Let's up the ante with Dante

The other day I made a timeline of major poets (about 17 pages long, I got carried away) and thought I'd focus on one of the earlier poets I placed on it: Dante. A 13th to 14th Century poet, Dante wrote so well that he is now known in Italym his home country, simply as Il Poeta. I have come across his Inferno before now while studying Paradise Lost, so it's time to look at a much shorter piece of writing, the poem,

There is a gentle thought
There is a gentle thought that often springs
to life in me, because it speaks of you.
Its reasoning about love’s so sweet and true,
the heart is conquered, and accepts these things.
‘Who is this’ the mind enquires of the heart,
‘who comes here to seduce our intellect?
Is his power so great we must reject
every other intellectual art?'
The heart replies ‘O, meditative mind
this is love’s messenger and newly sent
to bring me all Love’s words and desires.
His life, and all the strength that he can find,
from her sweet eyes are mercifully lent,
who feels compassion for our inner fires.’

This of course is a poem in translation. And I feel I hadn't covered a happy love poem in a while.

I love the personification of thought here. It is 'gentle' and yet has the joyous energy to 'spring', all because of love. And interestingly, it is thought that has power over the heart, not the typical reverse. Yet the mind is separate from thought, apparently, and so is still wary, fearing seduction. I suppose it is like intrusive thoughts that part of our minds would rather not consider.

Sometimes the commitment to love makes one feel as though other parts of life must be set aside, like the narrator's worry for his intellect. And then the greedy heart overrides these worries, concerend only with what love can 'bring'. And yet the two are joined in the last line with the possessive determiner 'our', showing that love unites the whole being eventually, not only joining two people as a couple.

Robert and his Graves

I have been reading a few of Robert Graves' poems recently. His name coincidentally chimes with many of his poems' subject matter from many different perspectives. I have even found an article on him titled 'The Haunted Mind', a very good read.

For today we shall look at 'The Cupboard', the entire message of which slips beyond my understanding, for now. Nevertheless I can feel the emotions he is trying to convey. After all, each person forms their own reading of any writing, and this is mine only.

Unfortunately I cannot find a print of the text which I can use here, so instead I shall provide a link to the poem on the Poetry Foundation website:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=14&issue=5&page=23

The most intriguing thing to me about this poem is the voices. Here we have a mother asking questions of a daughter. Not in the typical way that a mother asks her young child questions she already knows the answers to, but with persistent curiosity to a presumably adult woman, who appears to want children of her own now but for some reason cannot. That is my reading. From another perspective one could imagine that the daughter is perhaps young, but old enough to understand that when her mother has miscarried her to-be sibling, the trauma has deeply affected the older woman, leading the girl to try to hide any remembrance of it.

Within my interpretation, there are two imaginings of the mother: she is either mentally able, and therefore prying into her daughter's affairs; or she is ageing mentally with dementia or a disabling condition, and so is trying to recall what is in the cupboard for her own sake. I shall put forward my arguments for both these cases henceforth.

Concerning the first interpretation, we have the terms of address. By using 'Mary' to address her daughter, perhaps the mother is wanting to take control of her daughter's attention and remind her of her superior status as mother. It could be read aloud in a warning tone. After all, the mother has control over the name 'Mary' as she is the one who gave it.

Following this, we have the unequal address from Mary to the mother as 'Mother dear'. The latter endearment could be a pragmatic balm to soothe the inquisitive and domineering mother, who never offers that affection in return. The 'dear' augments to 'dearest' and 'mine', as if trying to put off her inquisitor, maybe even sarcastically. The fact that the final stanza ends this form of address and even ends the whole poem with a simple 'you' supports the theory that once the information has been withdrawn, the relationship's amicable façade breaks, and the daughter finally stands offensively rather than defensively with her own question, 'what's it to you?'.

My preferred reading is this: the mother is not able to remember that her daughter has been unable to have a baby, whether this is because she has not found the correct partner, or because she is physically unable, or even has had a miscarriage. Whatever the reason, the daughter has now both her personal worry and the worry of caring for her mother. For that reason she uses the terms of endearment sincerely, possibly feeling she has to remind her mother who she is in order for her to remember her in the long term. To me, this makes the poem all the more poignant when we reach the final line; the mother is so dependant on how the daughter perceives their world that 'the truth' could be anything said by Mary and the mother would believe it. Also, her harrowing experiences will not much upset the mother as perhaps she will forget the conversation in a few hours or even minutes.

In this poem, the focus on a standard household object highlights the domestic issues of our time. Why else would a cupboard be so important?