"A Scattering of Salts": Merrill's Temporal Innocence
Author(s): Reena Sastri
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 239-267
Published by: Hofstra University
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A Scatteringof Salts:
Merrill'sTemporal Innocence
Reena Sastri
In A Scatteringof Salts the return of innocence "with a difference" (Poems
651)1 is Merrill's aim and his subject. This volume's poems seek ways to
combine innocence and experience, to achieve a renewal of innocence
that does not deny knowledge, experience, or time. Merrill desires innocence as an openness to the possibilities of each new moment, a way
to approach the present and future with potential for wonder and hope.
But his is not an Adamic stance that erases the past, motivated by a will
to what Emerson calls an "original relation to the universe" (3).2 Neither
is it an elegiac yearning for an idealized childhood or Milton's "native
innocence" (373) prior to knowledge and guilt.3 Rather, like Blake's,
Merrill's innocence "dwells with Wisdom" (697).4 Like Stevens in "The
Auroras of Autumn," Merrill pursues innocence through confrontations
with change and death. But Stevens struggles to find or imagine an innocence outside of time, "innocence / As pure principle" (361), not subject
to mutability.5 Merrill relinquishes desire for purity or transcendence
and invents a contingent innocence that arises in time and is subject to
change.6 It is a shifting, dynamic balance of contraries, an ongoing poetic
creation that does not reconcile opposites into harmonious simplicity.7
Its aspects of youth and age, hope and dread, imagination and knowledge
"dissolve / And meet in astounding images of order" (Merrill, Poems 11),
the balance between opposing terms constantly changing. A Scatteringof
Salts invents a new figure for this complex innocence: a gem or crystal
seen in its temporal, material process of becoming, a "bright alternation"
(674) of crystallized form and contingent flux.
This volume's gems are very different from the static, decorative ones
Literature
50.3
Twentieth-Century
Fall2004
239
ReenaSastri
that encrust FirstPoems,those "emeralds. . . sapphires. . . pearls"that
Richard Howardsees as the defining featureof that work (33). Howard
reserveshis praisefor laterpoems that get "into the streamof occurrence"
(13) and the unusualearlypoem that dismisses"jewelsand emblems in
favorof happenings"(12).8In A Scattering
of Salts"Gemlikeprojectskeep
forming" (Poems638), but they are productsof "the streamof occurrence,""happenings"in motion and in time. Saltscrystallizeand dissolve;
layers of calcium carbonateaccrete to form a pearl,which in time is
droppedback into the sea;"molecules"under heat and pressurearerearranged to form gemstones,and the same forces "de-crystallize"marble
to "chalk"(606). The gem formation and chemical synthesisin "Press
Release,"the saltsthat dissolveand recrystallizein "A DownwardLook"
and"An UpwardLook,"the materialsthatundergomelting,cooling,and
"Volcanic
metamorphicor syntheticrearrangementin "A Look Askance,"
and
"The
all
model
an
"Alabaster,"
Pyroxenes"
ongoing alternaHoliday,"
tion between the achievedgem and the temporaldissolutionout of which
it arisesand to which it returns.Withits dynamicinteractionof random
fragmentsand orderedmirrorsthat createthe appearanceof symmetrical
patterns-gemlike arrangementsrealizedonly momentarily-the kaleidoscope that appearsin "PressRelease" (638) offers one version of this
process and a striking image of how the volume balancesthe aleatory
and the constructed.'
Haunted by AIDS, Merrill in A Scattering
of Saltsis more awarethan
ever of the contingency of innocence, and more resolvedto continue to
build it anew.AIDS is a quiet but pervasivepresencein the volume.It is
there when a "computervirus"strikesthe poet's laptop (635) and when
"patriciancells await / Invasionby barbaricviruses"(641), when "The
Monster"speaksfrom a Scottishloch-"They have diagnosedmy presI mutate,I metastasize"
ence, neverfound me. A shape-shifter,
(630)-and
when "unheardambulances"threatento "wakethe graysleeper"(662).It
is both an internalthreatand a "GreatPlague"(643) affectinga broader
community.Linking sex and death,AIDS presentsa compound, formidablechallengeto innocence.Eroshaslong been a form of innocence in
Merrill'spoetry,the recurrenceof love a "triumphof hope over experience" (Vendler46), but AIDS shadowseros with illnessand death.In the
1990s homosexualityno longer represented,as it did in the 1950s,"the
worst iniquity,"in Merrill'swords,"my parents(andmany of my friends)
could imagine" (Recitative
80), but AIDS threatensto redemonize it in
240
A Scattering
of Salts:Merrill'sAchieved Innocence
the popular imagination.10 These late poems must work to acknowledge
how AIDS alters the erotic landscape without allowing love to be wholly
infected with fear or guilt. These concerns form in part the pressures
under which Merrill achieves his knowing innocence, an innocence
that includes eros and death. Death is one among many chemical and
geological processes he imagines working transformations between the
organic and the inorganic: chemical reactions, atoms and molecules cross
and recross the boundary between living and dead. In Thom Gunn's The
Man with Night Sweats, death cuts off such interchange: friends' deaths
from AIDS leave the speaker frozen in a marble block, an unfinished
sculpture. "Abandoned incomplete," he writes, "I find no escape / Back
to the constant play of give and change" (80). Merrill's stones themselves
display the give and change that the poet strives to maintain in the face
of his own turning to stone. Acknowledging that, in Eliot's words, "Every
poem [is] an epitaph,"the volume also emphasizes that "Every phrase and
every sentence is an end and a beginning" (Eliot, Poems 208).
Insistently temporal, the volume's innocence comes into being at the
intersection of forward- and backward-looking impulses; it is as involved
with death as it is with childhood. In "Alabaster,"a Dickinsonian slant of
sunlight catches a marble tabletop so
That its translucent inset glows,
Mild, otherworldly, from the underside.
As once in love or infancy
Yesterday'scargo-pine cone, junk mail, keyFloats on a milky tide,
Grime-swirled, with blood-pink glimmerings. For me
The time I dread
Is coming, thinks the table.
(Poems606)
"Yet"for "Long minutes after dawn, whatever weighs / Upon me light /
Bears up." An "otherworldly" glow makes beautiful and satisfying, but
ultimately does not alter,the conditions of bodily existence; when Merrill
brings stone to life, he makes it not spirit but flesh: milk, blood, grime.
The innocence evoked, "As once in love and infancy," is an embodied
one. Under these conditions, although the "minutes" of grace are "long,"
they will yield to "a starless night." In Dickinson, we recall, "Alabaster
Chambers" are tombs.
241
ReenaSastri
The balance shiftsin other poems. Some are preoccupiedwith the
past,others with an ephemeralpresent or with the courage needed to
face the future;varying temporal emphasesyield new metaphorsand
differentcombinationsof hope and"dread,"
"life fizzing up again"(649)
and death'sshadow.In "Pearl"(665) innocence is elusive,the wonder of
childhoodis lost,and the poem as pearldependson castingoff the mortal
body."Pearl"respondsto time with a double movementthatparallelsthe
volume's models of geological melting and metamorphosing,chemical
dissolvingand crystallizing,and kaleidoscopicmotion.This doublemovement involvesmultiplecrossingsbetween pastand present,crossingsthat,
like the passingof time figuredby the back and forth motion of a clock's
pendulum, are both destructiveand creative,both honest about time's
lossesand wishing to make gainsof them.The poem'sform is symmetrical, taking an hourglassshape on the page and rhymingthe first andlast
of its 31 lines,the second and thirtieth,and so on." Rhymed lines match
also in length (indicatedby indentation);the central(sixteenth)line is the
shortest,consistingof the two words"Of grit"and rhymingwith the first
and last.The hourglassrecallstwo earlierpoems, "Hourglass"from First
Poems(in which each stanzatook the characteristic
shape)and"Hourglass
from
Yellow
Like
"Pearl"
is
II"
The
Pages.12 them,
preoccupiedwith time's
but the laterpoem replacesthe flowing sandsof time with
irreversibility,
an "angrygrain of sand"and its slow transformationinto a pearl.In that
form, however,it remainssuggestiveof loss, becoming, in a description
of the final scene of"Sasha Guitry'sclassic Perlesde la Courronne,"
the
"Gem swayinglike a pendulum"fromthe handof the "hero,"who, having
"trackeddown / His prize,"accidentallydropsit overboardinto the sea.
Although innocence in "Pearl"dependson Blakeanvision ratherthanan
idealizedview of childhood,it is nonethelessthreatenedby time.
In the opening lines the third person distancesthe speaker'schildhood self, characterizedby the knowledge he lacks,which the speaker
provides:
Well, I admit
A smallboy'seyes grew rounderand lips moister
To find it invisiblychained,at home in the hollow
Of his mother'sthroat:the real,deepwaterthing.
Farfrom the mind at six to plumb
X-raywise those glimmeringlamplit
242
AchievedInnocence
A Scattering
ofSalts:Merrill's
Asymmetriesto self-immolatingmite
Or angry grain of sand
Not yet proverbial.
This childhood self,"athome" with his mother,captivatedby beautybut
"Not yet"cognizantof its grittyreality,hasbeen lost.As an adult,although
he retainsthe pearl,the speakerhas lost the mother:
Yet his would be the hand
Mottled with survivalShe having slipped (how?when?) pastreachThat one day graspedit.
In the last lines, the hero of the film loses the pearl he has sought and
found;it dropsinto the sea
Where an unconsciousworld, my yawning oyster,
Shuts on it.
The waters of Lethe-the self's forgetfulnessor unconsciousness,the
inhumanworld'sindifference-close over an irretrievable"Gem,""Sign,"
the pearlin the film is not
pearlof "wisdom,""trophy,""prize."Although
the pearl seen in childhood, paralleldescriptionsas "wisdom'strophy"
and hero's"prize,"as well as the symmetryof the poem's form, conflate
the two.What had been carefullyevoked,from its "glimmeringlamplit/
Asymmetries"to the slow accretionof "Skinupon skin,"is gone;like the
cherishedsouvenirof time travelin "Novelettes"that"Falls[...] through
cloud-shreds,"the pearlis "pastretrieval"(625).
But as that last punning phrasefrom "Novelettes"suggests,the gain
found through loss is the gain to the work: the poem as pearl.As the
"smallboy's eyes grew rounder and lips moister,"containing its rhyme
"oyster,"the poet opens himself to ("admit[s]")that "early mote / Of
grit"at the center of the poem. Where the sea "Shutson" the pearl,he
shutson the mote to generatethe poem. Earlier,the "lastshot"of Perlesde
la Couronne
is "One layer,so to speak,of calciumcarbonate/ That formed
in me."Thefiguresuggeststhe conclusionto TheUseof PoetryandtheUse
where Eliot quotesA. E. Housman'sdescriptionof the writing
of Criticism,
of poetry as a "secretion""like the pearlin the oyster"(138) and reminds
us of Shakespeare's
sea change:"those arepearlsthatwere his eyes"(139).
Transformingorganicto inorganic-the poet to the poem-the process
leavesthe art object as gem.
243
Reena
Sastri
IfpoNeitherEliotnorMerrillsuggeststhatsuchsecretionis passive.
requires
it
andsimply"Time,"
etic creationrequiresopenness,receptivity,
andthe wisdomnot"to gloat/ In verdictover
also"X-ray"vision,"wit,"
meat"-as if the soulaspearlcouldcastoff the
the shucked,outsmarted
body andnot,likethe film'shero,"allsuavityandwit,"to be complacent
The poet's"hand"in the firsthalfis matched
about"wisdom'strophy."
that
the pearlis to understand
by the hero'sin the second;to "gras[p]"
yetthe
we graspslipsthroughourfingers.It slipspastretrieval,
everything
poet invitesus to "manthe camera,follow"its descent,andin evoking
of the past.In thepoem's
childhoodthepoemperformsa partialretrieval
wherebylossesbecomegains,the finalityof "Shutson
secondmovement,
sensethatwhena poemis finishedit"comesrightwitha
it"evokesYeats's
doesnot
clicklikea closingbox"(LJetters24),13butthatformalsatisfaction
compensatefor the senseof losswith whichthe poem ends.Thepearl's
extractiondependson the oyster'sdeath,andthe poem'sfirstuse of the
Inorganic
firstpersonindirectlyidentifiesthe poetwiththe cast-offshell.
itself,yet producedwithinandby a livingcreaturewhosedeathreleases
closeanalogyfor the poem.
it, the pearlcanseeman uncomfortably
We mightdecidethatwhetherlossandgainbalanceone anotheror
by"Asymwhetherthe poem,like the mother'spearl,is characterized
metries"is a questionof vision.Withthat"angrygrainof sand/ Not yet
that"mote/ Of grit"at the centerof the poem,Merrillinproverbial,"
"To
"Auguriesof Innocence":
visionof Blake's
vokesthe now-proverbial
see aWorldin a Grainof Sand/ Anda Heavenin aWildFlower/ Hold
Infinityin the palmof yourhand/ AndEternityin an hour"(490).But
how elusivethatvisionis.Thechild,we recall,couldnot see the sandin
suggestto him either
the pearl;norwouldthe sand"Not yet proverbial"
a worldor the gem of Blake's"Mockon Mock on VoltaireRousseau"
sandbecomesa Gem / Reflectedin the beams
(to the visionary"every
divine"[477]).Does the poet succeedwherethe childdid not?He has
Thatwordapthe difficultyof "holding"anything.
certainly"grasped"
pearsin referenceto the film'shero,describedas
holdingforth,thatsummernight,
At the ship'srail,allsuavityandwit,
Gernswayinglikea pendulum
Fromhis fing oops!
But Blake'ssuggestivelinesdo not, afterall,advocatethatsortof over-
244
A Scattering
of Salts:Merrill'sAchieved Innocence
confident grasping; they encourage the mind to expand, not the hand
to contract. Merrill's "X-ray" vision draws in and expands out, crossing
and recrossing to see the sand buried in the pearl, the hourglass implied
by the sand, the "pendulum" formed by the "Gem swaying," and the
poem as the pearl that forms within and outlasts the bodily self. The
poet of "Pearl"is "X-ray wise" in tracing the crossings between abstract
and concrete, childhood and adulthood, loss and gain, and in enabling
us to "follow" them through the "camera" lens of his rigorously double
vision. But where in "Alabaster""a milky tide" sustained embodied innocence for "Long minutes," the fulcrum of "Pearl"is that "mote / Of
grit" admitted, transformed, and lost in a process that abandons the body
as "shucked, outsmarted meat," a process that, despite the hourglass form,
we recognize as irreversible.
While "Pearl" evokes the difficult, elusive vision of Blakean innocence, "Volcanic Holiday" (617-18) pursues in Keatsian and Wordsworthian terms the relations between temporality,art, and passion.The poem's
form-seven stanzas of seven lines rhyming across stanzas-embodies the
process whereby lived experience is overlaid with subsequent contemplation; the pattern becomes apparent only through temporal layering.At the
same time, the poem wrestles with art'sfidelity to present emotion. It demands, and finds, alternatives to both the Grecian Urn and Wordsworth's
"spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion ... recollected in tranquility"
(LyricalBallads 246) in the way it imagines art's response to time. It does
this most conspicuously beginning in stanzas 5 and 6:
5
Adolescence, glowering unkissed:
The obstacle course yearning
Grew strong in. Cheek to cliff face, sheer devotion ....
To be loved back, then, would have been to die.
Then, not now. Show me the tomb
Whose motto and stone lyre compete
With this life-giving fever. As it fades
6
From the Zen chapel comes that song by Liszt.
Is love a dream?A burning,
Then a tempering? Beyond slopes gone ashen,
Rifts that breathe gas, rivers that vitrify,
245
ReenaSastri
Look! A bough faltersinto bloom.
Twin rainbowscome and go, discreet,
As when togetherwe hauntvirgin glades.
Conjuring the "Ode on a GrecianUrn,"the speakerchooses breathing
humanpassionoverart'seternalpresence,translatingthe moment of Keatsian"yearning"into the descriptionof an adolescent"gloweringunkissed"
for whom "Tobe loved back [...] would havebeen to die."Theyouthful
exaggeration-a versionof innocence now outgrown-doubles as a gloss
on Keats'surn, whose lovers,stilled in art, can never kiss but are by the
same token immortal,immune to a "burningforehead."Merrill'sspeaker
chooses the "fever"of experience,fully awareof its brevity:no sooner is
the fever affirmedthan it begins to fade.In the context of AIDS, where
to love and "be loved back"may mean "to die,"the celebrationof "this
life-giving fever"is a courageousone.The inorganicprocessesthatfollow
the volcano'seruption suggestdeath ("slopesgone ashen")or at leastan
end to motion ("riversthat vitrify")."Beyond"them, the poet imagines
new life and new innocence. His "twin rainbows"attestto love'srenewal
(ratherthan,like the solitaryWordsworthianrainbowwhose coming and
going they repeatwith a difference,dimlyreflectinglost glory).YetMerrill
also qualifieshope for that renewal:"As when together we hauntvirgin
glades"combinesa wish for a new beginning,an emotionalvirginity,with
the fearthat the loversare ghosts of their former selves.
"Islove a dream?"the speakerasks,"A burning,/ Then a tempering?"
Love cannot burn with a steadygemlikeflame;the heartand the self are
tempered,hardenedlike steel by heatingand immersionin a processthat
parallelsthe volcanic eruption,cooling, and solidifyingsuggestedby the
title. This volcanic process evokes Wordsworth'smuch-quoted definition of poetry in the prefaceto LyricalBallads.Defining poetry as "the
spontaneousoverflow of powerfulfeelings ... recollectedin tranquility,"
Wordsworthadds:"Now the music of harmoniousmetricallanguage,the
sense of difficultyovercome,and the blind associationof pleasure"taken
from similarliteraryworks,"all these imperceptiblymake up a complex
feeling of delight,which is of the most importantuse in temperingthe
painful feeling which will alwaysbe found intermingled with powerful descriptionsof the deeper passions"(266-67). Art tempersloss with
aestheticpleasure.Yetat the same time, Merrill'spoem hints that to see
through love's burning straightto its fading-to see through"passion"
in the first stanzato its rhyming"ashen"in the sixth-may hastenthat
246
A Scattering
of Salts:Merrill'sAchieved Innocence
fading; seeing present emotion as future art may destroy innocence as receptivity, wonder, and good faith in love. To look forward, as the last stanza
does, to looking back at-and writing about-emotion risks missing the
experience in the present.
Merrill avoids that risk here:
7
Moments or years hence, having reminisced,
May somebody discerning
Arrive at tranquil words for ... mere emotion?
Meanwhile let green-to-midnight shifts of sky
Fill sliding mirrors in our room
-No more eruptions, they entreatWith Earth's repose and Heaven's masquerades.
Attributing the future "tranquil words" to "somebody discerning," he
acknowledges that the person who remembers emotion is not the person
who experienced it. However, even as he imagines that "somebody" in
the future may reminisce, he registers passion's power and immediacy
through the speaker'spresent inability, indicated by the ellipsis and wondering question mark, to find for it adequate "tranquil words."
"Meanwhile" returns us to the present, yet Merrill acknowledges that
the present itself must be imagined in order to be experienced, at least
in poetry: to render it he uses not the present tense but the subjunctive
"let."14"Volcanic Holiday" ends in a reflective yet dynamic state, not with
"more eruptions" but with "green-to-midnight shifts of sky" filling "sliding mirrors."Those mirrors, shifting as in a kaleidoscope, suggest a more
dynamic model for art than "tranquil" recollection or the "cold pastoral"
of static representation. This art matches the movement of time in the
world of experience ("shifts of sky") with movement of its own. In its
"shifts" of tone and image from stanza to stanza and its rapid evocation
of the self's development from Keatsian "yearning" through a celebration
of love's "life-giving fever" even "As it fades" to a pastoral renewal of
love to a cool future and back to an uncertain and dynamic present, the
poem enacts that controlled yet responsive motion. On "Earth,"the end
of love and of life is stillness or "repose,"but art enacts the "masquerades"
in which experience finds its afterlife or "Heaven."
Merrill figures the adolescent yearnings evoked (and outgrown) in
"Volcanic Holiday" in terms of the Paterian ideal-"To burn always
247
ReenaSastri
with a hard,gemlike flame"-in his memoir A DiferentPerson(1993),
an account of his coming of age as a poet and a gay man.Recounting a
crucialpoint in his psychoanalysis,
he recallshis persistentdesire"neverto
breakfaith with the pure,gemlike feelings of adolescencelest [he] turn,
like Dorian Gray,into a hideous and corrupt thirty-year-old"(183).His
fear of corruptionand his changingPater's"hard"flame to a "pure"one
suggestthatwhat he idealizedin those adolescentfeelingswas innocence.
With the help of his analyst,the memoir records,the 25-year-old Merrill recognized that this ideal was keeping him from growing up. In A
Scattering
of Salts,Merrill transformsthis "pure,"unchanginginnocence.
Returning with a differenceto the Paterianadjective,the poet of"Press
Release" (638-40) reflects,"Gemlikeprojectskeep forming deep within
/ Our mine. Under what pressures?"The
need to keep faithyields to the
participle"keepforming,"staticenduranceto a processof destructionand
renewal.Adolescence'spurityis replacedwith a maturepartnership("Our
mine") that is both creativeand erotic.1s
"PressRelease"begins by comparingthe laboratorycrystallization
of
a "new syntheticsubstance"to a sexualinitiation,and ends by imagining
first the compound'sdissolving,then its recrystallizingin a new form,
the "lovers'knot" of two Alpine climbersclaspinghands.In between,it
recordsand enactsmotion, change,and chemical and artisticrearrangements of elements into new but impermanentconstructions.Theseconstructions,"Gemlikeprojects"of which the poem is one, form in "Our
mine";the closenessof thatphraseto "our mind"and the pun on "mine"
suggestthat the seeminglysolitarywork of artisticproductionmerges(as
in The ChangingLightat Sandover)
with the collaborativework of love.
In figuring sexual love as a processboth scientific and creative,Merrill
which callslove a crystallization:
may havein mind Stendhal'sDe l'amour,
Stendhaldevelopsthe metaphorby describinga baretree branchthrown
into a salt mine, retrieved,after two or three months' exposure to the
dampsalineatmosphere,coveredwith "petitscristauxmobileset cblouissants"
(4:287) next referredto as diamonds.16In Merrill'shands,the image appearsparticularlyappropriateto homosexuallove, which here as in The
ChangingLightbrings forth art-the poem as gem, formed under the
pressuresthat the punningtitle'sfirstword suggests-rather than children.
But AIDS means that love may also bring death.The poem respondsto
the intensifiedbrevityof this Paterianshortday of frostand sun,the rapid
transformationof the organic to the inorganic,by incorporatingthe in-
248
AchievedInnocence
A Scattering
ofSalts:Merrill's
organicin its own gemlike character.But "PressRelease"is not a steady
flameor only a multifacetedgem;its intricateform embodiesthe ongoing
it describes,rearrangingelements,alternating
yet discretetransformations
between fluid "solution"and crystallinecompound. In its kaleidoscopic
form, its crystallizationsand dissolutions,"PressRelease" is a "solution"
(though one whose equilibriumis threatenedby the next "turn/ Of the
kaleidoscope")to the problemof innocence within experience.
The opening lines announce a chemical crystallizationnext figured
as a sexualinitiation:
Now comes word that a new syntheticsubstance
Crystallizedin Sacramentofor the firsttime.
After much coaxing.These virgin substances
Don't know how. Or it "hurts"like the first time
You were kissedby a man. From then on, each time
Gets easierand perhaps-with crystals,who knows?More pleasurable.Soon this enlightenedsubstance,
Its code (so to speak)cracked,its maidenheadtaken,
Unblinkinglyreenacts,time aftertime,
And in remote labs,a rite of passageunknown
Two weeks ago.
Analogous to the creation of a new substance,this initiation is more a
beginning (the birth of the sexual self, of pleasureand enlightenment)
than an end (to some idealized state of virginity or negatively defined
innocence). In the penultimatestanza,Merrill returnsto the chemical
model, usingit to askwhether,aftera more negativetransformationor diminishment,a positiverenewal-of love, of youthfulenergy,of health-is
possible.When"longlankthreadsof polypeptide"havebeen "untied/ Rib/
bonwise," "Their one hope"is to take up "postures"of "preternatural
Kinkiness,as in yoga,"shapes"like our lovers'knot"which, in turn like a
crystal,"One dawnwill glitterfrom a furtherpeak."Like the loss of innocence at the beginning of the poem, the renewalof "hope"and strengthis
figuredas both destructive("untied,""denatured")and creative(the "new
synthetic substance"crystallizes,the "polypeptide[s]"fold into complex,
organizedstructures).In the words of Yeats'sCrazyJane,"Nothing can
be sole or whole / That has not been rent,"but as the prefixes"syn-"and
"poly-"suggest,Merrillis more interestedin the multipleand composite
249
Reena Sastri
than in the Yeatsian sole and whole. Further, the poem's rapid transitions
show the impossibility of coming to rest in any achieved state, however
tightly knotted or strenuously achieved.
These lines exemplify the "rapid"shifts that characterize the poem as
a whole, both thematically and formally. The "new synthetic substance"
crystallizes and "polypeptide[s]" are "denatured";"Gemlike projects keep
forming deep inside / Our mine"; "the clabber of rapids / Under the
bridge reanimate[s], refigure[s] / The inert shadows we cast";"Innumerable [...] traits / Reorient themselves" within the individual;"a turn / Of
the kaleidoscope" gives rise to startling shifts of "vision."Merrill matches
discursive changes with frequent shifts of metaphor and, further, enacts
formally the model of kaleidoscopic change that the poem invokes. The
nine nine-line stanzasinvolve repetitions of end words, but these are often
repetitions with a difference: corresponding end words take on different
forms (plurals,varied verb forms, negatives-as when "know" becomes
"unknown" or "fit" "unfitted"), or are used in different idiomatic expressions ("at a turn," "turn the light on," "wrong turnings"; "happy to
be worked," "at work," "in the works"), or share a purely homophonic
connection ("Hallowtide, "untied," "polypeptide"; "fits,""counterfeit";
"side,""suicides"; "concentrate," "traits").Words, like atoms, combine in
different ways to produce new compounds, and such changes take their
place among the myriad changes that the poem both records and creates. Using chance shiftings among verbal elements to create a highly
organized structure, the poem is kaleidoscopic. The self is no less so: in
the last stanza,"Innumerable [...] traits / Reorient themselves within the
substance / He has contracted to become."
Eliot's Four Quartetsprovides a model for a kaleidoscopic sort of innocence that bears comparison with Merrill's, though Eliot's religious
discourse differs significantly from Merrill's more insistently aesthetic
one. In lines that describe a radically kaleidoscopic vision, Eliot rejects
the notion of "wisdom" coming with age:
There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.
(Poems 185)
250
A Scattering
of Salts:Merrill'sAchieved Innocence
Further, he questions the model of "evolution" as a way to view history,
including the history of an individual life:
It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere
sequenceOr even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes [...] a means of disowning the past.
(194)
Merrill too questions any easy application of "superficial notions of evolution" to the story of what happens to "substance" in "time" (key end
words in the first and last stanza).At the structural center of the poem (the
fifth line of the fifth stanza), the speaker seems to accept the evolutionary
model, reading that "'Against such dark views [as he has been entertaining], Nature's best provision / Remains the tendency of certain organisms / Long on the verge of extinction to return / At depths or altitudes
they had once been unfitted / To endure."' But to accept the speaker's
acceptance is to endorse a Romantic relationship to nature that Merrill
ultimately undermines.17
The passage from "Nature" to the penultimate stanza's"hope" and
the last stanza's"courage" is not a direct one. Numerous transformations
intervene, transformationsthat illustratethe imaginative "work"-labor, but
also embellishment-required for hope and courage. In order to crystallize, the "new synthetic substance" requires "much coaxing"; chemistry
is "depicted as working" her "sampler" with "a new molecular stitch";
the plans of the lovers ("Gemlike projects") form "Under [...] pressures"; the transformation of the individual in the last stanza demands
"concentrat[ion]" and "sweat."The creation of the work of art ("Today's
nine-sided figure, / Prismatic epitome") is, by implication, equally arduous.
Merrill's "hope," "courage," and renewed innocence are achieved
(briefly) only by an active acceptance of the mortality on which nature
insists. He counters teleological "notions" of evolution with a model of
kaleidoscopic change, suggesting the importance of incorporating the
"dark views" of experience:
Whether you are at my side
Or off shooting a film, or tigers, or rapids,
Gemlike projects keep forming deep inside
251
Reena Sastri
Our mine. Under what pressures?Today's nine-sided
Figure, prismatic epitome, may at a turn
Of the kaleidoscope-nightfall is rapid
In these parts-yield to a fly's faceted vision
Hatching a micromorgue of suicides
From one poor sleeper. Buzzed awake, he turns
The light on-ah, how old! Who could have envisioned
Twenty years' loneliness, ill health, wrong turnings?
He opens a book, squinting to clear his vision:
"Against such dark views, Nature's best provision
Remains the tendency of certain organisms
Long on the verge of extinction to return
At depths or altitudes they had once been unfitted
To endure..."
The plain language of "Twenty years' loneliness, ill health, wrong turnings" contrasts with the more elaborate syntax and figuration of the
previous stanza, suggesting that beneath the verbal acrobatics (the play
on the various meanings of "shooting," the reflexive reference to the
"nine-sided / Figure" which is both gem and poem, the metaphor of
the kaleidoscope) remains the plain truth of age, illness, regrets. Further,
the echoes at work-of Blake's "The Fly" and "The Tyger" (its fearfully
imagined "distant deeps or skies" behind these evolutionary depths or
altitudes) and Dickinson's "I heard a Fly buzz" (223)-deepen the darkness that has fallen.18To the personal suffering of "loneliness, ill health,
wrong turnings," such echoes add a "dark view" of human existence in
which tiger devours lamb; God is remote, blind, or even malevolent; death
is absolute; experience vanquishes innocence.
Although the speaker seems to recover from this moment of crisis
in the next lines, we soon see that what has been offered "'Against such
dark views"' is not adequate:
Eyes shut in all but visionary
Consent, he lets the words reorganize
Everything he lives for, until it all fits
Or until he forgets them.What's the inorganic
Teardrop in Bulgari's window to thesefits
And flashes of blankness?
252
A Scattering
AchievedInnocence
ofSalts:Merrill's
"Eyesshut,"the speakeris still in darknesslike the speakerof "I hearda
Fly buzz":"And then the Windows failed-and then / I could not see
to see-" (224). His passivitymight describe a positive receptivity to
new perspectivesor arrangements-particularlylinguisticones-but for
the anticlimaxthat follows:"until it all fits / Or until he forgets them."
fits / And flashesof blankness"remind the speaker"how old"
"[TJ]hese
he has grown, and reduce the gem-already diminished from the aesthetic ecstasyof Pater'sgemlike flame to the item for sale in the jeweler's
window-to blinding flashesof memory loss. If the speaker'sinnocence
is to "return,"it will do so not by forgetting deathbut by incorporating
mutabiliy.
In the last stanzas,Merrill achievesa precariousbalancebetween innocence and experience.
Solutions whereby molecules are untied
Ribbonwise, or (to quote the technician)"denatured,"
Enervatethe long lank threadsof polypeptide.
Their one hope then'sthe prompt recallto nature,
To postureseven of some preternatural
Kinkiness,as in yoga. Or like our lovers'knot.
Looming throughpsychic azure-woe betide
Its severer!-it also,if we concentrate,
One dawn will glitterfrom a furtherpeak. In nature,
To reachthe pass,you must follow,like it or not,
Trailsof loam and caustic.By concentrating
On flameworkoverhead,ice to sun slipknotted,
Each climbersweatshis own salt concentrate
Of courage.Innumerable,faster-stabbingtraits
Reorient themselveswithin the substance
He has contractedto become. So let us not
Act like children.These are the Alps.High time
For the next deep breath.My hand.Hold. Concentrate.
Although, asVendlerobserves,these lines suggestWordsworth'scrossing
of the Alps in book 6 of The Prelude,Merrill'sclimb is differentfrom
Wordsworth'sinfinite upwardmovement ("Our destiny,our natureand
our home / Is with infinitude-and only there"[216]).Once Wordsworth
has crossedthe Alps,"thenceforwardall our course / Wasdownwards,"a
253
Reena Sastri
disappointment that must be "usurp[ed]" by the "Imagination!-lifting
up itself / Before the eye and progress of my song" (216); in Merrill, the
imagination works to include both the high and the low. Merrill achieves
this range in part by locating himself and his art "In nature,"-a very different nature from Wordsworth's.That phrase is stressed by its position as
an extra foot at the end of the penultimate stanza, the only stanza that
uses the Spenserian hexameter for its last line.19The changing forms of
the end word nature-"our natures"; "'denatured'"; "recall to nature";
"preternatural";"In nature"-express a complex dynamic interchange
between nature and art. (Merrill's changes to the root organ-"organisms"; "reorganize"; "inorganic"; "organ-/ Grinding"-do something
similar.) Although he neither relies on nature for spiritual guidance nor
translates natural into moral evolution, Merrill, unlike the Yeats of "Sailing to Byzantium," does not desire to move "out of nature."Yeats'slater
"images that yet / Fresh images beget" (Poems 249) could well describe
the shifting metaphors of "Press Release," not least in the suggestion of
bodily reproduction, which distinguishes Merrill's andYeats'smodels for
the imagination from Wordsworth's "unfathered vapor" (Prelude 216).
In "Press Release," love, birth, and death (even when metaphorical) are
situated in the body, as they are throughout the volume. In "Alabaster,"
the innocence possessed "once in love or infancy" returns as "a milky
tide, / Grime-swirled, with blood-pink glimmerings"; here "courage" is
rooted in "loam and caustic,""substance" and "sweat."The embodiment
of Merrill's Alpine climb is striking; there is no sweat in Wordsworth.
Loam and caustic might be thought of as the conditions of existence:
the one an especially fertile soil, life-giving; the other a burning substance
that destroys living tissue.While the end of "Press Release" puts "hope"
and "courage" together with dread and despair, neither Vendler's nor
Shetley's reading, it seems to me, places enough emphasis on the presence
of death or the "dark views" that persist to define the achieved "courage"
(the pressure that leads to the qualified release). Here as earlier, intertextual echoes deepen the darkness; our experience as readers of the texts
to which Merrill alludes is part of the experience that must be faced and
included. "Ice to sun slipknotted" suggests the rapid melting implied by
Pater's"short day of frost and sun"; "flamework" and "ice" conjure the
humorous but dark view of the powers of desire and hate in Frost's"Fire
and Ice"; the image also perhaps recalls Shelley's "Mont Blanc," where,
at the summit, "many a precipice / Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal
254
A Scattering
AchievedInnocence
ofSalts:Merrill's
power / Have piled:dome, pyramid,and pinnacle,/ A city of death,distinct with many a tower / And wall impregnableof beaming ice" (92).
Moreover,if sweat suggeststhe embodiment of Merrill'sclimb, it also
suggeststhe night sweatsof AIDS.What the speaker"has contracted"is
a diseasethat may lead to death.Merrill does not reach for a transcendent "home [...] with infinitude";he accepts his diminishments,his
contraction,without giving in to them. His Alpine crossingis no less
courageous-indeed it is more courageous-for refusingto subordinate
"substance"to spirit,body to mind.
Yet the end of "PressRelease"also evokes a beginning.A meditation
on the numbernine in the voice of WHA (Merrill'sAuden) nearthe end
of Scripts
for thePageantsuggeststhat the poem'snine-line stanzaspoint to
birth
both
and death:
9 MY DEARS? THE BIRTHING MONTH
THE STAGE
B4 THE OVALENIGMA:LIFE'S INDRAWN
BREATH, THE BASIN WHERE OUR OLD SELVESDROWN.
ARABIC9 (AS ON YR TRANSCRIPTPAGE)
FACE AVERTED FROM THE CIPHER LOOKS
BACK ON THE LONG ROAD TRAVELLED. ROMAN IX
SERVES FOR US: ONE FOOTSTEP FROM THE CRUX
OF TIME WE STAND POISED WAITING TO LEAP IN
(ChangingLight509)
In the last three lines WHA refersto the new lives that await him and
Mariaafterstagenine,but his words could applyalso to the living human
"poised"before death.ThroughWHA's play on the shapesof the symbols
for nine, the number,like Merrill in A Scattering,
looks both to the past
and to the future,both fearingdeath ("FACE AVERTEDFROMTHE CIPHER")
and creatingthe futurein an artisticprocessof "birthing."
If we should"not / Act like children,"an echo of Stevens'slate poem
"The Desire to Make Love in a Pagoda"helps to define what innocence
might nonetheless mean in the last stanza,in the context of love and
death:
In the firstinch of night, the stellarsummering
At three-quartersgone, the morning'sprescience,
As if, alone on a mountain,it saw far off
An innocence approaching toward its peak.
255
(456)
ReenaSastri
Stevens'sconjunctionof"the firstinch of night"and"the morning'sprescience"happensin the imagination,in the "As if."His "innocence"is
but still"faroff."In"The
locatedin thatimaginativefuture,"approaching"
Aurorasof Autumn,"a season"lavishing[...] itself in change"(359) prefiguresthe incessantchange of"PressRelease,"as Stevensacknowledges
that death "may come tomorrow,. . . / Almost as a part of innocence"
(362) and prefiguresMerrill'sapproachto death, which may be what
"innocence is [...]
is about to be. In Bloom's words about "Auroras,"
dialecticaland involves holding the imagination open to death"(277).
innocence
In "The Desire to Make Love in a Pagoda"as in A Scattering,
arisesonly in the context of change.Stevens's"innocence approaching
to its peak"anticipatesMerrill'slovers'knot that"One dawn will glitter
from a furtherpeak."
Because this complex innocence knows death and the desire and
dangerof makinglove,we aretold "let us not / Act like children."But the
gestureof claspinghandswith which the poem ends-"My hand.Hold.
Concentrate"-complicates this exhortation.Especiallyto help with a
difficultclimb or crossing,the gestureis appropriateto "children"or to an
adultand a child, as the hand is extended both to offer help and to seek
it. At the same time, the echoes of Keats's"This living hand"(384) and
Blake's"The Tyger"("What the hand dare seize the fire?","what dread
grasp / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?"[24]) make the hand powerful,
potentiallydangerous,suggestiveof death.The hand is both the physical
hand of the lover,standingfor the body by means of which we love,and
that of the artist,reachingout to the readereven from beyond the grave.
The "Concentrate"of poet and reader,as the lattermatchesthe former's
concentrationon the poem, may itselfbe, in one sense,a "new synthetic
The connection that is conjuredby the invitation to join
substance."20
hands modulates the isolation of "Each climber"perspiringin solitary
labor"his own saltconcentrate/ Of courage."Both love and art,at their
best,succeed in sharingthe individual'ssubjectivevision.
The "lovers'knot" that"One dawn will glitter from a furtherpeak"
distanceslove in time and place. Like this knot (whose "severer"is anticipated),like the formationand denaturingof crystals,like the weaving
and unweaving of ourselves,the claspingof hands is impermanent:the
two words of the poem's title suggestthat the moment of contact is followed by the moment of letting go. Merrilldoes not let us forget that (in
256
A Scattering
AchievedInnocence
ofSalts:Merrill's
Eliot'swords)"thepatternis new in everymoment / And everymoment
is a new and shocking /Valuation of all we have been";"aturn / Of the
kaleidoscope"changeseverything.Thefinal gestureembodiesthe willingness both to make the "perilouscrossing"(Merrill,Poems619), to clasp
the hand of death,and to presswith a child'strustthe hand extendedby
love while foreseeingits release.
The volume's last poem, "An Upward Look" (674), confronts the
conjunctionof the hand of love and the hand of deathin the case of HIV
infection.The close of "PressRelease" evokes the self's contractionto
mere "substance,"
yet separatesthe third-personself from the firstperson
the
who
continue imaginativelyto climb."An UpwardLook"
plural, pair
that
threshold
to look upwardfrom within the graveand to
goes beyond
even
a
death
from
AIDS as"a part of innocence" (Stevens362). It
accept
begins afterlove'send:
O heart green acre sown with salt
by the departing occupier
lay down your gallant spearsof wheat
Salt of the earth each stellarpinch
flung in blind defiancebackwards
now takesits toll
The erotic self has been put to pasture;the heart has become aYeatsian
acreof grass.But this field hasbeen salted.Generatingelectricalimpulses,
salt has kept the heartbeating;superstitiouslyflung backward,it brought
luck;but it "now takesits toll,"figuring as a "departingoccupier"'sstrategy for making"earth"and its anagram"heart"barren.Although we may
hear"tears"in "spears,"and taste them in salt,the alterationof nourishing ears of wheat into destructive"spears"is more than a chronicle of
love and loss.As destructiveseeds"sown"by a love affairand leading to
the grave,this poem's saltsare,among other things,a deadlyinfection-a
high "toll"indeed.21
Calling the lover a "departingoccupier"introduceswar or military
invasionas a metaphorfor both love and disease.24From an occupying
soldier-Cupid's arrowsconvertedto spears-the lover next turns tiger:
257
Reena Sastri
Up from his quieted
quarry the lover colder and wiser
hauling himself finds the world turning
toys triumphs toxins into
this vast facility the living come
dearest to die in How did it happen
Blake'squestion in "The Tyger,""When the starsthrew down their spears/
And water'd heaven with their tears,/ Did he smile his work to see? / Did
he who made the lamb make thee?" (25), haunts these lines. In a world
where erotic experience is also deadly, lover and beloved become innocent victim and corrupting source of infection. AIDS becomes the marker
of a new fallen era;as Sontag writes, the years preceding its advent appear
in retrospect "a lost age of innocence" (76). In a world of temporality,too,
experience devours innocence: in this dizzying "turning,"the earth'srotation becomes a factory consuming the raw materials of life and producing
only death. Not least of the poem's "triumphs" will be to find imaginative means by which to escape the oppositional logic of lamb and tiger,
innocence and its destroyer.
These means involve the creation of a temporal hybridity:
In bright alternation minutely mirrored
within the thinking of each and every
mortal creature halves of a clue
approach the earthlights
These lines illuminate the poem's form: its two-part lines and central spiral
of white space suggest the double helix of DNA, blueprint for every living creature,encoding the "clue" to life's renewal as well as to its "mortal"
limits.23In conception, the parents'DNA-"halves of a clue"-combines
in their child. In the context of disease established by the poem's opening lines, this process also suggests one that is analogous but opposed: in
infection, viral genetic material combines with the host's, resulting in
offspring of a sort in the form of new viruses. (Merrill's "vast facility"
of death echoes medical language that describes viruses converting their
host cells into factories producing more viruses; the poem's form might
further suggest the body's openness, its vulnerability to penetration and
258
A Scattering
AchievedInnocence
ofSalts:Merrill's
infection.24)Yet from anotherpoint of view, conception producesdeath
no less than infection may:the innocent newborn "creature"that results
is "mortal."Life and deathareas intertwinedas two strandsof the double
helix. Merrill'sdouble vision works here againstthe negativemetaphoric
potentialofAIDS's sexualtransmissionand its perceivedlink with homosexuality-the homophobic idea that in the era of AIDS homosexuality
breedsdeath as heterosexualconception breedslife.25He acknowledges
AIDS'sspecificity,but ultimatelytreatsit as part of a broadermortality.
This movementawayfromAIDS as a fall from innocence or an indicator of guilt has alreadybegun at the poem's"turning"point, the tercet
precededand followed by four couplets.The imageryof infection and of
lover as tigeryields to a recognitionof temporalityas the true predatorone that is innocent of intent or responsibility.Whenthe lover"findsthe
world turning,"his look "Up"comes close to catchingtime in the act.His
bafflement("How did it happen")recalls"The Book of Ephraim"'sreflection on the end of Proust'snovel:"A world abruptlyold, whitehaired,
a reader/ Looking up in puzzlement to fathom / Whether ten yearsor
forty have gone by."(When "Young"JM found this "foreshortening...
unconvincing";older,he affirmsit as "truthinstead / Babblingthrough
his own astonishment"[ChangingLight 70-71].) The transformations
caused by disease-the salted field and blighted wheat-are subsumed
into "the world turning"even as that turning is acknowledged as life
"turninginto" death.Merrill'sword games-turning "heart"into "earth"
and "ears"into "spears,"mining "salt"for its wealth of denotationsand
figurativeuses-match time's entropic transformationswith the mind's
creativeones:metaphor,linguisticplay.Theimagination's"triumphs"over
time are qualified,embedded in temporality (as the word "triumphs"
appearsfor a moment between "toys"and "toxins").Merrill'slinguistic
rearrangementsat once reflect truthfullytime'sirreversibleprogressand
find spacefor the mind'sseriousplay,a form of innocence.
At the poem's end, the saltsconceived as destructiveat its beginning
dissolveand recrystallizeto suggest the reviving power of smelling salts,
the liveliness,freshness,and wit that saltfigurativelygives.
Morning star
evening star salt of the sky
Firstthe grave dissolvinginto dawn
259
ReenaSastri
then the crucial recrystallizing
from inmost depths of cleardarkblue
Blake'sfearful symmetry becomes the beautiful symmetry of a crystal
as the terrifying turning is answeredby the kaleidoscopicturns of the
imagination.But the poem's resolutiondepends on a radicalacceptance
of loss;its recrystallization
requiresthe dissolutionof the self in the grave.
not
This ending is "crucial" in the sense of deciding between two rival
hypotheses,markinga decisivevictory for one or the other,for Merrill's
vision is insistentlydouble. It is crucial ratherin the chemical sense of
being associatedwith the trying action of a crucible,whose great heat
It is crucialalso in resultingin a
is one way of effectingrecrystallization.
crossor hybrid,figuredby the poem's evocation of the double helix of
DNA. Crossing"Morning star"and"eveningstar,"26
"dawn"and "dark,"
Merrillproducesa hybrid of these "halvesof a clue,"ending and beginning, experience and innocence.
As Vendler notes (47-48), this poem's recrystallizinganswersthe
when "the self,"figuredas a "tissue-thin"slice of
moment in "Alabaster"
cannot
"resist,/ Broken on terrorlike a rack,/ When wavesof
alabaster,
nightmareheat decrystallize/ Her lucid moleculesto chalk"(Poems605).
Yet without end punctuation,ending with the vastblue of sea or sky,the
poem, and the volume, remainopen to dissolvingagain.Thetwo actions
part of a largertemporalprodisplaceeach other "In bright alternation,"
cess reflectedin the poems that frameA Scattering
of Salts:"A Downward
at
Look,""ALook Askance,""An UpwardLook."Positioned,respectively,
the beginning,roughlythe middle,and the end of the volume,thesethree
poems structureit, enactingits ongoing processesand dynamicbalance.In
"A DownwardLook" (589) the landscape"Seen from above,"markedby
faults,/ A delta thicket,"appearsas a figure outstretched
"protuberances,
In "An UpwardLook""saltof the
in a bath"scattered[...] with salts."27
earth"balances"saltof the sky"and "dissolving"is matched by "recrystallizing.""A Look Askance"(637) figuresartisticcreationas a volcanic
eruption ending in the immobile permanenceof"stone."In the absence
of"PressRelease"'skaleidoscopeor "VolcanicHoliday"'sslidingmirrors,
"fixed scope"is the "steep cost" of permanence:the poet's writings and
his life "passinto this / Fossilstate thought up, then idly / Jotted down
on stone."Yet the phrase"fixedscope"itselfsuggestsan alternativein the
changingperspectivesthat"A DownwardLook"and"An UpwardLook"
260
A Scattering
AchievedInnocence
ofSalts:Merrill's
provide.Merrill'svision of landscapeas body in "A DownwardLook"recallsAuden'sin "In Praisein Limestone,"and that stone,as"Pharaonateof
Lime"and"chalk,"as gypsumand calcite,figuresin "Alabaster"
(604-06).
A deep-seaformationcomposedof fossilsand shells,limestoneunderheat
and pressurecrystallizesinto marble,and when dissolved,forms stalactites
and stalagmites,downwardand upwardrecrystallizations.
Thus the salts
scatteredin "A Downward Look,"having become living creatures,turn
to the "fossil"of "A Look Askance,"which turns to stone that in "An
UpwardLook"dissolvesand then recrystallizes,
reachingupwardfromthe
grave towardthe stars.Only at the level of chemical components,life's
elementalbuildingblocks,is this processcyclical;as the opening lines of
"An Upward Look" rearrangethe letters of "heart"to form "earth,"so
the physicalcomponents of the body turn to dust.
AsYeatswrote late in his life,"allthatis personalsoon rots;it must be
packedin ice or salt,"and"Ancientsaltis best packing"(Essays522-23),
advice that Merrill quotes in the 1987 prefaceto the second edition of
TheSeraglio
"fueland stabi(Novels631).28Yet as"FOOD/ FORTHOUGHT,"
lizer / Of the body electric"(ChangingLight141), saltnot only preserves
but stimulateslife and motion. In Merrill'searlyverse play TheBirthday,
Mr. Knight, a wizard figure, points out that "A drop of human blood
[...] / In chemicalproportionis equivalent/ To simple seawater"(Novels
a magical"polarwand"turnsa drop
436). In the late poem "Processional,"
of water into a snowflake,"gemlike,nevermore to melt! // But melt it
would" (Poems583). "An Upward Look"'s"crucial recrystallizing"is a
promiseof new "Gemlikeprojects"assurelyasit is a recognitionof the time
when theseprojectswill be not the self'sbut thoseof "thelove // That drew
the bath and scatteredit with salts,"a generativeforce that"Stillradiates
new projectsold as day"(Poems589). Merrill'scrystalsand gems are at
once a partof blood and sea,andpreciousconstructspoised for a moment
beyond their flow.They attest to the imagination'scapacity to answer
embodiment and mortalitynot with a dreamof transcendentinnocence
prior to experience or outside of time but with creative,transformative
processes.Throughthese processes,Merrill'sinnocence, his kaleidoscopic
patternsand his achievementof the poem as gem are continuouslyand
strenuouslyrenewed as the poet remakeshimself and his work in the
futurethat remains.
261
Reena Sastri
Notes
1."Yes,yes, it comes back.With a difference."
2. "Why should not we also enjoy an original relationto the universe?"
3.J. D. McClatchyfinds"longings ... for the pastoraland primitive,for an
idealizedchildhood and a sentimentalizedheroism,the paradiseslost to maturity and contingency"in Divine Comedies(317); I see such longings neither
in that volume nor in any beyond FirstPoems.My position is closer to Harold
Bloom's assessmentthat"Merrillis notan elegiac poet" (Introduction5);he
"studiesthe nostalgias"ratherthan indulgesthem (2).
4. "UnorganizedInnocence,An impossibility[.] Innocence dwells with Wisdom but never with Ignorance."
5. Bonnie Costello callsthis struggle"tragic"(82):"Stevenspersistsin the longing to 'dwell'in an innocent state,or to 'master'the changesof the temporal
world"(85). I place Merrill among the laterpoets who "see time in less tragic
terms"(85).
6.This argumentcontrastswith Timothy Materer'slinking of innocence in The
with timelessness.Although Matereracknowledges
ChangingLightat Sandover
that Merrill'sis "not the Adamicinnocence of EmersonandWhitman,which
seeks to free the self from history"(111), he goes on to quote Ihab Hassan's
has never reallyacknowledgedTime. Its vision of
RadicalInnocence--"America
Eden or Utopia is essentiallya timelessvision.... This is a radicalinnocence"
(Hassan325)-and assertsthat"thesewordswell describeMerrill'spoetic
vision in Scripts"(Materer112). He furthersuggeststhat Merrillseeks innocence as a way to move "beyondhis dualism"and beyond aestheticism(12).I
see Merrill'sinnocence as double ratherthan singularand enabledby,rather
than opposed to, the aesthetic.I focus here on innocence in Merrill'slastlyric
volume, but my claimsabout innocence extend to the trilogy.My argument
differsfrom the positionVernon Shetley sketchesin his review of A Scattering
of Salts.Shetley compares"Merrill'sproject"to that of the "Puritandiarist"
who examineseach day'sevents,"seekingsigns of election";the poems "seem
a persistenttest of the writer'snature,in which assurancesof his innocence ...
are sought throughthe confusionsof experience and the temptationsof selfdeception"(40).The desirefor innocence does persistin Merrill'swork.But
Merrill does not seek signsof an enduringpurity;his innocence is actively
constructed,and his "nature"is not just tested but made and remadein an image that is both contingent and chosen.While Shetley also notes the volume's
concern with "Change,transformation,metamorphosis"(40), his discussionof
innocence implicitlysets it againstchange.
262
A Scatteringof Salts: Merrill's Achieved Innocence
7. Willard Spiegelman argues that the trilogy proceeds through complexity to
"regain the simplicity of truth," the "reintegration and harmony" of a "higher
innocence" (230).
8.Judith Moffett similarly refers to Merrill's "nervous habit of encrusting his
early poems with gems" (14) and his tendency to petrify or freeze his subject
(5).
9.This rendering of process takes further a practice that critics have noted in
earlier volumes. Lynn Keller writes, "To the extent that Merrill is willing to
point to a truth,it is," as for other contemporary poets, "process" (244). Stephen
Yenser sees Merrill's poetry begin to incorporate process in WaterStreetand
writes of "The Book of Ephraim" that Merrill "seeks [...] to turn the destructive flow of time into the creative flow of the imagination" (229). I would
add that, by contrast with the emphasis on fluidity in "Ephraim," the poems of
A Scatteringof Salts model art as, and themselves create, a sequence of discrete
patterns arising from and returning to flux, yet distinct from it.
10. In an essay on art and AIDS Langdon Hammer writes, "Although the connection between HIV-transmission and gay male sex is only contingent, male
homosexuality and AIDS are indissolubly bound in the imaginative constructions of our society. This is the case" in Merrill's and Rich's elegies for David
Kalstone, the focus of Hammer's essay,"no less than in the tabloid fantasies of
mass culture" (105).
11.The one exception is the juxtaposed "sand" and "hand" (lines 8-9),
matched but not perfectly rhymed with "Couronne"and "down" (24-25).
12. It also recalls the "ideogram" drawn in lesson 8 of Scriptsfor the Pageant:No
(Changing Light 474-75), where the double hourglass warns against human use
of both atomic energy and fossil fuels (seeYenser 303-04).
13.Whereas the "correction of prose, because it has no fixed laws, is endless, a
poem comes right with a click like a closing box."
14. He uses the same strategy earlier in "Verse for Urania," a poem equally
concerned with the inadequacy of recollection as a model for poetic creation.
In a 1972 interview with David Kalstone, Merrill writes of the present tense
in lyric: "For me a 'hot' tense like that can't be handled for very long without
cool pasts and futures to temper it" (Recitative21).The end of "Volcanic Holiday" finds an alternative to the hot-cool dichotomy in kaleidoscopic motion.
15. IfAIDS provides a new impetus to "link anxieties about male homosexuality with anxieties about the effects of art" (Hammer 105), the degree to which
both A Diferent Personand A Scatteringof Salts resist anxiety and guilt to celebrate homosexuality and the aesthetic is striking.
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Reena Sastri
16. Merrill earlierrespondedexplicitly to this metaphorin the lastsection of
The Air Is SweetestThat a Thistle Guards"(Poems22). I am in"Variations:
debted to Shetley for suggestingthat"PressRelease"evokes"perhapsa crystallizationof the sort Stendhalused to describethe processof fallingin love"
(41).
17. Here I differwith Vendler'sview of Merrill'srelationshipto nature:"in a
book on evolution,"she writes,the speaker"findsencouragementto hope for
a more positive repriseof the morallife on a deeper or higher level";"Taking
Nature'sadvice,the poet decides to try a new beginning in altitudeshe had
once been 'unfittedto endure"'(48).
18.The "fly'sfaceted vision"may also recallthe reducingof the sphereof
Parmigianino'sself-portraitand indeed of the globe to "the gibbous / Mirroredeye of an insect"at the end of Ashbery's"Self-Portraitin a Convex
Mirror"(204).
19. Called to mind by the nine-line stanzas,SpenserinformsMerrill'sversion
of natureas well.The Mutabilitiecantos of TheFaerieQueeneareparticularly
relevant,especiallycanto 7, which uses turnboth in the sense of a wheel turning and of transformation:
For,all that from her springs,and is ybredde,
How-euer fayreit flourishfor a time,
Yet see we soone decay;and,being dead,
To turne againvnto their earthlyslime:
Yet,out of their decay and mortallcrime,
We daily see new creaturesto arize;
And of theirWinter springanotherPrime,
Vnlike in form, and chang'dby strangedisguise:
So turne they still about,and change in restlesswise.
(1044)
20. Shetley suggeststhat"Perhapsthe difficultclimb to which the poet alludes
is an analogy"both for "the work of love"and"alsofor the reader'sdifficult
encounter with the poem" (41);both processesinvolve"an inwardreorientation that changesones' substancefundamentally."
Shetley stressesthat"the poet
is there to help,reachingout his hand";he placesthe poet higher on the slope.
By contrast,WilliamWaters'sreadingof poetic addressin (amongother texts)
Keats's"This living hand"emphasizespoems'appealfor intimacy,their capacity
to transformthe readerinto the uniquely intended addressee,and the reader's
responsibilityto "come to the text as if [his]presencematteredto it" (220).To
the extent that Merrill'shand is extended to the reader,it seems to me thatit is
in this more mutualway.
264
A Scatteringof Salts: Merrill's Achieved Innocence
On the other hand, as it were, just as Stendhal's insistence on the novelty
of the word cristallisationas he is using it resonates with Merrill's invention of
a new form and his emphasis on new projects, so Stendhal's belief that readers won't let him get away with this coinage ("il estfort possibleque si cet essai
trouvedes lecteurs,ils ne me passentpas ce mot nouveau")and his willingness to lose
those readers ("J'engagedoncle lecteurqui se sentiratropchoquepar ce mot de cristallisation, aifermerle livre" [3: 27]) for the select few who will be pleased by it
suggests a way of reading Merrill's last word as a challenge: it is a bait for that
ideal reader,"that single silver carp" for whom one needn't dynamite the pond
(Recitative22).
21. The cost for wild oats sown, for having been, perhaps, salt in the adjectival
sense "lecherous, salacious,"is excessive--salt in its slang sense "costly, dear"
(OED).
22. Criticizing what she views as harmful metaphors for disease, and for AIDS
in particular (including the military metaphor), Susan Sontag writes:
the move from the demonization of the illness to the attribution
of fault to the patient is an inevitable one, no matter if patients are
thought of as victims.Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by
the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.
(11)
23. An earlier imaginative response to DNA appeared in Mirabell,book 6
(Changing Light 203). See Kalstone for a discussion of that passage in terms of
the "jewels" of Merrill's early work (140).
24. Hammer suggests that spaces perform this function in Rich's elegy for
Kalstone (111).
25. Hammer writes of Rich's elegy for Kalstone, "The irreversibility of HIV
and its sexual transmission connect infection ... with human conceptiononly it is death, not life, that gay male sex breeds" (109). In Merrill's elegy
("Farewell Performance"), by contrast, Hammer argues, "the special 'horror' of
AIDS-its linking of sex and death-cannot be confined to the gay man with
AIDS" but reflects "the confusion of life and death that, in Lacan as in Freud,
structures psychic life in general" (Hammer 115). Although it does not rely on
the Lacanian version of the death drive that Hammer invokes, my discussion of
"An Upward Look" comes to a conclusion similar to Hammer's about "Farewell Performance": that it breaks down the boundary between those who are
affected by AIDS and those who are not.
26.The two names give two perspectives on the same star;in the context of
the poem's concern with eros, we remember that that "star"is the planet Venus.
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Reena Sastri
27.When Merrill reversesthe metaphorto figurebody as landscapein "The
Instilling"(Poems623) and"The GreatEmigration"(629-31), he stressesthe
body'svulnerabilityto invasionboth by illnessand by the explorationsof
medicine.
28.The form of"An UpwardLook" might be said to recrystallizean ancient
one: the alliterativefour-beatline ofAnglo-Saxon verse.
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