Originally Posted by Glenn Wright
Hi, Trev and Nemo—
Thanks for your considered opinions. They helped me to understand how the piece landed with you and are very useful.
You both had issues with the Keatsian diction in the first two stanzas. Here is my thinking.
I wanted to emphasize the contrast between the world of imagination, Romanticism, night, mystery, and magic to which the N belongs, and the world of common sense, Realism, day, society, and responsibility to which the woman returns after her tryst. I saw dawn as the liminal space between the two worlds. The “meddlesome” sun is a hat tip to Donne’s “Busy old fool, unruly sun” in “The Sun Rising.” He is the personification of the Apollonian world of day with its rules, judgments, religion, and enforcement of social norms. He is counterbalanced by the N, who is the personification of the Dionysian world of magic, wildness, paganism, and sensation. I varied the diction in the two halves of the poem to underscore this contrast.
Nemo—Stanzas 1 and 2 are meant to evoke the magic of “Lamia” or “The Eve of St. Agnes.” The jeweled hummingbird, skylark hymns, and perfume are not supposed to be real. They may have been conjured by the N, an incubus who may have used them to try to seduce the girl. Or they may have been magical gifts offered sincerely by the lovesick N to the girl. In S3 and 4, I change the diction to reflect the lost magic and emphasize the humdrum world she chose, which is a real place. “[H]er world, so full of weeping” is a nod to Yeats’s “The Stolen Child.” I wanted the reader to react to her choice and decide if she made the right one. I also want the reader to decide if the N is a sincere lover or a self-serving seducer.
Trev—I thought about changing “meddlesome” to “copper” in order to play on both the color of the sun at dawn and the role of policeman that the sun plays, intruding into dark nooks and dim crannies, but I decided I liked the sound of “meddlesome.” I also thought about changing “caress” to something like “ardent kiss,” but it introduced metrical problems and “caress” makes the N sound more sensitive and vulnerable. I also thought introducing even one more adjective might make the poem explode.
Thanks, gentlemen, for your thoughts and encouragement.
Glenn
|