refers to “memories of the pasts behind the past / recently lived—the animal pasts and vague / vegetable pasts” (53–5). In her essay “Questions and Images” (1969), Page comments on the way such evolutionary proximity makes humans like, and unlike, other animals:

How quickly one learns about scale with a marmoset for companion.

Man in a rage with his gods, or, equally superficially, pleased with

them. The glorious macaw, the flesh of his Groucho Marx face

wrinkled and soft, his crazy hilarious laughter and low seductive

chuckles making him kin until one looked into his infinitely dilatable

eye and was drawn through its vortex into a minute cosmos which

contained all the staggering dimensions of outer space. (FP 37)

Operating with a later (and so less literal) understanding of evolution, Page is able to observe that, while these animals are not precisely kin, they are similar to humans in Essert 126 important ways.13 Significantly, Page also sees such observations as lessons in humility or “scale”: this small animal is a reminder of how small we are in the grand scheme of the universe. For Page, animals often serve in this way, as both an example of the wonders of the sensual world and a signal of our relative insignificance within it. As I show below, this comfort with human animality, which is of a piece with her later, more nuanced impersonality, was something Page arrived at only after her lapsus; her early work evinces the creative struggle to achieve this harmony. Her work shows relatively little evidence of the anthropological anxiety that pervades Eliot’s early work; but, in keeping with this struggle, such angst is not entirely absent from her pre-lapsus poetry.

Late in her career, Page became aware of and intensely concerned about environmental degradation. Her story about the heat-death of the planet, “Unless the

Eye Catch Fire…” (1979) is remarkably prescient in this regard. Her comments in an

NFB documentary,14 and in an interview in Jay Ruzesky, emphasize the gravity of the environmental situation, and “Address at Simon Fraser” and “Planet Earth” treat the issue forcefully in verse. “Address” concludes: “Art and the planet tell us. Change your life” (29). Her concern for animals must therefore be situated in the context of her concern for the planet.15 Her sense of the interconnectedness of all things is indicated with greatest pith in a riddle-poem from 1970, “Ecology”:

If a boy

13 This calls to mind a moment in Brazilian Journal where she compares the curator of the São Paulo natural history museum to a canine: “Most extraordinary. As I looked at his eyes, they were dog’s eyes—pale eyes, honey-coloured—and I thought, ‘Nonsense, look at his nose,’ and his nose too was a dog’s. And so I switched to his teeth—pointed, white, dog’s teeth. Uncanny. But such a polite dog. Wouldn’t cock his leg just anywhere” (80). 14 Still Waters: The Poetry of P.K. Page. 15 Diana Relke’s chapter on “Tracing the Terrestrial in the Early Works of P.K. Page” is illuminating on this subject; it places Page’s interest in animals (which I highlight here) in the context of a broader ecological reading. Essert 127

eats an apple

because a bee

collects nectar,

what happens

because a boy

eats an apple? (1–7)

In this poem Page suggests that even apparently simple actions can have significant consequences: whether the consequences are positive or negative, we ignore this fact at our peril. In what follows, I show how the views of Page and Eliot on animals and animality outlined here, which also indicate a particular understanding of personhood and of the place of humans within the universe, helped to shape, and were shaped by, their theory and practice of impersonality.

II. Impersonality Revisited

In conversation with Lucy Bashford and Jay Ruzesky, Page declared: “I feel that until you can reach beyond the self, you haven’t a great deal to say” (115).

Throughout her career, the theory of impersonality offered Page a way to “reach beyond the self” in her poetry. Building upon Brian Trehearne’s comments on impersonality in Canada (as quoted in this chapter’s introduction), I will argue that her post-lapsus poetry suggests a more developed understanding of that theory than does her early work. Her relationship to impersonality—her awareness of its advantages and drawbacks, and her adherence to or departure from it—has consistently been a central concern for her reviewers and critics, and it has motivated Essert 128 the inclusion of her work in this study.16 In making this argument, I will revisit at some length Eliot’s own formulation of the theory of impersonality, in order to more accurately measure Page’s use of that theory. Most significantly, I argue that Eliotic impersonality relies upon personal experience—most often embodied experience— as the sine qua non of good poetry. Though Page’s late-career comments indicate that she shared this view, her poetry suggests that she initially understood impersonality instead as demanding the complete excision of the poet’s emotions, experiences, and judgments.

When considered in the context of Eliot’s entire career, impersonality for him is most fundamentally an attempt to create poetry that will enable communication with other individuals, and so help to unify a fragmented society. If the fragmented forms of high modernism, of which Eliot’s work provides several excellent examples, are understood as representing the chaos of modernity, then impersonality is an attempt to combat chaos, fragmentation and isolation. This may appear paradoxical, as impersonality is often associated with emotional distance or impassive observation.17 But in my reading, Eliotic impersonality is an attempt to bridge the distances between individuals who are alienated from themselves and each other by the conditions of modernity. Such anxiety about the modern world is captured in Eliot’s famous statement about “the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history” in “Ulysses, Order, and Myth” (1923; SP

177); it is legible also, in a more oblique or psychological manner, in Eliot’s theory of

16 Another important prompt was Miranda Hickman’s comments on Page’s “Portrait of Marina,” discussed below. Hickman’s reading not only drew my attention to this poem, but also sensitized me to the Eliot allusions elsewhere in Page’s work (discussed here and in the introduction). 17 Laura Killian’s work offers a useful account of these charges against modernist impersonality. See also the discussion of modernism and gender, below. Essert 129 the “dissociation of sensibility” as set out in “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921; SP 64–

5).

In “The Three Voices of Poetry” (1953), Eliot described the creative process as giving birth, as exorcizing a demon, and as attempt “to gain relief from acute discomfort” (On Poetry and Poets 98) Though the creative act is therefore presented as a personal or individual activity, Eliot makes clear that the poet “will also want to know what the poem which has satisfied him will have to say to other people. …

The final handing over, so to speak, of the poem to an unknown audience, for what that audience will make of it, seems to me the consummation of the process” (99).

With such communication as the ultimate goal, the theory of impersonality proposes that all humans share basic experiences, and that the poet must de-personalize his own experiences so that they can be expressed as universally accessible art. It proposes, in my reading, a view of emotions and their conveyance, and of the relation of the individual to society. More particularly, I argue that, when read in the context of Eliot’s private suffering and a half-century which witnessed human suffering on an unprecedented scale, what Eliotic impersonality most seeks to understand and communicate is suffering.18 It seeks to transform psychological, emotional, or even physical suffering into art, as both personal catharsis and an act of communion to draw together fragmented individuals.

Below, I show that among the individual experience which Eliot’s theory encompasses, physical or embodied experiences (including, but not limited to, those

18 James Longenbach, and Ronald Schuchard (in Eliot’s Dark Angel), have both offered helpful examinations of the ways in which Eliot’s own personal suffering made its way into his poetry; biographies and Eliot’s own letters reinforce the point. I extrapolate from such work to consider how such suffering—and Eliot’s sensitive awareness of the acute suffering in the larger world—shaped his critical theories of literature. Essert 130 of suffering) play an important role. Impersonality becomes, then, a theory about the place of the complete, complex individual in relation to art. Given this connection, it makes sense that Eliot’s apparent ambivalence about the role of personality in his theory is very much like his ambivalence about human animality (or embodiment) in his poetry. This connection between personality and the body is legible in the epigraph from Eliot that opened this chapter; in it, Eliot associates the personal with the animal, and contrasts it with that which is permanent and public. It can be made clearer when we consider that, in his famous declaration that “the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates” (SP 41), Eliot contrasts “mind” with “man.” As the pairing is usually

“mind” and “body,” this suggests that, at least part of what Eliot means by “man” is the corporeal or animal self. Moreover, Eliot’s poetry often evinces a fascination with the suffering body: the violence of his “The Death of Saint Narcissus” and “Saint

Sebastian” are sufficient poetic examples, though there are others. In such poems, suffering is literalized in a corporeal way, thereby deepening our understanding of the meaning of “the man who suffers.” I argue that some of Eliot’s other statements, and the animal tropes and images found in his poetry, strongly suggest that he understood a complete separation between one’s physical life and mental or spiritual life to be impossible.

In “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919), Eliot famously claimed that

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality” (SP 43). This claim has often been understood as advocating for the complete excision of the poet—all of those feelings, opinions, and experiences of the human being or body which fall into Essert 131 the vague category of “personality”—from the poem, so only that which is general or universal remains. And yet, another notorious statement from that essay makes clear that, in Eliot’s view, it is impossible to escape entirely and permanently from the prison of personality: “What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” (SP 40). This suggests that, in Eliot’s reading, we cannot divest ourselves of our personality once and for all.

Instead, the poet perpetually struggles, each and every time he writes, to leave behind as much of himself as possible.19 Eliot’s statement here makes clear that impersonality is a process, not an end-point; it also suggests that personality is crucially important, because it is the thing which must be surrendered and extinguished, again and again, in order for poetry to be possible. In Jewel Spears

Brooker’s reading, Eliotic impersonality does not entail avoiding emotional expression, but rather submitting to a dialectical process whereby personal experience is transformed, via the annihilation of “the self as an all-sufficient whole,” in order to achieve “the greater end of realizing the self in writing” (42–3). In this reading, the creative dialectic begins with, and so depends upon, the personality, because there can be no impersonality, on which such poetry relies, without personal experience to begin from.

Further, I argue that personal experience, for Eliot, importantly includes sensual, physical, or embodied experience. When Eliot discusses experience in his critical prose, his examples are often perceptual experiences that rely upon our physical senses. In “The Metaphysical Poets,” Eliot contends that the mind of the

19 I am indebted here to Trehearne’s observations in “Impersonality, Imitation, and Influence: T.S. Eliot and AJM Smith.” Essert 132 poet is one in which experience like falling in love or reading Spinoza can combine with “the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking” to form “new wholes,” thus suggesting that embodied experiences are significant poetic material (SP 64).

Just as the chemistry analogy so central to “Tradition” indicates that there can be no chemical reaction without the shred of platinum that is the mind of the poet, the mind of the poet must include physical experiences along with emotional and intellectual ones in order for those experiences to coalesce into poetry. An observation in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933) also suggests Eliot’s understanding of how embodied experiences make their way into a poet’s work:

There might be the experience of a child of ten, a small boy peering

through sea-water in a rock-pool, and finding a sea-anemone for the

first time: the simple experience (not so simple, for an exceptional

child, as it looks) might lie dormant in his mind for twenty years, and

re-appear transformed in some verse-context charged with great

imaginative pressure. (70)

By this account, the poetry that is eventually produced depends upon the embodied, sensory experience of seeing this remarkable creature;20 it is emphatically not a sufficient condition, but it appears to be a necessary one. In other words, the personal experiences that are to be transmuted into poetry often rely upon the body, in so far as they are physical sensations or impressions.

Several statements from elsewhere in Eliot’s prose indicate the importance of personal experience more explicitly, and are worth reviewing for that reason. In an essay on Philip Massinger (1920), Eliot observed that “great literature” is “the

20 Eliot proves his own point here, for (as Brian Trehearne reminded me), this passage calls to mind the image of a crab in a pool in Eliot’s “Rhapsody on a Windy Night.” Essert 133 transformation of a personality into a personal work of art, their lifetime’s work, long or short. Massinger is not simply a smaller personality: his personality hardly exists.

He did not, out of his own personality, build a world of art, as Shakespeare and

Marlowe and Jonson built” (SE 217). This passage indicates that it may in fact be possible for an artist to remove himself almost entirely from his art, but that it would not be desirable for him to do so; according to Eliot, it is better to work with and through the personality, rather than negating it. It is this viewpoint that allows Eliot, in “Modern Tendencies in Poetry” (also 1920), to describe the poetry of Arthur

Rimbaud and Tristan Corbière as “personal in the right sense” (13). In this same essay, Eliot draws a comparison between the poet and the scientist, in which he argues that the best work in each field will still bear the mark of the worker: “No-one else could have drawn those inferences, constructed those demonstrations, seen those relations. His personality has not been lost, but has gone, all the important part of it, into the work” (10–11). Eliot elaborated on this point in “Shakespeare and the

Stoicism of Seneca” (1927), where he declared: “What every poet starts from is his own emotions. … Shakespeare, too, was occupied by the struggle—which alone constitutes life for a poet—to transmute his personal and private agonies into something rich and strange, something universal and impersonal” (SE 137). The claim that personal emotions are the ultimate genesis of a poem makes clear that

Eliot has no delusions about removing the poet entirely from his poem, or separating entirely the creative mind from the embodied aspects of an individual. Moreover, this suggests that corporeal experiences are desirable, because they play a crucial role in the creative process. And yet, those “personal and private agonies” cannot be presented raw—in Eliot’s view, to achieve successful or great art, they must be Essert 134 processed or transmuted into something that is not merely personal, thus allowing other individuals (“universal” here implies any and all other individuals) to understand the utterance.21 Finally, Eliot’s clearest statement on impersonality as a dialectic or process, in which personal experience plays a crucial foundational role, may be this passage from his lecture on Yeats (1940):

There are two forms of impersonality: that which is natural to the

mere skilful craftsman, and that which is more and more achieved by

the maturing artist. The first is that of what I have called the

‘anthology piece’, of a lyric by Lovelace or Suckling, or of Campion, a

finer poet than either. The second impersonality is that of the poet

who, out of intense and personal experience, is able to express a

general truth; retaining all the particularity of his experience, to make

of it a general symbol. And the strange thing is that Yeats, having

been a great craftsman of the first kind, became a great poet in the

second. (SP 251)

Based on the examples offered, the first form of impersonality would seem to involve the nearly-complete removal of the poet’s personality from the poem.

Although all of these poets employ the first person, the sentiments they express in their lyrics about love are generic and universal, and their unique personhood is evident, if at all, only in their choice of attitude or tone.22 This is more complex than an impersonality based on an avoidance of the first person, and aligns with the

21 To transmute is “To alter or change in nature, properties, appearance, or form; to transform, convert, turn” (“transmute, v.”); its broader meaning may be derived from alchemy and physics, which is significant in light of Eliot’s chemistry analogy in “Tradition.” 22 I could not locate any further comments from Eliot on the lyric poems of Lovelace, Suckling, or Campion; therefore, this assessment is based on my own reading of the work of these poets as selected and reprinted in the Norton Anthology of Poetry, shorter 5th edition (ed. Ferguson et al.). Essert 135 standard account of Eliot’s theory of impersonality. The second form, however, is a great deal more nuanced and more interesting, and articulates explicitly what was often only implicit in his theorizations of impersonality.

Eliot’s famous chemistry analogy purports “to define this process of depersonalisation and its relation to the sense of tradition” (SP 40), and yet it sheds very little light on the issue. In part II of “Tradition,” he explains that “the mind of the poet is the shred of platinum”—that much is clear—and that the oxygen and sulphur dioxide are emotions and feelings, but he does not effectively clarify the difference between these (SP 41). What is clear, however, is that the mind must act upon the emotions and the feelings in order for these to be transformed into art, which demands a high degree of detachment: the poet “possesses a variety of feelings to make use of. But in his operation upon them, he is not particularly interested in them because they are his feelings; it is only as he is able to regard these feelings as existing apart from him, just as apart as the chemical from the chemist, that he can work them into art” (“Modern Tendencies in Poetry” 11). This feels as though it is begging the question, for it remains unclear how such detachment is to be achieved. Part of the answer is suggested by Eliot’s comments on the small boy and the sea-anemone: given enough time, experiences can be regarded with sufficient detachment to become material for art. Eliot’s concept of “the tradition” also serves as an agent of detachment, in that it provides the poet with a sense of scale, helping her to surmount mere individuality by submission to or submersion in something larger than herself. In “Tradition,” Eliot repeatedly refers to the poet as medium; and the title of this famous essay indicates that the poet must channel nothing less than

“the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the Essert 136 literature of his own country” (SP 38). It is this application of tradition, this

“historical sense,” that makes the poet know it is impossible to be wholly original, and thus enables the poet to transform the private emotion into a feeling comprehensible to a reading public. The more thorough the immersion in the tradition, the more complete the transformation, the wider a reading public one can reach. Significantly, Richard Badenhausen has offered a persuasive reading of this aspect of Eliot’s theory as a form of collaboration. Eliot’s lifelong habit of collaborating with others—including dead poets—through various kinds of borrowing is crucial to the process of depersonalization, because it necessarily results in poetry which represents more than one perspective or subject position. Such collaboration should also be considered as evidence of an intense humility toward the poetic project, reinforcing Eliot’s dictum that “No writer is completely self- sufficient” (SP 74).

Eliot argued for a third method for achieving the detachment necessary for impersonal poetry in his formulation of the objective correlative; as Timmerman observes, “the crafting of the objective correlative constitutes the process of impersonalisation” (32). If tradition assists the poet in depersonalizing his experience, the objective correlative offers a method of sharing that experience so that it can be assimilated by readers. Eliot first used the term in “Hamlet and his

Problems” (1919), as a way of expressing what he found lacking in that play. He declared that

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding

an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation,

a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular Essert 137

emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in

sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked (SP

48).

Eliot’s youthful bravura is apparent in the opening words of this passage, and in this essay’s bold claim that Shakespeare’s much-lauded play fails because it does not meet this standard. But Eliot is careful to note (in the very next sentence) that the objective correlative is not new, and that Shakespeare employs it to great effect in many of this other plays. As it relates to impersonality, the objective correlative offers a way to capture or present an emotion that redirects the emphasis away from the speaker: the focus is instead directed toward the object, situation, or event which created, or which will evoke, that emotion.23 As a technique, this has two important benefits: it is concise, capable of capturing complex emotional states in a few words by finding the appropriate image; and it is more “objective,” that is, if chosen correctly it will evoke in the reader the emotion intended by the poet. As

Timmerman explains it, “Only this process of impersonalisation permits the reader to directly confront, or to engage, the actual emotional life of the poem, which is not the emotion of the poet, but a kind of emotional life the poet has discovered and transmitted by a sequence of images arranged in such a way as to make the independent body of emotions accessible to reader” (31). The “sequence of images” of Timmerman’s statement, or the “symbol” of Eliot’s comment on Yeats, is the objective correlative: images or symbols capable of capturing complex emotions, and of effectively conveying those emotions to readers. Given the importance of the objective correlative to Eliot’s theory of impersonality, it naturally played a crucial

23 Though Eliot’s essay makes clear that his idea is not a novel one, he neglects to mention its central position in contemporary poetics, as represented by the Imagists. Essert 138 role in Page’s reception and implementation of impersonality.

***

In her foreword to The Filled Pen (2006), Page makes clear the significant influence of Eliotic impersonality on her work:

asked to address ‘A Writer’s Life,’ I declined on the first invitation

because I didn’t think I could do it. I rarely think I can do it. Nor was

I eager to write about myself. Imprinted by Eliot’s ‘objective

correlative’ in my twenties, his influence is with me still. Re-reading

this manuscript, however, I realize that the self, like a child who has

been put to bed before the party, cannot resist creeping downstairs.

(xi)

The last sentence, which is also the last sentence of the foreword, indicates that

Page’s position on the role of personality in poetry, at least late in her life, was nearly identical to Eliot’s position as explicated here, in that it understands the return or manifestation of the self in the literary work as inevitable. And yet, the comment implies that Page used to believe in, and associates Eliotic impersonality with, a complete banishment of the self. She implies that it was, for much of her career, an article of faith for her that one should not write about oneself, but that her opinions and practices have now altered. Ironically, even as she seeks to dissociate herself from Eliot, Page offers a theory of poetic creation that has much in common with

Eliotic impersonality as I have described it above.

It is significant that, in this passage from Page’s foreword, Eliot’s objective correlative and his theory of impersonality are taken to be nearly synonymous. This association may help to explain why, despite her belief that it demanded the Essert 139 complete removal of the self from the poetry, Page still found impersonality attractive. She made the same link in a 1987 interview with Eleanor Wachtel: “I don’t really like confessional poetry. This probably has something to do with having been bought up on Eliot’s ‘objective correlative’ which can, after all, enlarge the boundaries of the poem” (63).24 For Page, the objective correlative formed the

Eliotic idea from which all else follows, because it is the technique that enables the poet to displace, diminish, or “reach beyond” the self (Bashford and Ruzesky 115).

Page was deeply concerned about what she referred to as “the tyranny of subjectivity”—the fact that perception is always subjective and therefore limited, such that an authentic relationship to the world and to our fellow humans demands the cultivation of another kind of vision or selfhood (FP 41–2). Jane Swann’s analysis of tropes of vision in Page draws attention to the way that such concerns are thematized in Page’s poetry, while Douglas Freake has discussed the multiple self as a focal point for Page’s “interest in the problematics of the self” (95). For Page, the search for the adequate correlative required that the poet background her ego and consider an emotion or event from multiple perspectives, in order to find a symbol that will be complex enough to signify to a diverse audience; the reward, ideally, is poetry that transcends interpersonal barriers and communicates authentically. As both process and product, the objective correlative would therefore have been useful to Page for addressing her concerns about the limits of subjectivity. In her poetry, objective correlatives often take the form of metaphors so complex as to resemble metaphysical conceits—as in “Paranoid” or “Mystics like Miners”—or of the rapid

24 A decade later, Page made a very similar statement in conversation with Bashford and Ruzesky. It is worth noting here the implicit contrast between impersonal and confessional poetry, because it suggests that the integration of personal experience into poetry is an all-or-nothing proposition. Essert 140 juxtapositions which Brian Trehearne has labelled her “a of b” formula (Montreal

Forties 81)—as in “The Bands and the Beautiful Children” or “The Stenographers.”

And yet, as the critical work on Page’s lapsus makes clear, this was not an entirely adequate solution; the critical distance required to find the adequate symbol often left

Page feeling too far removed from her subject.25

Page’s own comments not only indicate her debts to Eliot and her particular understanding of impersonality, but also suggest how that understanding developed as her career progressed. For example, when asked by Bashford and Rudesky about continuity across her career, Page responded as follows:

One of the things that emerges from The Hidden Room is that even

when I was young I wasn’t writing about myself very much. It’s one

of the complaints I get now; that my poetry is too impersonal. And

yet it always was. I was looking out. I was looking at the man with

one small hand, or the old man in the garden, or the stenographers,

typists. It wasn’t often that I was looking at myself, although I

suppose in some sense I was the man with the small hand, the old

man in the garden, etcetera, etcetera. (120)

Again in this passage, Page associates impersonality with not writing about herself, and with looking outward, rather than inward, for her poetic subjects. The tyranny of subjectivity emerges here in the tension between the ideals of her poetic project—to be a neutral observer of other individuals—and the ultimate impossibility of getting outside of or beyond one’s own subjective vision. Page’s observations suggest a basic

25 Particularly useful accounts of Page’s poetic silence have been offered by Killian, Trehearne, and Irvine. Swann’s work on Page’s awareness of limited perception is also an important contribution to this discussion. Essert 141 continuity in her poetic approach across her career (“it always was”), but also highlight a significant development. Her comments here are those of an older self reflecting on her earlier work: it is only in retrospect that she can see aspects of her own personality in “the man with the small hand, the old man in the garden, … the stenographers, typists.” In referring to criticism of her work as “too impersonal,”

Page is also obliquely referencing her own concerns about the detachment, coldness, or lack of empathy which have been identified as possible adverse outcomes of the impersonal method. Trehearne, Irvine and Killian have discussed how such concerns contributed to her poetic silence of the late 1950s and early 1960s. However, her later insight that she “was in some sense” her poetic subjects or speakers captures what her earlier theory of impersonality missed, and suggests the solution which allowed her to resume writing. Page’s earlier interpretation of Eliotic impersonality missed the pivotal aspect of it that many of its interpreters have likewise missed: that the poet’s personality, emotions, or experience are always her point of departure.

The synthesis of subjectivity and objectivity, or of the personal and the universal, is also captured by Page’s concept of the visionary “total I,” which appears in “Cry Ararat!” (1966). As Rosemary Sullivan explains, “The expression describes emotional integration as though consciousness comes into contact with deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substrata of being and to which we rarely penetrate” (40). It seems as though it allows her to understand the self as integrated into the larger whole, as a centre or focus of a network of empathic relations. In “Cry

Ararat,” Page writes of the dream of perfect correspondence between word and thing, and of a desire for

stillness to receive Essert 142

the I-am animal,

the We-are leaf and flower

the distant mountain here. (52–5)

This vision of the natural harmony and elision of boundaries is figured by another dream, of being a bird in flight, in the poem’s second part. In its conclusion, the poem suggests that, with concerted effort, a kind of synthesis may be achievable:

The bird in the thicket with his whistle

the crystal lizard in the grass

the star and shell

tassel and bell

of wild flowers blowing where we pass,

this flora-fauna flotsam, pick and touch,

requires the focus of the total I. (108–14)

In these lines and elsewhere in this poem, the speaker “explicitly asserts the need to remain present to oneself” (Stockholder 64). It is a kind of presence, however, that also takes in and unifies diverse perspectives: the “total I” appears to involve both subjectivity and objectivity. When this effort is made, and the “total I” has been focused, impressive feats of perception become possible: “A single leaf can block a mountainside; / all Ararat be conjured by a leaf” (115–6). When she returned to writing poetry in the late 1960s, Page’s work appeared to be more personal or subjective because of its more frequent use of the first person, and its presentation of a speaker who is very much like the poet. But this notion of the “total I,” along with

Page’s own comments, suggest there may also be important continuities between her early and late work. They are both, though in different ways, attempts “reach beyond Essert 143 the self” (Bashford and Ruzesky 115).

From another perspective, her later work manifests a more mature, more nuanced notion of impersonality. It enacts the Eliotic credo that personal experience is necessarily part of a poet’s work, but must be transmuted in order to become accessible to others. Page appears to have arrived at these conclusions by way of

Sufism and other philosophical explorations, rather than any investigation of Eliot’s work. And yet, Page’s later impersonality is a more complex approach to the theory, one which more closely resembles Eliotic impersonality than did her earlier understanding thereof. Page’s early work evinces a desire for unity with nature, and for a synthesis of the angelic and animal aspects of the human being. But such harmony is glimpsed only briefly, and is generally cast as fantasy or impossibility.

This correlates with a theory of impersonality which demands the excision of the personal, which is represented as embodiment or animality. We see Page privileging the spiritual over the embodied, and evincing some anxiety about human animality.

The animals in this early poetry are emphatically not real, flesh-and-blood creatures.

In contrast, Page’s later work, which makes frequent use of the first person, and offers a poetic speaker similar to Page herself, seems to achieve a synthesis of the personal and the impersonal. Although we cannot know whether the experiences and opinions represented in the poems were really Page’s own, they are presented as such. Thus, the new, post-lapsus poetic mode, which allowed Page to write prolifically for more than four decades, seems to involve departing from personal experience, but rendering it impersonal so that it can be appreciated by readers.

Eliot never suffered a comparable poetic silence, but he was not a prolific poet, and during certain periods he despaired of ever writing again (Badenhausen 11– Essert 144

12). And in an important way, the trajectory of Eliot’s career was similar to the arc of

Page’s, and with similar timing: as he entered his third decade as a poet, Eliot sought a new approach to poetry. His verse dramas, and the more accessible poetry of the

Ariel poems and Four Quartets, may appear as a marked departure from his earlier work. And yet, in Eliot’s later poetry, as in Page’s later work, the impersonal method simply allowed more room for the transmuted personality of the poet than did the earlier work (which often reads as an attempt to efface the self by way of pastiche and personae). In writing verse drama, Eliot applied his theory of impersonality in a new way: the poet’s personality was now not only transmuted, but divided among a cast of characters.26 In his last three plays, Eliot thematizes the complexity and multiplicity of the self, emphasizing the difficulty of fully knowing or understanding oneself and others; and yet, the drive to communicate in such apparently impossible conditions remained, as it was in his early theoretical work, the primary motive for artistic labour. But before analyzing Page and Eliot’s work to show how representations of animals help to illuminate these important developments in their poetic careers, it remains to consider the nature of Page’s debts to Eliot.

III. Eliotic Affinity: A Vexed Relationship

In addressing the perennial question of influence, Page’s critics often include

T.S. Eliot in lists of poets who have shaped her work.27 Page’s comments on this issue in her foreword to Hologram: A Book of Glosas (1994) are illuminating: “‘Who were the poets who influenced you?’ interviewers often ask and I have always

26 In “The Three Voices of Poetry,” Eliot opines that “Ideally, a dramatist… should sympathize profoundly with all of his characters,” and should endow each character with “some trait of his own, some strength or weakness, some tendency to violence or to indecision, some eccentricity even, that he has found in himself” (On Poetry and Poets 93–4). 27 Sandra Djwa appears to be especially interested in Eliot’s influence, as she mentions it in all her work on Page. Eliot’s influence on Page is likewise central to Hulan’s analysis of Page and emotions. See also Irvine, Messenger, Freake, and Orange (“P.K. Page”). Essert 145 resisted the idea—not that I think my voice so original, but because ‘affinity with’ seems closer to the truth than ‘influenced by’” (FP 61). Page clarifies her position by reference to an animal metaphor, telling the story of an ornithologist who raised birds in isolation. When finally introduced to birdsongs of various other species,

“they chose the notes and cadences that, combined with their own attempts, completed their species song.” As Page sees it, “‘that is what poets do. We have a song—of a kind. But it is not until we have heard many other songs that we are able to put together our own specific songs’” (FP 61). Like Eliot, Page believed that complete originality is impossible, and that the poet necessarily draws from the literary tradition in which she participates. Page’s choice of the glosa also indicates her views on influence and tradition. The form consists of “the opening quatrain written by another poet; followed by four ten-line stanzas, their concluding lines taken consecutively from the quatrain; their sixth and ninth lines rhyming with the borrowed tenth” (FP 58). Given that the glosa demands working closely with the words of another poet, comments on influence and affinity in the foreword to

Hologram are apropos.

Page also explains what the glosas’ collaborations mean to her: “it occurred to me that now, towards the end of my life, it would be appropriate to use this form as a way of paying homage to those poets whose work I fell in love with in my formative years” (FP 59). Page chooses as her points of departure lines by those poets with whom she has felt an affinity, whose song helped her to find her own.28

Unsurprisingly, Eliot is among these poets: Page wrote a glosa on four lines from

Burnt Norton I, which she titled “Presences” (1993). Page’s poem is not

28 Robert Stacey’s article on Page’s glosas is perceptive on the issue of her relationship to her fellow poets. Essert 146 straightforwardly imitative, but still shows clear evidence of her poetic debts by its invocation of Eliot’s voice, imagery, and methods.29 The following paragraphs will examine several early poems that also provide evidence of Page’s deep affinity with

Eliot. Because they date from the beginning of her career, these poems are helpful in tracing the development of her interactions with the senior poet, and thus of her version of the theory of impersonality.

First published as “The Traveller” in December 1942, “Cullen” would be the first in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical poems in which Page presents this male alter-ego.30 In the poem’s fifth stanza, Page makes an allusion to The Waste Land, followed by a direct reference to Eliot, when the speaker reports that Cullen “Tried out the seasons then, found April cruel— / there had been no Eliot in his books at school— / discovered that stitch of knowledge on his own” (42–4). In an interview with Sandra Djwa, Page recalls her introduction to Eliot at her first meeting with the

Preview group in early 1942: “I didn’t know what they were talking about. They had all kinds of incredible theories about T.S. Eliot. I had read a bit of Eliot, but not much, and I certainly didn’t have any theories” (41). When pressed, Page affirms that she had read “Prufrock” and The Waste Land, but says “I hadn’t understood them. I was fascinated by the form he was writing in, the language he was using. It was very exciting. I supposed understanding was a sort of slow osmosis. I gradually began to

29 The title refers to the spectres or visitors whom the speaker and his companion see in the garden. Page chose the moment in Eliot’s poem immediately preceding a revelation—an appearance of light which is only dimly understood by Eliot’s speaker. Page’s speaker, in contrast, seems to understand more fully: she observes that “their brightness spilled / over our skin,” and their presence is “like a blessing” (8–9); she exclaims “O Joy, O very miracle!” (29); and at the end of the poem, she and her companion are “new born, royal” (39). Page also employs many images that recur in Eliot’s late work, such as birds and roses. Where Eliot often integrated Buddhist and Hindu texts or figures into his work, Page borrows here from Egyptian mythology. There is also the more nebulous matter of how Page echoes the late-Eliotic tone: the smooth, steady polysyllables, the long sentences, and the indistinct (or highly impersonal) speaker all contribute to this. 30 Cullen was first published in Contemporary Verse n. 6. The autobiographical aspect of this poem may help explain why it was not published in a collection until Cry Ararat! (1967). Essert 147 see the world a bit more and realized that Eliot was talking about that world” (Djwa

“A Biographical Interview” 42). In light of such claims, the passage from “Cullen” is interesting for the way that the invocation of Eliot is followed by a kind of disavowal—read self-referentially, these lines suggest that Page may have bristled somewhat at the dominance of Eliot among the Preview crowd. Her imperfect understanding of Eliot’s work, in combination with his prominence, might have prompted her to assert that this titanic figure was not the only source of poetic knowledge. Given that Page associates Eliot with impersonality, these lines also suggested her vexed relationship with impersonality, which played such an important role in the trajectory of her career.

Page’s comments suggest that her introduction to the Preview group also constituted an introduction to Eliot. It is unsurprising, then, to find another strongly

Eliotic poem from that year—the unpublished “Diary,” dated February 1942.31 The poem opens with a chronographia resolving into zoomorphism,32 in a manner reminiscent of Eliot’s early work (perhaps especially of “Prufrock” and “Portrait”):

Winter has wandered here and stands among us –

a bitter creature torturing hands and feet –

walks like a stray but familiar dog and snuffles

the tidy timelessness of Sherbrooke Street. (1–4)

The poem’s final lines involve the type of synecdochic fragmentation of the body so often found in Eliot’s early poems: “Dance then, dance on, dance madly, knowing

31 Page Fonds, Box 1, file 5, pages 62–69. Page has dated the poem “Feb. ‘42.” My thanks to Zailig Pollock for sharing a scanned copy of these pages. 32 Chronographia is a “Vivid representation of a certain historical or recurring time (such as a season)” ("chronographia"). Essert 148 only / the eyes, the mouth, the hands, you run to meet” (189–90).33 It is therefore unsurprising to encounter a stanza largely about Eliot’s poetry, which begins by situating the speaker’s reception of his work within the context of the Second World

War:

Downstairs the two-inch headlines of the papers

explode like bombs upon the cutlery.

We gulp a piece of Lybia [sic] with toast

and mix our coffee with the China sea.

I should have brought my Eliot to breakfast

and read of out-worn disillusionment

that found a sort of weary exaltation

much later at the Anglo-Catholic font.

I should have swallowed Wastelands with my porridge

and Mr. Sweeney with my eggs and bacon;

the mood is definitely nineteen-twenty,

T.S. was in my mind when I awakened.

I lift my coffee spoon -- at once remember

his image that concerned a coffee spoon

and though the hour is breakfast I become

a paper figure leaning on the moon. (41–56)

The rather hackneyed reference to the coffee spoon aside, this passage is interesting for its complex invocation of the elder poet, much like the passage from “Cullen”

33 On Eliot’s frequent fragmentation via synecdoche of the human (most often female) body, see Melita Schaum, Michael North (Politic Aesthetic), and Carol Christ. These lines are especially resonant with Eliot’s “prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet” (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” line 27). Essert 149 discussed above. The repetition of “should have” emphasizes that the speaker did not read Eliot at breakfast, but feels she ought to have done so, suggesting again that

Eliot is de rigueur for her circle but not a poet she appreciates. Most literally, the speaker rejects Eliot by not reading him, while “Out-worn disillusionment” and

“weary exaltation” indicate a slightly disparaging attitude in keeping with this gesture.

And yet, in addition to its mentions of The Waste Land and Sweeney, the stanza concludes with a lunar image reminiscent of “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” and other Eliot poems in his early Laforguian manner. The extended invocation of Eliot, coupled with “T.S. was in my mind when I awakened,” ultimately suggests that his poetry has moved her in some important way.34

In the following stanza, the speaker leaves the communal breakfast table to go to begin her work of composing poetry. The next forty-four lines detail her struggle with the muse, figured as Pegasus. This extended, personal account of the creative struggle, and the emphatically first-person account of social anxieties which follow, are decidedly un-Eliotic. This suggests that the ambivalent representation of

Eliot in this poem (and in “Cullen”) indicates Page’s vexed early relationship to the figure of Eliot or to impersonality as she understood it. Given Trehearne’s observation that Canadian poets often believed that impersonality demanded the excision or avoidance of the first person, Page’s use of the first person here creates a pointed contrast between her own work and Eliot’s. Even at this early stage, Page may have been aware of the costs of impersonality, and of the potential value of a

34 In particular, the passage suggests that Eliot’s poetry offers some solace in wartime. Interestingly, line 51 suggests that the speaker’s wartime feelings of anxiety and ennui (manifested throughout the poem) are best captured by Eliot’s Poems (1920), written in the aftermath of the previous war, rather than by Eliot’s later work. Essert 150 more subjective or personal style.35 At the same time, this unpublished poem makes clear that Eliot’s methods—and certainly his tone and imagery—were also attractive to the young Page.

“Portrait of Marina” (1951) suggests a stronger, more mature, affiliation with the senior poet, as though Page felt more comfortable with her own balance of subjectivity and objectivity at this particular moment.36 By attempting to re-write a familiar story from the point of view of a female character, it participates in a feminist trend legible elsewhere in Page’s early work (especially in her poems about female office workers). In this case, Page represents the story of Pericles from the perspective of his daughter Marina, in what is likely a reply to Eliot’s “Marina.”37

While the title of Eliot’s poem suggests a focus on Marina, she is, as Timmerman observes, practically absent: “No actual Marina figure as a living personality enters the poem. She is the beatific figure who nonetheless, in the narrator’s experience, obliterates the past with its horror and transforms the present” (145). The sins listed in the second stanza of “Marina” are “By this grace”—that is, by the grace of the rediscovered daughter—“dissolved in place” (16). Serving simply to absolve and redeem her father, Eliot’s “Marina” has no life of her own.

As both Marilyn Russell Rose and Geoffrey Durrant have astutely observed,

“Portrait of Marina” is more interested in versions of reality and questions of

35 Dean Irvine has amassed convincing evidence to support such a reading of Page’s career in his “The Two Giovannis.” 36 In an unpublished conference paper, Miranda Hickman has offered a more detailed account of the case of considering Eliot’s poem as intertext, as well as a helpful discussion of the relationship of influence which pertains between these poets (one which is surprisingly equal and distinctly un- Bloomian). 37 In Shakespeare’s tale, Pericles leaves his infant daughter Marina with the rulers of a neighbouring country so that he may return to Tyre and reclaim his kingdom. Many years later, when he returns to find her, Pericles is told she is dead when in fact she has been sold into prostitution. The play’s ending is a neat and happy one: father and daughter are reunited, and Marina, having almost-miraculously remained virtuous, is married. As this plot summary suggests, Marina herself is more an object signalling Pericles’ failure and redemption than a significant character in her own right. Essert 151 perspective than in family drama. The father’s worldview is captured by the image he embroiders of a ship at sea (which is all that fits within his frame, or all that matters to him), and by his wish that Marina become “a water woman, rich with bells” (15). His behaviour toward her—his oaths, summons, and demands—suggests that his daughter is no more than a servant to him. The poem offers another perspective, that of the inheritor of the embroidered picture who idealizes her “great- great-grandpappa” and is unaware of Marina’s suffering (25). But the poem also offers Marina’s own perspective, from which the consequences of such treatment are figured as physical pain: “all his stitches, interspersed with oaths / had made his one pale spinster daughter grow / transparent with migraines” (7–9). The poem’s second section provides an extended portrait of her suffering, while the last makes clear the flexibility and fluidity which she has lost as a result of her too-circumscribed life. As

Durrant observes, “the very vividness of a world imaginatively perceived

[represented by the deep sea] is feared by a woman deprived of her vitality, since perception is more radically disturbing, and dangerous, than action in the world”

(175).

Reading “Marina” in this way, as a poem about perspective and perception, can sharpen our sense of how Page is writing back to Eliot by challenging his choice of frame and focal point. Page attends to what Eliot neglected, using the impersonal method to critique the important gaps in his vision, and so to address significant misgivings about the theory of impersonality itself. Miranda Hickman has observed that “as Page struggles to overcome the ‘tyranny of subjectivity,’ she encounters the possibility that the very impersonal techniques to which she has subscribed early in her career…themselves promote a kind of tyrannical subjectivity, which in turn Essert 152 precludes sympathy of the kind she seeks” (“‘O My Daughter’” 9). As this suggests,

Page’s interest in perspective and perception in this poem may be a kind of self- analysis, and her critique of Eliot is likely also a self-critique. The historical facts also suggest that the middle-1950s were a moment of creative angst for Page: it would not be long before she would stop publishing poetry, to begin again a decade later with a recalibrated sense of poetic priorities.38

Hickman, in a separate discussion of the ways that female modernists engaged with the theories and techniques of their male counterparts, notes that

“Portrait of Marina” illustrates the potential strength of Page’s imagistic impersonality by effectively creating the very empathetic response which Page worried she could not achieve (“Modernist Women Poets” 42-3). This poem, like many others by Page, serves as an important reminder of the gender dynamics that underwrite Page’s relationship to impersonality. After ground-breaking work which sensitized critics to modernism’s masculine bias—such as The Gender of Modernism, No

Man’s Land, and Sentimental Modernism—it has become possible to view impersonality as a mode which is not a priori masculinist, and which could also be liberating for women writers.39 Dean Irvine, Laura Killian, Shelley Hulan and Hickman have offered insightful readings of the ways in which gender shaped Page’s complex relationship to impersonality, emphasizing that Page’s difficulties with that theory

38 I follow many of Page’s critics here in reading Page’s poetry of the 1950s as offering an explanation for her poetic silence. And yet, it is also important to heed Trehearne’s caution that “the silence is not a sufficient context”: “I think it highly likely that later creative frustration will be anticipated to some extent in poems written earlier, but I reject linear causal analysis which would point all effects of all poems forward to that lapsus” (Montreal Forties 46). 39 Kaufmann, and Trehearne (in his conclusion to Montreal Forties), both argue effectively against the idea that impersonality is necessarily masculinist and detrimental to female creativity. Laity and Heuving offer examples of work from H.D. and Moore studies which address this same issue in the case of other female poets. Paul’s analysis of Page’s representations of girls and women is also useful for considering Page’s views on gender and impersonality. Essert 153 arise in part from her status as female.

There can be no doubt of Eliot’s importance to Page. Her understanding of impersonality did not derive exclusively from Eliot, and her knowledge of his poetics may have been largely second hand from the Preview group, but impersonality (a theory which she consistently associates with Eliot) was to shape much of her poetic output throughout her long career. The poetic invocations of Eliot discussed here also suggest that he was a significant figure against which Page defined herself: he is the only poet she addresses in her pre-lapsus published work. But Page’s engagement with Eliot is consistently critical or skeptical: she interrogates, rather than blindly accepting, the artistic principles she associates with him. No mere acolyte, when she ultimately arrives at the same place as the elder poet, she has come there by a different path. Having considered Page’s affinity with Eliot, and having achieved a better grasp of the impersonal theory as it applies to both poets, the remainder of this chapter examines poetic evidence in order to trace the relationship between impersonality and each poet’s representation of animals. In both cases, a shift in poetic methods (and thus in their practice of impersonality) correlates with new patterns in their use of animal tropes and imagery.

IV. Early Poetry

Birds are the most frequently represented animals in Eliot’s and Page’s poetry; in both cases, their uses are heavily symbolic. Page’s poetry tends to be populated by generic birds, but Brazilian Journals records her intense fascination with the many bird species encountered during her time abroad. John Orange’s 1988 interview with Page suggests at least one reason why birds are so significant for her:

Interviewer: Do the birds in your poems . . . Essert 154

Respondent [Page]: Relate to angels?

Interviewer: Yes. I always thought that they did.

Respondent: They must be of the same order in some kind of way mustn’t

they? But lower on the scale. The fact that they have hollow bones and are so

light and their temperatures and heartbeats are quite different from ours . . .

(73)

For Page, birds are symbols of the celestial on earth, the terrestrial manifestation and reminder of angels. In an article on Page’s interest in Eastern religions, Vivian

Vavassis notes that angels and peacocks are “Page’s symbols of psychic wholeness…

[they] offer glimpses of hope for a reintegrated and repaired universe” (132). The peacock in particular makes two important appearances in Page’s work, and as

Constance Rooke observed, “for P.K. Page there must have been a marvellous sensation of déjà vu in the discovery of a Sufic cult which joins the peacock and the angel in a fashion so perfectly attuned to the shapings of her own imagination”

(175). Examining her work as whole, it seems that Page considered all birds (not just peacocks) akin to angels, which she associates with “the higher faculty of man”

(Djwa “A Biographical Interview” 49). Birds represent that which is best and most creative in us, including our ability to transcend the mundane and move toward the divine; or, to use one of Page’s metaphors, they represent our ability to see the greater reality behind or beyond appearances. In Page’s distinction between animals and angels, birds are emphatically the latter. With respect to impersonality, birds represent for Page the capacity of the poet to transcend the “merely personal” in order to communicate with others.

This may explain why, in Page’s early poetry, birds are elusive creatures. As I Essert 155 read them, these birds are manifestations of Page’s uncertainty about human spirituality, or of her doubts about our ability to achieve transcendence. The title of

“Ecce Homo” (1942) refers to Jacob Epstein’s statue of the suffering Christ, and the poem describes the speaker’s trip, with a British companion, to a gallery to see it.

The poem also makes reference to Epstein’s controversial sculpture, Rima, and to a discussion about polygamy that the speaker and her companion had on their way to the gallery. The speaker recalls that “A wind of birds interrupted your words,” the slightly hackneyed internal rhyme drawing attention to the significant moment (6).

The birds here call to mind (for the companion, and for readers) the birds depicted in Epstein’s Rima, which keep company with the eponymous spirit-woman, a character from W.H. Hudson’s novel Green Mansions. Contemporary debates about

(artistic and sexual) morality are juxtaposed with the intensely affective experience of viewing Epstein’s artistic representation of a religious subject, and with the fleeting contact with the birds. The poem suggests a wish for transcendence, and a hope that it may be possible, while also affirming its present impossibility: “And like a young tree I put out a timid shoot / and prayed for the day, the wonderful day when it bore its fruit” (62–3). The bird imagery here suggests the difficulty of interacting with divine forces: the birds are merely a wind, not really present, and Epstein’s sculpture is difficult for the speaker to assimilate. The birds in “Rima,” to which the poem also refers, suggest the proximity between those creatures and (semi-)divine figures. The poem’s references to debates about marriage and art suggest that social constraints further increase the difficulty of finding an authentic spirituality or a communion with the divine.

Birds also play an important role in “If It Were You” (1945), Page’s moving Essert 156 portrait of mental breakdown.40 Its title suggests a challenge to an interlocutor—who, presumably, has belittled someone suffering from mental illness—to put him or herself in the position of such a sufferer. In keeping with the theory of impersonality, its plea for compassion is predicated on a belief in a common human nature. It departs from impersonality in so far as the speaker takes a clear position on an issue, and is emotionally invested and self-defensive, having suffered from the condition described in the poem (10). However, repeated use of the second person deflects attention from the speaker by interpellating the interlocutor, and also serves to depersonalize and universalize the experience in question by asking her (and by extension, the reader) to imagine herself in the situation described. Page’s depiction of mental illness in this poem suggests a typically modernist interest in the nature of the human psyche: the poem represents the movements of a mind in a state of distress, and is thus of a piece with other poems in As Ten As Twenty (such as

“Round Trip,” “The Condemned,” “Contagion” and “Landlady”) which focus on psychological states or experiences. The poem repeats the title phrase several times, and the speaker’s statements are almost entirely conditional: this seems to suggest that anyone might suffer such a breakdown, and (by extension) that the self is fundamentally unstable.41 The mental breakdown is initially characterized as a troubling collapse of distinctions: “everything terribly run together as if rain / had smudged the markings on the paper”; “that strange longitude that divides the body /

. . . / dissolved and both your hands were one” (5–6; 15–8). As the poem

40 I quote from this poem as it appears in As Ten As Twenty, pages 14–7, because this version contains lines that have been excised from later editions. 41 Throughout their work, both Page and Eliot often suggest that the self is incoherent, unstable, or fragmented. This seems in keeping with the idea (which has its roots in Keats) of the poet’s intense capacity for empathy, which is implied in many of Eliot’s comments regarding universal poetry and in Page’s emphasis on empathy. See Sullivan, Rooke (“The Chameleon at the Centre”) and Badenhausen (especially p. 45) for a detailed discussion of the influence of Keats on Page and Eliot. Essert 157 progresses, the sufferer experiences a clear sense of alienation from the community

(“Your friends and you would be practically strangers”), followed by a fragmentation of or alienation from the self (“Then there would be the things your head had prepared for your fingers…”) (24–5, 54–5).

Three mentions of birds are central to Page’s representation of this condition. In the second stanza, the addressee’s hypothetical distress is contrasted with the birds in the garden who “went on with their singing” (19). In the third stanza, Page invokes birds as angels, describing the sufferer as

… always lonely

and birds perhaps would brush your coat and become

angels of deliverance

for a moment only;

clutching their promising wings you would discover

they were illusive … (35–40)

Reading birds as symbols of the divine or the higher self, their appearance here represents the sufferer’s alienation from that principle. The intense emptiness or solitude which characterize this condition are made clear in the poem’s final mention of birds in the following stanza: “No bird nor beast with a challenging look / or friendly. / Simply nothing but you and the green garden” (48–51). The inclusion of

“beast” here suggests that the sufferer has finally lost touch with both the divine and the mundane, and so can do nothing but be “mechanically / occupied” (52–3).

Although in the final stanza, the sufferer feels “an identity with idiots and dogs,” this is only a feeling, not reality (81). As discussed further below, dogs and other creatures seem to represent a healthy embodiment, but this is impossible in such a disturbed Essert 158 state. Thus, the birds here function as effective objective correlatives for the transcendent aspect of humanity: a complete loss of contact with this aspect is figured as a tragic symptom of a mental breakdown, to which the interlocutor and reader are asked to respond empathetically because they too could easily suffer a similar fate.

In “Only Child” (1945), birding is an activity shared by mother and child, but their relationship to the birds is dramatically different. “Birds were familiar to him now, he knew / them by their feathers and a shyness like his own / soft in the silence”; they were “his element like air” (17–9, 29). His mother, who dreams of her son becoming “the noted naturalist” teaches him to “separate them in groups / or learn the Latin” (23–4). For the boy, “her words for them” turn the birds into

“statues / setting them apart” (30–1), while the bird pictures she offers show

“strange species flat against a foreign land” rather than living creatures (38). The final stanza describes a dream, which I read as the mother’s. The boy catches a variety of birds and, having “snapped and wrung their necks,” he “placed them in her wide maternal lap / and accurately said their names aloud: / woodpecker, sparrow, meadowlark, nuthatch” (63–5). If birds represent the divine or creative principle in humanity, then the kind of labeling or analysis favoured by the mother (a representative of the entire adult world) can kill this principle.

And yet, Brian Bartlett has made a persuasive argument that “the poem sees him [the son] sympathetically as well as critically” (66). Bartlett observes that “the boy is less interested in the birds per se than in arousing certain sensations within himself” (67), and amasses evidence from elsewhere in Page’s work to show that the naming and taxonomy associated with the mother are most often coded positively. I Essert 159 am not entirely convinced by such claims, but they do help to temper or nuance initial impressions of the poem, which cast the mother as the clear villain of the piece. In a further complication, feminist theory frequently associates schematic naming with patriarchy, but here it is associated with the mother, and the father is absent. Page may be considering the ways that women are unwitting accomplices to their own patriarchal oppression and (in terms of the boy’s reaction to the mother’s lesson) the ways that patriarchy oppresses both men and women by limiting their modes of thought and experience. In this case, the mother’s dream may represent her awareness that the way she is teaching her son to interact with nature is deeply destructive. If the birds represent divinity or spirituality, then the poem suggests the difficulty of achieving an appropriate relationship with the divine: neither passive dreaming nor excessive analysis will do. Moreover, it suggests that patriarchal patterns of thought, because they are limiting, might constitute a further impediment to spiritual fulfillment. With respect to impersonality, then, this poem appears to suggest that both excessive subjectivity, and excessive objectivity, can kill the creative principle.

Of the peacock in “Arras” (1954), Page said: “It may not be clear in the poem, but I generated it. Or the persona, whoever that persona is, generated it. I think of it as the life force. The creative force” (Djwa “A Biographical Interview”

47). Within the poem, the speaker is first unwilling to admit that she created the beautiful bird: “Through whose eye / did it insinuate in furled disguise / to shake its jewels and silk upon that grass” (5–7). At this juncture in her career, Page appears to have believed that impersonality demanded a complete excision of the self from the poetry, and involved an understanding of the poet as a medium, receiver or recorder Essert 160 rather than as an active producer of art. Again, there are very good reasons to read

Page’s poems of this period as, at least in part, dramatizations of her concerns about the impersonal method. “Arras” represents the limited and passive conception of poet-as-medium as a significant impediment. Until the poet is willing to claim agency over her creative force (represented by the peacock)—that is, until she is willing to insert herself, as creator, into the work—“nothing moves,” and she “fear[s] / the future on this arras” (21, 23-4). The creative impasse is resolved by a dramatic admission: “I confess: // it was my eye. / Voluptuous it came” (25–7). The drama is heightened by the poem’s typography, which sets “I confess” on a line of its own, followed by a stanza break, which creates the impression of suspense or hesitation.

Once the poet has proclaimed herself the origin or possessor of this creative force, the poem is able to move forward to a sensuous description of the peacock. And yet, the poet’s description is in some sense futile, because it does not attract the attention of the others in the garden: “they stand / as if within a treacle, motionless, / folding slow eyes on nothing” (36–8). This suggests that, even if the poet does manage to access the divine or transcendent, it may be difficult to articulate such an experience, or there may be no audience for it. Moreover, the final lines suggest that the speaker lacks total control of her creative powers: “another line has trolled the encircling air,

/ another bird assumes its furled disguise” (40–1). Thus, Page’s claims of agency in her interview with Djwa are not quite borne out by the poem, which registers some anxiety that the poet is merely a vessel or medium, and not a creative agent. This poem, written not long before her lapsus, dramatizes Page’s artistic struggle, and foreshadows some possible solutions, but does not resolve the vexing issue of the place of the poet within the poem. Essert 161

Birds are particularly effective symbols in these early poems because, at this juncture in her career, Page was acutely aware that transcendence of the self and communion with the divine are elusive goals. Close readings of Page’s birds also shed light on the zoomorphic comparisons of people to birds in “Giovanni and the

Indians,” “Offices,” and “Typists.” The birds in these poems act as concise and impersonal descriptions of these characters, indicating that they possess some remnant, though perhaps only a small one, of the divine or creative spark. And if birds are associated with the higher self, the divine, and creative power, then the prayerful invocation of them in “After Rain” is wholly consistent—their aid is invoked much like the aid of saints might be. This association also sheds light on

Page’s characterization in “The Crow” of that bird as a churchwarden. In these early poems, Page’s use of bird imagery suggests that communion with the divine is difficult to achieve: it is fading, fleeting, and elusive.

If birds represent the divine, then land animals (as suggested above) represent the mundane. Given Page’s later statements on human nature, it seems reasonable that her poetry contains images of both, as she thinks through humanity’s place relative to animals and angels. Canines make particularly frequent appearances in her early work, as though they were the quintessential animal. And, unlike birds, which are desirable but elusive, they are ambivalent figures. In Page’s “Election Day” (1945) on her return from the polling station the speaker walks “past an empty lot where an old dog / appoints himself as guardian of the green”; passing the same lot again on a midnight walk, she finds “the old dog / has trotted off to bed” (30–1, 42–3). In this poem, Page seems to be working through some concerns about impersonality by considering the relationship between public and private. The speaker leaves “the Essert 162 locked zone of my tight and personal thought” in order to wave “the streaming banner of my public thought” (3, 16). In her neighbourhood, “the box and private privet / denote the gentleman and shut him in” (17–8), and later in the evening, due to the intervention of the radio, “public is my room, not personal” (36). The poem seems to appreciate the opportunity to participate in public life (by voting), and suggests that in order to do so, one must bracket the private or personal. While the private is the space where poems are created, taking shelter behind it for too long may shut one in. Despite these concerns about private personhood, the speaker takes great pleasure in embodied sensations:

Oh on this beautiful day, the weather wooing

the senses and the feeling of walking

smooth in my summer legs

I lope through the tall and trembling grass … (12–5)

This might help explain the presence of the dog: a happy, fully-embodied creature who is blissfully ignorant of the elections, and who can declare himself the master of his domain. This suggests that Page saw some value in embodiment or animality (the

“personal,” which her version of impersonality would have her excise), and is contemplating its role.

The mention of dogs in “The Permanent Tourists” (1948) is similarly ambivalent. The tourists who are the object of the poem’s satire are zoomorphized in the poem’s second stanza, where they

Verge upon statues in the public squares

remembering the promise of memorials

yet never enter the entire event Essert 163

as dogs, abroad in any kind of weather,

move perfectly within their rainy climate. (6–10)

These individuals are bodies without souls or minds, downgraded therefore to the level of the purely bestial. In one sense, then, the association of the tourists with canines is meant as an insult (as animal comparisons most often are). But, still reading the dog as symbol for simple embodiment, the speaker may also be making a straightforward statement of fact: these tourists are not fully participating in the human community, because they don’t enter into mental or spiritual contact with their surroundings. The last stanza’s statement that the tourists are “somehow beautiful,” then, becomes part of a concluding move to soften the satire with compassion. In this context, the comparison to dogs suggests that these tourists are, though incomplete or unfulfilled, not really worse than other people—we often fail to be all that we might, and so we must be gentle in our assessment of others.42

Dogs also figure importantly in “Images of Angels” (1953), which considers the relationship between embodiment, reason, and divinity. After imagining the reactions of children, a notary, a financier, and an archaeologist to an encounter with an angel, the speaker suggests that “Perhaps only a dog could accept them wholly, / be happy to follow at their heels / and bark and romp with them in the green fields”

(59–61). Here again, the dogs seem to represent pure, unencumbered bodily existence. They seem able to sense that the angels are good, and so they interact with them physically (and joyfully) just as they would do with a friendly human. But

“Perhaps” gives us pause, and “Accept them wholly” may be lightly ironic, because the acceptance would be whole-hearted, but incomplete in so far as the dogs cannot

42 There was a productive debate about this poem in Canadian Poetry 19, in a special section titled “Literary Theory in the Classroom: Three Views of P.K. Page’s ‘The Permanent Tourists’.” Essert 164 recognize the angels in their full glory or significance. In this reading, the dogs form an important contrast with the financier and the archaeologist, both of whom have entirely intellectual responses, in keeping with their professions; the speaker thereby implies that neither embodiment nor intellect alone is sufficient. This is confirmed by the next lines (“take the nudes of Lawrence and impose / asexuality upon them”) which suggest that D.H. Lawrence’s literary characters—who often emphasize a relationship between the body and the spirit or mind—could commune with the angels if they were not so focused on sexuality and gender politics (62-3).

The importance of a complete or integrated existence is reinforced by the poem’s representation of the children’s interactions with angels, which appears to be positive. As discussed further below, Page tends to represent children as integrated, rather than dissociated, beings (to use Eliot’s terminology). For the children, the angels are “more coloured and a deal more cosy, / yet somehow mixed with the father” (14–5): their response is both intellectual and emotional, bringing together disparate impressions. And so “a child, not knowing they were angels could / wander along an avenue hand in hand / with his new milk-white playmates” (65-7). Though the children may not know precisely what the angels are, unlike the dogs they have a sense of their significance. That the child is able to hear the music of the spheres suggest that his open-hearted and integrated response models the path to enlightenment; and yet, the poem’s conclusion indicates the difficulty of achieving it for any extended period.

And yet, Page also seems to suggest that, at certain moments, “doggishness” might be an advantage. In “Man with One Small Hand” (1947) the description of the man’s relationship to his deformed hand involves a canine comparison: “Yet it has its Essert 165 place like memory or a dog — / is never completely out of mind—a rod / to measure all uncertainties against” (16–8). This man and his hand are associated with grace and beauty, as in the poem’s third stanza: “Sometimes you come upon him unawares / just quietly staring at it where it lies / as mute and somehow perfect as a flower” (9–11); or in its final lines describing the hand itself: “It has its magic. See how it will fit / so sweetly, sweetly in the infant’s glove” (21–2). The small hand is like a dog in that it is a constant reminder of the fact that we are earthly, embodied creatures. By improving his awareness of that important fact, the man’s hand confers upon him a kind of peace or grace, the result of being comfortably situated in the universe. And bodies, including our memories of embodied experiences, are a solid point to depart from, to “measure all uncertainties against” (18).

Similarly, In “The Metal and the Flower” (1954) those human beings who made the “garden of barbed wire and roses” (no rose garden at all, really) are contrasted with other humans, and with dogs:

Trespassers have wandered through

texture of flesh and petals.

Dogs like arrows moved along

pathways that their noses knew. (7–10)

For the trespassers, the garden appears to hold no danger—the threats of violence which separate the builders seem to be entirely in their heads, rather than objectively real. The dogs, like the trespassers, can move swiftly and comfortably through the garden, because (as pure embodiment), they are untroubled by the mental or spiritual constructs which impede the builders. If barbed wire and roses represent violent conflict and violent emotions, perhaps departing from a consideration of animality— Essert 166 which unites not only all humans but all creatures—could encourage a resolution.

On the whole, Page’s representations of dogs seem to register her ambivalence about human animality and (implicitly) about the role of the poet’s embodied or personal self within the poem.

Birds and dogs as symbols in Page’s work can be associated with contrasting aspects of the theory of impersonality: birds represent the need to transcend the merely personal, while dogs serve as reminders that the embodied self is always the point of departure. It seems that, in Page’s early work, she has intimations of the need for a synthesis of spirit and body, impersonal and personal, but is not sure how, if at all, it might be achieved. Another cluster of animals in Page’s work—a variety of sea creatures—can be associated with the need to be fluid and flexible in one’s perspectives, to adopt different points of view. And this, too, suggests the solution that Page would later achieve. Given the frequent use of personae in impersonal poetry, the ability to inhabit multiple perspectives may suggest a way of achieving universality or getting beyond the self. The quest for objectivity, figured most clearly in the use of the objective correlative, is central to impersonality, and may be an important factor in Page’s attraction to it. She was consistently concerned with avoiding what she called “the tyranny of subjectivity” (FP 41-2), and her sea imagery captures the premium she placed on openness of vision or flexibility of perspective.

The importance or value of such mental fluidity is often the theme of the poems in which sea creatures and sea imagery appear. A clear example of this phenomenon can be found in “Young Girls,” which compares female adolescents to porpoises and associates them with fluids: “See them in class like porpoises / with smiles and tears / loosed from the same subterranean faucet” (8–10); “A shoal of Essert 167 them in a room makes it a pool. / How can one teacher keep the water out” (16–7).

This fluidity, which makes the girls alive to obtuse angles and eye-catching phrases

(12), is a temporary state: although “on dry ground they goggle, flounder, flap,” they are “partially amphibious” and only “perilously afloat” (23, 27, 25). Their receptive and passionate engagement with the world overwhelms them, and they are “always drowning a little” (28). In addition to being temporary, their fluidity is not welcome or accepted by society—once they are captured by it (that is, once they have grown up), the more rigid terrestrial life is ironically called “their natural element,” when it is perhaps more of an adaptation to adult society. Though the speaker engages in some gentle mockery of the girls, the poem is ultimately critical of a society that demands that these girls “grow out of” their open or fluid perception.43

In “Element” and “Average” (both 1944, revised 1946) the speaker assumes the perspective of a fish, and this new perspective, along with the water setting, enables a representation of multiple or fluid points of view. In “Average,” the fishes

“take their own trip,” which is not ours, and their different physiology allows them different ways of seeing: “eyes—rock crystal—see two sets of things: / the right and the left with equal clarity” (3–4). Their environment can be likened to human ones, with courtyards, corridors, and forests, while the final stanza describes them as social creatures much like humans. The final stanza also suggests that there is much we will miss if we do not find the right ways of looking: what appear to be insignificant movements are actually the fish’s way “to spread the news abroad through wave and spout / that raiders are about” (16–7).44 This poem, then, represents sea creatures

43 Page similarly associates children with the sea in “Boy with a Sea Dream,” though there are no sea creatures in that poem. 44 This poem is not included in Kaleidoscope. I quote here from As Ten As Twenty page 25. Essert 168 and water in order to assert the value of imaginatively inhabiting other perspectives.

Similarly, the speaker of “Element” appears to be a fish, or perhaps someone dreaming that she is a fish. Consequently, the perspective is not the normal human one: where we value light and fear darkness, for the speaker light is frightening and darkness is safe. The perception of water is similarly altered from this new viewpoint:

“Oh, running water is not rough; ruffled to eye, / to flesh it’s flat and smooth; to fish

/ silken as children’s hands in milk” (6–8). This passage reveals the ambiguity of the poem’s perspective, suggesting a link between the movement and fluidity of water and the value of a shifting point of view. It seems as though Page has identified both a problem and a potential solution, but is not sure how, or even if, it might work in practice. Below, I discuss how Page’s post-lapsus work suggests that she came to understand impersonality as a method for universalizing the personal and the subjective, rather than an inflexible doctrine demanding their excision. This synthesis—the result of a dialectical process that transforms personal experience into something universal—is figured in Page’s later images of sympathy, communion, or harmonious relations between humans and other creatures.

***

The meanings of Eliot’s symbolic birds are less consistent than those found in Page, and more likely to be dependent upon the species of the bird in question.

Eliot was evidently knowledgeable about birds and bird lore, and his poetry often refers to a particular species with the intention of relying on its place in the cultural imaginary.45 Eliot’s birds are therefore more likely to be conventional or public symbols than are Page’s birds, though some (like the thrush) are certainly private

45 Eliot’s integration of a variety of bird species into the “Landscapes,” culminating with the avian catalogue of “Cape Anne,” offers the clearest poetic evidence of his intense appreciation. Essert 169 symbols.46 Certain species make repeated appearances in Eliot’s work, and the intertexuality which such repetition creates among his poems enriches and elucidates their meaning: this is especially true of the hermit thrush, the seagull and the nightingale. According to Marianne Thormählen, Eliot’s birds transcend “the region of everyday human existence. Often, they carry the knowledge of something urgently important to human beings, something men fail to recognize, must not be told, or have forgotten” (56). This suggests that, as in Page, birds in Eliot have some association with the divine; but the situation is not so simple, for Eliot considers birds as part of the animal kingdom (whereas for Page they were angelic), and each species of bird signifies differently in his work. However, Thormählen’s description does seem applicable to the hermit thrush, which makes its first appearance in “What the Thunder Said.” As Eliot’s note to line 357 of The Waste Land suggests, this bird’s name is appropriate because it is more often heard than seen—its hiddenness making it an appropriate objective correlative for elusive divine grace. Eliot’s note affirms a personal connection to this bird, by claiming that he has heard it “in Quebec

Province,” thus suggesting the manner in which embodied personal experience might make its way into his poetry. In “What the Thunder Said,” the thrush with its “water song” (which Eliot’s note calls “justly celebrated”) forms part of an oasis of water and pine-trees dreamt of by the drought-stricken speaker; it represents that which is desired but unobtainable. The thrush’s song may be contrasted with the cock’s crow that precedes the rain slightly later in the poem: whereas the cock is a bird of effectual, quotidian reality, the thrush is associated with (divine) vision unrealized. At

46 For this distinction, see Abrams and Harpham 394. Page’s use of the peacock might qualify as a public image, but the peacock’s significance for Page is based on its place in Sufi writings, with which her readers are not likely to be familiar. Moreover, she appears to transfer the peacock’s attributes to all other birds. Essert 170 this juncture, Eliot doubts our willingness or ability to commune with the divine, and the hermit thrush becomes an apt symbol of the elusiveness of grace. Eliot’s representation of this animal thereby allows him to make an important statement about the place of humanity in the universe. Below, I discuss the thrush’s appearances in Eliot’s later work; in keeping with Eliot’s changing spirituality, the later instances have more optimistic connotations.

Eliot’s seagulls hold a rather different meaning, being associated with bravery and nobility. Given their proximity to human habitats, this symbolism suggests that some birds may serve as spiritual models for humans. The colourful catalogue of birds in “Cape Ann”—a place dear to Eliot as the site of his childhood vacations— culminates in a suggestion that one bird species is superior to all the others: “But resign this land at the end, resign it / To its true owner, the tough one, the sea-gull”

(11–12). This later praise lends an extra poignancy to the “Death by Water” section of The Waste Land, where “Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead / forgot the cry of gulls” (312–13). Phlebas has lost even that which was most basic to his personhood as a sailor, which may be understood as the aspiration to bravery or nobility—qualities which the early drafts of “Death by Water” certainly associate with sailors. Collecting these associations can illuminate the image of the gull at the end of “Gerontion”:

… Gull against the wind, in the windy straits

Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,

White feathers in the snow,47 the Gulf claims,

And an old man driven by the Trades

47 Page’s “Stories of Snow” contains very similar imagery. Essert 171

To a sleepy corner. (69–73)

In commenting on this passage, Thormählen concludes that “the flight of the gull, however brave, is really just as useless as Gerontion’s passive, unheroic quiescence”

(62). I contend, instead, that these lines contrast the brave gull with the quiescent man who failed to act: though the “Gulf claims” both man and bird, they are not equal. The gull is portrayed here as active where Gerontion is passive, and such a reading is more in keeping with the symbolic significance of seagulls elsewhere in

Eliot’s poetry.48 The seagull, then, is the very model of the active bravery that

Gerontion never achieved, reminding us of the poem’s beginning (“I was neither… /

Nor… / Nor”). In these earlier examples, the gull represents virtues that are not possessed by humans, while the later instance is a clear statement of appreciation.

The nightingale also figures as a repeated symbol in Eliot’s work. It appears in several places in The Waste Land, always with reference to the story of Procne and

Philomela (discussed with respect to H.D. and Swinburne in chapter one). Eliot even makes a point, in his note to line 429, of reminding us that “swallow” ought to invoke this same myth, as though attempting to ensure that we think of these birds not as living, breathing animals, but as public symbols. Thormählen observes that

“the song of the nightingale, and the agonized address to the swallow, serve as reminders of ancient horrors… joining past to present by emphasizing the essential viciousness of the human race” (68). She makes an effective argument for this bird’s symbolic function in The Waste Land and in “Sweeney among the Nightingales.”

Whereas the thrush and the gull had positive spiritual associations, Eliot associates

48 It is also in keeping with the way that other animals are used in this poem—as discussed below, the tiger is a symbol of that divine destruction which is necessary for redemption, and thus also has positive connotations. Essert 172 the nightingale with excessive human sexuality leading to violence. Philomela is the victim of uncontrolled sexual appetites; in “Sweeney among the Nightingales,” the nightingales (prostitutes) are represented as threatening, even murderous, and the final stanza opines that the birds “sang within the bloody wood / When

Agamemnon cried aloud” (37–8), thus associating them with another story of adultery and murder.49 Its mythological associations make it a sort of negative spiritual model, suggesting another important symbolic role for animals in Eliot’s poetry. Eliot’s use of diverse bird imagery allows him to represent human embodiment, spirituality, and suffering in all their complexity.50 Turning to an examination of other creatures in his early work, a similar tendency toward ambivalence and complexity becomes apparent.

Eliot’s struggle to achieve a more accepting relationship to human animality is part of his career-long project of defining and refining impersonality—that is, the journey to understand the appropriate place of the individual in the universe. As described above (and examined in what follows), Eliot’s intense ambivalence about embodiment earlier in his career led to complex, even self-contradictory representations of animals. This can be concisely captured in Eliot’s frequent recourse to zoomorphism, which can have both positive and negative connotations.

But Eliot’s willingness to accept or inhabit contradictions is one of his defining

49 This message is reinforced by the fact that, in Ara Vos Prec, the poem contained “a second epigraph from an anonymous Elizabethan play, The Raigne of King Edward the Third” which can be translated as “‘And why should I speake of the nightingale? The nightingale sings of adulterous wrong’” (Schuchard, Eliot’s Dark Angel 94). Many commentators have noted that “nightingale” was slang for prostitute; for confirmation, see Farmer and Henley’s Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English (307). 50 Thormählen has elucidated at length the rather complicated imagery of the agèd eagle and wings in Ash Wednesday. She also notes that the kingfisher, which makes two appearances in Four Quartets, is associated with stillness or calm (94-5). Many of Eliot’s other birds are more simply symbolic than those discussed here: the eagle (in “Coriolan” and “A Cooking Egg”) represents war and/or Roman imperialism, while the dove (“Coriolan” and Little Gidding) signifies peace and/or the holy spirit. The parrot is associated with artificiality in “Portrait of a Lady” and “Aunt Helen,” while the sparrow, the commonest city bird, is simply set-dressing in “Preludes.” Essert 173 characteristics as a thinker. As C.B. Cox has argued, “Contradiction… in Eliot’s pre- conversion poetry reflects his concern to gather multiple points of view, rather than to adjudicate between them. He expressed both hope and despair, and does not attempt a reconciliation” (qtd. in Timmerman 48–9). This cast of mind is significant for its relationship to Eliot’s theory of impersonality: the process of universalization and depersonalization demands a consideration of the point of view of potential readers, and asks that the poet’s private opinions become less important than the presentation of an evocative situation. The ambivalent animal tropes of his early work can be related to the struggle, discussed above with respect to impersonality, to separate and sublimate the “man who suffers,” and to understand the role of the individual within society. An examination of the early poetry will be followed by a discussion of the later, which evinces a more accepting relation to embodiment, and which must be read in the context of his shifting religious beliefs.

Although Eliot wrote much poetry in his youth, “The Love Song of J. Alfred

Prufrock” is the earliest poem that Eliot was willing to publish in his lifetime.51 Its title character emerges as a weak young man paralyzed by his social anxieties and insecurities. Though the epigraph from Dante suggests that the speaker will reveal his darkest secrets, it becomes apparent that Prufrock has no serious secrets or indiscretions to speak of, but will reveal a great deal about his personality. Prufrock twice compares himself to an animal, in each instance revealing an important aspect of his character. He first likens himself to a specimen in an entomologist’s collection:

“And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, / When I am pinned and wriggling

51 “Portrait” and “Preludes” were begun before “Prufrock,” but completed after. Some earlier work was collected in Poems Written in Early Youth—but given that its 1950 printing was limited to 12 copies, we cannot really consider those poems published until the posthumous edition of 1967. Essert 174 on the wall” (57–8). This image emerges in response to Prufrock’s paralyzing combination of ennui and social anxiety, as suggested by the preceding lines: “And I have known the eyes already, known them all — / The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase” (55–6). In casting Prufrock as animal, Eliot indicates that

Prufrock is trapped by the fear of scrutiny, and is diminished to the level of the insect by this fear.

Similarly, Prufrock laments: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws /

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (73–4). This is preceded by an ellipsis, signalling an omission; “Prufrock’s Pervigilium” provides the omitted content, consisting of four stanzas describing a nightmarish visit to the sordid city slums

(Inventions of the March Hare 43). There is a remnant or stub of this passage in the canonical poem, in the “lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows” (72).

Such experiences appear to be an important part of what Prufrock cannot say to his female companion(s)—to do so would be indecent and reflect badly upon him in the polite society that is the poem’s background. The comparison suggests that Prufrock is so weak that he would prefer to devolve to the level of a crustacean than to express himself. Like the insect before it, the “claws” are not associated with any particular species—in both cases, the imagery is intended to signify “something undesirable and less-than-human.” Vagueness works better than specificity for these purposes, as it allows the reader to conjure the unpleasant creatures for himself.

Within the world of the poem these zoomorphic comparisons signal Prufrock’s pain; from the perspective of the poet or the reader, they also suggest that Prufrock has not been able to “man up,” and has descended to the level of insignificant animals.

This reading suggests that, for the youthful Eliot, animals are what we become when Essert 175 we do not act to affirm our humanity: they symbolize the baseness to which we are always proximate.

The other representations of animals in this poem complicate the issue somewhat, and suggest that Prufrock’s fear of human animality may be a source of his problems. Prufrock’s fear of women, and of embodiment, is suggested by the famous refrain: “In the room the women come and go / talking of Michelangelo”

(13–14, 35–36). Michelangelo is famous for his representations of the human body, and the women in Eliot’s poem are distant and vaguely threatening. Similarly, bodies in this poem cannot be taken in whole, but are always presented in synecdoche— there are arms, legs, eyes, and fingers instead of whole people. An observation about the women’s arms—“[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]” (64)—is therefore significant, as it links these women with animality and makes clear the source of Prufrock’s anxiety. Prufrock is only able to relate to animals in his imagination: in addition to the feline fog (15–25) and the canine evening/afternoon

(75–8), there are the sea-girls of the poem’s conclusion, who are intimidating but attractive. According to this reading, Prufrock’s fecklessness results from his distance from animals or his repression of his own animality. Taken as a whole, “Prufrock” suggests that we can neither deny nor revel in our animality, a position which is both unhappy and untenable. This difficult relationship to embodiment may be related to the delicately-balanced integration of the poet’s emotional life into this poem.

Biographical evidence suggests that the young Eliot shared much of Prufrock’s angst; but those emotional experiences are de-personalized by the creation of a persona, and by the forceful use of allusion, repetition, and other poetic devices.

Closely contemporary with “Prufrock” is “Portrait of a Lady,” another poem Essert 176 about the problem of gender relations and communication which also features zoomorphism. The speaker, a young man, describes encounters between himself and an unnamed woman who is clearly older than he. From his perspective, she attempts to draw him into an intimacy that he does not desire, through a series of carefully arranged meetings and contrived utterances. Again, we have the male speaker’s fear and consequent rejection of the female—the supposed object of desire, but practically quite the opposite. As in “Prufrock,” the young man’s self-deprecatory animal comparisons betray his social uneasiness. But here, the problem appears to be feelings of constraint and repression rather than acute sexual anxiety:

And I must borrow every changing shape

To find expression ... dance, dance

Like a dancing bear,

Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape. (109–12)

The common associations with these particular animals suggest that, however he expresses himself, the young man remains capable only of mimicry, and cannot speak or act according to his own volition. Because they are tamed or trained, these domesticated creatures lack true animality. He feels so controlled by the lady that he cannot imagine authentic, fully liberated expression. Together, these animals act as an objective correlative to capture such emotions. They are also a way for the speaker to assert his masculine humanity, because he is only (and only in a particular sense)

“like” these animals.

As with the examples of Sweeney and Grishkin (below), this objective correlative proves, upon closer examination, to be significantly more complex. These lines also implicitly suggest that appropriating the animal, like appropriating the Essert 177 primitive, can form an effective communication strategy. In part I of the poem, the young man, stifled by “an atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb” in which so much is “left unsaid” (6–7), retreats into himself in a way which evokes the primitive:

Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins

Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,

Capricious monotone

That is at least one definite “false note” (32–5)

Rejecting the lady’s violins and cornets (29–31), the young man marches to the beat of his own primitive drum, if only figuratively. He may dismiss his inner desires as capricious, absurd, or false, but in acknowledging them he has “at least” found something “definite.” The animals in the passage above are not wild, powerful, or authentic, but rather tamed and imitative; they may be all that remains of human animality. The young man’s inability to access the truly wild or primitive constitutes an important aspect of his malaise, and may even be its cause. Civilized culture (or social constraints) has repressed the primitive, which might enable him to break free of the “tobacco trance” to which he returns after each of these failed attempts at communication. He can neither embrace the primitive, nor be satisfied with the hollow performances of thoroughly domesticated creatures.

The complex position of animals in Eliot’s imaginative lexicon makes them particularly valuable signifiers for poems in a satirical vein, where their multiple implications serve to complicate Eliot’s social critique. “Mr. Apollinax” describes a teatime meeting between the title character, based on British philosopher Bertrand

Russell, and the polite society of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In depicting this tense encounter, the speaker zoomorphizes both parties. The naming of Professor Essert 178

Channing-Cheetah—later shortened to Professor Cheetah—carries the implication of animality lurking below a civilized veneer, which polite men and women go to great lengths to deny and conceal. The reference to Mr. Apollinax’s “pointed ears” and his association with “the beat of centaur’s hoofs” zoomorphizes him too, and indicates that he makes less pretence of concealing his animality (19, 16). The dullness of the Channing-Cheetahs and their companions—most evident in their fatuous comments, and likely the result of their denial of their animality—makes them largely forgettable (“I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon” (22)).

In contrast, the speaker clearly values Mr. Apollinax’s laughter, and he is cast as a fascinating man whose presence prompts imaginative activity: “I thought of

Fragilion...” (3); “I heard the beat of centaur’s hoofs” (16). The poem’s epigraph suggests that Mr. Apollinax is misunderstood by those around him (Worthington 3–

4). Thus far, the poem reads as a satire of Cambridge high society.

And yet, the negative adjectives attached to Mr. Apollinax, such as “dry” and

“irresponsible,” along with the ominous image of his severed head, suggest that he is not entirely admirable. Like the mermaids in “Prufrock,” Mr. Apollinax is half human and half animal, and so simultaneously threatening and fascinating. It is no secret that Russell, a philanderer, had an affair with Eliot’s wife;52 it seems possible that Russell’s excessive lasciviousness—coded here as animality—makes him as much the subject of Eliot’s derision as the dowager, the professor, and his wife. Thus the poem suggests that it is both ridiculous to deny one’s animality, and dangerous to accede entirely to one’s animal urges. As I discussed above, Eliot’s theoretical work of this period seems similarly uncertain about the relationship of personality to the

52 See, for example, Schuchard Dark Angel (91 and passim). Essert 179 poem. On the one hand, the artist must separate the man who suffers from the mind which creates, and personal experience must be transformed by or subsumed within the tradition in order to create art. On the other hand, such separation is a constant, never-ending struggle, and it is not entirely clear how such transformation is achieved. Thus Eliot’s ambivalence about animality can be related to his complex stance on the place of personal experience within poetry. Personality, like animality, must be carefully controlled; but unless the poet begins from personal experience, his work will be as forgettable as a meeting with the Channing-Cheetahs.

Two other works collected in Poems (1920) evince a similarly complex or conflicted attitude toward animals and human animality: “Whispers of Immortality” and “The Hippopotamus.” “Whispers of Immortality” juxtaposes metaphysical poet

John Donne and Elizabethan dramatist John Webster with a modern woman named

Grishkin. The juxtaposition is abrupt, with the two parts divided by asterisks, so that the reader is left to puzzle out the relationship between them on her own. The first stanza of part two contains no references to animals, but paints an ambivalent portrait of Grishkin. She is “nice,” with “friendly bust” that promises “bliss,” and we may take these as a young man’s pleased assessment of her body. However, her fragmentation into “friendly bust” and “Russian eye” objectifies her by focusing on specific body parts rather than acknowledging her whole person (19, 17). And her dangerous artificiality is emphasized by her use of cosmetics (“underlined for emphasis”) and by the fact that she promises only “pneumatic bliss” (18, 20).53

“Nice” may also be evidence of damning with faint praise, or Eliot may have

53 “Pneumatic” can mean “inflated or filled with compressed air” (“pneumatic, adj. and n.” def. 2c.); a humorous reference to Grishkin’s well-rounded figure (def. 2e.), it might also imply that the bliss she offers is artificial, temporary, or devoid of value. Brian Trehearne observes the adjective is also applicable to the metaphysical poets, who are concerned with spiritual existence and/or full of hot air. Essert 180 intended an archaic sense: “wanton, dissolute, lascivious” (“nice, adj. and adv.” def.

2b). The second and third quatrains describing Grishkin do so by juxtaposing her with an Amazonian jungle cat:

The couched Brazilian jaguar

Compels the scampering marmoset

With subtle effluence of cat;

Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar

Does not in its arboreal gloom

Distil so rank a feline smell

As Grishkin in a drawing-room. (21–8)

At first pass, these lines seems to reduce the jaguar to a symbol of excessive or untamed embodiment, and to cast Grishkin as a threatening (because sexually predatory) other. The reference to her “rank… feline smell” is particularly objectionable, implying as it does a visceral disgust with her female body (27).

In this reading, the jaguar as wild, threatening animal stands as correlative for the appetitive female: theoretically the object of desire, she is primarily gross and dangerous. Grishkin’s companions or customers are cast as her victims, lured into her maisonette just as the jaguar “compels the scampering marmoset” into its lair

(22). The structure of juxtaposition offers an elegant example of the use of objective correlatives in impersonal poetics: neither the precise emotions nor the exact relationship between images needs to be specified at length. Instead, these can be inferred from the meanings associated with the correlative and the relation suggested Essert 181 by the proximity of images within the poem. The objective correlative is especially effective because of the complexity of the emotion for which it acts as an equivalent, for closer examination reveals that Grishkin is not entirely repugnant.

The nuances of the jaguar as objective correlative, and its implications for the characterization of Grishkin, become clearer when read in the context of the poem as a whole. Eliot showed his appreciation for Donne and Webster in “The

Metaphysical Poets” and elsewhere; they exemplify the unified sensibility that is so crucial as a model for Eliot’s poetics. In “Whispers,” however, they are associated with an unhealthy obsession with death, depicted as (unconsummated) necrophilia.

Webster is so much “possessed by death” that he sees skulls and not live heads. He seems to imagine the “lipless,” “breastless” dead as posing seductively (“lean[ing] backward”) (3–4), and to prefer his companions with “Daffodil bulbs instead of [eye] balls” (5). In “The Metaphysical Poets,” Eliot declared that “A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility” (SP 64). The speaker of “Whispers” considers the practical ramifications of this cast of mind: Donne seems to reject experience (he is “expert beyond experience”) in favor of a life of the mind (as suggested by “found no substitute for sense” if “sense” means “consciousness”).

Moreover, his focus on the afterlife seems to lead only to “anguish of the marrow” and “fever of the bone” which cannot be satisfied (13–16). Thus, there is a strong contrast between the metaphysics of Donne and Webster and the pure physicality of

Grishkin, but both are found wanting (Strandberg n. pag.). Though Donne may be a model of the integrated sensibility in Eliot’s essay, he is not so in this poem. Though the speaker ultimately prefers the company of the long-dead writers, the tone of the final lines suggests that this is not a satisfactory conclusion: dry ribs are poor Essert 182 consolation after so much vitality, and metaphysics may be defined as “abstract talk with no basis in or relevance to reality” (“metaphysics, n.” def. 2).

This larger context suggest that Grishkin also represents—in large part because of the sustained zoomorphism—a vitality that is refreshing and appealing in comparison to the death-obsessed poet and the dramatist. Her energy and power should not be underestimated. In a discussion of the poem’s composition, Chris

Buttram Trombold observes: “Grishkin comes to be invested textually with an energy exceeding that required by her symbolic role. Clearly, she was initially meant to contrast with the female corpses of the first two stanzas, but in the end she is allotted far more space than they and comes to command virtually half the poem”

(104). Grishkin is abundantly present where Webster’s companions are absent—she is busty where they are “breastless,” and her eyes are emphasized where theirs are replaced by flower bulbs—and is described as “nice,” “friendly,” and a source of

(perhaps ephemeral) “bliss” (3–5, 17–20). The comparison to a Brazilian jaguar exoticizes her, if it does not explicitly eroticize her, and suggests power as well as danger (Schuchard, “Burbank with a Baedeker…” 4). We must note, finally, that

“Even the Abstract Entities” are attracted to her (29). The speaker’s rejection of

Grishkin thus seems to have as much to do with his fear of what she represents as with the baseness of her dissociated, purely physical lifestyle. The ambivalent representation of Grishkin is closely related to the multivalent meaning of the jaguar, which represents both dangerously excessive appetites and exciting, exotic vitality.

Impersonality offers the appropriate poetic form for such ambivalence—by juxtaposition and the choice of objective correlatives, the poet allows the reader to consider a variety of opinions on the subject. Essert 183

In its consideration of animality, “The Hippopotamus” focuses on religion and asceticism, rather than on sexuality. It offers another extended symbolic representation of an animal from Eliot’s 1920 collection. Another satirical quatrain poem, “The Hippopotamus” involves a sustained comparison between “the broad- backed hippopotamus” and the “True Church,” and employs the same technique of juxtaposition as “Whispers.” “The Hippopotamus” contrasts a hippo’s simple, even luxurious, embodiment, with a disembodied, powerful, and indistinct religious institution. Perhaps surprisingly, in the latter half of the poem the hippo ascends to heaven, “While the True Church remains below” (31). The poem is much more interested in the religious problem of embodiment versus asceticism than in hippopotami, but it is important to note Eliot’s awareness of the symbolic power of animals at this juncture in his career. The precise target of Eliot’s satire, and his likely stance on the issues raised by the poem, have been discussed by Grover Smith,

Hugh Kenner, Marshall McLuhan, and Andrew Miller; what is clear is that Eliot here uses a large, amphibious mammal as a symbol of embodiment, about which he is anxiously ambivalent. The plot or content of the poem appears to privilege joyful animality over an institution that negates embodiment (for example, the disembodied church “can sleep and feed at once”). And yet, the cartoonish heaven of white, gold, harps, saints and singing angels, along with the poem’s thumping rhythm and heavy end rhyme, gives the poem a ludic quality that prevents us from taking its conclusions literally. Once again, Eliot’s ambivalence about embodiment accords with his ambivalence about individual identity in his theory of impersonality; and, once again, the impersonal technique directs readers’ attention away from the poet’s beliefs or opinions. Essert 184

The figure of Sweeney looms large in the Eliot canon, in part because of his appearance in multiple texts. Animal tropes, particularly zoomorphic comparisons, contribute importantly to creating this complex character. He appears first in

“Sweeney Erect,” where he is represented as a john with violent tendencies and dangerous animal energy. Sweeney makes “gestures of orang-outang” as he “rises from the sheets in steam” (11–12), and is then described in a way that makes him almost monstrous: “This withered root of knots of hair / Slitted below and gashed with eyes / this oval O cropped out with teeth” (13–15). He is associated with two sharp objects—a sickle and a jackknife—and the fact that he “jackknifes upward at the knee” in order to get out of bed suggests a great deal of energy. Sweeney’s energy, associated with the animal and the primitive, is not positive. The “orang- outang” (in combination with Sweeney’s razor) constitutes a reference to Poe’s

“Murders on the Rue Morgue,” a story which provocatively confuses man and monkey. This reference to Poe’s animal story is juxtaposed with a reference to

Emerson, so as to suggest that Emerson’s view of humanity was overly optimistic, because humans are no better than animals. Moreover, Sweeney’s actions (or perhaps his mere presence) appear to bring about shrieking, an epileptic seizure, and general hysteria within the brothel (33-36, 41-44). If the animal imagery in “Sweeney Erect” contributes to a negative representation of Sweeney, he becomes steadily more appealing, though no less animal, in subsequent appearances.

In “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” Sweeney appears in the poem’s final stanza: “Sweeney shifts from ham to ham / stirring the water in his bath” (29–

30). Much like the hippo in “The Hippopotamus,” Sweeney appears here as the representative of embodiment, in contrast to the ascetic, overly-intellectual religious Essert 185 figures who appear earlier in the poem. The second half of the final stanza juxtaposes these figures with Sweeney: “The masters of the subtle schools / are controversial, polymath” (31–32). Eliot here may be suggesting that, though these religious men may be “person[s] of great or varied learning” (“polymath, n. and adj.”), the subjects they have mastered are too subtle to be of much real value.

Moreover, religion here has a strongly negative valence, exemplified by the reference to Origen, who is reputed to have castrated himself. Brian Cheyette reads Sweeney as

“the mirror image of the ‘Baptized God,’” and argues that the poem associates him with a salutary primitivism (343). Though the evidence within this particular poem may be somewhat thin, the claim acquires greater strength as we move forward to

“Sweeney Among the Nightingales.”

This poem, like the first, is set in a brothel; it begins with a comparison of

Sweeney to a variety of wild African animals:

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees

Letting his arms hang down to laugh,

The zebra stripes along his jaw

Swelling to maculate giraffe. (1–4)

Elsewhere in the poem, Sweeney descends the evolutionary ladder to become “The silent vertebrate in brown” (21); and as “the man with heavy eyes,” he perches outside the window, among the wisteria, as though he were a bird (28-32). In the poem’s sixth stanza, one of Sweeney’s female companions is also zoomorphized:

“Rachel née Rabinovitch / tears at the grapes with murderous paws” (24). This line has often been central to discussions about Eliot’s anti-Semitism, but the evidence is far from conclusive: we can no more infer Eliot’s attitude about Jews from this Essert 186 representation of a (presumably) Jewish woman than we can his attitude about

Spaniards from his reference to “the person in the Spanish cape” (11).54 The

“Nightingales” of the title and the final stanzas are also zoomorphic, in so far as nightingale was slang for prostitute. In this intensely sexual environment, Eliot seems to be representing sexual appetites as human animality. At this juncture in his career,

Eliot appears particularly anxious about humanity’s proximity to animals and the consequent possibilities for devolution; he therefore represents these inhabitants of the demi-monde as partly animal in order to foreground their crudeness. These zoomorphic comparisons supply an objective correlative—they make the speaker’s feelings about the poetic object or situation clear, without stating them explicitly.

What makes these animals especially effective as objective correlatives is their complexity as signifiers. Given Eliot’s formulation of the theory, we might believe this makes them poor objective correlatives—their complexity having the potential to evoke a variety of impressions, rather than the single one desired by the author.

And yet, part of the brilliance of this method is the capacity to evoke complex, nuanced emotions that would take many more words to express. The ape is not simply a repugnant beast; it is also a powerful creature, an object of fascination. The ape is a particularly complex signifier, because of its important role in debates about evolution (as our presumptive closest animal relative). The zebra and the giraffe are likewise positive: though “maculate” has negative connotations, both of these are impressive exotic creatures.55 This zoomorphic portrait of Sweeney (and of Rachel) is

54 For more on this controversy, see Modernism/Modernity 10.1 (January 2003), which includes a special section on “Eliot and Anti-Semitism: The Ongoing Debate.” 55 The OED defines maculated as “Spotted, stained, soiled; defiled. (Now chiefly lit. and poet., in expressed or implied antithesis to immaculate.)” (“maculated, adj.”). Eliot surely intended this to chime with the stain on the “dishonoured shroud” in the final stanza. Essert 187 intended to prompt thought about the nature of humanity: who are we, or what have we become? Cued by the positive role played by Sweeney in “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday

Morning Service,” we may note that in “Nightingales,” Sweeney appears to have control over his appetites: he “declines the gambit,” exits with “a golden grin,” and thus avoids a tragic fate (here represented by Agamemnon). He is not, in this instance, entirely bestial.

The representation acquires an additional level of complexity in “Fragment of an Agon” (part two of Sweeney Agonistes), which hints at the attitude toward embodiment which Eliot was to adopt later in his career. Sweeney is not zoomorphized here, but it seems likely that readers will remember the associations from his earlier appearances. In his later text, Sweeney attempts to enlighten Doris about the essential nature of human existence: “Birth, copulation, and death. / That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks” (34-5). Sweeney struggles to communicate his special knowledge to those around him: “I gotta use words when I talk to you / But if you understand or if you don’t / That’s nothing to me and that’s nothing to you” (161–3). But, perhaps paradoxically, Sweeney’s ability to reconcile himself to the limits and imperfections of language appears to have a liberating effect: he talks more often, and at greater length, than any other character in the play.

In combination with the earlier zoomorphisms, this suggests that the path to divine knowledge/salvation may pass through the animal or the body.

Taking all his appearances together, it seems clear that Sweeney is not merely an embodiment of vulgarity. Sweeney may be “burly and gross and sexually predatory [… and] cruel” (Baldridge 48), but the fact that Eliot employed him in various poems over the span of a decade testifies to Eliot’s fascination with such a Essert 188 character, and to Sweeney’s usefulness to Eliot. Discussing his struggle toward a modern verse drama, Eliot observed that in writing Sweeney Agonistes he had attempted to create “an understanding between this protagonist [Sweeney] and a small number of the audience” (Use of Poetry 153). Chinitz amasses convincing evidence that Eliot “had developed a certain affection for his Sweeney character and even a tendency to identify with him” (106). Eliot chooses his zoomorphic comparisons carefully, finding objective correlatives that allow for the impersonal expression of complex emotions—as well as the added advantage of concision.56

Eliot’s repeated representation of the animalized Sweeney constitutes a thinking- through of the problem of human animality as evinced in sexual appetites. Eliot’s early representations of animals proceed from anxiety to ambivalence, concluding with the figure of Sweeney. The remainder of this chapter will argue that ambivalence gives way to acceptance in the later work of both Eliot and Page, as evidenced by more positively-valenced representations of animals.

V. Later Poetry

When Page began publishing again in the late 1960s, her poetry was less imagist and less surrealist, and therefore more accessible. She also began to make frequent use of the first person singular, and to refer (if only obliquely) to her own experiences and opinions. This correlates with the abundant, late representations of animals that suggest a harmony or synthesis of mind and body, or a more comfortable relationship to our animality (and thus our spirituality). If the pre-lapsus

“Arras” is about the need to fully acknowledge the role or responsibilities of the poet in the poem, the later “Leather Jacket” (1970) laments the shuttering of vision or the

56 The case might be made clearer by contrast: because she is zoomorphized in such vague terms, Rachel is more straightforwardly bestial. Essert 189 annulment of creativity. Its premise, taken from a Sufi legend, is laid out in its epigraph: “One day the king laid hold on one of the peacocks / and gave orders that he should be sewn up in a leather jacket.” The “many-eyed bird” is a natural representative of vision, and he has been blinded by his imprisonment. The speaker asks that we “cry, cry for the peacock / hidden in heavy leather” (13–4). Like most humans, the peacock is “among flowers and / flowering trees” but he “sees nothing

/ smells nothing” (17–8, 23–4). To cry for the peacock, then, is also to cry for ourselves, unfulfilled and partial as we are. The symbolic significance of this bird makes it an effective objective correlative for the poet’s understanding of the human condition. Page does not explain, or need to explain, why we should cry for this bird; once we have understood the significance of her symbol, the poem will consistently evoke the desired emotion. This poem’s bird imagery emphasizes the poverty of our vision, and the difficulty of seeing beyond our subjective perspective. At the same time, the speaker takes a clear stance, asserting her sympathy for the peacock and thereby suggesting that we as individuals may yet achieve harmony with the divine principle, even if society as a whole does not.

Two other poems from the same period, about sea creatures, also suggest that sympathy with other animals can enable coherent selfhood and active, visionary creativity. In “Three Gold Fish,” a vision of those fish alters perception: “The pool was different too. / It seemed to swell / like some great crystalline and prismed tear”

(4–6). The fish “burned and shone / and left their brand” (9–10); and when she recalls this experience, the speaker is able to observe the world from a new angle, “a high / point on a twirling spindle” (21–3). Just as this poem is both personal

(offering an emotional account of an experience) and impersonal (it could be Essert 190 anyone’s experience), the fish enable a kind of transcendent vision.

Similarly, the speaker of “Leviathan in a Pool” (1971) laments the confinement of whales in an aquatic park. The poem is divided into sections, each of which make a new attempt at describing the creatures—considering another aspect of their behaviour, taking a different perspective or moving forward in time. The poem also integrates multiple voices, by including newspaper reports and an epigraph from environmentalist Roger S. Payne. The poet is making an attempt to consider an issue from various points of view, because humanity’s frequent and repeated failure to do so has unhappy consequences, such as the imprisonment and death of these representatives of openness and fluidity. Again, this poem is personal in so far as it expresses a clear opinion, but impersonal in that the emphasis is on the poem’s subject, and on issues of perception and expression, rather than on the speaker. The whales are compared to a dog, a cat, and birds, emphasizing that they are part of a community of animals. The speaker emphasizes their ability to communicate with their trainer, and likens their blowhole to a “third eye,” which represents enlightened vision. An interaction with these very real whales (the integration of news reports suggests their actuality) enables sympathy and creative activity, suggesting the importance of embodied experience to the creative process.

And although the whales are mistreated, the poem’s references to those who would treat the whales respectfully indicates that the speaker is not alone in her sympathetic relations with other animals.

The interplay between our usual limits and greater possibilities is also thematized with the use of bird imagery in “Finches Feeding” (1974). The poem’s speaker expresses frustration at being unable to capture the beauty of the birds she Essert 191 watches, and conveys a desire for an avian existence:

… yet these birds

as I observe them

stir such feelings up –

such yearnings for weightlessness, for hollow bones,

rapider heartbeat, east/west eyes, (9–13)

In my reading, the “yearning” Page describes here has to do with birds symbolizing the purest or most noble part of ourselves—they represent what we would be, and can be if we seek the path. In the context of the poem’s use of occupatio,57 the birds serve as an objective correlative for divine or perfect vision, which the poet claims to be unable to express. And though the birds’ presence may be fleeting, the speaker’s effective recording of the incident suggests her ability to commune with these creatures, and thereby achieve (aesthetic) transcendence.

In “Domestic Poem for a Summer Afternoon” (1977) and in many of the poems that follow, there is a strong sense of communion across the species divide, or harmony between creatures. This is of a piece with Page’s increasing synthesis of personal and impersonal, of which this poem is an excellent example. As in other late poems, Page refers to her time spent abroad (in this case, in Brazil) and to other experiences that can be verified by biography (such as the lush garden of her home in

British Columbia). But this may be the only poem in which she refers to her husband, Arthur Irwin, by name. In this poem, Arthur “dozes” just as the ducks doze (3, 10). The speaker likens the ducks of the present garden to the yellow bird

57 Occupatio is a rhetorical figure “in which attention is drawn to something by professing to omit it” (“occupatio, n.”). See lines 8 and 9: “Neither my delight not the length of my watching is conveyed / and nothing profound recorded.” Essert 192 and the hummingbird of their Brazilian garden, suggesting her delight in living in proximity to birds. She notes that the ducks “Might be decoys, these wild water birds

/ unmoving as wood” (11-12), and the harmony and likeness between birds and humans is made clear in the poem’s repetition of this image in the final stanza:

We are so motionless we might be decoys

placed here by high hunters who watch from their blind.

Arthur asleep has the face of a boy.

Like blue obsidian the drake’s head glints.

His mate and I are brown in feather and skin

and above us the midsummer sun, crown of the sky

shines indiscriminate down on duck and man. (23–9)

Just as Page finds a way of integrating personal experience into the impersonal poem

(any reader may relate to the events and emotions expressed here), she finds a way to represent humans and other creatures in harmonious coexistence. This is in keeping with poems like “Dwelling Place” (1976) and “Custodian” (1981), which evince a stoic acceptance of the frailty of human embodiment.

And thus, in “Visitants” (1984), Page is able to offer a detailed description of a flock of pigeons in a tree, which also likens them to thick-booted policemen. And in “This Heavy Craft” (1984), she employs bird imagery in its assertion that the possibility for transcendence lies within all of us:

I, Icarus, though grounded

in my flesh

have one bright section in me

where a bird Essert 193

night after starry night

while I’m asleep

unfolds it phantom wings

and practices. (4–11)

This confident expression of belief—of a harmony between our heavy bodies and our flying souls—would not have been possible in the earlier poetry, where Page struggled to reconcile the two facets of human nature. This trend continues in the later work, most strikingly in “Poor Bird,” a glosa on lines from Elizabeth Bishop’s

“Sandpiper.” In this poem, the speaker asserts in no uncertain terms that there are important similarities between apparently diverse creatures:

From birth, from the first astonishing moment

when he pecked his way out of the shell, pure fluff,

he was looking for something—warmth, food, love

or light, or darkness—we are all the same stuff,

all have the same needs: to be one of the flock

or to stand apart, a singular fledgling. (1–6)

The poem goes on to imagine the beach from the perspective of the sandpiper, describing how what may look like a futile search is not so. There is a similar sense of community with birds, and also with spiders, in other glosas, such as “Ah, By the

Golden Lilies” (2002) and “Coal and Roses” (2006). The inclusion of spiders, and of a dung beetle, suggest the way that Page’s later poetry embraces even less-popular creatures. If more terrestrial or ordinary animals are largely absent from Page’s later work, she nonetheless seems comfortable integrating the personal or embodied into her poetry of this period. It may be that birds and sea creatures, in these later works, Essert 194 represent the felicitous balance of body and spirit that she strives for.

***

Significant developments in Eliot’s understanding of personhood, and in his attitudes toward animals and human animality, can be observed in his work beginning in the 1930s. Barry Spurr’s thorough and nuanced work on T.S. Eliot’s religious disposition traces his relation to British Anglo-Catholicism as it existed in his lifetime. He notes that Anglo-Catholicism reaffirmed what Eliot had long believed about the place of the individual within the larger world: “In religion, of paramount importance, for Eliot, was [in Eliot’s own words] the ‘Love of God and a sound Catholic doctrine.’ The two were inextricable. The former … was insufficient as, relying on our own perceptions, we may fail to determine matters correctly”

(Anglo-Catholic 115). This emphasizes the humility, or the need to defer to higher authority, which was central to his formulation of the theory of impersonality, and which would later become central to his religious life. Elsewhere, Spurr makes the link between Eliot’s poetics and his religion clearer still: “He identified Catholicism with the impersonal, objective, and Classical critique of the individualistic, Romantic and Protestant ‘inner voice’” (“Religion” 307). The conception of humanity that had made Eliot an advocate for classicism and impersonality from early in his career can assist in explaining his religious disposition; but we may also read backward, noting how opinions which are clearly articulated in the later work may be implicit in the earlier.58

58 With a keen historical awareness, Spurr makes clear distinctions between Anglicanism, Anglo- Catholicism, and Roman Catholicism. Anglicanism, as fundamentally Protestant, could not have offered Eliot adequate spiritual solace (Anglo-Catholic 33 and passim); and Eliot’s baptism in to the Anglo-Catholic (not Roman Catholic) church had to do with that church’s centrality to British culture (Anglo-Catholic 195–202). Spurr’s hypothesis that Eliot might have become a Roman Catholic had he lived on the continent is revealing in this context (Anglo-Catholic 201). Essert 195

However, Spurr is careful to observe that, despite Eliot’s rejection of the

Unitarian Church in which he was raised, he was still deeply marked by the

Puritanism which was at the root of that religion and integral to his family’s history.

In a discussion of Eliot and the sacrament of confession, Spurr notes: “Eliot’s regular use of the sacrament expressed the deep-seated sense of sin in his personality

(not newly discovered in his Anglo-Catholicism, but deriving from his Calvinistic

Puritan heritage…)” (“Religion” 310). In a 1928 letter to Paul Elmer More, Eliot explained that he felt a void “in the middle of all human happiness and all human relations,” and that: “I am one whom this sense of void tends to drive towards asceticism or sensuality, and only Christianity helps to reconcile me to life, which is otherwise disgusting” (qtd. in Anglo-Catholic 149). On a very personal level, then,

Anglo-Catholicism offered Eliot solace for the very anxieties about animality that this chapter has been tracing in his poetry. In his reading of the second stanza of

Little Gidding IV, Stephen Sicari offers a clear explication of the theological stance on animality (or embodied desire) that governed Eliot’s later work and thinking:

Once again we must note how we do not leave the body in Eliot’s

achievement of transcendence. Love, which is God’s ‘unfamiliar

name,’ has devised the torment of our ‘being-in-the-flesh.’ … In

Eliot’s terms the torment of this ‘intolerable shirt of flame’ forces us

to make a choice between the fires of hell and the fires of Pentecost/

purgation. Living in the flesh brings on desire; desire is a fire that

consumes us. Over that we can have no control; over that we can

assert no agency. But we can assert our will and choose to regard this

‘burning, burning, burning’ as the fire of purgation. When we choose Essert 196

purgation, we are committed to a process in which desire can become

love, a process that brings us closer to the God who devised the

torment. (193)59

This passage makes clear the degree to which Eliot’s conversion helped him to resolve his concerns about Original Sin, allowing him a more comfortable relationship with human animality, and thus with the animal kingdom. In a similar vein, Pauline McAlonan has argued that the Four Quartets and other late poems provide evidence of Eliot’s shift from a negative theology (emphasizing human sinfulness and suffering) toward the affirmative way, which emphasizes divine love, and by extension, a greater acceptance of the body, sexuality, and the natural world

(262–72). Eliot’s increased comfort with his own animality is legible in “A

Dedication to my Wife” (1959/1963), which refers to “the leaping delight / That quickens my sense in our waking time” and “The breathing in unison / Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other” (1-2, 4-5).60 This more positive, less ambiguous view of animals is traced in the readings of his later work that follow.61 In Eliot’s later work, animals are more likely to be symbols with a definite meaning—often, a meaning reliant upon religious or popular associations with that animal. It is as though, in developing greater acceptance of animality, animals become less fraught as signifiers. Also significant, among the later poetry, are suggestions of a community of creatures, in which humans participate with other animals.

59 Sicari’s formulation of this issue on the following page is also enlightening: “For both Eliot and Joyce, who follow Augustine and Dante, one does not seek to be without the body and so without desire, but to perfect desire so that it can lead us upward, still in the body, toward blessedness” (194). 60 Though both versions support my claim, there are substantial differences between this poem as published in The Elder Statesman and as it appears in Collected Poems 1909-1962. The later version is slightly more explicit. 61 In her reading of Murder in the Cathedral, Thormählen argues the opposite, contending that Eliot’s responses to animals are consistent, at least this far in his career (175-8). Essert 197

“The Journey of the Magi,” the first poem Eliot wrote following his conversion, provides a ready instance of religious symbolism. Camels, which have some reputation for intractability, are used as part of a list of impediments along the journey: “And the camels galled, sore-footed and refractory, / Lying down in the melting snow” (6–7). In the poem’s second stanza, when the Magi arrive at the

“temperate valley” which is their destination, they see “three trees on the low sky, /

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow” (24–5). According to

Timmerman, the trees call to mind those of Calvary, and the most likely source for the horse is the book of Zechariah, in which “the four horses gallop off to announce the coming of the Messiah” (75). Thus, Eliot offers a blend of invented and borrowed imagery, representing animals in ways that have definite (though not necessarily transparent) meanings. Similarly, the “three white leopards” of part II of

Ash Wednesday (1930) are also of biblical origin—though they are generally single in the biblical instances—and represent the “destructive action of the Lord” which “is always joined with regenerative action” (Timmerman 93). The spiritual journey that is the poem’s focus demands that the soul be destroyed before it can be rebuilt or reborn, and Eliot employs religious imagery, gathering various allegorical uses scattered throughout the Bible, to express this point. This may be contrasted with

“Christ the Tiger” in “Gerontion,” in that the earlier poem permutes or reverses a particular passage from Lancelot Andrewes, and therefore functions as an allusion rather than as a readily interpretable symbol.

Lists in which animals stand as allegorical representations of particular sins or actions are another way—and the most obviously rhetorically—in which Eliot employs Christian animal symbology. In such cases, the associations attached to the Essert 198 animals are invented by Eliot, but the manner in which they are presented echoes biblical language.62 In “Marina,” Eliot’s association of animals with four of the seven deadly sins works within this tradition, but the choice of animals appears to be

Eliot’s own: he borrows the pattern but creates the content. Eliot demands a careful readership here: “Those who sit in the stye of contentment” (10) might call to mind pig stys and thus gluttony, but that line is in fact a warning against sloth (Timmerman

146–8).63 Having been steeped in religious language, and having a clear and unambiguous understanding of the role of animality, Eliot is now able to represent animals as uncomplicated symbols. Since spirituality constitutes the distinction between humans and animals in Eliot’s idiolect, it seems fitting that he would employ religious language in his later representations of animals.

Eliot’s birds provide a particularly clear index to his changing theology.

Above, I outlined the contrast between early and late references to the seagull; Eliot’s thrushes are similarly significant in this religious context. The woodthrush reappears first in “Marina” (1930), where, as before, it is associated with divine grace. But its meaning here differs importantly from its meaning in The Waste Land: there, it was an illusion, while in “Marina” it is a reality, and (in my reading) a herald of imminent salvation and reunion. When the thrush appears in Burnt Norton I (1935), it is again a kind of divine messenger: the speaker can understand its language, and is thereby led toward a transcendent encounter. Although the poem refers to “the deception of the thrush,” the encounter is real, if brief (22). Though it may be true that “human kind

62 A passage such as Isaiah 11:6–7 might exemplify such biblical references to animals: “Wolves and sheep will live together in peace, and leopards will lie down with young goats, calves and lion cubs will feed together, and little children will take care of them. Cows and bears will eat together, and their calves and cubs will lie down in peace. Lions will eat straw as cattle do” (Good News Bible). 63 Similar passages can be found in choruses V and VI of The Rock. Essert 199

/ Cannot bear very much reality” (42-43), and that the speaker does not entirely understand his or her spiritual experience, the section’s final lines have a feeling of closure which indicates some measure of enlightenment. Similarly, the various birds in Landscapes (1933) are integral to the scene, and an object of intimate knowledge and great respect. In particular, “Cape Ann” exhorts the reader to pay careful attention to a variety of birds, making repeated use of the imperative: readers are instructed to hear, to hail, and to greet, and are thrice told to follow. As animals, these birds are objects of devoted attention, signalling an appreciation of other creatures not previously evident in Eliot’s work. As divine agents, they are comfortingly close.

In the 1930s, as he made his transition toward playwriting and a more accessible mode of poetry, Eliot also wrote two texts which have received little critical attention. “Five Finger Exercises” and Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats appear to have been written for children, and stylistically they are striking anomalies in his oeuvre. But Eliot felt they were worthy of publication, and they are therefore deserving of careful scholarly consideration. In both texts, Eliot makes extended use of anthropomorphism to create positive representations of animals by playfully eliding the boundaries between creatures of different species. The speaker in “Five

Finger Exercises” is unstable, with the narrative perspective shifting in the middle of the poem. In “Lines to a Persian Cat,” the scene of birds and a cat in Russell Square is established by an impersonal speaker, but the last four or five lines may be spoken by the cat (Woolly Bear), who wonders “When will the broken chair give ease? /

Why will the summer day delay?” (9–10). “Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier” has a similar movement. It begins with an impersonal description of a thunderstorm and of a Essert 200

“little dog… safe and warm / under a cretonne eiderdown” (6–7), and its last three lines are certainly spoken by the dog: “Here a little dog I pause / Heaving up my prior paws, / Pause, and sleep endlessly” (13–5). The distinction between human and animal perspectives is murky, and the reader is offered insight into the emotional lives of these domestic animals. Similarly, in “Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza

Murad Ali Beg,” it is not clear where Mr. Eliot ends and his cat and dog begin:

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!

With a bobtail cur

In a coat of fur

And a porpentine cat

And a wopsical hat:

How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot! (8–13)

The heavy use of strongly-stressed end rhymes—often in couplets—throughout

“Five Finger Exercises” helps to create a joyful, playful tone, as though celebrating this communion of creatures. Rather than undercutting the text’s moral message, the text’s ludic quality helps to impress it upon the unsuspecting reader.64

The anthropomorphic depictions of felines in Practical Cats suggest proximity or community between humans and animals. The book consists primarily of portraits of particular cats, all of whom have fantastic names and memorable and idiosyncratic characters. “The Old Gumbie Cat” describes Jennyanydots, who teaches “music, crocheting and tatting” to the mice in the basement, and then “sets right to work

64 I am thinking here of Eliot’s comment in the conclusion to The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: “The chief use of the ‘meaning’ of a poem, in the ordinary sense, may be (for here again I am speaking of some kinds of poetry and not all) to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a bit of nice meat for the house-dog” (151). There are, of course, other aims or intertexts for this collection which also merit consideration, such as its satire of Georgian poets and its parody of “How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear” (D’Ambrosio, Reeves). Essert 201 with her baking and frying / She makes them a mouse-cake of bread and dried peas”

(12, 22–3). Like many of the other cats in the collection, Jennyanydots is engaged in actions usually attributed only to humans. Similarly, Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is employed as the indispensible supervisor of the Night Mail train, and Gus the

Theatre Cat recalls his glory days as an actor on London’s famous stages. Two poems—“Growltiger’s Last Stand,” and “The Pekes and the Pollicles”—are narratives rather than portraits, offering imaginative access to interactions between cats and dogs that are uncannily like those between humans. The Jellicle cats prepare for a dance, while Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer are renowned for their skill as petty thieves. Mr. Mistofflees and Macavity are both magicians, offering a humorously exaggerated depiction of the way that certain animal behaviours are baffling or mysterious to humans.

Perhaps most significantly, the first poem “The Naming of Cats,” stresses the importance to these felines of having an absolutely unique name (representing a unique identity), and attributes to cats the capacity for “profound meditation” (25).

Moreover, proper human/animal relations are the subject of the collection’s penultimate poem, “The Ad-dressing of Cats.” It outlines proper etiquette for getting to know a cat, declaring that “Cats are much like you and me” (6), and that “A Cat’s entitled to expect / These evidences of respect” (63–4). The humorous tone of these poems, and the fact that they were probably intended for a juvenile audience, may appear to undermine any philosophical or ethical content. It is also unlikely that Eliot intended the collection to be read as a post-humanist sermon about human/animal relations. Nonetheless, Practical Cats strongly suggests a kinship or continuity between humans and felines, and offers representations of harmonious interspecies relations. Essert 202

As with “Five Finger Exercises,” one might even say that the collection’s playful mode—accentuated by regular rhythms and end-rhymed couplets—helps to seduce the reader into agreeing with the text’s moral implications by offering a lesson in the guise of entertainment.65

This combination of pleasure and didacticism is in keeping with another of

Eliot’s projects during this decade. Contemporary with “Five Finger Exercises” and

Practical Cats, Eliot composed two plays on religious themes; though not as humorous as his short poems, these verse plays were surely intended to entertain the popular audience at the Canterbury Festival. Eliot’s first play, The Rock (1934) continues the pattern of symbolic animals discussed above. They are generally public symbols, generating meaning metonymically based on common associations with animals. This is the case with the serpent, signifying evil, which appears briefly in choruses V and VII before making an extended appearance in chorus X; likewise with the noble eagle of the first chorus. Occasionally, however, the meaning attached to an animal is not the usual one, but is nonetheless accessible, as with the dogs in choruses V and VI, and the lion and cat in chorus VI. The rat and the goat, in chorus

III, are among the few post-conversion animals that signify just as they did in the pre-conversion poetry: here, as in The Waste Land, the rat represents urban decay; and the goat, as in “Gerontion,” may be associated with lust. This suggests that certain animals may continue as unambiguous signifiers of gross embodiment, even as Eliot progresses toward greater acceptance of animality. Perhaps the most interesting

65 As Paul Douglass observes, Eliot’s four-stress line (often with medial caesura) associates it with alliterative verse, ballads and nursery rhymes, an association reinforced by the heavy use of rhyme (117). The regularity of this pattern, and the tone it evokes, have the effect of lulling the reader into a sense of security and passivity, thereby suggesting that we are partaking in entertainment rather than being taught lessons. Essert 203 passage, as an index of Eliot’s changing views, are these lines from chorus VII:

Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light

of the Word,

Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative

being;

Bestial as always before, carnal, self-seeking as always before, selfish

and purblind as ever before,

Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming the march

on the way that was lit by the light. (21–24)

According to this view, we are holy in spite of our animality; it is only later that Eliot’s work suggests that our bodies and their ability to suffer enables holiness.

This view begins to emerge in Murder in the Cathedral. In a dramatic moment leading up to the climax of that play, the priests implore Thomas to secure the doors against the knights who are coming to kill him:

You would bar the door

Against the lion, the leopard, the wolf, or the boar,

Why not more

Against beasts with the souls of damned men, against men

Who would damn themselves to beasts. (CPPE 211)

For the priests, the knights have forfeited their souls, and their right to be called men, because of the crime they are about to commit. But Thomas’ reply makes clear that the situation is more complicated:

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by stratagem, or by

resistance, Essert 204

Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast

And have conquered. We have only to conquer

Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory. (CPPE 212)

The “beast” that Thomas has conquered might be described as his own embodiment: rather than striving to protect himself, he has relinquished his body to the will of

God. Having done so, and with faith that he will be rewarded for his pains, the suffering he will endure will be (relatively) easy. But the issue is far from settled: transcendence or acceptance of animality may be the exclusive prerogative of saints.

When the knights invoke the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, figuring themselves as the predatory lions, Thomas’ reply plays on another, very different association of the lion with nobility and pride (“It is the just man who / Like a bold lion, should be without fear”) (CPPE 213). Eliot’s representation of the lion here is not one-dimensional, but both cases rely metonymically on common associations with the lion. As Thormählen observes, “The beastliness of the murderous knights, and Becket’s noble acceptance of the experience which will take him across the boundary between the world of the flesh and the world of the spirit, are both emphasized by references to the same animal” (Thormählen 55). The references to hawks, eagles, doves, and wolves, earlier in the play, are much simpler symbols.

Ultimately, the play appears to endorse an acceptance of our animality on the basis of its theological significance. In Part II, the Chorus’s first speech offers various species of birds as bad omens (CPPE 201). Thormählen describes the Chorus’s next speech (CPPE 207–8) as “unique in its protracted enumeration of more or less sinister creatures of Nature,” and notes that, here, “People and animals are brought together in a litany of mortality, their common lot” (175). Though this speech does Essert 205 seem to emphasize the inherent vileness of all flesh, the Chorus’ final speech contains lines that suggest a more positive attitude toward animals:

They affirm Thee in living; all things affirm Thee in living; the bird in

the air, both the hawk and the finch; the beast on the earth, both the

wolf and the lamb; the worm in the soil and the worm in the belly.

….

Even in us the voices of seasons, the snuffle of winter, the song of

spring, the drone of summer, the voices of beasts and of birds, praise

Thee. (CPPE 220–1)

The Chorus seems to have learned, from Thomas’ martyrdom, that the path to transcendence passes through bodily suffering.66

In Eliot’s subsequent works, the representations of animals become increasingly positive. A passage from part I of East Coker considers cycles of death and regeneration, and in such cycles (whether they be religious or natural) humans and animals move together:

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

Which is already flesh, fur, and faeces,

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

[...... ]

The time of the seasons and the constellations

The time of milking and the time of harvest

The time of the coupling of man and woman

And that of beasts. (6–8, 43–6)

66 Birds make only brief appearances in The Family Reunion, and in each case they are unambiguous, ominous symbols (the nightingales in 1.1. and the raven in 2.2). Essert 206

In keeping with the religious disposition outlined above, Eliot here represents humans and animals as part of a single community of creatures that inhabit the earth.

Though the enjambment makes the coupling of humans parallel to that of animals, other cues indicate that these lines do not evince the same fear of sexuality legible in

Eliot’s early work.67 Should we nonetheless choose to read this as a comment about our distasteful animality, lines from East Coker II suggest that humbling realizations have great spiritual value: “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire / Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless” (47–8). A reading of this creaturely communion as having positive connotations is supported by trends legible in the other poems of

Four Quartets.

At the outset, in discussing Eliot’s views on evolution, I noted that the speaker of The Dry Salvages seems to believe in evolution by natural selection, which is strongly non-progressive or non-teleological. This poem also suggests the degree to which humans are part of the larger natural world, in lines such as “The river is within us, the sea is all about us” (15). This poem also includes a seagull as part of a nautical scene—another symbol that remains constant throughout Eliot’s work.

Finally, Little Gidding makes important use of the Christian symbol of the Holy Spirit as a dove—here, it is inflected by the wartime context, so that (in part IV) its power is likened to that of the bombs being dropped on London. The “fullfed beast” of

Little Gidding II appears to be a metaphorical allusion to humanity, but one which seems accepting of our animality, in keeping with the declaration (in part III) that

67 The tone of East Coker I is peaceful and meditative, and lines 25–46 form part of the poet’s vision of his ancestors participating in a communal celebration. This vision appears to lead to enlightenment, as the speaker thereafter achieves a kind of oneness with the universe: “… . Out at sea the dawn wind / Wrinkles and slides. I am here / Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning” (48–50). The last phrase was also the first phrase of the poem, providing a strong feeling of unity and completeness. Essert 207

“Sin is Behovely” (18).

Finally, The Cocktail Party (1949) offers evidence of a kind of culmination or settling of Eliot’s position on the human/animal boundary. The word “human” appears no less than six times in the play, and is often invoked to consider the nature and boundaries of humanity. In Act One, Scene 1, the Uninvited Guest introduces this theme when he opines that, after certain mysterious experiences, “You no longer feel quite human. / You’re suddenly reduced to the status of an object” (CPPE 307).

In scene 2, Celia describes to Edward how, after becoming aware of the true nature of their relationship, she can see him only as an insect. She compares him first to a grasshopper, then to a beetle, to which Edward responds “Perhaps that is what I am” (CPPE 326–7). Oddly, later in this scene she tells Edward, “I can see you at last as a human being. / Can’t you see me that way too, and laugh about it” (CPPE 331).

This suggests that the term “human being” somehow describes our creatureliness or embodiment, a reality which is sometimes obscured by social interactions. This realization is to be greeted with laughter (a position voiced again, by Lavinia, at the conclusion of this scene), indicating that it is not entirely negative. In Act 2, we find the terms “subhuman” and “transhumanized,” suggesting that humanity is situated in a kind of middle space, from which we may descend (becoming only embodied) or transcend (becoming only spirit) (CPPE 349, 367). Celia’s violent martyrdom suggests that the path to transcendence or enlightenment passes through the body: it is only by her physical suffering that she can achieve her destiny.

Thus, Eliot’s representation of animality in his later work is quite different from that in his earlier poetry. This is in keeping with his shift toward verse drama and public poetry: his greater acceptance of all aspects of humanity—which I have Essert 208 argued is also signalled by his increased acceptance of animals and human animality—may have prompted a desire to reach a wider audience. As Pauline

McAlonan has argued, Eliot’s “Dedication” “portrays a physical and spiritual union of lovers ‘Who think the same thoughts without need of speech’ (CPP 206) and reveals that he is increasingly drawn to [the] affirmative way” (269). It is no coincidence that this dedication appeared before “The Elder Statesman,” which concludes with a promise of marriage, and also offers a touching portrait of paternal love. The creation of such emotional, accessible work appears to have depended upon the poet’s acceptance of all facets of personhood.

VI. Conclusions

For both Eliot and Page, the personal experiences or selfhood of the poet are ultimately the point of origin: though these experiences must be de-personalized and universalized in order to be represented, effective poetry begins there. This declaration opens up an important connotation of this chapter’s title: for both poets, it is imperative to retain and depart from an awareness of ourselves as animals, with all the humility which that entails. For Page and Eliot, we are frail creatures struggling to connect with other frail creatures, and our embodied experience forms important common ground. My title also suggests the ways in which these poets distinguish humanity from all other species: we are capable of being impersonal. We can intellectualize our experiences and consider them with critical distance; we are aware of something beyond ourselves, and continually strive for transcendence. I have argued that this view of humanity and animality—common to Page and Eliot, though each arrived at it by their own routes—underwrites the theories of impersonality which shaped their work. Importantly, more than simply indexing Essert 209 attitudes toward humanity, the animals in Eliot and Page are also crucial elements in the rich lexicons that make impersonal poetry possible. In the work of both poets, animals appear frequently as objective correlatives and symbols, allowing the poet to express him- or herself in ways that depersonalize and universalize their emotions and experiences.

This chapter has also sought to analyze the differences beneath or beyond these similarities. Whereas Eliot formulated his own “impersonal theory of poetry”

(SP 40), and refined and revisited that theory in his critical prose throughout his long career, Page encountered the theory second hand, and largely from members of the

Preview group, for whom impersonality was dogma. Whereas Eliot, as a white male of the upper-middle class, could engage with the literary establishment and literary history with relative confidence, Page, as a woman writer residing in a former British colony, would likely have felt some hesitation about her literary ambitions. But if

Page struggled to find the literary form that would suit her needs—that would strike a balance between subjectivity and objectivity—Eliot’s challenge was to accept the implications of human animality. The representations of animals in his early work suggest an anxious ambivalence about our proximity to other creatures: animals represent both our vile bodies and a powerful vitality that might help to forestall modern ennui. However, once his conversion allowed him to achieve greater acceptance of embodiment or animality (and implicitly, greater self-acceptance), Eliot was able to embark on the second phase of his career, during which his more- accessible works were widely and warmly received. Where a gradual shift in Eliot’s worldview prompted a further development of his poetic activity, Page revised her poetic methods so that they would better enable a synthesis of objective and Essert 210 subjective methods. Her notion of the “total I” suggests that, though such experiences are rare and fleeting, the self has the capacity to incorporate and harmonize a variety of perspectives and experiences. And, as Zailig Pollock notes in his introduction to Kaleidoscope, “the focus of the total I” enabled Page “to embark on a new phase of creativity, which was to continue unabated right up to her death in extreme old age” (17). In both cases, the more positive representations of animals and animality found in their later work correlate with a strong emphasis on acceptance and community. To trace their animal figures and imagery, then, is also to trace significant developments in the themes and techniques of their poetry.

Essert 211

Thus Spake the Animals: Indirect Prophecy in Moore and Layton

The poetry of Irving Layton has two significant commonalities with that of

Marianne Moore: it is shaped by a belief in the poet as prophetic social critic; and this belief led, in each case, to the frequent representation of animals. Their methods and motivations in each case are dramatically different and so they offer, for the most part, a study in contrasts. And yet, in considering these shared qualities—which suggest crucial characteristics of their poetics—and the relationship between animals and prophecy, some intriguing similarities emerge from this unlikely pairing. Animal tropes and images are, in each case, an important “strategy of indirection” for surmounting obstacles to poetic prophecy. From this vantage point, Moore and

Layton emerge as poets struggling to address the major historical events of their era and the moral dilemmas that emerge therefrom. Considering Moore and Layton as poet-prophets, with all the religious connotations that the word “prophet” implies, enables a focus on their religious context, which had a significant impact on their worldviews and poetic output. For both Moore and Layton, poetry was the most appropriate vehicle for prophetic statements, and the poet has an obligation to prophecy—that is, to act as a social critic and moral philosopher. A focus on their animal imagery, meanwhile, illuminates how prophecy manifested itself in their poetic practice. Both poets felt compelled to respond to the social and moral problems arising from the traumatic events of the twentieth century; their responses, importantly, involved (re)considering human nature, which in turn often involved comparing and contrasting humans with other animals. As Marianne DeKoven observes, animals are “a locus both of the other who calls us to ethics and of many of the things that, in our various modes of ethics, we value” (367). For these very Essert 212 reasons, animal imagery proved useful to two poets who sought to address the major ethical problems of their era.

Moore’s constant challenge as a poet was to accommodate what she called

“our natural reticence” (CPr 396). She needed to balance her strong didactic impulse with the need to retain humility and avoid dogmatism. Chapter one discussed some of her poetic techniques in this light, in order to recover the role played by animal imagery in her responses to gender politics. In this chapter, I argue that a notion of prophecy modelled on the prophet Habakkuk—a “questioning, anti-authoritative mode” (Miller “Prophecy” 39) which avoids egoism and promotes humility—assisted

Moore in finding an appropriate balance. Her anti-authoritative ethos demanded that she must suggest rather than assert, and thus encouraged the development of a poetry that presented artefacts, flora, or fauna, in order to prompt the reader toward consideration of social or moral questions. Animals emerge as particularly important for Moore’s treatment of moral issues because they are both like and unlike human beings. They are living, sentient beings with a complex intellectual and emotional life; but their bodies, diverse and different from human bodies, also provide sufficient distance to enable careful, detailed observation. In her observations, Moore often seems to have perceived animals as embodying virtues; their likeness-with-difference therefore makes animal tropes and imagery a crucial aspect of her poetics. In representing animals, Moore is often also commenting on moral or social problems: the animals are the ostensible focus, and her prophetic commentary is suggested rather than declared. I argue that this technique of implicit, rather than explicit, commentary is a significant strategy of indirection, and that this strategy enabled Essert 213

Moore to respond to the Depression and the Second World War in a way that was neither dogmatic nor alienating to readers.1

As I discuss below, Layton’s understanding of prophecy was quite different from Moore’s; so, too are the motives for his animal imagery. After an initial stage of development—discussed in detail by Brian Trehearne in Montreal Forties—Layton’s poetry was strongly lyrical, and presented an assertive persona who did not hesitate to comment on humanity and its failings. Layton’s poetic silence on the Holocaust during the 1950s and early 1960s is therefore a loud one: given his frankness about other matters, his reticence on this issue seems out of character. For Layton, the pressure to formulate an adequate response to the Holocaust may have been too intense, or the events themselves too earthshattering; it did not emerge as a major subject in his poetry until twenty years after the fact. In one way, Layton’s delay is unsurprising: in recalling Adorno’s dictum that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” (34), the difficulty of writing a poem about the Holocaust is almost self- evident. But because Layton’s struggle with “the problem of prophecy” in addressing the Holocaust has been insufficiently addressed in scholarship on Layton, this chapter offers an account of that struggle.

In what follows, I examine Layton’s initial, ineffective poetic responses to the

Holocaust, before arguing that certain poems of the later 1950s and early 1960s constitute an indirect response those events. I argue that Layton frequently represented humans as animals, or depicted human violence toward animals, in order to address the moral or philosophical question posed by those atrocities: what are we that we are capable of such cruelty? A belief in humanity’s similarity to other

1 This idea developed from my reading of Derrida and Haraway, both of whom emphasize that much writing and thinking about animals is often, ultimately, writing and thinking about human problems. Essert 214 creatures offered Layton a possible answer, so that his animal imagery responds indirectly to historical events by considering the underlying moral issues that emerge from them. An adequate response to the Holocaust demands a rethinking of the notion of the human; for Layton, this had to begin with an acknowledgement of human animality. I show that, though Layton was comfortable casting himself in the role of “poet-prophet,” he struggled with the problem of prophecy in responding to the Holocaust. The effectiveness for Layton of animals as a figurative strategy is suggested by the fact that, later in his career, he wrote many poems which explicitly refer to the Holocaust, and few which included animals. For Layton, representations of animals were only a temporary strategy: having surmounted his difficulties, he was able to progress from indirection to greater directness. Indirection and prophecy are therefore interrelated for Layton, as for Moore: prophecy helps to explain the motive, while indirection illuminates the method that enabled their creative utterances.

Though the discussion of Jeremiah in section two will call to mind the rhetoric of the jeremiad, my argument here is concerned with prophecy as a motivation or poetic project, not as a rhetorical mode.2 In his study of the prophet

Jeremiah, Michael Avioz notes that “The simplest definition of ‘prophet’ would seem to be an individual blessed with special traits who is chosen by God to transmit a message to a community or to other individuals” (1). Although it seems unlikely that either of these poets genuinely believed themselves to be divinely chosen, I have deployed the term prophecy because it captures their strongly-felt obligations to act as social critics within their communities, which can be traced to the religious

2 In contrast, Sacvan Bercovitch’s American Jeremiad considers the jeremiad as a crucial rhetorical genre for the development of American identity and the American polity. Essert 215 traditions in which they were raised. Though many poets have felt the need to comment on contemporary moral issues, for Moore and Layton this need was central to their self-definition, and was shaped by biblical precedents. This may be the strongest reason to discuss their work as prophetic. As Avioz observes, “The element of a mission is the principal one that characterizes the role of all prophets…

The aim of the mission is to warn and reprove the people so that they will repent, yet sometimes also to encourage and comfort them…” (3). This sense of mission, and the belief that poetic language has the power to influence opinions and behaviours, is integral to both poets’ work. This chapter discusses how Moore and Layton wrestled with the problem of prophecy—that is, the problem of how to enact such a role as poets in the modern world—and shows how animal tropes and imagery were crucial in helping them to communicate their message and fulfill their role. It is this similarity in their approach to their craft that licences the comparison of two otherwise very different poets.

I. Marianne Moore’s Response to the Depression and Impending War

Among the most crucial facts of Marianne Moore’s biography must be her strongly Presbyterian upbringing and her lifelong adherence to that faith. As

Cristanne Miller summarizes:

With both a maternal grandfather and a brother who were ministers and a

mother whose letters frequently read like sermons, Moore grew up in an

atmosphere where familiarity with Christian precepts and scripture was taken

for granted. On Sundays, the Moore family attended church and eschewed

work and social engagements, a practice the poet maintained even after her

mother’s death (“Prophecy” 31). Essert 216

During the time she lived in Brooklyn, Moore was a prominent member of the

Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church; the memorial service held for her there testifies to her importance to that congregation.3 Her religious beliefs and practices undoubtedly had an important impact on her poetry, and nearly all of the scholarly work on Moore makes reference to these facts. And yet, perhaps because she did not represent it directly in her poetry, Moore’s faith has not often been the focus of studies of her work. A Critical Essay by Sister M. Thérèse Lentfoehr was published in a series on “Contemporary Writers in Christian Perspective” in 1969, and Daniel

Jenkins’ essay, “Marianne Moore: a Presbyterian Poet?” appeared in Theology Today in

April 1984, but neither assessment has garnered much attention. In discussing the impact of Moore’s beliefs on her poetry, Lentfoehr declares: “every line she has written is religious in that it results from a world vision set shiningly in the Christian dimension,” and offers useful corroborating evidence: “To Donald Hall, who asked

‘Have you ever departed from Christian doctrine?’ she replied swiftly and decisively

‘No’…. She also told Mr. Hall that she reads the Bible every day, and once attempted to memorize the chapter in Hebrews on faith” (39). Further, she observes that

Moore’s “celebration of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, and especially of the cardinal virtue of fortitude, is the very fruit of her creative being, which is naturaliter Christiana [naturally Christian]” (Lentfoehr 46). Lentfoehr offers some illuminating readings of particular poems in support of this claim about Moore’s representation of Protestant virtues, and it is a point I return to later in this chapter.

3 The Beinecke holds a copy of memorial booklet for Marianne Moore’s funeral at that church (“An Act of Thanksgiving”). A paragraph describing her commitment to the parish makes note of “a testimonial banquet” for her on April 30, 1967 “attended by 300 church members and friends.” Essert 217

Jenkins aims to introduce Moore to a wider audience of Presbyterians (or perhaps Christians generally), on the basis that Moore’s religious affiliation, as exemplified in her poetry, makes her worthy of their attention. Though the lists vary,

Jenkins’ assessment echoes Lentfoehr’s in its attention to Moore’s representation of virtues; he argues that her poetry

exemplifies what I choose to call ‘the Presbyterian virtues.’ By that

phrase, I have in mind delight in the responsible use of reason for

humane purposes, enjoyment of the natural creation, humility and

self-criticism arising out of the awareness of justification by faith

alone, hatred of egocentricity and ‘highbrowism’ by artists, reticence

in approaching the mysteries of faith which is part of the fear of the

Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. (35)

Jenkins offers “Four Quartz Crystal Clocks” and “The Icosasphere” as evidence of

Moore’s love of reason (they “celebrate the sharpening of imagination evoked by both science and practical rationality”), and points to “The Jerboa,” “The Pangolin,” and “The Arctic Ox (or Goat)” as instances of her appreciation of nature (36).

Jenkins is primarily interesting in convincing readers that “in her major poems she

[Moore] is moved by a Christian passion which is reminiscent of the best kind of preaching” (37), gathering support from “In Distrust of Merits,” “By Disposition of

Angels,” “Blessed is the Man,” “Melchior Vulpis,” and “What Are Years?”; some of these poems have yet to receive substantial critical attention. The arguments offered by Jenkins and Lentfoehr have encouraged me to emphasize the religious dimension of Moore’s work. In particular, their discussion has shaped my own argument that Essert 218

Moore’s animals are representations of, or meditations on, the Protestant virtues which were central tenets of her faith.

Andrew J. Kappel’s “Notes on the Presbyterian Poetry of Marianne Moore”

(1990) is particularly interested in questions of form: it argues that “A backbone of continuous connections between her orthodox beliefs and her modernist poetics runs through her verse, shaping individual poems and her entire oeuvre” (“Notes”

40). Kappel explains how the modernist “program” of impersonality, “designed to afford escape from the personal into communicable significance dovetailed neatly with a faith that emphasizes humility”: these “resources of a modern poetic … were just the sorts of things that a Protestant poet, eager to avoid the sin of self- centeredness, might be looking for” (“Notes” 44). He also emphasizes the importance of struggle in Moore’s theology, and offers numerous examples of the theme of struggle as it appears in her work, illuminating a significant aspect of her poetry that might otherwise be overlooked.4 Jeredith Merrin’s An Enabling Humility

(also 1990) contains a chapter on the influence of seventeenth-century Protestant prose writers on Moore’s work. It enriches critical understanding of Moore’s theology by observing its similarity to that of earlier Protestant Christian writers, and

(because of its focus on nature and natural history) is discussed in greater detail in section three, below.5 These articles enable an understanding of the ways Moore’s

4 Lentfoehr also emphasizes this point in her discussion of Moore’s representations of courage. 5 Merrin and Kappel published further articles on Moore and religion. Kappel’s “The Verba Ardentia of Richard Baxter in the Poems of Marianne Moore” (1992) discusses the importance of seventeenth- century Protestant theology to Moore’s work, but limits itself to a case study of the imprint of Richard Baxter on a handful of Moore’s poems where his work is quoted. Kappel’s “The World is an Orphan’s Home: Marianne Moore on God and Family” (1994) focuses on American Protestantism during the Gilded Age, drawing evidence from Moore’s poetry to contrast her conception of God the Father with that of her mother and brother’s more maternal God. It is interesting biographically, and for its precision about the details of Moore’s faith (for which Miller does not give Kappel sufficient credit). Merrin’s second article, which considers Moore’s faith as a strand of American Calvinism, is Essert 219 religious beliefs shaped not only her poetic content, but also many of her formal choices.

Miller revisits and revises these accounts in “Marianne Moore and a Poetry of

Hebrew (Protestant) Prophecy” (2002). She observes that by focusing on colonial

Puritans or seventeenth-century British writers, Merrin and Kappel imply that

“Protestantism did not change significantly between the composition of those texts and Moore’s life. Moreover, this criticism sees the poet’s views as identical to those of her mother and brother, hence regards especially her mother’s piety as representing Moore” (“Prophecy” 30). Thus, Miller strives for a more precise socio- historical context, and a more nuanced use of biographical evidence, in her analysis of Moore’s faith as an influence on her poetry. For example, she argues that “While

Moore’s moral sense was unquestionably fostered by her religious upbringing, this upbringing was itself part of a widespread contemporary movement towards liberal, non-doctrinaire religious commitment” so that “Moore’s church participation and

Christian belief was a spur to social engagement and pluralist thought” (Miller

“Prophecy” 32). This assessment of the role of Moore’s faith illuminates both her strong didactic impulse and the indirectness (some have said opacity) of her poetry: she felt an obligation to comment on social issues, but her commitment to humility demanded that she privilege polyvocality and suggestion over dogmatic assertion.

Taken together, the critical work on Moore’s faith enables a consideration of its impact not only on her poetry, but also on her self-conception and self-presentation as an artist, and (I argue) on her frequent choice of animals as subjects for her

largely a recapitulation of Kappel’s first article and Merrin’s book chapter, with the addition of some historical context. It is marred by its central assumption that the American Puritan religious community remained relatively unchanged from the seventeenth century. Essert 220 poetry. Moore’s religious beliefs are surely a significant factor shaping her sense of a poetic mission: they prompted her to view her poetry as a venue for conveying social and moral messages, and often shaped the content of those messages.

***

In January 1919, Moore composed a lengthy reply to an equally lengthy, and very inquisitive, letter from Ezra Pound. In response to a question about her influences, Moore wrote: “Gordon Craig, Henry James, Blake, the minor prophets, and Hardy, are so far as I know, the direct influences bearing on my work” (SL

123).6 Although modernist theatre designer and theorist Craig is a surprising inclusion on this list, more interesting for my purposes is her claim of debts to Blake and “the minor prophets.” Blake may seem an odd choice, given the important formal differences between his work and Moore’s; but his self-presentation as poet- prophet makes him an important modern instance of a type that was evidently important to Moore’s own poetic formation and self-definition.7

Pursuing this hint, Miller argues (in the article discussed above) that a group of Moore’s early poems “present Hebrew poet-prophecy as a model both for her stance as ethical speaker addressing issues of contemporary public concern and, secondarily, for the anti-lyrical, prosaic, descriptive, but highly structured and

6 This letter was drawn to my attention by Miller’s quotation of a portion of this passage (“Prophecy” 33). 7 In its biography of Blake, the Poetry Foundation notes, of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, that “for Blake the poet is a man who speaks both from the personal experience of his own vision and from the ‘inherited’ tradition of ancient Bards and prophets who carried the Holy Word to the nations” (n. pag.). These biographers also quote from a letter in which “Blake compares himself to the prophet Ezekiel, whom the Lord made strong to warn the Israelites of their wickedness. Blake’s image of a stern prophet locked head to head with his adversary is a fitting picture of part of Blake’s relation with his reader” (n. pag.). This adversarial stance suggests an important difference between Blake’s variety of prophecy and that developed by Moore. Given this self-presentation, the idea of prophecy or vision has been central to Blake studies, as even the titles of critical works in a Blake bibliography attest. Tony Trigilio has asserted Blake’s relevance to twentieth century poetry, presenting his work as foundational for a modern prophetic tradition (inherited by H.D. and Ginsberg, among others). Essert 221 cadenced forms of her poetry” (“Prophecy” 29). While Moore’s emphasis on humility and anti-dogmatism may make Biblical prophecy appear an unlikely antecedent for her work, Miller culls significant supporting evidence from notes

Moore took while attending a bible study class—notes that focus on the Old

Testament prophet-poets—and offers careful readings of several early poems that mention or allude to those prophets.8 She uses this evidence to build her case that

Prophecy, in this [liberal Protestant] interpretation and as Moore

understood it, was based on religious belief but dealt with secular

issues of the public political world. … As she understood it, speaking

in the mode of prophecy constituted an attempt to pitch one’s

language beyond the merely personal, to regard one’s self as the

historical shaper of language but not a genius-creator, or “poet.” To

be a prophet-poet is to attempt to speak truthfully about the world as

one sees it, “to care and admit that we do,” not to have any guarantee

of God-given recognition or success. (Miller “Prophecy” 36)

When prophecy is understood as a strong commitment to addressing social and moral issues, rather than as a divine ordinance, it is a powerful concept for understanding Moore’s work.

And yet, the impersonality and indeterminacy of Moore’s poetry may make it difficult for many readers to associate it with prophecy. Miller addresses this issue in her reading of Moore’s “The Past is the Present,” which invokes Habakkuk, one of the minor prophets. According to Miller, Habakkuk is Moore’s most significant

8 These include: “Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel”; “The Bricks are Fallen Down, We Will Build with Hewn Stones. The Sycamores are Cut Down, We Will Change to Cedars”; “That Harp You Play So Well”; “The Past is the Present”; “Feed Me, Also, River God”; and “Novices.” Essert 222 prophetic model, because he “authorizes both an artistically enviable prosaic rhythm in verse and a poetic stance of uncertainty; his poems openly acknowledge their lack of inspired or revealed truth by addressing questions to, rather than speaking for,

God” (Miller “Prophecy” 39). This precision is crucial to understanding Moore as a poet-prophet. A “questioning, anti-authoritative mode” (Miller “Prophecy” 39) is a defining feature of Moore’s own poetry. Moore would never have considered herself

“elect” or divinely chosen, and would not have believed that she had access to any kind of eternal or divine truth. Although Kappel claims that the “characteristic nature of her poetic action” was “propulsive and conclusive” (“Notes” 47), I agree with Miller that Moore is rarely conclusive. The readings I offer in this chapter emphasize that Moore’s prophecy functions not by declarative statement, but instead employs rhetorical questions and the conditional mode. She has sufficient faith in the reader’s intellectual abilities to assume that readers can draw their own conclusions; though she is didactic, she has sufficient humility to avoid assuming that her implied morals are the only possible or correct ones. As Miller explains, “Like prophecy for them [the Old Testament prophets], poetry for her provided an active means of exploring fundamental values and understandings, not a platform for pronouncing truths” (“Prophecy” 40).9 For Moore, accordingly, prophecy does not mean predicting the future, or acting as a messenger from god; it involves, instead, a strongly felt need to comment on social and moral issues. And, because she values humility, Moore is not declarative or affirmative, but rather invites readers to draw their own conclusions.

9 See also Miller’s analysis of Moore and prophecy in Cultures of Modernism. Essert 223

A sharper picture of Moore’s notion of prophecy can be achieved by reading her poem, “Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel” (1915). It invokes in its title the four

“major prophets,” and it adopts the pacifist position with which they are associated.10

Its epigraph, which is a kind of summary of their beliefs, reads “Bloodshed and Strife are not of God.” And though it is not punctuated as such, the poem reads as a series of rhetorical questions:

What is war

For;

Is it not a sore

On this life’s body?

Yes? Although

So

Long as men will go

To battle fighting

With gun-shot

What

Argument will not

Fail of a hearing!

The speaker of this poem makes no declaration about the evils of war or her authority as a speaker; instead, the poem solicits the reader’s or interlocutor’s agreement, and poses implicit questions about the challenges facing those who would speak against war. The double negative of the last lines complicates the final statement; ultimately, the speaker seems to be lamenting that arguments will always

10 See Lucas. This poem is quoted in its entirety, as it appeared in The Lantern 23 (Spring 1915) (BMM 360). Essert 224 be drowned out by the noise of guns. By involving readers in the game of interpretation, and interpellating them with questions, Moore increases her chances of engaging her audience. The opening stanza makes clear that one must continue to argue nonetheless, as prophets have done throughout history, reminding herself and her reader that admitting defeat in the face of this adversity (i.e. ceasing to speak out against war) is not an option. This poem, then, not only aligns Moore with the prophets, but also suggests her approach to poetic prophecy.11 The poet-prophet’s job is to address social crises (such as war), regardless of any negative responses they might receive, and to do so in a way that will engage the public.

In “The Past is the Present,” the speaker addresses herself to Habakkuk, declaring herself ready to take the minor prophet as a mode for her own poetry: “I shall revert to you, / Habakkuk” (3-4). The basis for this appreciation seems to be a certain man’s assessment that “‘Hebrew poetry is / prose with a sort of heightened consciousness’” (9-10)—and thus the choice of model here appears to have a formal, rather than moral, basis. But the poem also indicates some uncertainty about whether

Habakkuk is indeed the right model. Although the title suggests that a model from the remote past is appropriate because there is no significant difference between past and present, the poem’s opening lines are couched in the conditional: “If external action is effete / And rhyme is outmoded, / I shall revert to you” (1-3). If these two conditions are met, then the speaker will take the prophet as her model; but (as

Miller observes) it isn’t clear that they ever could be, and thus the speaker cannot

11 The affirmative epigraph—representative of those prophets’ declarative stance—may be contrasted with Moore’s own methods here. Moore’s summary conflation of these four major prophets is at odds with her usual precision, as indeed she later noticed herself. “Novices” (1923) includes lines I read as self-chastisement, in which the speaker criticizes young writers who engage in “the transparent equation of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel” (29). This suggests development of Moore’s thought, as well as a willingness to correct errors and to change her mind. Essert 225 emulate him entirely. This suggests, by extension, some doubt about the efficacy or practicality of traditional prophecy in the modern age, a position entirely in keeping with the “poetic stance of uncertainty” associated with Habakkuk (Miller 31). The poem’s invocation of the minor prophet makes clear that, even if she cannot “revert to” him entirely, the poet can learn important lessons from the prophet. If Moore avoids declarations about morals, she is willing to affirm aesthetic principles, as in this poem’s final sentence: “Ecstasy affords / the occasion and expediency determines the form” (8-9).

Miller has offered rich readings of Moore’s two early poems involving the prophet Jonah—“Is Your Town Nineveh?” (in “Ethical Poetry”) and “Sojourn in the Whale” (in “Women Modernizing”)—and David Anderson has discussed “Is

Your Town Nineveh?” in the context of Moore’s republicanism. Building upon their contributions, I would like to emphasize two aspects of the story of Jonah. He is a reluctant prophet, who attempted to evade God’s call to preach to the people of

Nineveh by travelling in the opposite geographic direction.12 This aspect of the story might suggest Moore’s hesitations about her own perceived sense of responsibility to write poetry with a moral message (or poetry which responds to social issues). These reservations would be in keeping with the poem’s syntax, which relies heavily on questions, rather than statements. Secondly, Jonah’s story is about redemption: when he finally brings God’s message to Nineveh, its people repent en masse and change their sinful ways. As a result, and much to Jonah’s disgust, God spares them. It is, then, a story that emphasizes both the human capacity for change and the depth of

12 This can be likened to Moore’s “The Hero,” which represents the hero as a humble figure who shrinks from potential danger, “having to go slow / to find his roll; tired but hopeful” (16-7, 28-9). As in the previous chapter, unless otherwise specified, Moore’s poetry is cited as it appears in Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1981). Essert 226

God’s mercy, so that Moore is able to imply a certain religious doctrine by invoking it. Though it is useful to think of the Old Testament prophets as models for Moore in her approach to poetry, it is important to be precise about Moore’s approach to prophecy and prophets. It is characterized by an “ethical speaker addressing issues of contemporary public concern” (Miller “Prophecy” 29), by its anti-authoritarianism, and by an avoidance and critique of egoism, rather than by a belief in divine inspiration. In the remainder of the chapter, this understanding of Moore’s view of the poet-prophet enables a deeper understanding of Moore’s representations of animals. Moore’s view of poetic prophecy, in combination with her commitment to humility, prompts her to use animal tropes and images as a strategy of indirection.

Her animal poems become legible as implicit social and moral commentaries, in which Moore is able to fulfill her prophetic impulse while avoiding dogmatic declaration.

***

Chapter one discussed several possible motivations for Moore’s use of animals, and linked that use to her commitment to a poetics of humility, in order to offer an explanation for the ubiquity of creatures in her work. But in considering prophecy as an important model or mode for Moore, the question arises newly: why were representations of animals particularly useful for her prophetic project? The beginnings of an answer may be found in Kappel’s observation that Moore’s

“attitude toward nature, as God’s second book, is recognizably Protestant, especially in its attention to animals” (“Notes” 50). The observation was part of Kappel’s list of issues for further investigation, and this section will pursue his suggestion with respect to Moore’s animals. Merrin explores this idea at some length in her chapter Essert 227 on “Marianne Moore and Seventeenth-Century Prose,” which focuses on the morals espoused by Moore’s favourite prose writers as an influence on her own views.

Merrin argues that “Her employment of natural history for devotional purposes is in accordance with the notion of God’s ‘two books,’ a Renaissance commonplace …”

(Enabling Humility 23-4). Merrin offers Edward Topsell’s “Dedicatory” to Historie of

Foure-Footed Beastes as an example of the idea that nature is a companion volume to the Bible,13 and the chapter as a whole argues for the importance of Topsell and Sir

Thomas Browne as important predecessors for Moore, because their notions and uses of nature closely resemble her own.14

Patricia Willis expands on this point by noting that, beginning in Browne’s era, “God’s ‘second book’ became a common trope for the book of nature,

Scriptures’ companion to divine tutelage; the concept helps reinforce Moore’s intense observation of and writing about nature and her pursuit of a weighty second- scriptural understanding” (43). Willis notes that Moore encountered Browne in an

“Imitative Writing” class at Bryn Mawr, where she also studied biology and zoology.

While in college, Moore was clearly engaged in the very kind of attention to nature that enabled her affinity with Browne. Willis also discusses the important influence of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which was a favourite in the Moore household;

Bunyan’s work is characterized by both a strong belief in God’s second book and the persistent use of allegory.15 While Moore’s poetry is always interested in the actual animals which she chooses for her subjects, and her moral messages derive from her

13 For more on this, see Harrison (193-204) and Numbers. 14 Merrin’s best evidence here is that the table of contents of Browne’s Pseudoxia Epidemica closely resembles that of Moore’s Complete Poems, because they consider many of the same animals. 15 Kappel’s “The World is an Orphan’s Home” also emphasizes the importance of Pilgrim’s Progress as an intertext for Moore’s work. Essert 228 observation of those animals (if only in photographs or movies), I argue that many of her animal poems can profitably be read as modernist allegories. This implicit and anti-authoritarian mode of socio-moral commentary enables Moore to fulfill her prophetic impulse while accommodating her commitment to humility.

Departing from the idea of “God’s Second Book,” Moore presents these creatures with as much detail and as little extraneous commentary as possible, with the intention that readers will glean from them the same moral message perceived by

Moore herself. Such methods are in keeping with Moore’s striving for a prophetic poetry that avoids egotism and dogmatism, in that they leave space for the reader’s interpretation rather than dictating a meaning.16 “Allegory” is a helpful term in this analysis because it captures the way that Moore’s poems signify, at the same time, both literally and figuratively. Unlike other kinds of figurative language, allegories

“make coherent sense on the ‘literal,’ or primary, level of signification” (Abrams and

Harpham 7); Moore’s animal poems are, I argue, legible as literal accounts of the creatures they represent. The fact that allegory is a narrative strategy captures the fact that Moore’s poems often relate stories or anecdotes about animals: her creatures are rarely static.17 However, her allegory differs importantly from traditional allegory in that the “second, correlated order of signification” of these poetic animals is not entirely determined by their role within the poem (Abrams and Harpham 7). This openness or indeterminacy suggests a new variety of modernist allegory, which enables a reading Moore’s animal poems as implicit, anti-authoritarian commentaries.

16 Moore’s demand for active readers is certainly not unique; it is common to most modernist authors, and could even be considered a defining characteristic of the modernist movement. Here, I am interested to see how it connects with other aspects of Moore’s aims and practices. 17 Although my understanding of the genre of the emblem is limited, it appears to imply a static representation rather than a dynamic one. For that reason, I have emphasized “allegory” rather than “emblem” here. Essert 229

Vivenne Koch’s commentary on the ways Moore’s animals differ from those traditionally found in moral literature is enlightening:

Always her quaint animals are meant to illuminate qualities and,

unlike the fabulists’ practice, they are not necessarily human ones. In

the oriental fable or in those of La Fontaine, one does not find the

animals acting themselves out, as do Miss Moore’s, to give us

knowledge of humanity; instead, the fabulist endows the animal with

human traits and attributes. With Miss Moore the animals as animals

count for as much as the humans they may eventually inform (154).

Moore’s fascination with the actual, living creatures that inspire her poems sets them apart from traditional allegory, and suggests her careful balancing of literal and figurative meanings.

Several of her animal poems offer clear indications that there may be a secondary significance in addition to the literal meaning. She notes, for example, that pangolins are “models of exactness” (67), that the ostrich (in “He ‘Digesteth Harde

Yron’”) is “a symbol of justice” (7), and that the wood weasel is “determination’s totem” (8). Such terms—though not precisely equivalent—suggest that these portraits of animals have a figurative significance in addition to their literal meaning.

The term “allegory” captures this tension or simultaneity, though we must acknowledge Moore’s distinctly modernist deployment of the genre. Moore’s

“Nevertheless” constructs a series of brief sketches of plants and animals that persevere through struggle and are ultimately triumphant, so that the poem conveys its meaning through presentation rather than declaration. There is “a strawberry that’s had a struggle,” rubber plants with roots that survive the winter, prickly pears, Essert 230 carrots, grape vines, and cherries; collectively, they illustrate the poem’s exclamation,

“What is there / like fortitude!” (30-31). This technique of constructing allegorical emblems is, I would suggest, her modus operandi for her work as a whole, and helps to explain why animals are so crucial to her work. In observing them, she finds them to exemplify the virtues she believes are necessary for the betterment of the individual and society. It may be that she “sent postcards only to the nicer animals” (Jarrell

140), but it is her genuine love of all nature which allows her to draw examples from it. Because she is suggestive rather than declarative, and derives her moral message from observation, her allegories constitute a particularly modernist use of that genre.

And yet, as I discuss further below, Moore’s animals suggest virtues without being exemplary: her poetry foregrounds the animals’ appearance and so emphasizes species difference, thereby indicating that though one can be exact or determined, it is impossible to be precisely like the pangolin or the skunk.

Moore’s enigmatic animal subjects foreclose the possibility of final, declarative resolution, which Moore consistently strove to avoid, thus making them especially well-suited to her work. Although Moore was also interested in artefacts, plants, and flowers, the sentience and vitality of animals (and thus their likeness-but- difference) may help to explain their central place in her poetry. The similarities between humans and other species prompt Moore’s fascination with other animals, while her awareness of species difference encourages her to avoid assumptions about them. This makes animals particularly useful for Moore’s modernist allegory: they provide her with both an ostensible focus and a potent reminder of the need for humility. Essert 231

“Critics and Connoisseurs” offers an example of how animals in Moore’s poems are often open signifiers, inviting readers to make their own determination about their meaning(s). It opens with the speaker’s declaration that “There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious / fastidiousness” (1-2). Fastidious can mean

“reflecting a meticulous, sensitive, or demanding attitude” (“fastidious, adj.” def. 2c), a definition that captures some of the ambivalence of Moore’s poem.18 By extension, to be unconsciously fastidious would be to exhibit this quality instinctively, rather than as a matter of principle (consciously). The bulk of the poem involves the speaker’s contrast between “a swan under the willows in Oxford,” memorable for its

“conscious fastidiousness,” with a “fastidious ant” near an ant-hill (10, 13, 24). The swan pretends to be uninterested in the food offered by the speaker, but ultimately moves toward it and eats it; the speaker views this as a calculated decision on the swan’s part. The ant, on the other hand, appears to be operating automatically or instinctively, twice following an oddly circular course with its cargo of whitewash or sticks before ultimately returning “to the point / from which it had started” (27-8).

The two anecdotes are linked by the speaker’s declaration that “I have seen this swan and / I have seen you; I have seen ambition without / understanding in a variety of forms” (20-22). It is not clear who the interlocutor is, or whether he is being compared to or contrasted with the swan. However, it does seem as though this pivotal phrase associates both the interlocutor and the ant with “ambition without understanding.” This prepares us for the equivalence suggested by the poem’s final rhetorical question, which undermines the apparent contrast:

18 The OED defines fastidiousness as “Disposition to be easily disgusted; squeamishness; over- niceness in matters of taste or propriety,” but this definition suggests a stronger negative valence than Moore, in my reading, intends (“fastidiousness, n.” def. 3). Essert 232

What is

there in being able

to say that one has dominated the stream in an attitude

of self-defense;

in proving that one has had the experience

of carrying a stick? (32-6)

I read this as suggesting that one should not do things just for the sake of doing them, or hold opinions just for the sake of holding them. This would apply to pre- formulated judgments about art and artists, but also more broadly to the ways in which all individuals make judgements about people and situations. The unconscious fastidiousness of which the speaker seems to approve may in fact be just as problematic as the conscious variety; while the swan’s behaviour seems to be feigned or calculated, the ant’s is troubling because it is thoughtless or unexamined.19 One cannot settle easily on a judgement of these animals, and it is not even clear whether they are intended as contrasts or as examples of the same thing. What is clear, however, is that Moore offers an anecdote (or in this case, two unrelated anecdotes) that signifies on both a literal and a figurative level. In this poem, the juxtaposition of two unrelated narratives and the apparently unrelated title prompt us to search for a secondary meaning. But these animal images are not quite symbols, because the literal animal remains crucial to the text’s meaning. In this way, Moore’s work represents a particular, and particularly modernist, kind of allegorical prophecy.20

Animal representations enable Moore to offer social and moral commentary in a way

19 See Levy’s reading, p. 49, which emphasizes the poem’s ambivalence. 20 For more on the difference between Moore’s work and traditional allegory, see also Lentfoehr, Bishop, and Auden. Essert 233 that is interrogative rather than definitive. The poem signifies on multiple levels, and

Moore is able to avoid egoism and promote open-mindedness.

***

Having argued that understanding Moore’s particular approach to prophecy can illuminate her poetic methods, and that representing animals is integral to

Moore’s prophetic methods, in what follows I discuss the content of her prophetic messages, and consider why animals might be especially useful in conveying them.

My argument focuses on the way Moore writes animals as a response to the

Depression, the threat of a second World War, and the war itself; given more space, it could be extended backward in time to consider her earlier animal poems.

The scholarly discussion of Marianne Moore’s poetic response to war stretches back to Randall Jarrell’s omnibus review of war poems in the Partisan Review for winter 1945. Jarrell’s scathing critique of Moore’s “In Distrust of Merits” has often been cited by Moore scholars, and has prompted many other analyses of

Moore’s war poetry. Both Susan Schweik (1987) and Bernard Engel (1989) take

Jarrell’s commentary as their point of departure, and so focus on “In Distrust.”

Schweik—who defends the poem—addresses the difficulties facing a civilian woman who would contribute to the canon of war poetry, a genre that has often privileged the first-hand experience of male soldiers. Engel, in contrast, concludes that he

“must agree with the disparagers. The war raised the possibility of profound and insuperable evil, a possibility that Moore—like most of the rest of us—could not entirely accommodate to her comfortable scheme in which virtue is rewarded and Essert 234 evil is punished” (Engel 441).21 Lois Bar-Yaacov compares the poem favourably to

Pound’s Canto LXXXI, finding Moore’s “naïve but honest self-doubt more powerful, more relevant to my own urgent concerns than Pound’s medieval mysticism and pseudo-Biblical pontifications” (24). Jennifer Leader seems to have taken her cue from Schweik by placing Moore’s poem in the context of Christian women’s war poetry (in “‘There Never Was a War That Was Not Inward’”). The critical work to this point would have led us to believe that Moore’s war poetry consists of a single poem about the Second World War; Cristanne Miller’s discussion of Moore’s poetic response to World War I (in “‘What Is War For?’ Moore’s

Development of an Ethical Poetry”) was therefore an important contribution to

Moore studies. In “Distrusting: Marianne Moore on Feeling and War in the 1940s”

(2008), Miller broadened the canon of Moore poems about World War II to include

“See in the Midst of Fair Leaves,” and “The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing,” as part of her argument that “Moore’s sense of urgency in contemplating the world’s escalating violence led her back to the relatively plain, direct style of her earliest poems and to an aesthetic of sentiment, capable of linking convictions about art, ethics, and spiritual belief with feeling” (“Distrusting” 353).

In the last decade, critics have also investigated Moore’s response to another historical event: the Great Depression. Victoria Bazin and Luke Carson have both analyzed Moore’s interactions with leftist philosopher and literary critic Kenneth

Burke; in so doing, they illuminate the aesthetic and moral challenges that Moore faced during this decade, and offer new perspectives on “Part of a Novel, Part of a

Poem, Part of a Play” (1932), “The Jerboa” (1932) and “The Plumet Basilisk”

21 Lentfoehr discusses “In Distrust” and “Keeping their World Large” as response to war, in the context of Moore’s Christian morality (29-31), but makes no mention of Jarrell’s comments. Essert 235

(1933).22 Jennifer Leader discusses Moore’s search for an “ethics of engagement” in this period, which she argues “is illuminated by her philosophical affinity and friendship with contemporaneous Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr” (“Ethics of Engagement” 316-7). More particularly, she claims that in order to address the ethical problems raised by the impending war, “Moore and Niebuhr both fashion a model of selfhood in which one is at all times vitally engaged with the other while simultaneously balanced by a Judeo-Christian ethic of self-emendation and restraint”

(317). In his analysis of Moore’s poetry of the 1930s, Charles Berger concentrates on

“Moore’s efforts to counter pernicious ideologies of nationalism and hero-worship

… by subjecting such affirmations to the rigour of poetic skepticism” (151). He investigates her representations of heroic figures, noting how Moore repeatedly valorizes hybridity by suggesting that the intermingling of opposites may produce something entirely new. Such work is a helpful point of departure for reading

Moore’s poetry of this decade as a response not only to the Depression, but also to impending war.

All of this scholarship emphasizes that Moore was deeply concerned by, even preoccupied with, the historical events of her era, and that she responded to these events in her poetry. But they ignore too much of Moore’s poetic output during these decades; of this work, only Carson’s article attends to Moore’s poetic animals.

Thus, this chapter’s final section will build upon existing critical work on Moore in order to read her animal poems in particular as responses to the Depression and the

(impending) Second World War. I argue that Moore presents these animals as exemplars of those (often markedly Protestant) virtues that she believes can bring

22 Carson and White’s “Difficult Ground,” while not precisely about Moore’s response to the Great Depression, also provides trenchant analysis of her work of the 1930s. Essert 236 about peace, placing particular emphasis on fortitude, temperance, hope, and love.

Moore’s poems of this period consistently imply her dictum that “there never was a war that was / not inward,” and focus closely on those virtues which she believes would help the individual to conquer in herself “what / causes war” (“In Distrust of

Merits” 73-6).23

***

In her “Foreword” to A Marianne Moore Reader, Moore recounts an anecdote:

“‘I think I might call you a moralist,’ the inquirer began, ‘or do you object?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I think perhaps I am. I do not thrust promises or deeds of mercy right and left to write a lyric’”(CPr 553). Commenting on this, Lentfoehr observes:

But this is far from meaning that in her work she thrusts moralistic

preachments at her readers; she is much too fine an artist for that.

However, her minute description of the objects of her poems…

makes the reader unmistakeably aware of the values she cherishes

(25)

In other words, when considered collectively, Moore’s menagerie offers readers a coherent moral universe. Proceeding by presentation more than by declaration,

Moore’s animals offer examples of what she elsewhere called “values in use” (CPM

181). In poems that focus on a single animal, that animal represents or models particular, and often clearly Protestant, virtues. Taken together these animal poems suggest a moral message, but one which the reader must assemble for herself, and which is available only if she has humility enough to take lessons from her fellow creatures. If a reader chose, he could see these poems as cute or fascinating portraits;

23 Here, again, there is important common ground between Moore and Virginia Woolf. Woolf’s Three Guineas is devoted to a consideration of “how to prevent war” (6). Essert 237 but Moore relies upon her readers to give the matter more careful consideration.

Through this strategy of indirection, Moore offers prophetic socio-moral commentary on the pressing issues of the 1930s and 1940s.

In his reading of “The Jerboa,” Benjamin Johnson argues that “Moore ultimately resists allegory as much as she courts it. Specifically, the poem resists the type of allegorical reading that would see in the jerboa a model for human morality, and leads us to see that the jerboa’s fortitude and adaptability exceed human capabilities, and therefore mark our moral and aesthetic limitations” (63). This is an important nuance, applicable to all of Moore’s animal poems as I read them. Her animals are not traditionally allegorical (as discussed above), and their behaviour cannot be construed as exemplary because the differences between species are too significant. Moore’s creatures are better than humans could ever be; but Moore’s religious beliefs emphasized not only human frailty, but also the necessity of constant struggle for the virtuous life. Thus, the animals examined in what follows are not models in the sense of “A person, or a work, that is proposed or adopted for imitation” (“model, n. and adj.” def. 9a), because humans can never achieve their level of virtue. Animals are particularly useful for Moore in this respect:

“superhuman” virtuousness is exhibited by non-human creatures, so that species difference is a marker of other differences. These animals are exemplars in the same sense that Christ is a model for Christians; one may ask “what would Jesus do?” but one can only ever be Christ-like, because he was a divinity and not merely human. Essert 238

Luke Carson has helpfully situated “The Jerboa” in the context of the ethical problems confronting Moore during the Great Depression.24 Johnson offers an extended and detailed reading of Moore’s poem as a manifestation of her religious beliefs, with emphasis on human sinfulness and the development of a moral aesthetics. As Johnson’s careful summaries of the previous critical work on “The

Jerboa” attest, this poem has received ample attention from Moore scholars, and I do not wish to repeat what has already been said. Instead, I want to emphasize two aspects of this poem: Moore’s careful attention to detail, and the association of the jerboa with virtues that would be particularly pertinent at a moment of widespread economic hardship. The poem offers descriptions of the rodent’s physique—“the body is white / in front; and on the back / buffy-brown,” and “the fine hairs on the tail” “lengthen till / at the tip they fill / out in a tuft” (128-30, 137, 139-41)—but is perhaps most interested in its movements or habits.25 The speaker describes it as

“launching / as if on wings, from its match-thin hind legs,” its body “followed by as a weight, / a double length, thin / tail furred like the skin” (117-18, 120-22). She also notes that its tail

… curls round it when it

sleeps ‘round’—the nose nested in fur, a hind leg

at each side of the head—or lies lengthwise,

in view, when the body lies

24 Carson argues that Moore’s poem of this era are powerful because they “are shaped by a civic republicanism informed by Calvinist values,” but they do not simply assert these values. Instead, “this framework is challenged by Moore’s celebration of the personal and cultural possibilities disclosed by modernity” (318). 25 I quote here from the first published version of this poem, reprinted in A-Quiver (64-69), which is slightly more lavish in its description of the jerboa. Essert 239

flat. … (123-27) and that, hopping through the sand, it moves “By fifths and sevenths / in leaps of two lengths” (151-52). All of this detail is the yield of Moore’s careful research about this remarkable rodent, for which Ditmar’s Strange Animals I Have Known was a crucial source of information (Johnson 63). It is this research, representing a genuine interest in the actual, living animal, which sets Moore’s work apart from traditional allegory. Rather than pasting an idea onto a creature, she looked carefully at the animal, and from that observation gleaned the virtues with which it may be associated.

Based on such knowledge, Moore imagines that the jerboa “honors the sand by assuming its colour” (148), suggesting a beneficent relationship with its harsh environment. A creature of the desert, it “lives without water” (93). In contrast to the

Romans and Egyptians described in the poem’s first section who have “too much”— their opulence, possessiveness, and abuses of power are represented at length—the jerboa has “abundance,” in the sense of having everything necessary to meet its needs. The speaker declares that “ …. Abroad seeking food, or at home / In its burrow, the Sahara field-mouse / has a shining silver house” (94-96). This indicates that the jerboa’s home is blessed, and that it can (with some effort) find the food it needs to survive. Because it can be content with so little, and even amass a “food store,” the jerboa represents the virtue of restraint or temperance (140). It also represents courage or fortitude by its ability to thrive in this environment (it “has / happiness,” as well as “rest and / joy”) and to live in proximity to threats (“its flight from a danger”) (93-4, 97-8, 144). The virtues of temperance and fortitude are, unsurprisingly, very Protestant ones. Essert 240

As social commentary, it might initially seem as though “The Jerboa” is exhorting the victims of the Depression to “make do” with what they have. This is entirely possible, given the Protestant attitude toward struggle, even if she was aware of the full extent of the pain of her fellow citizens. More likely, however, given the descriptions of opulence which comprise the poem’s first section, this poem is a coded critique of the economic disparity and social injustice which gave rise to, and continued during, the Depression.26 The poem suggests that if all members of society could learn to practice temperance, such distress could be avoided; but until the situation improves, her religious beliefs prompt her to counsel (and probably also to practice) fortitude. Sadly, these virtues would become even more necessary in the face of wartime scarcities. The poem as a whole poses questions about ethics of consumption and the role of art and beauty in a time of economic hardship. A long and complex poem, it does not easily resolve into a single moral claim (as critical disagreements attest). The ambivalence of its response to the wealth of Rome and

Egypt suggests that it raises concerns and asks questions, rather than offering answers. Likewise, it is up to the reader to derive a moral lesson from this portrait of the jerboa; what can be learned from this desert rat that might be applied to human lives?

Carson has also read “The Plumet Basilisk” as a response to the Depression, arguing that

Moore’s plumet basilisk possesses not only aesthetic but economic

virtues that distinguish it from the poem’s other dragons…. While

the basilisk is a “gold-defending dragon” (Poems, 23–24), the

26 I am also cued to this reading by Leader (“Ethics of Engagement”) and by Moore’s 1963 essay “Profit is a Dead Weight” (CPr 568-71). Essert 241

“tuatera”—four of which adorn “the principal door / of the bourse”

in Copenhagen, their conspiring green tails “symboliz[ing] security”

(21)—guards a market value that plunged in 1929. (329)

But the basilisk is not just associated with hidden gold (and thus the gold standard); it is also “a figure of circulation and exchange; its value derives from its capacity to remain in circulation, just out of reach of the hand or the mind. Captured, it loses all value and becomes ‘putty on the hand,’ manipulable matter for those who would seize it” (330). This illuminates an important facet of this complex poem, the complete meaning or message of which is obscure. Because Carson’s reading is certainly not the obvious one, it suggests that Moore’s efforts to present animals as representatives of virtues are not always successful, perhaps because she places too much faith in her readers; I cannot readily associate the creature itself with any particular virtue.27

Similarly, Willis has argued for “The Frigate Pelican” as “a poem-as-sermon,” showing how it follows the structure of the Protestant sermon (texts, doctrines, reasons and uses); the bird follows the adage of “Festina lente,” offers an example of a creature that “fulfills its mission and its divine plan,” and shows that the path to destiny “passes through darkness” (51-2). However, Willis’ reading relies on some specialized knowledge of a particular, historically-situated discourse. In my reading, it seems that Moore represents the frigate pelican so as to offer her moral lesson with subtlety, but ultimately obscures any moral message. Although her admiration for the bird is clear from the detailed and animated description, I lose the thread of the

27 Jenkins’ comment that “She respects the intelligence of her readers almost to the point of excess” (39) is pertinent here; in the context of his analysis of Moore as a Protestant poet, it prompts us to reconsider her notorious difficulty in a new light. Essert 242 poem in the onslaught of allusions that constitute the third and fourth stanzas. This makes it difficult to understand why the bird is described as “an eagle / of vigilance,” and “this most romantic bird” (35-6, 41), or what might be the relevance of the

Hindu saying quoted in the penultimate stanza (37-9). This confusion is even more acute in an earlier version of this poem published in Criterion: it contains three stanzas describing animals that the frigate pelican sees in its flight, offering too many images and creatures in quick succession (A-Quiver 83-6). Also troubling, in both versions, is this bird’s un-virtuous habit of feeding itself by stealing food from other birds.

Though such poems may not be effective as responses to social conditions, they are interesting in other ways, and suggest that Moore was exploring the viability of indirect commentary via animal imagery at this juncture in her career. 28

While the poems above are legible as responses to the Depression, “The

Pangolin” may be the first of Moore’s animal poems to address the impending war.

The poem was first published in The Pangolin and Other Verse, a product of Bryher’s

Brendin Publishing Company. Through her friendship with Bryher and H.D., Moore had important affective ties to Europe, and she was certainly well aware of the political situation there.29 When she began writing this poem in 1935, if not significantly earlier, Moore was thinking about impending war and how it might be avoided.30 For Moore, the pangolin represents the virtues of faith, hope, and courage.

Again, it is important to note that Moore bases her depiction of the pangolin on research or observation: the first of Moore’s notes to this poem reads “‘The closing ear-

28 Robin Schulze’s “The Frigate Pelican’s Progress” provides a helpful account of the different versions of this poem. 29 See Berger 153 and SL 328. 30 Although Moore’s letters evince concern about Hitler and the rise of totalitarianism as early as 1932, I do not find anxiety about war in her poetry before 1935. Essert 243 ridge,’ and certain other detail, from ‘Pangolins’ by Robert T. Hatt, Natural History,

December 1935” (CPM 281). Such details, indicative of her careful attention to this animal, suggest that it is not merely a vehicle for moralizing. While traditional allegorical animals have little in common with their flesh-and-blood models, the pangolin’s characteristics as described in the poem correspond to reality, so that an implicit moral is the reward for this act of attention. Moore seems to notice or derive virtues, rather than imagining or imposing them. For example, in terms of courage or fortitude, the pangolin “endures exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night, / returning before sunrise” (15-6). His food source is difficult to obtain, because the ants he eats often retaliate; but his physique is adapted to the challenge, and so “‘Fearful yet to be feared,’ the armoured / ant-eater met by the driver ant does not turn back, but / engulfs what he can” (34-6). That the pangolin is armoured, and must do battle, indicates a likeness to soldiers.

Thus far, the poet is extrapolating from the facts; elsewhere in the poem, she is rather more imaginative. In the final stanza, the speaker notes approvingly that he

“goes cowering forth, tread paced to meet an obstacle / at every step” (89-90). All of this fortitude has its reward: he is “made graceful by adversities, con- / versities” (54-

5). The poem concludes with reference to two other virtues, faith and hope:

there he sits in his own habitat,

serge-clad, strong-shod. The prey of fear, he, always

curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work

partly done,

says to the alternating blaze,

“Again the sun! Essert 244

anew each day; and new and new and new,

that comes into and steadies my soul.” (92-8)

In this instance, Moore is obviously embellishing, imagining, or extrapolating.

Perhaps she sees this animal’s perseverance in the face of adversity as evidence that it has faith and hope, which would give it the strength to continue the struggle.

Significantly, the final section of this poem blurs the boundary between human and animal, as though to suggest that although this creature is very odd and unfamiliar, one may still learn important lessons from observing him. Fortitude or courage is a significant wartime virtue, for soldiers and for those on the home front. Faith and hope are less obviously applicable to wartime, but Moore may have believed that greater faith and hope on the part of individuals could prevent another world war.

Certainly, they will assist individuals in enduring the conflict, should it occur.

The Pangolin and Other Verse (1936) was published in a limited edition of only

120 copies (A-Quiver 35); the poems included in it (with the exception of “Half

Deity”) were first available to the general public in What Are Years (Macmillan 1941), and so the poems collected there were likely received as a commentary on the war.

Having read “The Pangolin” in this context, two other poems from this collection offer further support for the argument that Moore’s animal poems of the late 1930s constitute an indirect commentary on the moral questions of that moment.31 “He

‘Digesteth Harde Yron’” is a poem in praise of the ostrich: the title refers to a myth about its diet. The speaker tells us that this bird, which can also be called the “camel- sparrow,” “was and is / a symbol of justice” (4, 6-7), and spends the remainder of the poem attempting to convince us of this claim.

31 Moreover, as if to emphasize the significance of her animals, Moore includes an image of a caged bird at the conclusion of the collection’s first (titular) poem. Essert 245

This bird watches his chicks with

a maternal concentration—and he’s

been mothering the eggs

at night six weeks—his legs

their only weapon of defense.

He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard

as a hoof; the leopard

is not more suspicious. (8-15)

Like a good soldier, the ostrich is willing to sacrifice his own safety in order to protect and care for others. He is suspicious because, as the remainder of the poem emphasizes, he has long been the victim of human cruelty. Men have hidden “actor- like in ostrich skins… /… /… that ostriches / might be decoyed and killed!” (18-

21); ostriches have been given as gifts to emperors, and misused in myriad other ways (34-5, 39-45). This may be Moore’s way of considering the problem of individuals (or even countries) trusting each other, given a history of betrayal and violence.

And yet, the ostrich is “the one remaining rebel” because he has survived these human abuses of power (57). He has done this by his watchfulness, and by an ability to adapt and make do; it “builds his mud-made / nest in dust yet will wade / in lake or sea till only the head shows” (36-8). The speaker believes “heroism is exhausting, yet / it contradicts a greed that / did not wisely spare” (50-1) so many other large birds, thus completing the contrast between the ostriches’ virtues and humanity’s failing. The poem’s negative portrayal of humanity widens the gulf between human and bird, and thus reminds us that the ostrich, again, is not a model Essert 246 to be emulated, but an exemplar of those virtues that one should nonetheless strive to cultivate in oneself. The bird’s status as “rebel” and “hero,” derives from its manifestation of values that are very often absent from the rest of the world: love, hope, and courage (seen in its defense of its egg and its ability to endure).32 Love may seem an odd virtue to associate with war, but for Moore it is a virtue that might prevent war. Temperance is suggested by the description of its adaptability quoted above, which is reinforced by lines appearing in an earlier version of the poem:

quadrupedlike bird which

flies on feet not wings,—his moth-silk

plumage wilted by his speed;

mobile wings and tail

behaving as a sail. (60-64)33

This reference to the ostrich’s speed (it has the fastest land speed of any bird) also serves as a reminder that Moore has derived the qualities and virtues associated with the ostrich from research, not hearsay or imagination. The title is a reference to one myth about the ostrich, while other lines from the earlier version note that the bird is, in fact, “never known to hide his / head in sand” (50-51). Moore’s emphasis on facts and particularities is crucial to her method, because it is of a piece with her emphasis on presentation rather than declaration; she offers the facts about this bird, and has faith that readers will draw an appropriate conclusion.34 On the whole, the poem’s social comment seems to be that a reassessment of “heroism,” and greater

32 “Bird Witted” makes a similar point about maternal love and courage by describing a mocking bird protecting her chicks from a cat. Likewise, the reindeer in “Rigorists” evinces the same temperance and adaptability that Moore celebrates in the ostrich and the jerboa. 33 I quote here from this poem’s first appearance, in Partisan Review (July-August 1941). 34 See also Catherine Paul’s reading of this poem, which relates it both to the wartime context and to a display at the American Museum of Natural History, Essert 247 cultivation of love and hope, could prevent conflict. Should war become unavoidable, Moore suggests that courage and temperance would help us survive that struggle.

“The Paper Nautilus” offers another example from the animal kingdom of self-sacrifice and struggle gracefully borne. The poem opens by indicating that this creature exemplifies virtues not possessed by certain kinds of people:

For authorities whose hopes

are shaped by mercenaries?

Writers entrapped by

teatime fame and by

commuters’ comforts? Not for these

the paper nautilus

constructs her thin glass shell. (1-7)

For whom, then, does this octopus construct her shell? Not for any human, but for her progeny: the poem praises her efforts and self-sacrifice in protecting her eggs.

Having made her protective shell, she “guards it / day and night; she scarcely / eats until the eggs are hatched” (13-5). And, her task having been fulfilled, “the intensively / watched eggs coming from / the shell free it when they are freed”(24-

6)—a reminder of Moore’s belief that true freedom derives from limits and constraints. The poem concludes with a typically Mooreish adage: “love / is the only fortress / strong enough to trust to” (33-5). Love, generally exemplified in Moore’s poems as the love of parents for their children, emerges as the crucial virtue in her late work.35 For Moore, it seems that the deepest virtue lies in loving something else

35 See Levy 63-68 (“The Case for Moore’s Late ‘Love’ Lyrics”). Essert 248 more than oneself; she implies that this is the quality often missing from human beings, the cultivation of which would bring an end to war.36 The nautilus likewise manifests fortitude and temperance in her attention to her eggs, reinforcing the pattern of virtues seen in Moore’s other animals. At the same time, Moore’s detailed physical description of this unusual octopus emphasizes its difference from humanity, and so reinforces the claim that it represents an ideal rather than a model to be imitated.

The poems in Nevertheless (1944) were all written during the Second World

War. These include the title poem, discussed above as exemplary of Moore’s method, and the much-analyzed and much-debated “In Distrust of Merits,” as well as “The

Mind is an Enchanting Thing” and “A Carriage in Sweden,” both of which Miller reads as commentaries on war. It also contains two more poems, both about animals:

“The Wood-Weasel” and “Elephants.” They have received little critical attention, and do not appear to have been considered in their wartime context. However, they offer further examples of animals as representing virtues that would be of particular use in wartime. “The Wood Weasel” is, at least in part, a poem for Moore’s friend

Hildegard Watson: it is a backwards acrostic on her name, and Watson’s formal attire was typically black with white accents (“‘The Wood-Weasel’”). But it is surely more than just praise for a friend. In this poem, Moore attempts to recuperate the much- maligned skunk by christening it with a more appealing name. Over the course of the poem, the skunk is described by references to a Chilcat blanket, a chipmunk, a goat, cuttlefish, a moth, and an otter; it also uses the more general terms “pole-cat” and

“weasel.” In a poem so short, this collection of similar animals can make it difficult

36 This is the argument of Miller’s “Distrusting: Marianne Moore on Feeling and War in the 1940s.” Essert 249 to focus on the skunk, and does not amount to the kind of detailed description found elsewhere in Moore’s work. The skunk is praised as a “noble little warrior” and “determination’s totem,” but unlike in the poems discussed above, the description does not support these claims. However, such references do suggest the wartime context, in which many citizens are warriors and determination was a crucial virtue for enduring pain and scarcity. In this context, “powerful,” “protection,” and

“warden” (as in air-raid warden) also read as wartime vocabulary. Like “The Plumet

Basilisk” or “The Frigate Pelican” (discussed above) this poem offers an example of an ineffective use of this strategy of indirection: if there is a social comment lurking behind Moore’s portrait of the skunk, it’s not entirely clear.37

“Elephants” is a longer poem, and thus has more space to offer a complex portrait of its subject. It begins with a description of two elephants fighting with each other, which, upon closer observation, turns out to be not a “knock-down drag-out fight that asks no quarter” but “Just / a pastime” (6-7). The poem proceeds on to an image of elephant and mahout resting peacefully together, before moving on to its depiction of the elephants as participants in the Sri Lankan “festival of the tooth.”38

In keeping with their gentle treatment of their mahouts, the elephants are represented as resigned to their fate: “Amenable to what, matched with him, are gnat

// trustees, he does not step on them” (36-7). The poem makes clear that such resignation was not immediate, and associates it with wisdom; the elephant

is not here to worship and he is too wise

to mourn—a life prisoner but reconciled.

37 The likeliest possibility seems to be that one should not reject others based on their reputation alone, but instead should take the time to really observe them before passing judgement. 38 Moore likely learned about this from the film mentioned in her notes to this poem. Essert 250

With trunk tucked up compactly—the elephant’s

sign of defeat—he resisted, but is the child

of reason now. His straight trunk seems to say: when

what we hoped for came to nothing, we revived.

As loss could not ever alter Socrates’

tranquillity, equanimity’s contrived

by the elephant.(41-9)

Moore here makes a virtue out of necessity, but (as Willis’ reading of “The Frigate

Pelican” indicates) the idea of embracing or fulfilling one’s destiny is an important one in Moore’s Protestant theology. Rather than striving to change what cannot be changed, the aim is to meet one’s struggles with as much courage or fortitude as possible. The elephant, like the good Christian, is “reconciled” to his fate, accepting it with equanimity because that is the wisest course of action. Though the elephant meets his struggles passively, Moore is surely aware that fortitude may take more active forms. She may also be considering the way that different situations demand different kinds of fortitude (those at home in the United States experienced the war differently from those in England). This poem’s brotherhood of species may be an indirect expression of a cautious hope that a brotherhood of man may still emerge from the ashes of war. However, poem reads as more declarative than those discussed above, and trades on a familiar association of elephants with intelligence or wisdom, and for that reason is less powerful than her more famous animal poems. Essert 251

Moore’s poetic project as represented in this chapter involves conflicting imperatives: she wanted to convey moral messages and social commentary, but also strove to avoid egotism and dogmatism. Though it may seem odd to imagine a prophet who offers her message in riddles rather than making declarations, there is of course an important tradition of prophecy (in the sense of social and moral commentary) that involves allegory or parable. Many examples can be found in both the Old and New testaments, while The Divine Comedy and The Pilgrim’s Progress are only the two most famous examples of Christian allegorical literature. Such precedents would have licensed Moore’s indirect approach to moral commentary, offering examples of how to balance competing imperatives. Moore could not imagine that she had the answers, nor that she was the only one with the right to speak. To do either would be to sink to the level of the very forces which her poetry sought to combat: she consistently rejects “the haggish, uncompanionable drawl // of certitude” (“In This Age of Hard Trying…” 15-6), and all those who, like her steamroller, would “crush all the particles down / into close conformity” (3-4). And so she implies a moral message by presenting portraits of animals, rather than declaring one explicitly; she lets the animals speak for themselves, as it were, shifting the emphasis away from both speaker and poet. As discussed above, animals are particularly effective for Moore because of their likeness-with-difference. There is sufficient difference (and thus distance) to permit careful observation, and enough similarity to sustain attention and enable analogy. For Moore, such strategies of indirection were an absolute necessity, without which it was impossible to accommodate one’s “natural reticence” (CPr 396). Turning to Layton, I address a different kind of reticence, which results from the enormity and intensity of historical Essert 252 events, rather than from temperament or ethos. Animal imagery, as a strategy of indirection, enables Layton to address pressing moral issues that he could not, initially, confront otherwise.

II. Irving Layton’s Response to the Holocaust

Thus far, this chapter has argued that Marianne Moore found certain Hebrew prophets, and a particular notion of prophecy associated with them, to be a helpful model for thinking about her own poetic project and the place of the poet in society.

But it is important to note that Moore never called herself a prophet—given the common understanding of that term, she would probably have found it grossly egotistical. She even disavowed the humbler title of “poet.”39 Irving Layton, on the other hand, clearly and repeatedly affirmed his belief that he was a genuine poet and therefore a prophet, and clearly intended that term to be understood in the colloquial sense of “A divinely inspired interpreter, revealer, or teacher,” or, “More generally: a prominent proponent of or spokesperson for a particular cause, movement, principle, etc.; a visionary leader or representative” (“prophet, n.” def. 1a). For example, in his foreword to The Swinging Flesh (1961), Layton opines that:

The contemporary poet should fulfill his role as prophet and critic,

should exalt and pull down. … The dedicated poet can be a power in

the land. If he did his work well, evil and arrogant men, knowing

there was one about, would sleep less soundly in their beds. So would

everyone else. For the poet can feel the future on his skin and can

speak of things to come. (Engagements 90-91)

39 See Miller, Cultures 155. Essert 253

Layton not only affirms that the poet has an important role in society, but also indicates that he understands the poet as one who “predicts or foretells future events” (“prophet, n.” def. 5a). In the foreword to his next book, Balls for a One-

Armed Juggler (1963), Layton takes up the theme of poet-as-prophet again, by declaring that contemporary poets are not realizing their full potential: “instead of remembering they are prophets and the descendants of prophets, the poets have swapped roles with entertainers and culture-peddlers” (Engagements 105). He goes on to explain that prophecy demands intense effort and self-sacrifice on the part of the poet: “Because he is a prophet, the poet must take into himself all the moral diseases, all the anguish and terror of this age, so that from them he can forge the wisdom his tortured fellow men need to resist the forces dragging them down into the inhuman and the bestial” (Engagements 106). Thus, the genuine poet has a role of great importance and responsibility: he is capable of foreseeing, diagnosing, and even healing, social ills. Layton made this position still more explicit in a 1978 television interview with Peter Gzowski:

I’m all of these things: a prophet, a poet, and I hope, a physician to

the ills of this country, if not of the entire world. I think poets are, by

the way. They are really the physicians to the soul. Not the

philosophers, Plato was quite wrong about that. It’s the poets who

are the physicians to the human soul, who know exactly what the

ailment is… they study the human heart, they study the human soul,

that’s their geography, that’s their territory. (n. pag.)

Layton’s public persona evidently involved claiming a large and crucial role for the poet, not only casting himself as “prophet,” but also affirming the power and Essert 254 importance of the poet-prophet in modern society. Trehearne has traced the development of this persona, which he describes as “Nietzschean Übermensch”

(Montreal Forties 199) and “self-celebratory Dionysian” (Montreal Forties 217), emphasizing that its successful deployment relies upon its containment by irony. Joel

Deshaye has observed that the Laytonic persona is that of the “pseudo-religious” prophet, modelled most closely on Zarathustra (a “clownish, failed teacher”); this public persona emphasizes religious pretensions, and suggests Layton’s scepticism about his status (“Celebrity” 80 and passim). What follows considers Layton’s prophetic persona—his self-presentation as social or moral critic, in his poetry and public utterances—and not his private or personal views.

The contrast between his view of the prophet and Moore’s can be illustrated by a comparison of his “On Seeing the Statuettes of Ezekiel and Jeremiah in the

Church of Notre Dame” (1955) with Moore’s “Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel.” 40

Layton refers to Ezekiel and Jeremiah as “my rugged / troublesome compatriots,” asserting an important affinity between himself and the biblical prophets (2-3). The statues seem to represent the way that the Catholic Church has “made …captive” these prophets: he observes that their “angers” are “quite lost,” and their “splendid beards, here, are epicene” (2, 6-7, 4). The bulk of the poem continues this attack on the Church, but it concludes with the speaker strongly affirming his alliance with the prophets:

I shall not leave you here incensed, uneasy

among alien Catholic saints

but shall bring you from time to time

40 Unless otherwise noted, Layton’s poetry is quoted as it appears in his Collected Poems (1965). Essert 255

my hot Hebrew heart

as passionate as your own, and stand

with you here awhile in aching confraternity. (27-32)

Layton does not hesitate to present himself, either in prose or in poetry, as a

“confrère” of these major prophets. In contrast, Moore’s poem makes no such declaration. It is couched in rhetorical questions, and does not indicate clearly the speaker’s position vis-à-vis the prophets of the title. It emphasizes, moreover, how often prophets “fail of a hearing,” thereby suggesting some uncertainty about the prophetic project. Importantly, Layton aligns himself with prophets who focus on preaching against sins and predicting the future. Moore also invokes Isaiah and

Daniel, who focus more on describing the nature of God and His covenant with His people, thereby offering a more complex or balanced representation of prophecy than does Layton’s poem (Lucas).

Just as the figure of Habakkuk was helpful in understanding Moore’s notion of poetic prophecy, the figure of Jeremiah may be helpful for understanding

Layton’s. The invocation of Jeremiah in the poem above indicates Layton’s interest in that prophet, and directs readers to an earlier poem, “Jeremiad,” which appeared in Here and Now (1945).41 The definition of “jeremiad” reveals much about the popular reception of the prophet to whom this eponym refers: it is “A lamentation; a writing or speech in a strain of grief or distress; a doleful complaint; a complaining tirade; a lugubrious effusion” (“jeremiad, n.”). Layton’s poem is a lament or complaint about the current state of society, which both observes the present and imagines the consequences of a failure to repent. It begins with observation: “So I

41 I quote from Here and Now, because the poem was not included in any later collections. Essert 256 watch the motorized legions, / the municipal bums of yesteryear, the present heroes

/ sow untrafficked wastes and even the seas with their bodies” (1-3). And it concludes with gloomy prediction: “The rest, / the remaining rubble, the goddamned nowhere nothing / shall time sandpaper into a venomous joke” (10-12). In the intervening lines, the speaker laments the waste of war, referring ironically to a “good harvest” of soldiers, and to “the veteran’s stump” (6, 8). The images in “Jeremiad” do not cohere, which may be why Layton did not include the poem in any subsequent collection. However, it suggests that his interest in Jeremiah was both informed and longstanding; and, like the later poem, it claims Jeremiah as a model or precedent for social criticism in verse. A “major theme” in Jeremiah’s preaching is

“that Judah has lost her true identity as God’s covenant people because deceit permeates life, destroying the social fabric (9:1-6). Only genuine repentance can avert disaster (3:12-14)” (Lucas 124). As “God’s ambassador” and a “covenant enforcer”

(Lucas 118), Jeremiah’s primary task seems to be to point out the ways in which members of his society are failing to live according to the covenant, in order that they might see the error of their ways. Though not interested in God’s covenant,

Layton is concerned about forces that are destroying society, and his utterances are intended to provoke a change in behaviour.

Layton’s conception of the poet’s role, and his self-styling as prophet, prompts questions about his relationship to Judaism and the Jewish community; it was a fraught relationship, which may be contrasted with Moore’s consistent commitment to her faith. According to his memoir, Layton experienced religious scepticism from a young age. He tells a story of the day he broke the prohibition against switching on electric lights during the Sabbath, only to find that there was no Essert 257 immediate divine punishment:

My simple experiment had forever weakened my trust in the faith of

my forefathers. Once again doubt filled my mind about the ubiquity

of God. I didn’t breathe a word about that to my mother and sisters.

However, in the months and years that followed, my behaviour

spelled it out clearly enough for them. I refused to say Kaddish for

my father, and later on wouldn’t let any rebbe prepare me for my bar

mitzvah. My mother cursed and railed, my sisters implored me not to

break my mother’s heart, but for me, without benefit of Nietzsche,

God was now dead. (Layton and O’Rourke 96)42

It would, however, be inaccurate to cast Irving Layton as an atheist. In a 1957 letter to the Canadian Forum, he suggested that the Song of Songs was “the origin of [his] joyful sensuality” (Layton Engagements 165). And in a 1962 lecture on “Jewish Writers in Canadian Literature,” Layton made a declaration that clearly indicates a belief in

God:

For myself, the essence of Judaism is that God is a creator, and

before all I love my Creator because he created me—or Adam—out

of dirt and blew the spirit of life into that dirt. For me this is the

central riddle of human existence and I quarrel in my writing with

both those who exalt the spirit only, and those who would debase us

only to dirt. (qtd. in Mayne 129)

Similarly, in a 1986 NFB film, Layton observes that “my religion is not very different

42 Moreover, among Layton’s critics, Howard Baker asserts that Layton “does not believe in God” (44), while Michael Abraham declares that, “For Layton, there was no greater evidence of God’s death than the holocaust [sic], no better proof of God’s former life than His tragic death” (100). Essert 258 from my father’s,” suggesting a strong belief despite his rejection of traditional observances. This can also be felt in the centrality of his cultural Judaism to his later work, particularly the poems in For My Brother Jesus and The Covenant. At a minimum, one might conclude from such statements that Layton could not accept any of the

“easy” answers offered by orthodox theology; this fact may help explain why the problem of human cruelty or evil became such a preoccupation for him, particularly from the 1960s onward.

***

If, in Layton’s view, the poet’s job is to study the human heart or soul,

Layton’s investigations seem to assume, as their point of departure, that humans are animals. In his Foreword to A Red Carpet for the Sun (1959), he opined, “Aristotle was surely wrong: it isn’t reason but cruelty that distinguishes our species. Man is not a rational animal, he’s a dull-witted animal who loves to torture” (Engagements 83). And, indeed, it is important to note that Layton’s celebration of the human body and human sexuality suggests that human animality is not strictly negative. Many years later, Layton explained to Donald Winkler his belief that “every human being on this planet is creative, and this is what makes the human animal different from all other creatures” (Poet: Irving Layton Observed). Thus, Layton’s emphasis on human animality does not preclude some significant differences between species, and may offer him reason for hope.

The introduction offered evidence that Layton’s belief in human animality was rooted in his belief in evolution. In this chapter, I argue that the notion of human animality is integral to his prophetic message. Up to the mid-1950s, Layton’s poetry frequently compares, and even conflates, humans and animals, in what Essert 259 amounts to a commentary on the nature of humanity. In “On the Death of A.

Vishinsky” (1954), the speaker calls himself “a desperate animal,” and in “Thoughts in the Water” (1956), the speaker refers to himself as “a careless animal” (3). The use of the generic term here seems intended to denigrate the human speaker by demoting him to the category of “merely animal” or “brute.”

Contemporary instances of more specific zoomorphic comparisons also carry negative valences. “The Swimmer” (1945) mentions snakes, cockleshells, and tigers, but most significant is its comparison of the swimmer to “A male salmon

[swimming] down fretted stairways” (15).43 When the swimmer resurfaces, this moment of imagined metamorphosis is over, but not forgotten: he is “stunned by the memory of lost gills” (16). Since this highly enigmatic poem appears to address the process of coming of age (Trehearne Montreal Forties 186-88), images that refer to our evolutionary kinship with other creatures (the coming of age of our species) enrich the poem’s meaning.44 Ultimately, the poem seems to cast animality as something to be transcended or evolved beyond, even if it cannot be entirely forgotten. In “Vexata Quaestio” (1953), the speaker communes with nature, and thereby receives a message of vocation:

And there among the green prayerful birds

Among the corn I heard

The chaffering blades:

“You are not flydung on cherry blossoms,

43 “The Swimmer” has an important place in the Layton canon, in large part due to Layton’s own comments about it: see the preface to The Laughing Rooster (Engagements 112), and Waiting for the Messiah 228-9. 44 “Proof Reader,” also from Here and Now, is so cluttered with imagery, including animal imagery, that the speaker is nearly lost beneath it (Trehearne Montreal Forties 202-3). However, the poem concludes with the speaker’s description of himself as a “cold egret in a mere of ink”—suggesting his too- intimate relationship with the tools of his trade. Essert 260

Among two-legged lice

You have the gift of praise….” (7-12)

This representation is more ambivalent. The poem’s speaker is able to hear or to receive the message because he is among the birds, communing with nature.45 But the content of the message is that humans are merely “two-legged lice,” and thus very much part of the animal kingdom. The speaker may “have the gift of praise,” but the focus on his embodiment in the remainder of the poem suggests that he is no less animal than his fellow humans. “It’s All in the Manner” (1954) makes a similar comparison between humans and a lowly animal,46 in its declaration that

Manner redeemeth everything:

redeemeth

man, sets him up among,

over, the other worms, puts

a crown on him… (18-22)

In the same vein, in “To the Girls of My Graduating Class,” the young girls are described as “Intolerant as happiness, suddenly / They’ll dart like bewildered birds”

(7-8). Similarly, “Eros Where The Rents Aren’t High,” derives its humour in part from its comparison of a man engaged in intercourse to a horse, while “For Priscilla” is a nasty satire that describes its subject as “a female hyena / of the spirit” (9-10).

Layton makes use of such figurative language to suggest a very literal, biological likeness. Moreover, the largely negative connotations of his animal imagery suggest that, in this phrase of his career, his animal imagery is intended to make reader aware

45 The previous stanza mentions insect bites, a very intimate and immediate way in which humans and insects interact. 46 Below, I discuss Layton’s representation of flies; it seems that Layton’s work often associates small insects with the mass of humanity, whereas birds or mammals represent individuals. Essert 261 of the gross, bestial embodiment that most humans attempt to deny or repress. This is an important first phase in Layton’s prophetic response to the Holocaust: his commentary on the moral issues arising from those atrocities begins with the repeated assertion of humanity’s brutish, venial animality.

Anthropomorphism can also emphasize the proximity between humans and animals, as in two poems from the 1950s. “The Ants” (1954) describes those insects as an army of soldiers with “tiny grey helmets” (26)—and later in the poem they are

“like African warriors” (36). The poem’s speaker seems to admire their vitality and resilience, calling them “jots of life” and “black specks of determination / — irresistible” (5, 11-12). He is also fascinated by their apparent organization, suggested by their coordinated movements: “they poised themselves / on withered rocks,”

“then took soundings / and came down” and, finally, “at the edge / of the newspaper” “they waited / for signals” (19-20, 27-28, 36-37, 42-43). And yet, in anthropomorphizing these insects, who seem to take themselves very seriously, he is also making an implicit comment on the ridiculousness of human military operations, and even about the insignificance of human life and human actions more generally.

Similarly, “Sheep” (1958) offers a comparison between that farm animal and humans in its opening lines: “Like a socialist I knew, a simple soul / These two sheep, male and female, stare at us / from their fold” (1-3). In the fourth stanza, the sheep are compared to “a philosopher” and “a dancer” (27, 29). The third stanza makes the point clearer still; the speaker asks his companion to look at the sheep’s mouths:

… Would you not say that’s the smile

You’ve caught and watched on the face of someone

who, while he’s too meek to defend himself, Essert 262

Sees through and despises your guile? (18-21)

The comparison becomes personal in the fifth stanza, when the speaker compares the sheep to his daughter (35-8). The strong and unironized message is that humans closely resemble these domesticated animals. And Layton’s choice of animal here is not coincidental: given the reputation of sheep for mindless following, it fits neatly with Layton’s negative view of humanity and animality during this period.

This suggests why such comparisons are so important to Layton’s prophecy: his work repeatedly affirms that humans must acknowledge their animality. Of course, animality is not always negative: it may also be associated with the sensuality and sexuality which Layton celebrates so often in his work, and he consistently rails against those who promote the repression of such vitality.47 Indeed, for Layton it seems that the darker side of animality results from this repression: he is deeply concerned with the evil and cruelty lurking within humanity, which humans have often tried to deny or ignore. It is this aspect of Layton’s thought which I will emphasize here, because it enables an explanation of an important facet of his work.

Layton strove to remind his audience about human animality because he hoped that awareness of our true nature might lead to change. In his Foreword to The Shattered

Plinths, he suggests that “If we know the grim, unpalatable truths about ourselves we might in time learn to restrain our most destructive impulses. We can strive to accommodate ourselves to each other’s egotism and for the sake of common survival modify or direct it into less apelike manifestations” (Layton Engagements 130).48 Much

47 His poem “The Puma’s Tooth” is particularly interesting in this respect. 48 Again, Layton’s reference to apes suggests that his belief in human/animal kinship has its roots in a belief in evolution. Oddly, this reference to apes is much like those found in his earliest work, in that it appears to have a strongly negative valence (see footnote 17 to the introduction). Richter’s notion of “anxiety of simianation” is relevant here, but with an important difference: Layton is convinced that Essert 263 later, Layton explained that “the writer’s job is to make people aware that these demons are there in the human soul, and that they’ve got to be watched all the time”

(Poet: Irving Layton Observed). Layton’s position on humanity and war therefore bears an important similarity to Moore’s, in that both see war as the result of a deep flaw or defect in the individual human soul. But whereas Moore’s Protestantism gives her hope that humans can conquer this, at least at an individual level, Layton’s hope is more limited. As Michael Abraham has argued, for Layton, “History’s only positive lesson is its negative example. As such, mankind’s only hope lies in a direct acknowledgement of and engagement with its own beastliness, not in reverence for ancient wisdom” (90).

“Paraclete” (1954) is a pivotal poem in Layton’s representation of animals. In keeping with the poems examined so far, it represents humanity as bestial. But it also represents non-human animals as joyful, innocent, creatures who are often the victims of human cruelty, initiating what will become a trend in his work of the late

1950s and early 1960s. The poem’s speaker offers a pessimistic view of human nature that the poem as a whole does not contradict. In fact, the title indicates approval:

“paraclete” is “a title given to the Holy Spirit (or occas. Christ): an advocate, intercessor; a helper or comforter” (“paraclete, n.”). This suggests that the speaker, by telling these truths about humanity, may be offering help or comfort, and is holy by virtue of doing so. In the first stanza, the speaker declares “I expect nothing from man / Save hecatombs / … And ferity” (2-4), and all of what follows is an elaboration or expansion on this belief. The OED’s second sense for hecatomb seems most pertinent here: “transf. and fig. A sacrifice of many victims; a great humans already resemble apes, and believes that an awareness or acknowledgment of this likeness will help humans to evolve beyond this merely bestial state. Essert 264 number of persons, animals, or things, presented as an offering, or devoted to destruction” (“hecatomb, n.”). The speaker expects not only that humans will murder, but that they will do so on a large scale. Ferity—“The quality or state of being wild or savage; brutishness, wildness; hence, ferocity” (“ferity, n.” def 1a)— captures in a word the Laytonic conception of humanity: the thin veneer of civilization sometimes reins in, but cannot eliminate or conceal, the savage brutality of homo sapiens.

Layton may also have intended the first sense of “hecatomb,” which refers to religious sacrifice of animals, to suggest the way that such atrocities have often been given religious justifications. The second stanza, and much of the poem which follows, discusses how humanity now tends to direct its aggression toward other species. Recent hecatombs are put aside in order to focus on how, because interpersonal violence is not generally condoned, humanity’s innate tendency toward violence is visited on animals instead. The second stanza lists some victims of this redirection: “the sulphur-coloured / and young seals, white, without defense— / whatever crawls, flies, swims” (6-8), while the penultimate stanza offers a description of an act of violence as a particular example: “Or like a sodden idiot who plucks / A thrush from a willow, grief in her green hair, / Throttles it to uncover the root of its song” (21-3). This introduces another kind of animality: beautiful, gentle, and joyful.

Such creatures contrast with the “queer beast” that is the human, and the poem even suggests that it is the attempt to sublimate our animality (both its positive and its negative aspects) that leads us to commit violence:

It is as if, killing, he looked for answers

To his discontent among the severed veins Essert 265

And in the hot blood of the slain

Sought to inundate forever his self-horror. (17-20)

This complex, nearly contradictory, representation of human/animal proximity and relations, would offer Layton a fruitful way to address the moral problem of human cruelty. Though Layton, as poet-prophet, was not yet able to comment directly on the events of the Holocaust, his representations of cruelty toward animals in this poem (and in many that follow) allow him to address the pressing moral issues which emerged from it. Thus, his prophetic response to the Holocaust initially took this more philosophical or indirect form. Animality played an important role in conveying this message, as a kind of foil for humanity, or as a stand-in for innocent human victims. But before investigating this connection further through readings of other examples, I want to discuss Layton’s initial attempts to write the Holocaust. I argue that he had recourse to animal poems as a strategy of indirection because his attempts to address the Holocaust directly (in the late 1940s and early 1950s) were ineffective.

***

Among Layton’s earliest poetic efforts, there are oblique references to the

Holocaust, such as the mention of pogroms and invalidated ration-books in “Jewish

Main Street” (1945) or the allusions to the long history of Christian persecution of

Jews (the “torquemadas stirring in the frosty veins” of line 9) in “Gothic

Landscapes” (1951). Layton’s contributions to Cerberus (1952) include two poems that may be related to the Holocaust: the incoherent “Letter to Raymond Souster,” and the somewhat more-successful “Ex-Nazi.” I cannot presume to establish standards for effective poetry about the Holocaust; instead, I argue that these are Essert 266 ineffective poems by Layton’s own standards. Layton’s concept of the poet-prophet demands that poetry offer clear social critique or moral commentary, but the poems discussed in this section do not cohere into anything of the sort. It is no coincidence that they are all from before 1953, which (as I discuss below) can be identified as the moment when Layton found his mature poetic voice. These poems exhibit the same incoherence that often mars his earliest work, and they are therefore incapable of conveying any kind of commentary to the reader.

That “Letter to Raymond Souster” had its only publication in Cerberus suggests Layton’s awareness of its flaws. Despite Layton’s frequent denigration of

Eliot, the line “Deutschland undid him” (7) recalls “Richmond and Kew / Undid me” (293-4) from “The Fire Sermon,” and prompts us to link the intensive use of fragmentation and pastiche here to Eliot’s methods in The Waste Land. The poem’s opening line—“Man stinks like a dead horse”—announces a pessimistic meditation on human nature, and the poem’s third through fifth stanzas clearly refer to the

Holocaust:

Gone are guilt and sin

And religion

Is something less than an opium

Since lately we saw God

The Jew’s masterpiece

Dissolve in the idolatrous smoke

of a Polish crematorium

The burning bush Essert 267

The burning bush

Moses and

the burning bush49

Hush my Jewish child

—ash (15-27)

The two following stanzas seem to refer to the history of lynching and other racial violence in the United States, while the rest of the poem addresses human vileness generally. In short, the poem’s fragments do not cohere. This form is atypical for

Layton, and (as I hope this excerpt shows) not one which suited him enough for him to manage it deftly. Moreover, the fact that Eliot himself searched for new forms after The Waste Land suggests the limits of a form based on pastiche and juxtaposition. But this poem makes clear that Layton was searching, in the early

1950s, for a mode or method that would allow him to address the Holocaust adequately.

“Ex-Nazi” imagines an encounter between a child and his neighbour, the ex-

Nazi of the title; crafted in Layton’s early imagist manner, the poem suggests the long shadow of the Holocaust, but can do little more than evoke an uncomfortable mood.

The images of snow and whiteness, and of heat and sun, seem incongruous and unmotivated. Moreover, although the conflict between innocence and guilt is interesting, I cannot understand why the neighbour is described as “Innocenter than his bounding mastiff,” or why “the hot sun desiccates his guilt” (19, 22). In short, the

49 Miranda Hickman has observed that these lines are another allusion to The Waste Land, as they recall the final lines of “The Fire Sermon.” Essert 268 poem seems to raise issues that it is incapable of addressing decisively.50

For Layton, neither fragmentary pastiche nor evocative imagism proved effective as poetic strategies, and he did not pursue them as vehicles for prophetic moral commentary. His next published attempt to write the Holocaust, “The Ape and the Pharisee” (1951), is a kind of surrealist allegory which almost obscures its treatment of those historical events.51 Its imagery of soap, chimneys, and skeletons— particularly in combination with references to Hillel and phylactery boxes—may be triangulated to hint at the Holocaust. The “Pharisees” of the title may refer to the historic religious party within Judaism, but is probably also intended more broadly, to represent a particular kind of authority, “A person of the spirit or character commonly attributed to the Pharisees in the New Testament; a legalist or formalist; a self-righteous person, a hypocrite” (“Pharisee, n.” def. 2). The ape is probably a figure for the poet, who finds himself in opposition to authority, with all the connotations of mimicry suggested by considering ape as a verb. He has “a white hot rivet in his mind,” but it quickly “grows cold,” suggesting both a link to the moon later in the poem, and a moment of burning inspiration that cannot last (2, 6). There is then a “you” (who is associated with horses), who tells the ape: “That’s a silly thing to do / For a scholar / and a Jew” (19-21)—thus associating the ape with Layton himself—and so the ape “straightened up” (23). All this taken together suggests that this is a poem about the difficulties of writing about the Holocaust: the poet feels he can only ape, that he loses inspiration, and (judging by the confusion of persons

50 See also Greenstein’s much more approving reading of this poem (Greenstein 36-38). “Ex-Nazi” may be compared with the (arguably more successful) later poem “Das Wahre Ich,” which is a moving presentation of a similar situation (Laughing Rooster 103). 51 I quote from the poem as it appeared in The Black Huntsmen; it was reprinted only once, in Collected Poems 1971. I am indebted to Joel Deshaye for his insightful comments on this poem. Essert 269 here) that he is internally fragmented. It is not surprising, then, that the poem collapses into incoherence under the weight of its surreal images. The choice of images suggests that the poet is trying to say something about the Holocaust, but the many hesitations in my reading here indicate that it is difficult to know exactly what he might be trying to say. At best, Layton is able to convey something about his own creative struggles; there is no clear moral or social commentary available in this poem.

If Layton’s first collections show evidence of a desire to respond to the

Holocaust, coupled with an inability to do so effectively, there appears to have been an important development in his work during the mid-1950s. Brian Trehearne has argued persuasively for 1953 as the pivotal year in which “the mature and successful

Layton” emerges (Montreal Forties 175). Trehearne invites us to compare “a total

Layton output of sixty poems in the 1940’s” with “the unsilenceable Layton of the

1950’s, who produced sixteen books, ten of them collections of new verse and two major selected volumes” (176). Layton produced several major self-reflexive poems in the years immediately after this shift: “In the Midst of My Fever” (1954), “The

Cold Green Element” (1955), and “The Improved Binoculars” (also 1955).

Significantly, these poems paint a bleak picture of humanity as heartless, vicious, and bloodthirsty, in keeping with the representation of humans-as-animals discussed above.52 Capitalizing on the strategy developed in “Paraclete,” three of Layton’s most canonical poems of the late 1950s represent animals as innocent victims in order to

52 Some exemplary lines: “In the midst of this rich confusion, a miracle happened: someone / quietly performed a good deed” (“In the Midst of My Fever” 13-4); “And the rest of the populace, their mouths / distorted by an unusual gladness, bawled thanks /to this comely and ravaging ally, asking / Only for more light with which to see / their neighbour’s destruction” (“The Improved Binoculars” 13-17). Essert 270 address the moral problem of human cruelty. Though there is little to link them directly to the Holocaust, I argue that in these poems, Layton offers prophetic social commentary on moral problems arising from the Holocaust.

In Layton’s much-reprinted, much anthologized, “The Bull Calf” (1956), the speaker describes the killing and burial of a bull calf by a farmer who does not want to keep it because male calves are not profitable. The young animal is anthropomorphized by the attribution to him of “pride” and “the promise of sovereignty”—a description which prompts the speaker to think “of the deposed

Richard II” (3, 4, 9). The idea of sovereignty and ensuing deposition must be intended as ironic: this calf has never had, and could never have, anything resembling

“absolute and independent authority” (“sovereignty, n” def 3b). This may be intended as a comment on the animal’s lack of self-determination, or (more likely) a kind of pre-emptive deflation of the idea of paying attention to the death of such an apparently insignificant being. And indeed, in the second stanza, the animal is

“snuffing pathetically at the windless day,” suggesting its weakness (12). After it is struck, the wounded calf appears to be “gathering strength for a mad rush,” but in reality it is incapable of any retaliation (19). After it is buried, the calf lies “as if asleep,” and the “pity” of the waste of this animal’s life prompts the speaker’s tears

(32, 13). It seems as though the speaker is sincere in his sorrow for the calf, and in his frustration at a system in which animals are objectified (“like a block of wood”) and killed when it is not profitable to raise them (there is “no money in bull calves”)

(26, 10); to cry, and admit to having done so, is a significant gesture. It may be that the speaker’s sorrow is more the result of his identification with the calf (as a prideful creature at the mercy of the profit motive) than of any concern for the animal itself. Essert 271

That the poem seems more interested in the speaker’s reaction than in the calf’s pain suggests that Layton’s real subject is human nature and human/animal relations. He is primarily interested in what can be learned about humanity by considering the ways we treat other species or respond to violence toward them.

Another poem in this vein is “Cain” (1958). It is clearly the speaker himself, and he alone, who commits the act of cruelty. The act of shooting a frog with a bb gun is deliberate, and involves setting aside the individual personality: “I measured back five paces, the Hebrew / In me, narcissist, father of children, / laid to rest.

From there I took aim and fired” (2-4). These lines suggest that, in order to commit this act, the speaker must ignore significant aspects of his identity: his racial heritage, which should discourage violence against innocents; his self-love or dignity; and his role as a model for his son. This suggests that society imposes taboos which should prevent violence, and that those taboos are easily discarded. There follows a detailed description, full of metaphors and similes, of the frog’s reaction to being hit by the air rifle; the hit is not immediately fatal, giving the speaker ample time to observe the dying creature and its reactions. This prompts a meditation on death more generally, which affirms the basic similarity of all mortal creatures: “But Death makes us all look ridiculous. / Consider this frog (dog, hog, what you will) / Sprawling, his absurd corpse rocked by the tides” (25-7). He goes on to compare the dying frog to

“a retired oldster… / Living off the last of his insurance” (29-30). This all serves to distract the reader from the animal’s suffering by moving the poem into a comic register; it is also a kind of elaborate post-hoc justification on the part of the speaker.

And the speaker’s desire, in the face of this pressing awareness of his own mortality, is to commit more acts of violence: Essert 272

Absurd, how absurd. I wanted to kill

At the mockery of it, kill and kill

Again—the self-infatuate frog, dog, hog,

Anything with the stir of life in it, (32-5)

Although the poem moves on to a consideration of the fall of empires, and another look at the dead frog as “A comic; a tapdancer apologizing / for a fall, or an Emcee,” the main point, as implied by the title, has been made here (52-3). The poem suggests that we are all sons of Cain, ready and able to commit senseless acts of violence without provocation. Moreover, we are certainly no better than other animals, who the poem suggests are Abel to our Cain, and whom we often kill in a misguided attempt to affirm our superiority.

“For Mao Tse-Tung: A Meditation on Flies and Kings” (1959) is contemporary with “Cain,” but it implies a different, and rather troubling, ethics. It is perhaps the first clear indication in Layton’s poetry of a belief that violence may sometimes be permissible. The poem, in Layton’s Nietzschean/Dionysian mode, seems to suggest that the ends may justify the means, and that some lives count for more than others. The poem begins with the speaker killing a fly, and admitting to having killed other insects in the past:

So, circling above my head, a fly.

Haloes of frantic monotone.

Then a smudge of blood smoking

On my fingers, let Jesus and Buddha cry.

… But I Essert 273

Am burning flesh and bone,

An indifferent creature between

Cloud and stone;

Smash insects with my boot. (1-10)

The poem goes on to establish a contrast between “the meek-browed and poor,” who are “etiolated” and “do not dance” (16-8), and those who “dance with desire” and so “Weave before they lie down / A red carpet for the sun” (38-41). The sun, in

Layton’s work, generally represents Dionysus and divinity—a kind of true religion which is here contrasted with Christianity.53 The speaker allies himself with Mao—

“Poet and dictator, you are as alien as I” (29)—alien, that is, from the poor and weak who are prey to the “enchantments” of Christian morality. Moreover, in the final stanza, he declares

I pity the meek in their religious cages

And flee them; and flee

The universal sodality

Of joy-haters, joy-destroyers. (42-5)

Thus, the poem would seem to side with Mao, and similar powerful figures, who are willing to reject conventional morality and forge a new world: this is how one weaves a carpet for the sun.

Moreover, the poem would seem to excuse or diminish any violence that may be required to achieve such aims. The insects, flowers, or bushes that the speaker harms are described as “Jivatma” (14)—the word used in Hinduism for “a living being, or more specifically, the immortal essence of a living organism (human,

53 On the importance of the sun imagery, see Francis, “Layton and Nietzsche” (47 and passim). Essert 274 animal, fish or plant etc.) which survives physical death” (“Jiva”). Thus, the speaker says that “they endure / endure and proliferate” (14-5). If this is the case for these lesser living things, the second stanza suggests, if only by juxtaposition, that human lives are as capable of “enduring,” and are of as little concern. Wynne Francis’s observation strengthens this link: “Flies and other flying insects abound in Layton’s poetry. On the literal level they are merely annoying distractions: symbolically they represent people, the mass of humanity” (Francis “Layton’s Red Carpet” 51).54 As in the other poems examined thus far, Layton represents animals in order to comment on human nature and moral issues. But in this instance, the poem does not condemn the violence against innocent animal victims, and implicitly condones violence against humans. This, too, is a prophetic message, but a much more troubling one. It is significant, however, that animals play a crucial role in this meditation on human nature and human violence, which forms part of Layton’s initial, very philosophical, response to the Holocaust.55 In the next section, I examine Layton’s Balls for a One

Armed Juggler (1963), which contains many similar poems, and which enables a clear and explicit link between animal imagery and prophetic moral commentary about the

Holocaust.

***

Layton’s stance on human animality is particularly significant because it is crucial to the development of his poetic response to the Holocaust. 1963 saw the publication of Layton’s Balls for a One Armed Juggler, a collection that seems to mark

54 See also my discussion, in chapter one, of H.D.’s use of similar tropes in her late work. 55 I fail to understand how someone so concerned with human cruelty, and with the Holocaust, could believe that the mass destruction of life would ever be acceptable. Nonetheless, it does not seem accurate to read this text ironically, or in any other way that would avoid seeing it as condoning violence. Essert 275 another important turning point in his concerns and strategies. In his foreword to that volume, he opines that the topics generally addressed by poets are

hardly to the point in an age of mass terror, mass degradation, when

the human being has less value than a bedbug or a cockroach.

What insight does the modern poet give us into the absolute

evil of our times? Where is the poet who can make clear for us

Belsen? Vortkuta? Hiroshima? There is no poet in the English-

speaking world who gives me the feeling that into his lines have

entered the misery and crucifixion of our age. (Engagements 104)

In this collection, Layton attempts to be that poet, as he was unable to be in his earlier work. Juggler contains two poems which reference the long history of Jewish persecution (“History as a Slice of Ham” and “Soren Kierkegaard”), and two poems that name sites of mass murder (“For My Friend…” and “Le Tombeau de la Mort”).

“Whom I Write For,” which is discussed further below, addresses the problem of writing after the Holocaust. If these poems were the only responses to the Holocaust in the entire collection, his foreword would be a poor introduction to the volume.

But Juggler also contains a series of poems about human cruelty toward animals, much like those discussed above. Read in the context of Layton’s foreword, and alongside the historical references elsewhere in the collection, these poems stand as an indirect treatment of the traumatic moral issues arising from “the misery… of our age.” The animals stand in for the wounded humans whom Layton cannot yet conjure; they allow him to represent the rottenness and violence at the core of human nature, and thus suggest a kind of explanation for the Holocaust and similar atrocities. While my linking of the earlier animal poems to the Holocaust was based Essert 276 more on inference, situating the animal poems in Juggler within the context of that collection justifies reading them as social or moral commentary on the Holocaust and human nature.

I have found no evidence to explain why Layton declared the Holocaust a preoccupation at this particular moment, but the trial of Adolf Eichmann is at least a possible motivation. The trial, which ran from April to August of 1961 was an international sensation; it included the testimony of ninety concentration camp survivors, and Eichmann’s defense was that he had been “following orders.” It is possible that the trial prompted Layton to focus his attention on the Holocaust and its moral implications. His previous book, The Swinging Flesh, was published before the trial began, so that this would be his first opportunity to respond to the issues and emotions it raised (Layton Wild Gooseberries 138). Moreover, the reference to

Eichmann in “Whom I Write For”—published first in October 1961, and included in Juggler—is a clear indication that Layton was interested in the trial.

The speaker in “Therapy” relates two separate animal anecdotes. The first three stanzas describe his affection for a lame kitten that was born to his family’s cat when he was six: he recalls that it “had all my love,” “all my agonized attention” (6,

9). He says that “its playfulness /… / broke my heart” and so he “was glad” when the kitten died. This is a reasonable reaction, to which the reader can be sympathetic: the kitten was unwell, perhaps suffering, and so one might be inclined to be glad that its suffering had ended. But in the two final stanzas, the speaker relates a second event: “Yesterday” he “axed a young badger / rummaging in our garbage bin / for food” (17, 19-21). The contrast in the speaker’s interactions with these creatures is striking: the domestic animal is loved, the intrusive wild animal is killed. And the Essert 277 speaker shows no remorse; instead, he declares: “I am now strong enough for God and Man” (25). As Trehearne explains, the speaker’s action “earns him the poet’s corrosive closing irony…. He is indeed strong enough for a man: strong enough to kill without reason a weaker, joyful creature” (“Introduction” xxix). The reference to

God may suggest the man’s wildly inflated ego, or the notion that only God has (or should have) control over life and death. In representing this speaker’s inconsistent attitude toward other creatures, his casual violence, and his self-promotion to the level of a deity, Layton offers a prophetic social commentary on significant flaws in human morality and human behaviour. Layton’s primary mission seems to be to raise awareness of the human capacity for cruelty or violence against the innocent, of which voiceless animals are a potent symbol.

Elsewhere in Juggler, there is a trio of poems involving violence against animals that are connected by the similarity of their situation and imagery. In both

“Still Life” and “Ambiguities of Conduct,” the speaker and his interlocutor are discussing art and philosophy, and then the interlocutor, carelessly and without motivation, kills an animal (a bird and an insect, respectively). This situation closely resembles that in “Breakdown,” also included in Juggler, with the important difference that the victim there was human.56 “Still Life,” by its title, suggests the possible cruelty within art itself, that is, its capacity to still (stop) life. While “speaking of

56 “Breakdown” depicts the capacity for violence that lurks below the veneer of civilization. The opening stanza defines the speaker’s companion as a “cultivated gentleman,” and offers his cultural credentials (opera-lover, successful academic). The two men are “admiring the instinctual swans” in Parc Lafontaine when the companion “stopped suddenly” in front of a blind woman on a bench and “and plunged two pins, / one into each cheek” (15-17). The surprising and unprovoked violence of this apparently gentle man represents both a mental breakdown of the individual, and the breakdown of polite society, which could occur at any moment because of the instability of the human animal. Interestingly, Brian Trehearne has mentioned to me that many of Layton’s later poems which explicitly address the Holocaust also associate the Nazis with high culture (“Aesthetic Cruelty” being only one example). Essert 278 modern art,” the speaker sees a linnet, “wiping its beak / on the fallen leaves and grass, / joyfully ignoring both of us” (1, 7-9). Thus, the bird is very much alive, and is associated with joy. And then:

As if he had done this

many times before,

the stranger dislodged the flat stone

near his hand

and let it crash down heavily

on the hopping bird. (10-15)

The stranger’s reaction—“‘That makes an exciting composition’” (23)—condemns him further by establishing him as preferring death over life, and artistic construction over reality. In “Ambiguities of Conduct,” the speaker declares his interlocutor’s talk about the importance of love to have been “sincere,”

Even if, later,

he deliberately flicked

his cigarette ash

into a flowercup

where a black insect was crawling. (10-15)

The man’s “excited / words of love,” are not interrupted by this act; the speaker believes that “I alone heard” the “sizzle” and “scream” of the dying animal (16-20).

This indicates both the interlocutor’s indifference to the suffering of other creatures, and the speaker’s special status as intensely sensitive. It may even suggest a kind of empathy or identification. In both of these poems, the combination of the men’s indifference to physical suffering with their elevated conversation and other evidence Essert 279 of “civilization” is particularly striking. This is perhaps why Layton repeats the scene thrice in the same collection: he wants to alert his readers to the cruelty that lurks below the surface, within all of us. Layton writes animals as victims because humans often kill them in a futile attempt to assert their superiority, and because the joyful embodiment of other species contrasts with humanity’s anxious denial.

“Butterfly on Rock” again includes imagery of rocks and wings, but in this instance, as in “Therapy,” it is the speaker himself who kills the creature. Observing a butterfly settled on a rock, the speaker convinces himself that “the rock has borne this” butterfly as a result of its “secret desire / to be a thing alive” (5, 7-8).

Confronted with an apparent epiphany—that the inanimate can become animate— the speaker explains:

Forgot were the two shattered porcupines

I had seen die in the bleak forest.

Pain is unreal; death an illusion:

There is no death in all the land,

I heard my voice cry;

And brought my hand down on the butterfly

And felt the rock move beneath my hand. (9-15)

In other words, the speaker has deluded himself about the nature of life and death, so that he thinks that it is acceptable to kill the butterfly (because “pain is unreal; death an illusion”) and that the rock moves.57 Although the idea of there being no death might make sense in a Christian context, it hardly fits with Jewish doctrine; and

57 Poet: Irving Layton Observed includes a scene in which Layton discusses this poem. There, he seems to be asserting, with the poem’s speaker, a belief in the ability to create through destruction. However, it is impossible to know to what degree that filmed discussion was merely a performance. Essert 280 neither tradition explains why the rock is imagined as alive or animated. The poem becomes clearer within the context of Layton’s Nietzscheanism, which would sanction violence as a means to an end, and introduce the idea of creation as occurring through destruction. “Forgot” recalls the similar moment in “Cain,” in which various public identities are “laid to rest” (4). For me, it suggests an ironic reading of this poem, by implying that one must forget a great deal (more than just the dead porcupines) in order to believe that “death is an illusion” and that the rock has moved. As I read it, this poem emphasizes the way that delusion can lead to cruelty, and may also enable post-hoc justification. The poem is therefore a prophetic commentary on human evil, and an indirect response to the moral issues arising from the Holocaust.

“The Predator” is similarly ambiguous, but ultimately legible as a poem that represents violence toward animals, and contrast humans with non-human animals, in order to offer a prophetic statement about morality. The speaker has encountered a dead fox on the side of the road, and the poem’s first stanzas imagine the cause of its death: perhaps it had been caught in a trap, or killed by a farmhand. In either case, the fox is the victim of human cruelty. The speaker thinks that it’s “hard to believe / a fox is ever dead” because “his fame’s against / him; one suspects him of anything,” and “his evident / self-enjoyment is against him also: / no creature so wild and gleeful can ever be done for” (10-11, 13-4, 16-8). Once again, an animal is idealized as representing joyful embodiment. The second half of the poem contrasts the fox, and “free and gallant predators like him,” with man, “the dirtiest predator of all” (21,

30). The fox’s self-enjoyment is contrasted with human self-hatred; “Man, animal tamed and tainted, wishes to forget” his animality, but is unable to do so (24). The Essert 281 speaker declares that “Man sets even / more terrible traps for his own kind” (34-5).

This poem, then, does not so much lament the death of the fox as valorize the fox in order to present a contrast between animal predation and human cruelty.

“A Tall Man Executes a Jig” has the distinction of being the final poem in

Juggler.58 It is also longer, and more tightly structured, than most of Layton’s poetry, being a sequence of seven unrhymed sonnets.59 This poem, which is a meditation on the role of the artist in society and on the nature of humanity, contains significant animal imagery. The first stanza emphasizes the tall man’s communion with nature:

“The noise he heard was that of whizzing flies, / the whistlings of some small imprudent birds” (4-5). The second and third stanzas consider his interactions with the flies or gnats, and these insects signify quite differently here than they did in “For

Mao Tse-Tung,” where they represented insignificant life. Lee Briscoe Thompson and Deborah Black have suggested that “Both the gnats and the man are dispensable to the ongoing maintenance of the natural cycle; thus the ultimate irony is in their reciprocal valuing of each other: the gnats as crown to man, and the man as substantial world to the gnats” (37). The tall man’s reaction to the flies is complex:

“the assaults of the small flies made him / Glad at last, until he saw purest joy / In their frantic jiggings under a hair” (25-27). In contrast to these flies, he “felt himself enormous,” and he attempts to diminish them to “motion without meaning, disquietude / Without sense or purpose, ephemerides” (29, 37-38). On other hand, they are “haloing” and provide him with an “aureole,” so that the relationship is evidently a significant one, which imbues the tall man with a sense of power or

58 Its significance is also suggested by it placement as the final poem of Collected Poems. 59 Brian Trehearne has reminded me that a cycle of seven sonnets is known as a “crown”—and thus the form of “A Tall Man” is in keeping with its recurring imagery of crowns. Essert 282 meaning (35, 43). If the flies represent the mass of humanity, the artist figure’s relationship with them is crucial to his self-construction.

In the last three sonnets of the poem, the tall man observes a wounded snake:

… temptation coiled before his feet:

A violated grass snake that lugged

Its intestine like a small red valise.

A cold-eyed skinflint it now was, and not

The manifest of that joyful wisdom,

The mirth and arrogant green flame of life;

Or earth’s vivid tongue that flicked in praise of earth. (64-70)

This snake is both symbol and a vulnerable physical being, and Layton strives to separate this creature from its rich textual history. It is more than just a figure for temptation or wisdom, and its embodiment and mortality are emphasized by

Layton’s striking image of the valise. The tall man first “wept because pity was useless,” and then “Beside the rigid snake the man stretched out / In fellowship of death” (71, 85-6)—strongly indicating an identification or kinship between the snake and the artist figure. In the final lines of the final stanza, the snake is transformed into a dragon, and forms a new kind of crown for the tall man:

Meanwhile the green snake crept upon the sky,

Huge, his mailed coat glittered with stars that made

The night bright, and blowing thin wreaths of cloud

Athwart the moon; and as the weary man

Stood up, coiled above his head, transforming all. (94-98) Essert 283

The poem suggests that an alliance with animality is necessary for the tall man’s success, implying that the artist’s mission has to do with understanding the place of humanity in the universe, relative to other creatures. If the snake and the flies represent different kinds of human audiences, the poem nonetheless indicates the importance of both the flies and kings (to recall the distinction from “For Mao Tse-

Tung…”). In this poem, animal imagery enables Layton to meditate not only on the role of the poet, but also on the nature of humanity and on pressing moral questions.

In addition to Layton’s prefatory remarks, which prompt readers to consider the poems in Juggler as a response to the Holocaust, several poems in this collection refer to the Holocaust. “Whom I Write For” does so at length, and I believe it is

Layton’s first coherent, effective poem about the Holocaust. As its title suggests, it is a self-reflexive poem, primarily concerned with the problem of how to write poetry about the Holocaust, or with the role of the poet in responding to such atrocities. It begins aggressively: “When reading me, I want you to feel / as if I had ripped your skin off” (1-2). The poem continues this way for eight more lines, describing gross, violent acts as a way of expressing the shocking or violent impact he hopes his verse will have. This first stanza emphasizes family relations, manifesting an awareness of the way that violence has historically been used to fracture the family unit. Then, as in many of Layton’s prefaces, the speaker disavows any intention to make poetry that is easy or comforting, and takes several lines to mock poets who do offer such fare

(they are “no prophets, but toadies and trained seals!”) (16-7).

In the third stanza, the speaker claims to “write for” both the perpetrators and the victims of mass murder and atrocities: by this, I understand him to mean that he writes so that they will not be forgotten, or so that the world will continue to be Essert 284 aware of what they have done or suffered. The mention, in this stanza of “the young man, demented, / who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima” (23-4) suggests an important aspect of Layton’s ethos: all mass murders, not just attacks against Jews, are tragic and deplorable. The point becomes even clearer when, several lines later, he claims “I write for the gassed, burnt, tortured, / and humiliated everywhere” (32-

3). The poem ends as it begins, with a litany of graphic descriptions of violent acts, which work as metaphors for the power of words. Obviously, Layton means to make readers intensely uncomfortable. But he is also asking difficult questions about how a poet can address such atrocities, which are crucial to the human experience in the twentieth century. The violence represented in the opening stanzas is so excessive, so far beyond the realm of what words are capable of doing, that they become legible as a kind of fantasy of poetic potency: only in his imagination could the poets’ words wreak such destruction. In this way, the poem becomes, as its title suggests, more about the difficulty of writing about the Holocaust than about the Holocaust itself or war more generally. There is something like despair bordering on insanity here: how, after all, can a single poet with his pen compete against armies?60 In Juggler, Layton began to overcome such obstacles, and to respond to the most pressing moral questions of the later twentieth century. I have argued that animal imagery was integral to this creative process, allowing him to address the underlying issues before he was able to comment on the historical events directly.

Given the framing material in Juggler, it seems reasonable to consider how such work might constitute a response to the Holocaust; I argue that it responds, not

60 I remain puzzled by the declaration that “I write for Castro and Tse-Tung, the only poets / I ever learned anything from.” Is this real praise, or ironic? This poem may be compared with “The New Sensibility” from Shattered Plinths (1968): “The up-to-date-poet / beside labouring at his craft / should be a dead shot…” The later poem also invokes Pound, and refers to the Six-Day War. Essert 285 by representing or alluding to the historical event, but, by representing animals, to lead us to consider its implications for our understanding of human nature. As Anta

Pick has argued, the Holocaust involved a “fundamental unravelling of the human”

(51). Pick’s discussion of “The Holocaust and the Discourse of Species” situates

Layton’s animals in the context of a wider discourse, helping to explain why animal imagery might be a particularly effective strategy of indirection:

Holocaust discourse is uncannily doubled: on the one hand, animals

permeate the Holocaust. We find them in the perpetrators’ denial of

the humanity of the Jews and in the reverse commonplace that the

Nazis ‘behaved like animals,’ in the image of Jews as ‘lambs for the

slaughter,’ clichés about Nazi animal lovers… and most potently,

perhaps, in the resounding question of Holocaust literature of how to

retain one’s animality in the face of Auschwitz. But if the Jews died

like cattle, cattle do not die like Jews. Comparing the fate of animals

to that of Jews is considered ethically repugnant. … [And yet,] If we

must ‘keep the Holocaust human,’ this is precisely because the event

radically erodes human legibility. To simply reject as iniquitous the

analogy between Jews and animals is also to refuse to engage fully

with the Holocaust itself. (24)

In this context, Layton’s poetic affirmations of human animality are important because they suggest the sacredness of all life, the embodied vulnerability of all creatures which (unlike rights) cannot be denied on any basis. It also leads Layton to an awareness of our vileness, and prompts him to offer a portrait of human nature

(in all its brutishness and ferocity) that he feels is more accurate or honest. This is Essert 286 valuable because, as Layton wrote later, “The new image of man may not be a pleasant one to contemplate, but if it is an accurate one it might in the end turn out to be a gain if illusions are jettisoned” (Engagements 130). By emphasizing, in Balls for a

One Armed Juggler, the human ability to commit senseless acts of violence against innocent creatures, Layton offers something akin to Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil. He implies that no one is innocent, because everyone is capable of such crimes.61 He demands a reconsideration of what it means to be human, because while animals may be vicious, only the human animal attempts to deny its ferity, and only the human can be so malicious as to kill without motivation.62

***

In a 1985 documentary, Layton declared that the Holocaust was “the most terrible event in all of human history” (Poet: Irving Layton Observed). And yet, “Whom I

Write For” (1961) is his first effective poem to focus on the problem of writing the

Holocaust, and his first poems directly addressing the atrocities do not appear until

Periods of the Moon (1967). As Baker and Butovsky both observe, Jewish themes, and references to the poet/speaker’s Jewishness, are largely absent from Layton’s work until the late 1960s. I do not wish to speculate about the motivations for this delay; instead, having discussed Layton’s struggle to develop a prophetic response to the

Holocaust, I will conclude by discussing some later poems that address those events directly. Having argued that his animal poems were part of a strategy of indirection, I claim that, in the later 1960s and after, this strategy was jettisoned because it had

61 Bernard J. Bergen offers a clear recapitulation of Arendt’s controversial theory. 62 On which, see “On Being Bitten by a Dog.” Essert 287 ceased to be necessary.63

Given the developments in Balls for a One Armed Juggler, Layton’s next collection is somewhat surprising. His lengthy preface to The Laughing Rooster (1964) focuses on the craft of poetry, and makes no mention of the Holocaust; the poems in this collection are largely satirical, and many depart from Layton’s observations about Spain and its culture. Just one poem considers the Holocaust (“Das Wahre

Ich,” mentioned above). The collection’s preface is dated Feb 1, 1964. In May of

1966, Layton toured Germany as a guest of the West German government. He wrote letters and articles for Canadian print media about his trip; because he believed

Germany was now a stable democracy, and that its government and people should be trusted rather than shunned, he created a small controversy, and was denigrated as an apologist for Nazi crimes.64

He included some poems inspired by this trip in his next collection, Periods of the Moon (1967). Though it does not announce itself as such in the framing materials, this collection marks Layton’s first direct, sustained response to the Holocaust. There are two touristic poems with Holocaust themes: “Rhine Boat Trip” and “At the

Belsen Memorial” are placed together in the collection, increasing their emotional impact.65 In the first, the speaker observes how the scenery he views from the boat is

“haunted / by the ghosts of Jewish mothers / looking for their ghostly children,” so

63 Deshaye has suggested, in conversation, that Layton’s desire for celebrity may have something to do with this delay: he didn’t want to risk alienating his potential readers by addressing this thorny issue directly. This coheres with Deshaye’s division of Layton’s career into three phases, the last of which is Layton’s “gradual acceptance of being overexposed and passé after 1965” (89): it is not until the late 1960s, when he was no longer striving for celebrity, that Layton’s poetry addresses the Holocaust directly. 64 See material in Taking Sides, and two poems in Periods of the Moon that are rebuttals to such critics (“For the Stinker who called me an Apologist for Nazi Crimes,” and “For the Editor of the Jewish Canadian Eagle”). 65 I quote the remaining poems as they appear in Periods of the Moon. Essert 288 that, despite any enchantment offered by the landscape, “one hears only / the low wailing of cattle-cars / moving invisibly across the land” (2-4, 14-6). This suggests

(contrary to Layton’s attitude in his articles from Germany) that the German landscape (and perhaps by extension, the whole world) is forever haunted by the atrocities committed there. “At the Belsen Memorial” proceeds by a kind of occupatio, invoking what was once present on that site by way of what the speaker did not experience there. “It would be a lie / to say I heard screams / I heard nothing,” the speaker begins (1-3). The poem them proceeds through all the senses, always with the same formula: the speaker did not see “ribs / like the bones / of beached ships”; did not smell “the odours / of decomposing crystals / or of bodies”; did not touch

“emaciated ghosts / of little children,” did not taste death (5-7, 11-3, 20-1, 32).

Layton’s move here is deft, for it implies both that we can never fully conjure the past, and that we are doomed nonetheless to be haunted by it. The anaphoric repetition of “It would be a lie” serves to increase the speaker’s authority, suggesting that he would not tell us anything that was not true. Similarly, the emphatic use of the first person allows the speaker to assert himself as authentic witness, albeit a belated one.

His personal experience seems to have lent new urgency to Layton’s poetic treatment of the atrocities of the Holocaust, for other poems in this collection also register responses to that tragedy. In “Gypsies,” the speaker declares that the world needs a beggar woman because “she tests whatever / remains of Europe’s heart / made frigid in the ovens of Auschwitz” (38-40). This suggests both an important wound to the entire human psyche, and our ability to persevere in spite of it. “The

Coming of the Messiah,” does not mention any particular site or event of the Essert 289

Holocaust, but may be read as a meditation on why such an enormous tragedy did not lead to any fundamental changes in humanity. “We shall come to love” each other —that is, humanity will cease its cruelty—“but not now, not yet. // We have not suffered enough” (24, 27-8). This poem has a self-consciously prophetic tone, predicting the future; the prophet declares that “The Messiah will come / only after every inch of earth has been stained with human blood” (42-3). There is hope, but it is far off, and humanity will have to suffer even further before help arrives. This may be related to another poem from this collection, cast in a lighter and more youthful voice, “Song of a Frightened Jewish Boy,” which implores the help of “Brother

Jesus,” on the grounds that he was once also a “Jewish boy” (9-10). Jesus becomes a kind of comic-book superhero, who will “show them all who’s boss,” and make “the tall killers turn good // and those that don’t, run off” (20, 28-9). This represents, in the mode of the juvenile and the fantastic, the same hope for salvation figured otherwise in “The Coming of the Messiah.” Three other poems—“Games,” “Sight

Seeing,” and “Professional Jew”—attempt to address history through satire, and make clear that the Holocaust and its consequences are now central concerns in

Layton’s work.

The Holocaust is the central subject of Layton’s next collection, The Shattered

Plinths, as suggested by his comments in its Foreword :

I submit that a new element was ushered into the human situation

with World War II, with the slave camps of Communist Russia and

the extermination camps of Nazi Germany. With the terroristic

bombings of Hamburg and Cologne. Hiroshima … It is this new and

terrifying fact that utterly invalidates ninety-nine per cent of the Essert 290

world’s literature of the past and rolls a stone over it that nothing will

ever again remove… The poet today labours under the constraint of

finding other means. (Engagements 128)

Although Layton’s work in this collection is not formally very different from what preceded it—the lyricism and the persona remain the same—the historical events of the Holocaust and the issues they raise (made freshly pressing by the Six-Day War) are represented in some manner in the majority of the poems in this collection. The best among these is perhaps “For My Two Sons, Max and David,” although “Who

Will Give Me Back” and “The Graveyard” are also moving. The problems posed by the Holocaust would continue to preoccupy Layton for the remainder of his writing career; and, although animals do not disappear from his work entirely, he wrote only a few poems representing animal cruelty from this point onward. His meditations on cruelty toward animals appear to have been a means to an end, a strategy that assisted Layton in conveying his prophetic message, and allowed him to progress to more direct kinds of commentary.

My analysis of Layton began with a discussion of his self-presentation as poet-prophet, situated in the context of his personal agnosticism, in order to understand his view of human animality and his poetic representations of it. I argued that, given an understanding of humans as animals, Layton wrote poems representing human cruelty toward other animals as a way of writing the Holocaust before he was able to do so directly. Developing a (heavily ironized) prophetic persona, he preached that humanity was rotten at the core, and that humans must recognize this fact, because ignoring what we are capable of can lead to atrocities of an unimaginable scale. By the later 1960s, in the present marked by the Six-Day War Essert 291 and its aftermath, and with enough distance from the Holocaust for it to be handled as history, Layton was able to invoke it directly. Before that, he addressed the moral quandaries raised by those events by choosing more particular, and more mundane, examples of human cruelty. Animals are particularly useful symbols or subjects because, like the victims of the Holocaust, they are innocent, and defenseless in the face of vastly greater strength.

***

Animal tropes and imagery emerge as a crucial poetic technique for both

Moore and Layton. Both poets felt a strong calling to produce a poetry that would respond to the social crises of the twentieth century and their attendant moral issues.

I have invoked the category of prophecy, which himself Layton invoked on several occasions, because its religious connotations suggest the traditions which helped to shape Moore’s and Layton’s poetics. Although the difficulty of Moore’s poetry, and the aggressive persona developed by Layton, might suggest otherwise, both poets believed that they had an obligation to connect to readers, and that their words could make change; this, too, is suggested by the category of “prophet.” But prophecy is no easy feat. In Moore’s case, the primary barriers to creativity were her commitment to humility, and to the avoidance of dogmatism. In Layton’s case, though he easily assumed the role of the poet-prophet, he seems to have struggled with the problem of prophecy when it came to responding to the enormous tragedy of the Holocaust.

The social and moral commentary that both Moore and Layton wished to share with their readers had to do with the nature of humanity; and so, in their search for creative strategies, animals offer an important source of symbols and imagery.

Animals are useful as figures or images in such considerations, because it has long Essert 292 been common to define the nature and boundaries of the human in reference to (and in contrast with) other species. Moreover, given the moral issues addressed by these poets, the voiceless innocence of other creatures makes animals particularly appropriate as representatives of virtue, and especially poignant as tragic victims. The animal imagery in Moore’s and Layton’s poetry constitutes a strategy of indirection in so far as the animal poems are ultimately concerned with human nature and human issues: they represent other species that we might better understand our own. Their reliance on this strategy is suggested by the frequency and centrality of animals in their work; that it is only a strategy may be indicated by the fact that both Moore and

Layton wrote fewer animal poems during the later decades of their career. Having employed animal tropes and images in order to fulfill their prophetic impulses, both poets were able to progress to other strategies or techniques. Despite their strong affinity with other creatures, this analysis of their poetry indicates that their animals, like all poetic animals, are ultimately figures that enable the poet to address human concerns.

Essert 293

Conclusion

The goal of this project has been to uncover the post-Darwinian context of the modernist movement, and to assert that one of modernism’s core concerns was to define (or re-define) the human. An awareness of this socio-historical context enables a careful consideration of the representations of animals that proliferate throughout modernist poetry. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection poses a significant challenge to human narcissism, because it erodes the human/animal boundary. When other cultural and historical events (such as war, atheism, and feminism) also prompted a reconsideration of the boundaries of the human, animals therefore became an important figurative strategy for innovative writers. Chapter one discussed how H.D. and Marianne Moore frequently blurred the human/animal boundary in their work in order to reckon with the related binary of male/female. Because women and animals have historically been connected in patriarchal discourse, rejection of a clear species divide implicitly challenges hierarchical, dyadic notions of gender. Chapter two showed how T.S. Eliot and P.K.

Page register their changing views on human embodiment and spirituality through representations of animals. Their views were important determinants in their theories and practice of impersonality, which also exhibited significant developments over the course of their careers. Finally, chapter three examined how the spiritual concerns of

Moore and Irving Layton prompted them to use animals as a strategy of indirection in poetry that responds to social and moral crises. It considered why these poets seemed unable to comment more directly on the ethical issues that troubled them, and why animals were particularly effective as allegorical signifiers for their modernist prophecy.

Essert 294

In other words, in the modernist poetry and prose considered here, animals are always about something else. Biographical evidence suggests that each of these five poets had a deep appreciation for non-human animals, but the creatures in their work are clearly textual rather than zoological. Even when they are the ostensible focus, as in many of the texts discussed throughout this dissertation, these animals are also legible as commentary on other socio-cultural issues. This multiplicity of meanings not only gives these texts greater interest and importance, but allows us to integrate them more fully into each poet’s larger project: they are not anomalous, but of a piece with work which addresses similar issues in other ways. Focusing on these poets’ textual animals therefore permits a view of each poet’s work as internally coherent, and offers new insights into their poetic goals.

This research on poetic animals has also surfaced underlying similarities between poets whose work is, at first glance, very different. H.D. and Moore are united by their interest in gender; Eliot and Page by their commitment to impersonality; Moore and Layton by their desire to respond to the moral implications of the Depression, the Second World World, and the Holocaust. The second and third chapters each pair an American poet with a Canadian, in order to show how modernists of different generations and different nationalities evinced similar concerns, and had recourse to similar techniques. This strategy has emphasized the trends, motives, or techniques that unite and define a diverse array of modernist poetry, at least within the North American context. Such work is intended to prompt further consideration of the interrelations between various local or national modernisms, and to encourage the inclusion of Canadian poets in discussions of global modernisms.

Essert 295

This project also contributes to the study of modernist poetics, particularly with respect to the modernist uses of metaphor, simile, and analogy. These tropes emerge as crucial to these poets’ responses to modernity, and to their renewal of poetry. These are tropes that close the gap between apparently disparate things: they unify diverse images or experiences in order to create surprising, even shocking, new wholes. Metaphors and zoomorphic comparisons encourage readers to see connections, to create coherence out of chaos. But, importantly, they are almost always ambiguous signifiers that demand readerly interpretation. Such representations are interrogative rather than declarative, because the questions posed

(about the modern world, and the place of humans and animals in it) do not have easy answers. More than anything else, what unites these poets is their use of poetry to respond to the issues of the day, coupled with their reluctance to offer clear conclusions. This invitation to the reader is legible as a kind of compensation for the difficulty of their verse, and indicates a democratic impulse behind the apparent elitism.

In contrast with much recent work in the field of literary animal studies, this dissertation is not interested in questions regarding the ethics of representation. The fact that the animal poems considered here are rarely interested in flesh-and-blood creatures may indicate an unethical relationship to animals: these textual creatures are being represented with little regard for their real-world correlatives. The historical context suggests that judging these poets for failing to represent non-human animals as fully equal to humans would be ahistorical. The idea of animals as deserving of equal rights and consideration did not emerge until late into the twentieth century, and has yet to gain widespread popularity. It is incompatible with an era in which full

Essert 296 legal personhood was only gradually granted to women and non-whites. Moreover, it is difficult to know what an “ethical” representation of another creature would look like, particularly given our limited knowledge about the subjectivity of other animals.

What emerged instead, over the course of this study, was an emphasis on the ways that representations of animals enable these poets to pursue important lines of ethical thought—about gender, selfhood, war, and the nature of humanity. Through animal tropes and imagery, all five of the poets discussed here engaged with these major ethical problems, which were central to their poetic goals. In this way, the relationship between figurations of animals and ethical questions is integral to this project.

This project’s consideration of modernist literary animals is certainly not exhaustive, and it is intended to prompt further research. Though this project has focused on similarities in the ways modernist poets of different nationalities represent animals, there are also important differences to be considered. A sustained comparison of the poets featured here (or their contemporary compatriots) with their British counterparts would be particularly enlightening; D.H. Lawrence’s and

Ted Hughes’ creatures might be good test cases. Another line of inquiry would have to do with generic differences. Though this study does consider some prose, and some other studies mentioned in the introduction consider both poetry and fiction, there is a need for a theoretical study of the way genre shapes the literary representations of animals. Finally, Elizabeth Atkins’ article (“Man and Animals in

Recent Poetry”) included many mentions of poets who are not considered modernist, or whose work is no longer widely read or studied; it would be interesting

Essert 297 to contrast their representations of animals with those created by radically innovative, canonical modernists.

Each chapter of this study might easily be expanded into its own project. The chapter on Moore and H.D. could grow into a consideration of modernist women’s representations of animals, with Elizabeth Bishop and Virginia Woolf as obvious candidates for inclusion. Given that impersonality was a foundational principle of much Anglophone modernism, there is a need for a full-scale reassessment of the theory, which would investigate its dissemination and reception more thoroughly than was possible in chapter two. Finally chapter three’s notion of modernist prophecy surfaces the under-explored issue of the didactic impulses of many modernist authors. What is prophecy’s relationship to other aspects of modernism, in particular to modernist difficulty? By tracking animals, this project has discovered some surprising, but very productive, scholarly territories.

The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss believed that certain animals were chosen as totems “not because they are ‘good to eat’ but because they are ‘good to think’” (89). Ultimately, this dissertation concurs, arguing that animals proliferate among modernist poets precisely because they are good to think with. Language, and in particular poetic form, distances these textual creatures from their real-world counterparts, so that they become figures of thought, useful for addressing modernity’s most urgent intellectual problems. These five poets strove to consider the place of humanity in the modern world, and to represent the impact of modernity on human nature. Given that twentieth-century North American culture experienced widespread uncertainty about the human/animal boundary, animal tropes and imagery are particularly valuable for poetry that seeks to consider the

Essert 298 boundaries of the human. Representations of animals thus enable poets to pose, whether explicitly or implicitly, crucial questions about the human species that could not be addressed otherwise.

Essert 299

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Essert 332

Abbreviations

BMM Becoming Marianne Moore: The Early Poems, 1907-1924.

CPPE The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950, T.S. Eliot

CPr The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore

SL Selected Letters of Marianne Moore

SP Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot

SE Selected Essays, T.S. Eliot

FP The Filled Pen, P.K. Page