For those in 3rd period who are just looking for something to comment on, my poem was the short yet intense "Suicide's Note" by Langston Hughes:
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.I remember just flipping through the Anthology looking for a poem to talk about and this one caught my eye pretty quickly. It was short but from the get-go I noticed that it could totally have a much deeper meaning than just someone diving into a river.
Here was my thought process: firstly, its Suicide's Note, not The Suicide note or simply 'Suicide note'. So was it suicide personified that was speaking? Honestly, I rolled that in my head for a bit, but it never really seemed to stick very well. Its not like the suicide itself could have thoughts, and a suicide can't commit suicide. I ended up just thinking about the speaker as the person who committed suicide, talking to us from the grave, kind of explaining his actions. As someone brought up in class, the suicide was a very immediate and swift decision, or at least it seemed to be. Mr. Mitchell brought up the point of narcissism, that its like at the moment, the speaker wasn't really thinking about anyone else other than himself and the river. It was like if nothing could stop him from wanting to 'kiss' the river.
Narcissus would always look into the water and see his own reflection right? This is where I got the idea that perhaps the reader too looked into the river and saw his reflection. Given the tone of the poem, which seems very relaxed, I can assume that the speaker's face was calm and 'cool'. Perhaps yes, the speaker wanted to give himself a kiss, in which case, his own narcissism was the cause of his death, and I can't really say I feel bad for the speaker.
But then there's another definition of a 'cool' face that I talked about in my poetry talk as well. A 'cool face' could also refer to an unfriendly, an apathetic face.
Rivers are beautiful.
You know it, I know it.
Well, at least the non-polluted ones are.
If you felt like something with a beautiful face was apathetic towards you, that it was uninterested in you, would you not want to be acknowledged by it? Would you not want it to notice you, so that you could fully see and surrender to its beauty? If this was the case, then when the river asks for a kiss, then the speaker was much more interested in obliging to the river than truly wanting to die. Maybe all the speaker wanted was a kiss, maybe in his life he felt sad and alone. Touch deprivation can truly send someone spiraling into depression fairly quickly.
Something that I didn't bring up in class, but I read elsewhere, was that wanting to die, wanting to not be alive, and wanting to kill oneself are very different feelings. I don't think the speaker wanted to die, nor do I think the speaker wanted to kill himself. I feel like, in these situations, the person would be much more tense. If someone wanted to die or kill themselves, I feel like they would not put so much emphasis on the river wanting a kiss.
Our speaker must've finally found peace by being able to kiss the river and not be alive anymore. Kisses in literature are often seen as signs of love, obviously, but also hope. In his last moments, maybe the speaker was hopeful that this would end his sorrows? There is also the fact that in literature, rivers are also used as metaphors for the passing of time, that time is free, like the water (I thought this was important to add, because the speaker could have easily jumped into a pond or lake with the same results, why was a river chosen?), and death is the abrupt stopping of time. In this sense, perhaps the speaker hopes that he will become immortal? Or maybe, that he will become an icon, that people will remember him?
These are some thoughts I had when reading through the poem. Its a poem I'd like to share with more people, if possible, because it has a much deeper meaning in it than one can see at a first glance.
One way I interpreted the poem was that the poem was written as a note from "suicide". Maybe I'm thinking of this in too much of a Romantic sense but I thought of Suicide as a being. If you think of Suicide as something that could think or talk, then you could understand the poem as an apology or an explanation from suicide. Perhaps Suicide wanted to give a kiss to the River and needed to use a human body in order to do it, meaning every kiss he gave to the river was a human body that he killed. You made an important point when separating the wish to die, the wish to not live, and the wish to end one's life. With each of these, the meaning of the poem changes completely. I think that if you take the meaning as wishing to die, it makes the narrator pitiful. Saying that the river asked for a kiss sounds like an excuse in that context. Using the meaning of wishing to not live anymore makes the poem much sadder. Now the poem has become a conflict within the narrator. The narrator, possibly exhausted with life, faces the river that asks for a kiss, but does not want to die yet, as he is just tired of living. The last definition fits more with the interpretation we discussed in class about how the face in the river is the reflection of the narrator. Perhaps the narrator looks down at the river and sees his own broken face and it seems to ask him for a kiss. I hope this wasn't too dark or deep of an interpretation of such a short poem but anyways thanks for bringing up this poem in class.
ReplyDeleteI can confirm that in my experience at least, wanting to die, wanting to kill yourself, and wanting to not be alive are very different feelings with very different implications. I'd also point out that when someone is in the mindset of being on the verge of suicide, their thought processes are distorted and no longer conventionally logical, and the short and poetic, almost romantic nature of this poem reflects that chillingly well. Like the connection you drew to Narcissus, being in the headspace needed for one to commit suicide is very much so tunnel visioned around oneself - you lose regard for anyone else in the world. That's not to say that people who commit suicide or contemplate it are selfish, but that being in that sort of state of mind is incredibly altering to the way one thinks and interacts with the world. Like you said at the beginning, this poem is very short and yet extremely impactful and indicative in so many ways of how suicide impacts a person.
ReplyDeleteSomething that struck me about this poem is that, like you pointed out, suicide is a very intentional thing. Killing oneself usually involves some kind of targeted intention, but this poem is phrased as if death is an after-effect and not the main objective. I'm sure many people have those thoughts or destructive impulses when standing atop a high place or faced with a situation that could put them in danger: "what if I jumped?", "What if I stuck my hand in that machinery?", etc. This almost feels like an extension of those thoughts, led more by impulse and morbid curiosity than an actual desire to end one's life. This sounds like the narrator from beyond the grave explaining the impulses that led him to jump, but contrasts heavily with the poem's title which implies intent. What's left to the imagination is the exact nature of that intent, and the narrator's goal in jumping into the river.
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