Read Robert Lowell: A Biography Online
Authors: Ian Hamilton
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Personal Memoirs, #General
Robert Lowell: A Biography (58 page)
Lowell had left California by June 5, the day of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, and although he continued to speak for McCarthy right through to the Democratic Convention in Chicago at the end of August, his heart does not seem to have been in it. In July, he wrote, in a speech called “For McCarthy”:
One longs for our old opponent, Senator Kennedy; Robert Kennedy had his scrappy, abrasive qualities but it was hard not to honor him, and even feel something close to ardor: he had feelings of his own, fire, the spirit of vertigo. Little of this remains in many of Kennedy’s chief lieutenants; solemnly, woodenly, they troop to Humphrey. Mr.
Humphrey
rubs no one the wrong way, at least personally: he goes down easily, as if he himself were one of the products of the druggist he once aspired to become.
46
Four days before the Democratic Convention the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia, and McCarthy’s faint hopes were thus effectively killed off. At the convention itself, the bloody showdown between
demonstrators and police was for Lowell the final, numbing irony—the “five nights of Chicago: police and mob” left him feeling “tired and had”:
The police weren’t baby-sitting at 5 a.m.:
in our staff headquarters, three heads smashed, one club;
Five days the Hilton was liberated with troops and cars—
a fallen government. The youth for McCarthy
knew and blew too much: their children’s crusade!
47
And in September, with Humphrey now lined up against Nixon, and with George Wallace rather sinisterly in the wings, Lowell wrote to his Castine friend, the poet Philip Booth:
New York is insufferable, the election, the talk about the election, the depression, the frustration, the moisture,—and there’s noise twenty hours a day. Such the insight of my jaundiced eye, my jaundiced ear. Strange moods of testiness; very productive, but not sociable….
…Yet quite likely the future will be desultory, depressed and moist, and maybe peaceful. Luckily our only completely dangerous “leader” is Wallace, a man of perhaps too little articulation to win power.
48
Lowell continued to speak against the war when asked, and in November 1968 was stung to engage in an acrimonious dispute with Diana Trilling in the pages of
Commentary:
she believed him to be “soft” on student violence (she was writing on the Columbia riots of April 1968), and he believed her to be evasive on the Vietnam war. To the “soft on students” charge, Lowell made the following reply:
I answer that I might wish to be a hundred percent pro-student, but the other morning, or some morning, I saw a newspaper photograph of students marching through Rome with banners showing a young
Clark-Gable-style
Stalin and a very fat old Mao—that was a salute to the glacier. No cause is pure enough to support these faces. We are fond of saying that our students have more generosity, idealism and freshness than any other group. Even granting this, still they are only us younger, and the violence that has betrayed our desires will also betray theirs if they trust to it.
I would like to tell Mrs. Trilling one thing very clearly. I had nothing to do with the student strike at Columbia. I was at Columbia just once two or three weeks before the troubles. I spoke for four or five minutes
against President Johnson’s Vietnam War. I received tame applause. Also, I want to explain to her, finally I hope, that I have never been new left, old left or liberal. I wish to turn the clock back with every breath I draw, but I hope I have the courage to occasionally cry out against those who wrongly rule us, and wrongly lecture us.
49
And the end of Lowell’s political adventure is tersely marked by the sonnet he calls “November 6th”: on the previous day Richard Nixon had narrowly defeated Humphrey at the polls:
Election Night, the last Election Night,
without drink, television or a friend—
wearing my dark blue knitted tie to classes …
No one had recognized that blue meant black.
My daughter telephones me from New York,
she talks
New
Statesman
,
‘Then we’re cop-outs! Isn’t
not voting Humphrey a vote for Nixon and Wallace?’
And I, ‘Not voting Nixon is my vote for Humphrey.’
It’s funny-awkward; I don’t come off too well;
‘You mustn’t tease me, we were clubbed in Chicago.’
We
must
rouse
our
broken
forces
and
save
the
country:
we often said this, now the fallen angels
open old wounds and hunger for the blood-feud
hidden like contraband and loved like whisky.
50
1
. R.L. to Peter Taylor, June 4, 1967.
2
. R.L., interview with John Gale,
Observer,
March 12, 1967.
3
. Robert Brustein,
Making
Scenes
(New York: Random House, 1981), pp. 31–32.
4
. Ibid. p. 31.
5
. R. W. B. Lewis,
Yale
Daily
News,
May 24, 1967.
6
. R.L., interview with John Gale,
Observer,
March 12, 1970.
7
.
New
York
Times,
May 18, 1967.
8
. Ibid., June 14, 1967.
9
. R.L. to Peter Taylor, June 4, 1967.
10
. Esther Brooks, “Remembering Cal,” in
Robert
Lowell:
A
Tribute,
ed.
Rolando
Anzilotti (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi Editori, 1979), pp. 37–44.
11
. Norman Mailer,
The
Armies
of
the
Night
(New York: New American Library, 1968). All quoted matter concerning the event is from Mailer’s book.
12
. Elizabeth Hardwick, interview with I.H. (1982).
13
.
Notebook
1967–68
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), p. 27.
14
. R.L., “The Poetry of John Berryman,”
New
York
Review
of
Books,
May 28, 1964.
15
. Allen Tate to R.L., February 7, 1968 (Houghton Library).
16
. Richard Stern,
Tri-Quarterly
5 (Winter 1981), 270–71.
17
. Ivan Illich,
Celebration
of
Awareness
(London: Penguin, 1976), p. 21.
18
. Robert Silvers, interview with I.H. (1981).
19
.
Notebook
1967
–
68,
“Mexico” sequence, pp. 58–63.
20
. Mary to R.L., January 9, 1968 (Houghton Library).
21
.
Notebook
1967
–68,
p. 8.
22
. Anonymous, interview with I.H. (1980).
23
. R.L., “Day of Mourning,”
New
York
Review
of
Books,
February 29, 1968.
24
. R.L. to Peter Taylor, March 16, 1968.
25
. Jeremy Lamer,
Nobody
Knows
(New York: Macmillan, 1969), p. 187.
26
. Max Hastings,
America
1968,
The
Fire
This
Time
(London: Gollancz, 1969).
27
. R.L. to Peter Taylor, March 16, 1968.
28
. Eugene McCarthy, interview with I.H. (1980).
29
. Blair Clark, interview with I.H. (1979).
30
. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
Robert
Kennedy
and
His
Times
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1978). R.L. quoted.
31
. Robert Kennedy to R.L., February 18, 1966 (Houghton Library).
32
. R.L. to Robert Kennedy, February 25, 1966. R.F.K. papers, in Schlesinger,
Robert
Kennedy
and
His
Times.
33
. Grey Gowrie, interview with I.H. (1980).
34
. Jean Stein and George Plimpton (eds.),
American
Journey:
The
Times
of
Robert
F.
Kennedy
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 193.
35
. R.L. to Peter Taylor, March 16, 1968.
36
. Stein and Plimpton (eds.),
American
Journey.
37
. R.L. to Elizabeth Hardwick, March 22, 1968.
38
. E. W. Kenworthy, “Poet and Politician Orchestrate McCarthy Overtures to Voters,”
New
York
Times,
March 29, 1968.
39
. Andreas Teuber, special assistant, McCarthy campaign, quoted in Stein and Plimpton (eds.),
American
Journey,
pp. 311–12.
40
. Eugene McCarthy, interview with I.H. (1980).
41
. Ibid.
42
. Schlesinger,
Robert
Kennedy
and
His
Times,
pp. 910–11.
43
. Andreas Teuber, quoted in Stein and Plimpton (eds.),
American
Journey,
pp. 311–12.
44
. Eugene McCarthy, interview with I.H. (1980).
45
. Blair Clark, interview with I.H. (1979).
46
. Ms (Houghton Library).
47
.
Notebook
1967
–
68,
p. 138.
48
. R.L. to Philip Booth, September 30, 1968.
49
. R.L.,
Commentary,
April 1969, p. 19.
50
.
Notebook
1967
–68,
p. 140.
For almost a year Lowell had been writing his fourteen-line poems at the rate of three or even four a week. By July 1968 he was talking of the “long poem” he had almost finished—“I want this book to hit with a single impact: the parts are not meant to stand by
themselves
”
1
—but it was in October 1968 that he decided that the
movement
of his
Notebook
’s plot should be from summer 1967 through the fall of 1968:
It is not a chronicle or almanac: many events turn up, many others of equal or greater reality do not. This is not my diary, my confession, not a puritan’s too literal pornographic honesty, glad to share private
embarrassment
, or triumph.
2
Although
Notebook
makes much of its framework of public events—Lowell lists the year’s principal upheavals in a note at the end of the published text—and although Lowell’s own year had been
hectically
political, there are few poems that are explicitly “about” the headline sensations of 1967–68. Indeed, anyone reading the book now, without aid from any of the histories, would find it hard to recall even the main outlines of what happened. As Lowell notes, in explanation of his list of dates: “Dates fade faster than we do. Many in the last two years are already gone; in a year or two, most of the rest will slip.”
3
The book’s real scope, of course, is the scope of Lowell’s
consciousness
: and here he does not provide us with a list of dates, nor does he offer many footnotes. The assumption throughout is that we will somehow know as much about his life as he does: a necessary assumption, he implies, for the purposes both of reticence and of
tone. In poem after poem, there is an unbending intimacy between the poet and his addressee; Lowell uses snatches of conversation, secret jokes, idly resurrected incidents from youth and childhood, quotations from books, private letters, gossip, and “much more that I idly spoke to myself.” Having chosen his structure, Lowell gives it freedom to ingest at random. His themes—Power, Middle Age, and Art—are huge enough to seem consistently pursued; his plot—the passage of the year fitted to the chronology of his own life—is loose enough to be lost track of and picked up again at will.
It would take a whole book to annotate
Notebook
,
and the labor would not always be worthwhile. Now and again, though, there are poems that gain hugely from some knowledge of their “
background
.” Here, for instance, is a sonnet called “The Next Dream”:
‘After my marriage, I found myself in constant
companionship with this almost stranger I found
neither agreeable, interesting, nor admirable,
though he was always kind and irresponsible.
The first years after our first child was born,
the daddy was out at sea; that helped, I could bask
in the rest and stimulation of my dreams,
but the courtship was too swift, the disembarkment
dangerously abrupt. I was animal,
healthy, easily tired: I adored luxury,
and should have been an extrovert: I usually
managed to make myself pretty comfortable….
Well,’ she laughed, ‘we both were glad to dazzle.
A genius temperament should be handled with care.’
4
And here, from a draft of Lowell’s autobiography, is its remarkable prose source:
A few months after Mother’s death in 1954, I went through her papers and discovered a note-book written in 1937, when she had just begun to have interviews with a psychiatrist. The spelling is a miracle of
inaccuracy
due to ignorance, but also due to impatience. The notes soon became mere quotations from psychiatry books that Mother was
reading
. However, the first five or six pages are personal: they are an
autobiographical
sketch disguised as a third person description of Miss B.
Mother’s account shows courage and self-knowledge, and refuses to evade. Here are excerpts exactly as she wrote:
“Miss B’s father was a conscientious disciplinarian, so busy in uprooting what was bad that he destroyed and damaged much that was good. Her mother was suppressed and unhappy, rather superficial, but was
completely
dominated by her husband, who insisted on running everything, with constant criticism and direction.” As a child Miss B was “
self-conscious
, introverted, aggressive and rather deceitful.” Her Father’s discipline was “erratic but severe.” “Being a rather lonely and
maladjusted
child, retreated into a world of dreams and unreality, and spent an increasing amount of time in this way (Began at about 10 years, encreased [
sic
]
till about 26, and lasted until over 40).” She was “
absolutely
powerful and perfect in this and resisted exeration [
sic
]
of any kind.”
Miss B married, because she thought it was time to. She was not at all in love with the man, nor did she really admire him. But he seemed the best that was offered. She rather enjoyed his admiration, and thought she might improve him, and would be free herself, and away from the constant family frictions and quarrels, which she thought
degrading
.
But she also thought she was doing a very wrong thing in
marrying
this man whom she did not love, and often felt that she would be punished for it, as she was always punished for doing what was wrong.
After this marriage … having to live in constant companionship with this comparative stranger, whom she found neither agreeable,
interesting
, nor admirable, was a terrible nervous strain. She became
increasingly
critical and unappreciative. She wished to do nothing and see no one. She was utterly hysterical, and would have liked to die, but the idea of (Playing the game) kept her from doing it. So to the world, her family, and her friends she appeared happy and serine [
sic
].
She was determined not to whine and be a Coward; but what a lot of care she made for herself.
Her husband “could not understand at all, was always kind, though irresponsible; and thought her half crazy.
5
For Lowell, few documents could have held more fascination; in the poem, he turns Miss B back into the first person and adds to his mother’s self-description quotations from his own memories of childhood. (For example, again in his draft autobiography, he tells that “When visitors praised Mother’s house, she would smile and answer in a cosy, humorous removed voice: ‘I usually manage to make myself pretty comfortable.’”)
6
Readers without access to Lowell’s papers could hardly fathom the full weight or even rightly
gauge the direction of this poem: who, or what, they might wonder, is the poet quoting from, and to what purpose? Although much of
Notebook
thrives on the neglect of such considerations, there are large stretches of it that can be altered into a new forcefulness by “biographical” support.
And there are other stretches that cannot. For example, a poem like “The Misanthrope and the Painter”—one of many that recount gnomic dialogues between we-know-not-whom—will tend to leave most readers wondering, So what? It goes like this:
‘The misanthrope: a woman who hates men.
Women are stronger, but man is smarter.’ ‘Mostly
woman hates his drinking and his women,
hates this in all men; she will not permit
Cassio to escape tragedy.’
‘Hear the artist on her fellow artist,
woman on woman?’ ‘The only way she can
repaint this one is for her to lie under a truck.’
‘I pick up lines from nothing.’ ‘I’m not nothing, Baby.
When I am in a room, Wyeth is invisible.’
‘When Rembrandt had painted the last spot of red
on his clown’s nose, he disappeared in paint.
I pick lines from trash.’ ‘I’m not garbage, Baby.
You may have joie de vivre, but you’re not twenty.’
7
There is, admittedly, a comic near motto for
Notebook
in the
exchange:
“‘I pick lines from trash.’ ‘I’m not garbage, Baby.’”; but all in all what can be made of this? Who are these two people; where are they; is one of them meant to be Lowell? And so on. The “key” is provided by Sidney Nolan:
I was with Cal and this girlfriend of his in Boston, and at one point she said, “When I’m in the room, the Rothko disappears.” That’s what
she
said. So I said, “That isn’t fair to Rothko.” So we changed it to that realist, the famous chap who did
Saturday
Evening
Post
covers—not Rockwell. It then says, “You may have joie de vivre, but you’re not twenty-one.” That was her talking to
me
.
The point is, she wanted me to get out of the way.
8
Nolan had gone to Milwaukee with Lowell in 1968, and had also seen him regularly in Boston and New York. There are at least a
dozen poems in
Notebook
that he can similarly “explain” but not illuminate: he will recognize snatches of his own conversation, or lines from books that he knew Lowell was reading at the time, and he can also identify characters and situations. But, as with “The Misanthrope and the Painter,” the poem in question very often stays elusive—or if not that, then trifling or self-indulgent.
Other friends can provide a service of this sort with other poems; there are letters in libraries which will reveal that “Friend Across Central Park” (p. 66) is addressed to Jackie Kennedy, or that Irving Howe is the “New York Intellectual” (p. 112), or that Allen Tate couldn’t remember telling Lowell’s daughter, Harriet: “I love you now, but I’ll love you / more probably when you are older” (p. 73); and the score or so amusing literary anecdotes—about Eliot, Ford, Jarrell, Pound—can be verified or contradicted. Such knowledge does not always generate forgiveness, and often Lowell’s opacity seems merely mischievous or vain. In the end, though, nothing much can be got from
Notebook
without giving some measure of assent to the hit-or-miss manner of its composition: for Lowell himself, it remained a text that he could tamper with, add to, and finally break into separate parts. It is a weird, unshapely monument to his belief that his experience had somehow not been served
respectfully
if it had not been transmuted into literature: the near literature of
Notebook
made it possible for him to “meathook” the mundane.
Published in June 1969,
Notebook 1967
–68
was received in most quarters with awkward respectfulness—“complex and imperfect … a propitiatory act to the modern god of chaos,” said William Meredith in the
New
York
Times
Book
Review
.
The book’s sheer size was felt to compensate for its obscurity, its line-by-line
unevenness
, and the historic sketches—a gallery, this, of Lowell’s
favorite
“despotic gangsters”: Attila, Caligula, Napoleon and Hitler—caused several reviewers to marvel at his understanding of “the violence of our history and the moral stench of power.” A year later, Lowell was to publish a revised version, which he called simply
Notebook
—“about a hundred of the old poems have been changed, some noticeably. More than ninety new poems have been added”—and there was by then rather more resistance to his new fecundity: Donald Hall, for instance, spoke of “the seedy grandiloquence” of
Notebook
and dismissed the whole thing as “self-serving journalism.”
9
In 1969, though, the feeling was that
this almost official “major U.S. poet” had estimably tried to land The Big One.
*
Lowell had completed his final revision of
Notebook 1967–68
in February 1969. In January he visited Canada and Newfoundland—“the setting of my grandfather’s longest and best-loved novel the New Priest of Conception Bay (really, you can look on a large Northern map)”
10
—and at the end of February he set off for a two-week tour of Israel. The plan then was for Lowell to go to Italy for a performance in Turin of
The
Old
Glory
and then to meet up in Spain with Hardwick and the Nolans (Sidney and his wife, Cynthia). Relations with Hardwick, though, seem to have been tense during the winter of 1968–69. Lowell again got through these months without a breakdown, but a letter he wrote
Hardwick
on January 9, 1969, suggests that the two years since his last illness had not been free of turbulence: there were his Cambridge infidelities (which he seems to have made little effort to hide) and also, it seems, a new attachment to the stimulus of alcohol:
I have been hard going the last couple of years, tho when haven’t I been? I am going to do everything to cut down on the drinking, even stop if I must…. Also, even harder, a pledge to try to do my duties and answer things. Can I become the pillar never absent from the family hearth? I love: your varied interests, your refreshing teaching, your neat clothes, your capacity for keen conversation and argument and most for our lovely child. You know it’s hard, I seemed to connect almost unstopping composition with drinking. Nothing was written drunk, at least nothing was perfected and finished, but I have looked forward to whatever one gets from drinking, a stirring and a blurring? I’ll really try as a child might say, but even the Trinity can’t make the crooked stick straight—or young again.
11
Lowell arrived in Tel Aviv on March 6, 1969. His itinerary would take him to Nazareth, the Golan Heights, Jerusalem and Jericho: he was expected to give readings, to visit libraries, and to do the rounds of local literary figures, although—as he later reported—“At the University of Texas I met far fewer Americans than here.” On March 6 he wrote to Hardwick:
But I have the shakes. When I lift the coffee cup to my lips at breakfast table, I don’t know whether I can get it there. God, have mercy on me—may I not die far from you! Love (This is lovely if I woke a 100 years younger. Love again I miss you so.