between stay and escape

1、Between stay and escape: the confessional voice in Robert Lowells “Memories of West Street and Lepke”Robert Lowells confessional poetry has been understood from the perspective of the poets personal problems that are conveyed by his poems,as Paula Hayes says, periodical descents into manic depressio

2、n, divorce, recollections of a culturally repressive childhood, the disintegration of New England narratives concerning religion, the loss of a cultural faith in the social power of myth to bind communities together, the effect of Cold War.(Paula,2) However, it is easy to be ignored that the relatio

3、nship between his early pre-confessional poetry ,mostly religious in content and the confessional poetry that is obviously consumed with the exploration of self. Religious does have to do with exploration of self. Although the early work of Lowell has the religious mindset of New England Puritan pas

4、t while the later ones mostly focus on the recounting experiences of manic depression and hospital stays, the connection is discernible because all the work has carried on the similar theme of spiritual loss,which is the main objective of religion and the key to overcome the psychological manic. The

5、 poets already writing out of the mindset of a confessional thinker when hes writing about the collective consciousness of New England. The anxiety he senses in the legacy of New Englands religious heritage is his own anxiety, as well. From another side, Lowell is never a blind follower who beliefs

6、the belief that humanitys depravity is overcome by the consistency of Gods grace, so that the darker side of Puritan theology is diminished in favor of Gods grace. For Lowell, God is a mystery, if a tangible presence at all. There is the reality of evil, and yet, on the other hand, there is the the

7、reality of benevolence to overturn evil. meanwhile, the power of God also could be questioned. In Lowell theres almost always a dialectical pull, an urgency to confront the opposing natural forces of good and evil. The result is doubt rather than faith(Paula,4). Many times the limitation of human be

8、ing has a conflict with the infiniteness of God while the presumption is Gods ubiquitous. Intellects, who take more responsibility themselves than the common, must have a stronger feeling of frustration when the reality of evil is much too tough or the salvation of God seems not enough to support th

9、e spirit realm. Thats what kind of sophisticated feelings the poem “Memories of West Street and Lepke” describes. The first stanza of the poem begins with the memory of the speaker which is the daily agenda of a teacher apparently. The lazy and leisure days do provide him a living in Boston and a mo

10、derate lifestyle if the poet is satisfied. However, the house is on a “hardly passionate Street”. Therefore, whether the memory is so pale because the life ever was hardly passionate? It is not the difficulties of life which erode the passion but the uneasy blood which prompts him out of ordinary ma

11、kes life hard to handle. Things get even worse when the contrast appears between the speaker “I” and the man who scavenges filth, a “young Republican”. Besides, the younger “I” is old enough to be a grandfather of the roseate daughter. Everything is new and lively in the front of an “infant”, just l

12、ike the powerful energy from the sunlight,except the withering flowers. The more obvious the contrast is, the more outstanding the effect is. In another sense, the distance between the speaker “I” and the his experience has already given the poem a special kind of tension. It can be felt that someth

13、ing is withheld rather than yielded. Thus, it is easy to slip into the “tranquilized Fifties” with the inner tumultuous atmosphere which is covered by “hardly passionate”. In the next stanza, the statements of the speaker “I” are expressed typically as the confessional mode. The seedtime in “ought I

14、 to regret my seedtime” alludes to Wordsworths lines of “Fair seedtime has my soul, and I grew up fostered alike by beauty and by fear”. People often go through life as if they were unconscious of what is going on around them. Many things may be or not be noticed because they are too beautiful or to

15、o ordinary. Unlike Wordsworth, who is amazed or even shocked by the beauty of nature, the speaker “I” (mostly Lowell) asks himself whether he should regret the seedtime or not while, in fact, “I” try to re-experience the craziness from memory in order to fill the heart with the pleasure he missed wh

16、en it actually happened. The “crime” the “I” committed is explained clearly as a “fire-breathing catholic C.O.(Conscientious objector)”. However, the sentence has been claimed by the pen beside the “Negro boy with curlicues of marijuana in his hair”. The fire-breathing catholic C.O. has broken the s

17、o-called tranquilized 1950s with manic statement. The stanza provides a situation of confession with an ironic kind of tone. Even the pen is bull and the person who control the pen decorate his hair with marijuana. The speaker do confess something that deserves his confession, but maybe not the crim

18、e declared by the authority. Anyway, the speaker “I” is put into a jail for a year during which time he gets acquainted with Abramowitz and Czar Lepke. The first six lines of the third stanza highlight the constrained and gloomy surrounding of jail. Following with the visual depiction of the prison,

19、 the disgusting environment is exposed as well the annoying mood. For example, the sealed space “l(fā)ike my school soccer court”, the colors which fills peoples eyes are “sooty” and “bleaching khaki”. The enclosure is so narrow and the “sooty clothesline entanglements” just like the depressed state of

20、mind. The few things a prison can do under such kind of environment may be “strolling” and “yammering” .Nevertheless, in such extremely bad condition, there exists a pious pacifist, Abramowitz, who “tried to convert the Hollywood pimps to diet”. Obviously the answer would not be positive. “They blew

21、 their tops and beat him black and blue”. Something is being suggested about failed ideology and the lapse of subjectivity in the 1950s and middle age. The beliefs and doctrines are trivial when people is under the treat from surviving and the persistence of a poor but strong believer could be destr

22、oyed instantaneously. The process and result of conversion can be regarded as the innuendo of religions impracticability. That is why a fearfully prostrate thinker should think under the pressure of intellectual trepidation: people cannot rest easily upon the presumptions of Gods grace, as faith mig

23、ht dictate; instead, lacking the security of faith, the poet makes himself appear as perpetually alert to the possibilities of humanitys inherently destructive capabilities, to the end result that a negative dialectic is reached. In Lowells poetry, the conception of a regional self will eventually e

24、volve into the personality of a confessional subject.(Paula,3) The confessional voice and questioning voice come into climax in the last stanza. Lepke appears officially in the this stanza, firstly as a background person being talked by the speaker “I” and another jailbird. A self-claimed Jehovahs W

25、itness points out the “T-shirt back of Murder Incorporateds Czar Lepke”. The poets aiming for the irony of a situation in which the speaker, who refuses to kill, is incarcerated in the same place with a person who has been convicted for killing. The two both sit in the prison and the law covered bot

26、h ends-one in for killing, the other in for refusing to kill. Moreover, the speaker observes by shockingly looking at the way the prisoners being treated. “Flabby, bald, lobotomized” dawdling off to his little segregated cell in which the two toy American flags tied together with a ribbon of Easter

27、palm. The syntax of the poem is thus the perfect vehicle for the realist-confessional mode and “Easter palm” metonymically stands for the debasement of the Catholic version of American Dream with its uneasy amalgam of Palm Sunday and the Fourth of July. Besides, the “Easter palm” and the “T-shirt” a

28、re two typical symbols of Jesus. The shape of “T” represents the salvation of Jesus while the palm branch is traditional Christian iconography associated with the celebration of Palm Sunday and Easter. The Murder Lepke are ambiguously endowed with the meaning of salvation and rebirth. Finally, the p

29、oets baffled failure to generalize becomes one of the subjects of the poem. The figures in the situation have the air of being deliberately chosen and placed,as the connections which between the criminal past and the respectable drugged present. The poem bristles with the challenge to recapture and

30、unite them(David,1) The figure pf Lepke is complex, a complexity reflected in the sudden shift to a tighter metrical rhythm at this moment in the poem. He acts as an empty mirror, a doppelganger for Lowell. Lepke stages in a dangerous position where he could chose to ruin or to save. The same situat

31、ion comes into the speaker “I ”, Lowell, prisoners, and every single person. All the figures in prison are “others”, ciphers of disconnection,separation, and alienation from the mainstream: his younger self, the Negro boy, the Jewish pacifist, the pimps, the Jehovahs witness, and the Lepke. But Lowe

32、ll does more than project theory of destruction onto the prison inhabitants; he pairs his younger self against these others as if they were foils -the more ominous or dangerous alternatives of blacks, gays, Jews, pimps, Jehovahs Witness, and the murder Lepke. Lowell thereby stages religiosity and pa

33、cifism-and resistance itself-as ineffectual and impotent in the context of a prison society where the violent Lepke reigns(Philip,20). The jailbirds are constrained in a narrow space, however, they are given freedom to a large degree. It occurs to every single living entity. Whoever, even the murder

34、, seems find the oasis eventually under the peace of lost-connections, where no agonizing reappraisal or any other torment. In some sense, it can be regarded as the terminal goal of confession, no matter it belongs to the religious confession or not. The poets intention of confessional mode maybe th

35、e forgiveness from something he admires(God or not),so that the spiritual peace and the inspiration are achieved. However, prompted by intellectual trepidation, at the beginning of his career, Lowells exploration of religious tropes undermined personal faith; at the same time, his use of such tropes

36、 encouraged others to realize that the malaise of modern temperament was indeed a spiritual problem(Paula,5). In the process of confession, the result of stay, or escape, still needs to be sought through unceasing self-exploration. Bibliography 1 Altieri, Charles. Enlarging the Temple. London: Associated University Presses, 1979, Print. 2 Bloom Harold. Robert Lowell. New York: Chelsea House, 1987,Print. 3 Hayes, Paula. Robert Lowell and the