Slattery’s is a pub in the Ballsbridge neighborhood of
Dublin, and knowing that throws an even harsher light on this poem, already a
forlorn but effective statement from a man who is going down, drowning in
alcohol, and as he says, threatening to drag down everyone clinging to him.
There’s no point here criticizing or castigating the poet, because I don’t see
much of showmanship, whining, presumptuous nonsense, or bragging here. I read
it as a forthright letter to the declining man’s wife who finds herself snared
in an incredibly difficult situation. I get the impression from the poem that
she has tried to reach out to him, in bed at midnight—“Difficult at midnight
grew our love"—and he remained unreachable and unhelpable. “Nobody in the world
knows where I am.” That may just be the most difficult thing a spouse can hear.
Genuine love, the shared responsibility of children, the
chosen submission to the commitment of marriage, and simple social inertia all work
to keep married couples together. Many things will tear through the
interpersonal connections, addiction being one of them. If Kate is hitched to an
addict going down, she will use what resources she has to try and save him and
her marriage and herself. We’ve seen her get angry, we’ve seen her commit him
to a mental hospital, and here we get intimations of an attempt to reach him
emotionally and psychologically through the powerful complications of sexual
intimacy. Didn’t work, apparently. He looks her in the eye and tells her that
he has a “crisis in the ghost,” which is a pretty hard line. Whatever is going
on with him, it’s spiritual, and she can’t spiritually reach out to it. The
only thing left to say is, “Attend his sorry perish, excellent lady. / Withhold
from him your frown.” Not letting her in because his problem is unreachable
even to his wife. Just don’t hate me for it, he says. I can’t help it.
So—does a spiritual crisis trigger and justify addiction?
That’s his stance and has been all along. But did it maybe work the other way? Does
addiction come first and then reach down into spiritual depths? Seems possible,
since it’s pushing him toward death. Maybe spiritual crisis and addiction go
down hand in hand, or most likely it doesn’t matter at this point.
Perhaps it’s a sort of optimistic naivety to assume that no
one is ever past reaching. A
spiritual faith assumes that no one has to ever be lost because God’s love and
forgiveness are boundless. But, Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler were probably past
reaching, and their crimes were such that wouldn’t it have been immoral to even
try? They’re ridiculously extreme examples, but they were human beings too, and
they were innocent children once. If they somehow became lost, others can as
well. It’s not a question of if there’s
a line that can be crossed, it’s a question of where one draws the line. If the
addict says I will not be helped, then in his splendid isolation there’s
nothing anyone can do about it. He has chosen. My understanding about the
age-old assumption about the damned is that they must choose their fate—it’s
never beyond them. B. here is speaking as one of the lost. He claims all
through The Dream Songs that his fate
was handed to him. I’m not so sure, though the physicality of addiction
complicates the matter. But he reaped advantages from his station. They’re more
important to him that any one person, though he can feel bad about his choice.
Here, there’s no sense of regret. There is simply a hard, clear statement: This is my situation, and that is all
there is to say about it.
I initially read it as him having yet another affair, this one starting at the pub. But I think your reading is correct.
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