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“Life Studies”—Robert Lowell's Comic Breakthrough

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

George McFadden
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Abstract

The fifteen “Life Studies” poems are distinguished as a separate work from the rest of the Life Studies volume. Their unicity arises from Lowell's use of the Freudian myths of maturation and the family romance, from a (largely Freudian) comic emphasis, and from a rhetorical, rather than merely confessional, project of the poet to vindicate himself by means such as Pound used in The Pisan Cantos. Lowell's parents are the victims of comic degradation in the poet's struggle to achieve maturity; his Grandfather Winslow is both a savior, as father surrogate, and a threat to dominate Lowell. A “plot” including parenthood, the loyal intimacy of his relationship with his wife, and Lowell's comic self-acceptance helps to give “Life Studies” a sense of renewed vitality. Also, Lowell's new, more open style reflects his response to the movements of the fifties in American poetry and supports the mythic and comic structures of renewal in the work.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 90 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 96 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1975

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References

* The term “breakthrough” is more usually associated with Allen Ginsberg than with Robert Lowell, but I take it from the latter's statement in 1961 : “writing seems divorced from culture somehow. It's become a craft, purely a craft, and there must be some breakthrough back into life.” See Robert Lowell: A Portrait of the Artist in His Time, ed. Michael London and Robert Boyers (New York: D. Lewis, 1970), pp. 267–70, reprinting an interview in Paris Review.

1 In Anthony Ostroff, ed., The Contemporary Poet as Artist and Critic (Boston: Little, 1964), pp. 107, 108–10.

2 An excellent selection of their criticism appears in the volume edited by London and Boyers cited above.

3 Writing in 1967, Hayden Carruth felt he detected “a faint odor of degenerate Freudian sentimentalism” (London and Boyers, p. 241). Jay Martin records that, in 1954, Lowell “made a start on a prose autobiography. He became interested in psychoanalysis, particularly in Freud. Now ‘Freud seemed the only religious teacher’ to him.” Robert Lowell (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1970), p. 28. Martin doesn't follow up this lead. I should like, however, to emphasize that my approach in this article is not meant to be Freudian, nor exclusively myth- or genreoriented. I consider that “Life Studies” exhibits Freudian myths and a comic tone as major literary features, and my approach is partly interpretative and partly rhetorical in the broader context of a “layered” criticism.

4 This is a point made to me by Richard J. Fein, whom I wish to thank for other suggestions as well.

5 In For the Union Dead (New York: Farrar, 1964), “Middle Age,” “Fall, 1961,” and “Soft Wood” show the poet as an adult, noncomic persona.

6 Life Studies (New York: Farrar, 1959). This text has been reprinted several times without significant changes.

7 The technique of cancellation is rampant in the quoted passage. The word “belles” for music hall girls cancels “La Belle France.” “Goose necks” is hardly flattering. The “glorious signatures” were, of course, pseudonyms. “Beauty-mo/es” should be “marks.” Their coils of hair should not be related to roosters, nor to tails. And the “khaki kilts” worn into battle by Highlander troops are still a shocking reminder of the colorless degradation of modern warfare.

8 Freud is admirable on the child and the comic. He makes imaginative advances upon Bergson, whom he quotes freely. In Freudian terms, the ultimate degradation of the grown-up is to be eaten by the child. In Bergsonian terms, Uncle Devereux is inflexible (he “snaps”—the expected word is gingerbread man). The “clothes-press” suggests repression, maintenance of a flat, official, uniform pattern. It contrasts with Young Bob's carefree dirtying of his pants. Also, the image accords with Uncle Devereux's physical condition. This image seems arbitrary at first, but it grows on one.

9 Lowell's freer verse functions very well toward achieving an overall rhythm and continuity in these “Life Studies” poems. His former stress-charged, heavily rhymed lines went along with an impressive but claustrated imagery. They rotated, so to speak, with intense centripetal force around and around a dense emotional nucleus, hardly concerned with making forward progress. “Life Studies” entirely escapes these limitations, without sacrificing unduly what is good in Lowell's characteristic style of incredibly implicated cross-reference.

10 Father's “piker speculations” contrast with Grandfather's prodigal losses—see Lord Weary's Castle, where Grandfather's generosity is his salvation (a point not yet made clear by the critics). Father's spending “a king's ransom” to reduce an ordinary Chevvie to snobbish plainness is an example of degenerate small-mindedness.

11 The line from Mallarmé's “Brise Marine,” which has been identified as Lowell's allusion, is adapted from Baudelaire; Lowell alludes to both, possibly, but “Le Voyage” provides a richer ironical context.

12 See Charles Mauron, Psychocritique du genre comique (Paris: José Corti, 1964), pp. 58–64, for a broad application to comedy of this central Freudian theme.