Below is a journal posting from my Pre-Civil War American Literature class. This is a weekly assignment for which we write a (very) short exposition of a certain aspect of one of the texts we've encountered during the week. At the time we were covering war poetry, and I was drawn to Millay's work after being snagged by an opening line of another of her poems, "I know I am but summer to your soul," several years ago.
Apostrophe to Man
(on reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again)
Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize
Bacteria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach, expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens.
I forgot for a moment
I forgot for a moment France; I forgot England; I forgot my care:
I lived for a moment in a world where I was free tobeWith the things and people that I love, and I was happy there.
I forgot for a moment Holland, I forgot my heavy care.
I lived for a moment in a world so lovely, so inept
At twisted words and crooked deeds, it was if I slept and dreamt.
It seemed that all was well with Holland--not a tank had crushed
The tulips there.
Mile after mile the level lowlands blossomed--yellow square, white square,
Scarlet strip and mauve strip bright beneath the brightly clouded sky, the round clouds and the gentle air.
Along the straight canals between striped fields of tulips in the morning sailed
Broad ships, their hulls by tulip-beds concealed, only the sails showing.
It seemed that all was well with England--the harsh foreign voice hysterically vowing,
Once more, to keep its word, at length was disbelieved, and hushed.
It seemed that all was well with France, with her straight roads
Lined with slender poplars, and the peasants on the sky-line ploughing.
The poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay sets the feminine ideal of self sufficient domesticity at odds with the concept of war, as demonstrated in the following line from Apostrophe to Man:
“Breed, crowd, encroach…”
These are three loaded words, bearing the particular burden of war unique to women. The language she uses is decidedly bitter, indicative of the feminine ideal being infringed upon by the realities of war. “Breed, crowd, and encroach” immediately connotes the Biblical exhortation to “be fruitful and multiply,” but it places an alternatively negative spin on the traditionally positive instruction. To breed is animalistic and inexpressive, characteristics that can probably be extended to the author’s conception of war. “Breeding” and “crowding” bear no resemblance to making love, raising a family, or building community—relational ideals of femininity which are suspended in times war, when fathers, sons, and brothers are often absent from the landscape of home.
In I Forgot for a Moment, Millay delivers further glimpses of what perhaps may be construed as bitterness toward war. When she dreams that “all was well with Holland—not a tank had crushed/The tulips there,” she imparts a disturbing mental picture to the reader. The image of flowers, a distinctly female symbol, being crushed by the wartime tanks is a concept consistent with the language used in Apostrophe to Man. Like tanks upon a field of tulips, war “encroaches” upon the feminine sensibilities, and Millay’s poetry gives voice to the women whose pain is inherent in that reality.
