I have analysed this poem several times here on Tusitala, but after teaching it again a few days ago, I was struck powerfully by the importance of The River God’s TONE of voice.
Rather like The Mentalist’s nemesis/serial killer, Red John?
Try reading The River God out aloud and listen carefully to the tone of the speaker’s VOICE.
After all , tonality creates atmosphere before we even need to start analyzing the meaning of the poem.
When we read the poem aloud its creepy quality becomes apparent, even before we really start to engage with its meaning. This creepy, insinuating quality reflects(IRONICALLY)the strangely confessional aspect of the poem, which is a very important aspect of this dramatic monologue.
Indeed, we realise that the speaker revels in his confession rather too markedly like Browning’s Duke in My Last Duchess, and seems to extract a disturbing pleasure from his sinister, ‘confessional’ tale.
The River God reminds me of Dickens’ famous ‘creep’ Uriah Heep who appears in David Copperfield as a gloating, falsely ‘umble character, determined to ruin the eponymous hero, David.
Before I talk a little about the ways in which Smith creates her very unsettling tone of voice in this poem, let’s meet Uriah Heep and perhaps see a possible origin or inspiration for her murderous protagonist. Here are a few of David Copperfield’s early first impressions of the ever UNCTUOUS Uriah Heep:
I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made the clammy tracks along the page(or so I fully believed) like a snail. ..
”I am well aware that I am the ‘umblest person going,” said Uriah Heep modestly; ”let the other be where he may.My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for..’‘ (Chapter 16, David Copperfield).
Notice how physical detail is used to create repulsion through the imaginative, day dreamy simile; ‘ like a snail.‘ This repulsion then lingers, anticipating the infamous repetition of false humility when Uriah Heep announces his ‘umble’ character and even that of his ‘umble parents.
The slime trail of Heep’s forefinger, takes on material form through the language used by Uriah. It is as if Uriah is ‘leaking’ his falsity and David’s naturally intuitive imaginative recognizes the affectation albeit in a rather appalled, yet fascinated manner.
This fascination borders as I have said, upon repulsion and such disgust is experienced by the reader when we meet the River God in Stevie Smith’s dark and unsettling poem.
The ‘writhing’ aspect of Heep, with all his ‘snaky twistings’ is conjured up again brilliantly in the softly insinuating voice of the River God.
Notice the emphasis on the ‘s’ sounds in the poem. Sibilance reveals the serpentine twists and turns of the river’s motion as well as his depraved, murderous impulses towards women. Snakes are linked to the Fall of the garden of Eden and foreground the immorality and decadence of the speaker.
Note too the soft vowel sounds used in the poem. This assonance creates a voice that seems gentle, yet insinuating , whispering out his confession that seems gloating and arrogant.
The erratic mentality of the speaker is revealed through the mixing of enjambment and endstops in the poem, so that we hear a voice that is disturbed and unpredictable.
The crazy cruelty of the last line has been arrived at through a long meandering narrative that privileges the macabre humour of the River God with his strange delusional representations of a fallen world beneath the surface of reality.
How horrible do we find the rechristening of the speaker’s drowned victims into ‘fish’?
How Uriah Heepish to suggest that the drowned woman is enmeshed in some watery romantic entanglement with the speaker? !!!
I may be smelly, and I may be old,
Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools,
But where my fish float by I bless their swimming
And I like the people to bathe in me, especially women.
But I can drown the fools
Who bathe too close to the weir, contrary to rules.
And they take their time drowning
As I throw them up now and then in a spirit of clowning.
Hi yih, yippity-yap, merrily I flow,
O I may be an old foul river but I have plenty of go.
Once there was a lady who was too bold
She bathed in me by the tall black cliff where the water runs cold,
So I brought her down here
To be my beautiful dear.
Oh will she stay with me will she stay
This beautiful lady, or will she go away?
She lies in my beautiful deep river bed with many a weed
To hold her, and many a waving reed.
Oh who would guess what a beautiful white face lies there
Waiting for me to smooth and wash away the fear
She looks at me with. Hi yih, do not let her
Go. There is no one on earth who does not forget her
Now. They say I am a foolish old smelly river
But they do not know of my wide original bed
Where the lady waits, with her golden sleepy head.
If she wishes to go I will not forgive her.
