#372

p. 394: https://books.google.com/books?id=-Wf2AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA394&lpg=PA394&dq=o+yes+I+wish+her+well.+let+her+come+on&source=bl&ots=t61AkrF4jn&sig=OWzh3QXtxQ0R6U-FFy3lxlYoc9g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjm17jh-pfKAhVH6SYKHbuAD0QQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&q=o%20yes%20I%20wish%20her%20well.%20let%20her%20come%20on&f=false

The high heroine is back! “Cold & golden lay the high heroine / in a wilderness of bears” is a line repeated from DS 291, so these two poems are thematically linked. In my response to DS 291, I wrote that “The golden heroine is possibly a symbolic representation of his wife, Kate, but there are other possibilities, which may include his genius or his muse, or a more generalized female figure standing for Woman, his mother, or possibly even his anima, an embodiment of the male psyche’s collected female characteristics.” In DS 291, she is surrounded by bears, which, whatever they may stand for in the poem’s dream symbology, are terrifying. Had the speaker of DS 291 known that the heroine was dead, he would have fled from whatever it is she really symbolizes—I read her at this point as something like a female personification of Great Art as much as anything, and the bears are the phalanx of violently ignorant readers and critics standing between the striving artist and his union with Her, which would be the eroticized fulfillment of his artistic goal. In DS 372, she is mortally wounded, and this changes things. She will lie in peace, guarded by a hound, until her lover comes, restoring her goddess-like dominion over the life of the earth. “Her patience is exemplary” is a witty pronouncement. She’s dead. Of course she’s patient! But the presence of her lover will bring her back to life once he arrives.

The poet himself is the lover she’s waiting for, of course, which would have this intolerable overtone of infantile, narcissistic grandiosity except that this is all clearly from a dream, and stuff like this in a dream is normal and perfectly fine. There is the critical difference between this and DS 291. There, he would run from her if she were dead. She’s not, but she’s protected by those bears. After the lines repeated in both poems, in 291 comes, “His spirit fled.” Here: “Let one man in.” He’s the man. One is enough. Don’t hide away in some citadel. (Note that she’s restored to activity again somehow, but this is a dream. That’s okay.) And then this: It’s a matter of love.

Oh my! In my effort to figure out who the mythic heroine in DS 291 might stand for, I considered she might somehow be his wife. I really think now that’s not the case, unless in some weird buried corner of his psyche he married her and set her up as some kind of living embodiment of his eroticized artistic fantasy. But I think not. In this dream, the supplication is to let the high goddess of Great Art let him in, as a lover. It’s not really about love, but there is a clear implication which fits right into the other movements that have been developing: His heart is saved for his art, for Art. No mere woman, even his wife, takes precedence over the subject’s erotic striving toward a mythic grandiosity. This would have a fragrance of insanity about it, but again, it’s a dream. Dreams are always insane anyway. But when you couple this grandiosity with the undeniable effects of the soul withdrawing and withering from addiction, you get that now-familiar manic/depressed psychic double exposure: Grandiose and abject at the same time. Dying and immortal. Up ahead and back there, but not here. A revealing dream indeed.