Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Source of book: I own this

My first choice for Umberto Eco was originally The Name of the Rose. However, my wife found this for next to nothing at a library sale (or maybe on the discard shelf?) So, it was a convenient choice. 

This book is rather on the long side - 641 pages in my edition. For me, that isn’t that long, as books by Anthony Trollope and Henry James tend to run at least 800. So I am used to reading long books. So believe me when I say:

This book is too damn long. 

I think it would have been a great book at one-third the length. So much of the book seems unnecessary and deadly boring, even if it relates to the plot and theme of the book. Let me explain. 

[Spoiler Warning]

Here is the basic plot. Three friends, Belbo, Diotellevi, and Casaubon (the narrator) work for a vanity press company. As part of their work, they screen books by self-funded authors relating to the constellation of conspiracy theories surrounding the Knights Templar. Casaubon wrote a thesis on the Templars back in college, while Diotellevi is a Cabalist. Between the three of them, they go rather down the rabbit hole of interlocking theories. Eventually, they decide to write the mother of all conspiracy theory books, by finding ludicrous connections and metaphors between all kinds of nonsense - literally from ancient history to Mickey Mouse. To assist them, they use Belbo’s computer (this was in the 1980s) to randomly re-assort phrases they feed into it. The result is a bunch of pseudo-profound and utterly ridiculous blither. 

But the problem is, people start believing it. Maybe even the three friends. And eventually, the belief that the three are in reality holding the great secret of the Templars for world domination turns deadly. 

I avoided spoiling all of the ending, but that is in fact most of the plot. The majority of the book is a mess of interconnected conspiracy theories. It starts out well enough, with a history of the Templars, and then the Rosicrucians, and then...well it really goes down the rabbit hole. Anthony Burgess said that the book contained so many esoteric references to alchemy, the kabbalah, and conspiracy theories, that it needed an index. 

To give a feel for the book, it starts with a teaser of the scene near the very end (Casaubon hiding in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, waiting for...something connected with the Foucault Pendulum.) Then we dive into Casaubon’s attempts (eventually successful) to get into the missing Belbo’s computer, then another 90 pages or so of Templar history and theories. It isn’t until a hundred pages in that we actually get to start the story itself and figure out what the heck is going on. And then, after a short bit of plot, where a mysterious Colonel Ardenti claims to have a document with the secret to the Templars, then disappears, suddenly we are in...Brazil, where Casaubon goes chasing a woman he falls in love with. A few years there, and they meet a nut-job, Aglie  who seems to believe he is the Count of St.-Germain (still living hundreds of years later), who leads Casaubon down another series of rabbit trails. Oh, and a weird Afro-Brazillian occult ceremony and more theories. And then, Casaubon breaks up with the woman and goes back to Italy. And now, we are past the halfway point of the book, having spent maybe 30 pages on plot and the rest on conspiracies. 

 The Foucault Pendulum at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles

This was the first one I ever saw, and I still remember it.

Once you get to about page 400, the plot finally starts to move somewhere. Over the final 240 pages, the ratio of plot to conspiracy theories is about 1:2, which is, believe it or not, a real improvement. The ending is pretty exciting, actually, and there are some great moments in that second half. So I am glad I stuck with it. But I really don’t think I remember all that much of the Templar stuff - and have no interest in trying to figure it out. 

Anyway, these quotes will give a bit of the flavor. First is Casaubon’s description of the Templars early in the book. 

“Hughes and the original eight others were probably idealists caught up in the mystique of the Crusade. But later recruits were most likely younger sons seeking adventure. Remember, the new kingdom of Jerusalem was sort of the California of the day, the place you went to make your fortune. Prospects at home were not great, and some of the knights may have been on the run for one reason or another. I think of it as a kind of Foreign Legion. What do you do if you’re in trouble? You join the Templars, see the world, have some fun, do some fighting. They feed you and clothe you, and in the end, as a bonus, you save your soul.”

This, of course, was before things got crazy. (Also, this is page 80, and we are still back on the actual history of the Templars.) I should also mention a deliciously snarky remark by Belbo. Casaubon has mentioned that things got uncomfortable after the Crusades, because soldiers do not easily return to civilian life - particularly as a priestly order. From sleeping with the plundered women to celibacy? Anyway:

“From prohibitions you can tell what people normally do,” Belbo said. “It’s a way of drawing a picture of daily life.” 

Another fascinating insight comes from, of all people, Aglie, describing the Brazilian fish market and the mashup of all these religious and occult symbols. 

“This,” Aglie said, “is the very image of what the ethnology textbooks call Brazilian syncretism. An ugly word, in the official view. But in its loftiest sense, syncretism is the acknowledgement that a single Tradition runs through and nurtures all religion, all learning, all philosophy. The wise man does not discriminate; he gathers together all the shreds of light, from wherever they may come…”

One of my epiphanies of the last few years is that ALL religion, past and present, is syncretistic. There is no such thing as “pure” revealed religion. It has always borrowed from the culture in which it exists, for good or ill. While it is an oversimplification to say that there is a single tradition, Aglie is to a certain degree correct. What runs through all religion, learning, and philosophy is humanity. We are all human, and thus have more in common than different. It is therefore unsurprising to find so much religious commonality. Unlike Aglie, I don’t think there is a single conspiracy involving the Templars, of course. 

One of the subplots of the book is the gradual revelation of Belbo’s childhood, growing up in a small village during World War Two, when his fellow residents were caught between the Fascists and the partisan rebels. How to stay alive and “normal” is a fine dance. There is an exchange between Belbo’s uncle, and Mongo, the rebel leader, which is revealing. 

Mongo said then, “You see, Cavalier, it’s this way, Major: we were informed that you collect taxes for the Fascist government that toadies to the invaders.” “You see, Commander,” Uncle Carlo said, “it’s this way: I have a family and receive a salary from the government, and the government is what it is; I didn’t choose it, and what would you have done in my place?” “My dear Major,” Mongo replied, “in your place, I’d have done what you did, but try at least to collect the taxes slowly; take your time.” “I’ll see what I can do,” Uncle Carlo said. “I have nothing against you men; you, too, are sons of Italy and valiant fighters.” They understood each other, because they both thought of Fatherland with a capital F. 

Eco too grew up under Fascism, and is one of the most perceptive writers about the subject. (See note at the end.) Fascism and Nazism are not synonymous. Nazism is Fascist, but not all Fascists are Nazis. For Italy, it was more complicated. Mussolini wasn’t Hitler. While Italy was complicit, it did not invent the “final solution,” and was no more anti-Semitic than, say, England. 

Around this time, Aglie shows up in Italy, and kind of worms his way in with Belbo’s girlfriend, kind of like he did in Brazil to Casaubon’s girl. He gives her some kind of line about how she is Sophia, the female part of God, and…(I don’t really understand all of that)...but she has this fun line about it. 

“How nice! Does he give that line to all the girls?”

“No, stupid, just to me, because he understands me better than you do. He doesn’t try to create me in his image. He understands I have to be allowed to live my life in my own way. And that’s what Sophia did; she flung herself into making the world. She came up against primordial matter, which was disgusting, probably because it didn’t use a deodorant. And then, I think, she accidentally created the Demi -- how do you say it?”

“You mean the Demiurge?”

Lorenza is a minor character, and seems to exist mostly to be part of the love triangle. Casaubon’s girlfriend (and later baby-mama) Lia, on the other hand, is pretty much the only sane character in the book. She tries on several occasions to talk Casaubon back from the cliff, so to speak. The extended passage in chapter 63 is way too long to quote, but she gives Casaubon a brilliant lecture on how the supposed magic numbers of numerology derive naturally from the body, and from nature. 

Another tour-de-force is the section where Belbo, on a dare from Casaubon, creates a whole argument that the automobile powertrain is a metaphor for the Tree of Life. It’s impressive. And laugh-out-loud ludicrous. I mean, it makes exactly zero sense. But it makes sense within the context of the ridiculous stuff the three are coming up with. This is the strong part of the book: the way Eco taps into the real psychodynamics of conspiracy theories. 

But whatever the rhythm was, luck rewarded us, because, wanting connections, we found connections -- always, everywhere, and between everything. The world exploded into a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else. . . .

One of the things that they start doing is finding things that have the initials “R. C.” - for Rosicrucians. For instance, Raymond Chandler and Rick of Casablanca. Hey, that reminds me of an R.E.M. song: 

[insert]

 Lenny Bruce is NOT afraid....

That this was unhealthy was something they knew, but refused to admit. 

When we traded the results of our fantasies, it seemed to us -- and rightly -- that we had proceeded by unwarranted associations, by shortcuts so extraordinary that, if anyone had accused us of really believing them, we would have been ashamed. We consoled ourselves with the realization -- unspoken, now, respecting the etiquette of irony -- that we were parodying the logic of our Diabolicals. But during the long intervals in which each of us collected evidence to produce at the plenary meetings, and with the clear conscience of those who accumulate material for a medley of burlesques, our brains grew accustomed to connecting, connecting, connecting everything with everything else, until we did it automatically, out of habit. I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing. 

This has a way of happening with any ideology, whether that of Communism or Objectivism. The line between parody and true faith is beyond blurry. 

But all of us were losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real.

And that quote in particular struck me as descriptive of Evangelical theology, which has been so divorced from reality that it can no longer make those distinctions, particularly in its own scripture. 

Once the three bring the Jesuits into things, they have an issue: the Jesuits appear to have been the Templar’s biggest enemies. In coming up with a possible explanation, Casaubon stumbles upon a really interesting idea:

The Jesuits knew that if you want to confound your enemies, the best technique is to create clandestine sects, wait for dangerous enthusiasms to precipitate, then arrest them all. In other words, if you fear a plot, organize one yourself; that way, all those who join it come under your control.

The problem for the three is that they actually have managed to do this -- people are believing their hogwash. Lia finally tells Casaubon off, and she is right. 

Your plan isn’t poetic, it’s grotesque. People don’t get the idea of going back to burn Troy just because they read Homer. With Homer, the burning of Troy became something that it never was and never will be, and yet the Iliad endures, full of meaning, because it’s all clear, limpid. Your Rosicrucian manifestoes are neither clear nor limid; they’re mud, hot air, and promises. This is why so many people have tried to make them come true, each finding in them what he wants to find. In Homer, there’s no secret, but your plan is full of secrets, full of contradictions. For that reason you could find thousands of insecure people ready to identify with it. Throw the whole thing out. Homer wasn’t faking, but you three have been faking. Beware of faking: people will believe you. People believe those who sell lotions that make lost hair grow back. They sense instinctively that the salesman is putting together truths that don’t go together, that he’s not being logical, that he’s not speaking in good faith. But they’ve been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing to a miracle. You’ve invented hair oil. I don’t like it. It’s a nasty joke. 

It’s a nasty joke with consequences. In real life, this happens too. I am thinking particularly of “Pizzagate,” which came damn close to getting innocent people killed. Or the whole Trump presidency, built on racist and xenophobic conspiracy theories, which have gotten a whole lot of brown-skinned people killed. Think about just the last couple of weeks, with the claim that Covid-19 was somehow a Chinese/Democrat conspiracy to remove Trump from office. That would require the entire rest of the world lying, which is ludicrous. But once you already live in the psychological place where incoherence is proof of truth, that’s where you end up. This is one reason why I consider most of the clergy in this country guilty of gross spiritual malpractice, for feeding conspiratorial thinking, painting science as the enemy, and turning people who are different from them into enemies out to get them. It isn’t funny. And the consequences have been dire. 

Anyway, that’s my take on this book. When it is good, it is great. But it is way too long with too many rabbit trails - you really do need an index. I am glad I stuck with it, though. 

***

Umberto Eco and Fascism:

One of the best long articles I have ever read is Eco’s 1995 article for the New York Review of Books, “Ur-Fascism.” Because Fascism takes different forms around the world, it helpful to see what the Fascism of Hitler and Pinochet, Viktor Orban and Jair Bolsanaro, have in common. It is also a prescient predictor of the rise of Trump. And yes, Trump is a textbook Ur-Fascist. 

It was this article that, when I read it several years back, convinced me that white Evangelicalism in America is proto-Fascist in a number of disturbing ways, starting with their idolatry of a mythical past and their need to believe in dire enemies foreign and domestic. And also their obsession with doctrinal and sexual “purity.” The single greatest reason that Trump appealed so deeply to white Evangelicals is that he spoke the Ur-Fascist language that they already built into their doctrine and psyches. (If you don’t think that Trump uniquely appeals to them, look at the way they lined up to defend him during the impeachment proceedings - they could have had Pence, supposedly their sort of candidate: genuinely devout, conservative, and so on. But what Trump has that Pence will never have, is the ability to speak Ur-Fascism.) 

 In a sense, Foucault’s Pendulum is an extended riff on Fascism and its psychological roots. 

The Collected Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Source of book: I own this. 

I picked this book up used from the library - a random find that cost next to nothing. I will confess that I hadn’t read anything by Edna St. Vincent Millay since my high school days, and I didn’t remember that much about the experience. In retrospect, I think it is likely that I was given one of her “safe” poems, one that tends to get picked by literature courses, rather than her more dangerous and radical ones.

In any event, I was immediately taken by this collection - it is fantastic. It was one of the more pleasant surprises in this year’s reading. I am a great lover of sonnets anyway. The form itself speaks to me (and indeed, my pathetic attempts at poetry during high school were often in sonnet form), and hers are some of the best I have read. 

 Edna St. Vincent Millay was a fascinating character. Living and writing mostly during the first half of the 20th Century, she refused to adhere to convention. She was raised by a divorced mother, whose poverty was in contrast to her dedication to introducing her daughters to classic literature. All three daughters were infamous at school for speaking their minds. Edna herself insisted in being called by her middle name: Vincent. Her teacher refused, calling her by random female names starting with V. (The name comes from the St. Vincent hospital, where Millay’s uncle was saved from death at one point.) 

Millay was openly bisexual, documenting relationships with women from her teens. Many of her poems are about love between women, which caused some scandal during her lifetime. (Although, to be fair, times were less puritanical in the 1920s than they would become later.) Millay would eventually marry in her 30s, after a number of love affairs with both men and women, having refused multiple offers of marriage, gotten pregnant, and had an abortion. The marriage was explicitly an open relationship, with both spouses continuing to have affairs with others. Her husband (like her) was strongly feminist, and fully supported her work. In fact, he took primary responsibility for domestic duties. 

In 1936, she was flung from an automobile in a freak accident, and suffered significant nerve and spinal damage. In constant pain for the rest of her life, she became addicted to morphine and alcohol, which contributed to her death at age 58. 

Even more tragic than that, however, was the tale of her career. She had previously been opposed to war, but, seeing the dangers of Fascism long before most of her fellow artists, she strongly advocated in favor of the United States entering World War II. This led to her essentially being blacklisted in artistic circles, effectively ending her career. At the same time, pro-Fascist poets such as Ezra Pound continued to receive accolades. 

Millay wrote about 160 sonnets, about the same as Shakespeare. They are not all related in the same way, but there are definitely themes that flow through most of them. There are three sonnet sets, both of which are haunting and moving. The first is Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree, which tells, over the course of 17 poems, the story of a wife caring for her dying husband who she separated from years ago. The second is The Harp Weaver, a tale of a mother who freezes to death creating a lavish wardrobe for her child. It is not difficult to see in both of these a reflection of Millay’s mother, whose life was harshly circumscribed by her failed marriage to a worthless man, and her need to sacrifice herself to keep her children fed. The third collection is Fatal Interview, believed to have been written about a long term relationship of hers which had ended. It is a devastating look at love, loss, and the ravages of time and age. 

Although there are a few exceptions, these themes tend to run through the other sonnets as well. Millay’s musings on the nature of love, desire, sex, loss, grief, pain, and endings are just amazing, really. I had not realized that these poems existed, but this book is now one of my favorites. 

Here are a few that stood out - although I could have listed most of them here. This one is from her first collection, Renascence, written in her late teens. 

THOU art not lovelier than lilacs,—no,     

Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair     

Than small white single poppies,—I can bear 

Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though 

From left to right, not knowing where to go,        

I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there     

Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear 

So has it been with mist,—with moonlight so.   

Like him who day by day unto his draught     

Of delicate poison adds him one drop more        

Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten, 

Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed     

Each hour more deeply than the hour before, 

I drink—and live—what has destroyed some men.

This illustrates one of her skills: taking a mushy love-sentiment, and somehow turning it a wee bit poisonous. There is a sting in this and other poems. Like this one. 

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,

And drag me at your chariot till I die,—

Oh, heavy prince! O, panderer of hearts!—

Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie

Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair,

Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,

Who still am free, unto no querulous care

A fool, and in no temple worshiper!

I, that have bared me to your quiver’s fire,

Lifted my face into its puny rain,

Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire

As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!

(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,

Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

A bit of reverse psychology there, and yet so much angst. 

This next one is definitely a favorite. Having been raised in a subculture pounded into us the ideas that Marriage is Miserable Hard Work™, Commitment™, Keep Your Vows Even If Abused™ and the rest of the idolatry of marriage and family, I have been drawn very much to the counter-idea: that a good relationship shouldn’t feel like martyrdom, and that one should actually be happy to be around one’s beloved. 

OH, THINK not I am faithful to a vow!

Faithless am I save to love's self alone.

Were you not lovely I would leave you now:

After the feet of beauty fly my own.

Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,

And water ever to my wildest thirst,

I would desert you–think not but I would!–

And seek another as I sought you first.

But you are mobile as the veering air,

And all your charms more changeful than the tide,

Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:

I have but to continue at your side.

So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,

I am most faithless when I most am true.  

Elizabeth Barrett Browning also captured some of this in her sonnets (also favorites of mine - I’m a hopeless romantic). Here is another one with delightful ambiguity about love:

Loving you less than life, a little less

Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall

Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess

I cannot swear I love you not at all.

For there is that about you in this light—

A yellow darkness, sinister of rain—

Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight

To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.

And I am made aware of many a week

I shall consume, remembering in what way

Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek

And what divine absurdities you say:

Till all the world, and I, and surely you,

Will know I love you, whether or not I do.

Less lighthearted is this one:

Once more into my arid days like dew,

Like wind from an oasis, or the sound

Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,

A treacherous messenger, the thought of you

Comes to destroy me; once more I renew

Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found

Long since to be but just one other mound

Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.

And once again, and wiser in no wise,

I chase your colored phantom on the air,

And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise

And stumble pitifully on to where,

Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,

Once more I clasp,—and there is nothing there.

Again, just a brilliant picture. Bitter and yet full of desire. 

This next one is another favorite. 

Let you not say of me when I am old,

In pretty worship of my withered hands

Forgetting who I am, and how the sands

Of such a life as mine run red and gold

Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold,

Here walketh passionless age!"—for there expands

A curious superstition in these lands,

And by its leave some weightless tales are told.

In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;

I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;

Impious no less in ruin than in strength,

When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,

Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site

The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer." 

A few layers to this one, to say the least. Millay challenges the idea that the elderly are sexless, or extra-righteous, or merely to be reverenced. She is still herself, passionate, impious, and the same as she ever was. 

I quote this next one because of an experience of my wife. This obnoxious racist dickhead who was the parent of a kid (poor guy) who was in band with one of my kids came up to her and said something nearly word for word as that said in this poem. (Do I even need to add that this guy is a huge Trump fan? Or that he was FINALLY banned from a local homeschool forum after repeated posts of neo-confederate and other vile propaganda?) 

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!

Give back my book and take my kiss instead.

Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,

“What a big book for such a little head!”

Come, I will show you now my newest hat,

And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!

Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.

I never again shall tell you what I think.

I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;

You will not catch me reading any more:

I shall be called a wife to pattern by;

And some day when you knock and push the door,

Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,

I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

Dude was literally acting surprised my wife was reading a “big book.” He probably has no idea about the stuff that she read while still a kid. After this incident, when she withered him with a glare, we have taken to calling him “Tiny Books.” Because his books are probably like the “hands” of his political idol. I am also reminded of one of my favorite bits by James Thurber. 

I unfortunately cannot quote all of Fatal Interview, but highly recommend it as a poem cycle. Here is the opening sonnet:

What thing is this that, built of salt and lime

And such dry motes as in the sunbeam show,

Has power upon me that do daily climb

The dustless air?—for whom those peaks of snow

Whereup the lungs of man with borrowed breath

Go labouring to a doom I may not feel,

Are but a pearled and roseate plain beneath

My wingèd helmet and my wingèd heel.

What sweet emotions neither foe nor friend

Are these that clog my flight? what thing is this

That hastening headlong to a dusty end

Dare turn upon me these proud eyes of bliss?

Up, up, my feathers!—ere I lay you by

To journey barefoot with a mortal joy.

From there, the cycle veers from the ecstacy of love to the depths of despair to the resignation to the depredations of time. This one, from early in the series, is as good of a love poem as I have read. 

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls

Or rich with red corundum or with blue,

Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls

Have given their loves, I give my love to you;

Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring

Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain—

Semper fidelis, where a secret spring

Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:

Love in the open hand, no thing but that,

Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,

As one should bring you cowslips in a hat

Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,

I bring you, calling out as children do:

"Look what I have!—And these are all for you."

It just gets better every time I re-read it. And the form is perfect. The two ideas in the two quatrains, followed by the turn in line nine, and the last couplet so memorable and true. 

A later poem from the series take the theme carpe diem, but with the twist that what youth doesn’t use, age will twist into something ugly. Unfortunately, what came to mind with this one was the way that my parents’ generation has mostly grown unwise with age, giving in to “compromise and fear,” selling their souls to preserve a mythical past. 

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone:

Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.

No man holds mortgage on it; it is your own;

To give, to sell at auction, to destroy.

When you are blind to moonlight on the bed,

When you are deaf to gravel on the pane,

Shall quavering caution from this house instead

Cluck forth at summer mischief in the lane?

All that delightful youth forbears to spend

Molestful age inherits, and the ground

Will have us; therefore, while we're young, my friend—

The Latin's vulgar, but the advice is sound.

Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here

For age to invest in compromise and fear.

This next one is pretty dang dark. The relationship has begun to turn a bit, and the combination of doubt, ennui, and suspicion creep around the corner. 

Most wicked words!-forbear to speak them out.

Utter them not again; blaspheme no more

Against our love with maxims learned from Doubt:

Lest Death should get his foot inside the door.

We are surrounded by a hundred foes;

And he that at your bidding joins our feast,

I stake my heart upon it, is one of those,

Nor in their councils does he sit the least.

Hark not his whisper: he is Time’s ally,

Kinsman to Death, and leman of Despair:

Believe that I shall love you till I die;

Believe; and thrust him forth; and arm the stair;

And top the walls with spikes and splintered glass

That he pass gutted should again he pass.”

While not the bulk of the poems, there are a few which are about altogether different topics. One that I found particularly interesting is this one, written in honor of suffragist Inez Milholland. Who also happened to be Millay’s husband’s first wife - she died a few years prior to Millay’s relationship with her husband. 

Upon this marble bust that is not I

Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame;

But in the forum of my silenced cry

Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.

I, that was proud and valiant, am no more; ---

Save as a dream that wanders wide and late,

Save as a wind that rattles the stout door,

Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate.

The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust.

Only my standard on a taken hill

Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust

And make immortal my adventurous will.

Even now the silk is tugging at the staff:

Take up the song; forget the epitaph.

That’s a seriously great epitaph. Milholland would die before realizing the dream of voting rights for women - a cause Millay also supported. 

This next poem is more about nature - both nature in the sense of the natural world, but also in the sense of human nature. And not a very nice part of that second nature either. 

Enormous moon, that rise behind these hills

Heavy and yellow in a sky unstarred

And pale, your girth by purple fillets barred

Of drifting cloud, that as the cool sky fills

With planets and the brighter stars, distills

To thinnest vapor and floats valley-ward, —

You flood with radiance all this cluttered yard,

The sagging fence, the chipping window sills!

 Grateful at heart as if for my delight

You rose, I watch you through a mist of tears,

Thinking how man, who gags upon despair,

Salting his hunger with the sweat of fright

Has fed on cold indifference all these years,

Calling it kindness, calling it God’s care.

Millay was concerned about the modern American - or perhaps Western - tendency toward social darwinism and of a “science” devoid of humanity or empathy. In our own times, we are still continuing to pay for this soulless vision of technology and raw capitalism. As Millay points out, we embrace data points without context, without wisdom, without kindness. It is power for power’s sake. 

Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,

This furtive age, this age endowed with power

To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar

Into the rowlocks of the wind, and find

What swims before his prow, what swirls behind ---

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,

Rains from the sky a meteoric shower

Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill

Is daily spun; but there exists no loom

To weave it into fabric; undefiled

Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still

Upon this world from the collective womb

Is spewed all day the red triumphant child. 

It’s a bit of a downer to end on, alas. Millay’s poems do seem to get darker over time, and it is easy enough to see why. This poem was published in a collection dated 1939, and there is no secret about the state of the world at that time. Fascism threatened to envelope at least Europe, and possibly the world. Although it would be anachronistic to read the horrors of nuclear war into this poem, it fits all too well. 

The collection as a whole is more thoughtful than exuberant, more focused on time and loss than on the ecstacy of love - although that is present as well. The poems stand up so well, though, because of this emotionally realistic approach to life and love. All is not well, and along with joy and love come loss and pain.