[On the Aims of Poetry: Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 3 February 1818]
Hampstead Tuesday.
[ . . . ] We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.—How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, ‘admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose!
Keats’ letter here follows on from his famous thoughts about ‘negative capability‘ where he discussed the Artistic value of uncertainty. Writers who force meanings upon their readers and characters place a stranglehold upon their art. In this letter above, Keats celebrates writing that is unobtrusive and without a palpable design on us; art that allows us to make up our own minds through the seemingly natural ‘affects’ and effects of the writing.
Carson McCullers’ novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe quietly explores the tragic emotional repercussions of unforeseen infatuation. Although the generic term Southern Gothic has been applied to her writing, the world of McCullers seems to be as much our own as any other. True we have the isolation, the relentless heat and the quiet desperation of physically challenged figures such as Amelia with her crossed eyes and Cousin Lymon with his dwarfism.
Yet all these figures are trying to make the best of their very fragile circumstances, using the skills they have to survive and even temporarily, to thrive.
Like Dickens, McCullers recognizes that we all live according to our own obsessions, quietly or loudly subscribing to our our preoccupations camouflaged or just ‘out there.’
People are daringly seen and portrayed inside out. Are we not all secret caricatures of ourselves, occasionally ‘caught out’ when we exhibit some personal idiosyncrasy outside of the sanctuary of the private?
Here we find ourselves in a place rendered spectral in its longing and irreparable despair inhabited by someone who seems to severed all connection to human kind, to the daily circumstances and details of existence.
…Nevertheless, on the second floor there is one window which is not boarded; sometimes in the late afternoon when the heat is at its worst a hand will slowly open the shutter and a face will look down on the town. It is a face like the terrible dim faces known in dreams-sexless and white…
The ritualistic aspect of this brief glimpse of Amelia Evans communicates a profound lostness palpably present.
The metonymical glimpse of the hand and face, underline the utter alienation of the deserted woman; a Miss Havisham of America’s Deep South, slowly rotting away inside the home once vibrant with community and playful intimacies.
Like Dickens, McCullers recognises that the spaces we inhabit, are psychically imprinted with our past. The boarded house IS Miss Amelia and vice versa.
Despair has metamorphosed into a shuttered edifice testifying to hope wrung dry.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of my favourite books – but I’ve never read Ballad of the Sad cafe (great title) – I shall have to ‘give it a go’ . btw – your writing/criticism here is ‘poetic’ in the sense Keats writes of…
I like the sound of this, though I haven’t read the book yet. I like how you refer to our obsessions and being a secret charicature of ourselves. That sounds so true when life is at its most intense, and isn’t that what great literature conveys. Love the link with Keats too.