This is a purely personal post, motivated both by my admiration for 20th c. American poet Elizabeth Bishop and the association with 19th c. French Symbolist poetry that it engenders for me, specifically Verlaine’s Clair de Lune (included at the end of the post)1. I am not sure many readers will share that association, but Bishop’s poem stands alone, as it is.
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Sonnet
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.
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The poem is in the form of an Italian Sonnet, with a typical rhyme scheme of abbaabba cdecde, with an iambic pentameter meter to add to the musicality.
The first four lines establish a dreamy quality that is both sensual and sad. That she is in need indicates an emptiness of some sort, which is characterized by physical enervation–fretful and trembling–and sensory acuteness–feeling finger-tips and bitter-tainted lips. The need is to assuage her fretfulness of feeling, to soothe it, and she sees music as the means to do this–With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow-the preponderance of “stressed” syllables suggesting both the soothing beat of slow music and its ability to tranquilize, comparing it to similar, liquid qualities of water (deep, clear, and liquid-slow.) She seeks the restorative aspect of music, needing to be healed of emotional wounds, perhaps.
The next four lines beautifully limn the soothing quality of music, placing stressed and unstressed syllables in a kind of incantatory rhythm, the sounds washing over the reader in an enveloping cadence like the imagined water falling over her, healing and restful, soothing her quivering limbs .
The sestet (six-line stanza) is hypnotic and somewhat hallucinatory in its invocation of music as an immersion. The alliterative m‘s of the first line emphasize the seductive nature of music–There is a magic made by melody–that can cast a spell on the listener, evoking rest, quiet breath, and cool/Heart, as though applying anaesthesia. But this also perhaps suggests not a true healing or restoration, but a balm, a soothing, a mitigation of pain, like being immersed in the quiet depths of the sea or floating in a moon-mirrored pool, held–inactive, not proactive–in the arms of rhythm and sleep, as if drugged or hypnotized, a relief rather than a solution, passing, as music passes. Though the words, images, and music of the poem are soothing, there remains a lingering unease of afterthought.
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There is a haunting quality to both poems.
Translation from the French, Paul Verlaine, Clair de Lune
Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
That play on lutes and dance and have an air
Of being sad in their fantastic trim.
The while they celebrate in minor strain
Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,—
And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,
The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
And in their polished basins of white stone
The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.
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(Note: You can view most poems on the website, Poetry Foundation.)
(Note: My Poetry Recordings Playlist: At the very bottom of the post Is a recording. To view my entire playlist of poetry recordings, hover over “1/18” in the upper right corner, then click on ‘My Poetry Recordings Playlist:´and make selection.)
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