{"id":5303,"date":"2010-05-31T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-05-30T22:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=5303"},"modified":"2010-05-09T23:30:20","modified_gmt":"2010-05-09T21:30:20","slug":"edna-st-vincent-millay-1892-%e2%80%93-1950-the-world-stands-out-on-either-side-no-wider-than-the-heart-is-wide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/05\/edna-st-vincent-millay-1892-%e2%80%93-1950-the-world-stands-out-on-either-side-no-wider-than-the-heart-is-wide\/","title":{"rendered":"Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 \u2013 1950) The World stands out on either side, no wider than the heart is wide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only the bridge of Beauty will be strong enough for crossing from the bank of Darkness to the side of Light <\/em>– Nicholas Roerich<\/p>\n

The United Nations General Assembly in resolution A\/RES.62\/90 has proclaimed the year 2010 as the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures \u201cto promote universal respect for, and observation and protection of, all human rights and fundamental freedoms.\u201d Cultures encompass not only the arts and humanities but also different ways of living together, value systems and traditions.\u00a0 Thus 2010 should provide real opportunities for dialogue among cultures.\u00a0 It is true that to an unprecedented degree people are meeting together in congresses, conferences and universities all over the globe. However, in themselves, such meetings are not dialogue and do not necessarily lead to rapprochement of cultures. There is a need to reach a deeper level.\u00a0 Reaching such deeper levels takes patience, tolerance, the ability to take a longer-range view, and creativity.\u00a0 Thus we are pleased to present the creative efforts of individuals who have helped to create bridges of understanding among cultures.<\/p>\n

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 \u2013 1950) The World stands out on either side, no wider than the heart is wide<\/strong><\/p>\n

Into the golden vessel of great song<\/p>\n

Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast<\/p>\n

Let other lovers lie, in love and rest;<\/p>\n

Not we, \u2014 articulate so, but with the tongue<\/p>\n

Of all the world.<\/p>\n

Edna St. Vincent Millay<\/p>\n

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a Dionysian of passion who symbolized the \u201cNew Woman\u201d at the end of the First World War and was a cultural bridge builder between women and men.\u00a0\u00a0 However, she wrote largely in the most controlled of poetic forms, the sonnet.<\/p>\n

As Van Wyck Brooks wote in his study of New England writers New England Indian Summer <\/em> \u201cIn Edna Millay\u2019s high lyrical talent, the Yankee note, which one felt from the first, increased in depth and clarity as time went on, as the flippancy of her earlier verse \u2013 its conscious naivet\u00e9 mingled with wonder \u2013 yielded to profundity of feeling\u2026She was direct and lucid because her feeling was intense, her sense of the miracle of consciousness and the things of earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was born in the state of Maine, of a long line of Maine families, and the sea coast provides her with many of her early images \u2014 of anchors, shells, ships and sea-farers, but there was also a certain distance from her milieu:<\/p>\n

\u201cSafe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:<\/p>\n

Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand.\u201d<\/p>\n

She left New England for university studies at Vassar, a leading college for women outside New York City, and she lived much of her life in the art and literature milieu of New York City.\u00a0 Her writing talent showed itself early, and even before graduation in 1917, she was acting and writing for a newly-formed theatre group on Cape Cod \u2014 the Providence Players.\u00a0 Eugene O\u2019Neill was the leading figure of the Players with a much darker vision of\u00a0 the human condition than Millay\u2019s.\u00a0 O\u2019Neill is still a leading figure of the American stage while Millay\u2019s early plays The Lamp and the Bell <\/em>or Two Slatterns and a King <\/em>are hardly known except by specialists.\u00a0 One of her plays, however, The King\u2019s Henchman <\/em>of 1927 was transformed into an opera by the then young New York composer and music critic Deems Taylor.\u00a0 The plot is similar to Wagner\u2019s Tristan und Isolde \u2014<\/em>though less grand.\u00a0 The King\u2019s Henchman<\/em> was performed 14 times in three seasons by the Metropolitan Opera House \u2014 a record for an American work.<\/p>\n

There were two themes to Edna St. Vincent Millay\u2019s poetry: preoccupation with youth and the passing of time:<\/p>\n

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,<\/p>\n

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain<\/p>\n

Under my head till morning; but the rain<\/p>\n

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh<\/p>\n

Upon the glass and listen for reply;<\/p>\n

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain<\/p>\n

For unremembered lads that not again<\/p>\n

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.<\/p>\n

For Millay, time passes, but does not heal<\/p>\n

Time does not bring relief, you all have lied<\/p>\n

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!<\/p>\n

Time passes, and the society grows worse as seen in these lines from her darker Conversations at Midnight <\/em>(1937):<\/p>\n

The word \u2018Personal\u2019 now on an envelop means<\/p>\n

\u2018impersonal\u2019, \u2018important\u2019 \u2018unimportant\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018the Finest\u2019 \u2018the Best\u2019 \u2018the Purest\u2019 \u2014 what do they mean now?<\/p>\n

Something somebody wants to sell,<\/p>\n

We are a nation of word-killers: hero, veteran, tragedy \u2013<\/p>\n

Watch the great words go down.<\/p>\n

Her root convictions of faith in the individual, the sense of the potential in human nature, the love of life and the belief in its ultimate goodness were sorely tested by the law case in New England\u2019s Massachusetts: the arrest for a bank robbery and the killing of the bank guard in 1920 of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and their execution in 1927.\u00a0 For Millay, the case was her one entry onto a political stage \u2014 driven less by politics than by a sense of unfairness of the weight of social power against two immigrants who hardly understood the legal system in which they were caught.\u00a0 Her poem Justice Denied in Massachusetts <\/em>published just as Sacco and Vanzetti died is an eloquent echo to Bartolomeo Vanzetti\u2019s letter to Judge Thayer who had condemned them:<\/p>\n

If it had not been for these things, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure.\u00a0 Now we are not a failure.\u00a0 This is our career and our triumph.\u00a0 Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for joostice, for man\u2019s understanding of man as we do by accident.\u00a0 Our words \u2014 our lives \u2014 our pains \u2014 nothing!\u00a0 This taking of our lives \u2014 lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler \u2014 all!\u00a0 That last moment belongs to us \u2014 that agony is our triumph.<\/em><\/p>\n

Edna St. Vincent Millay\u2019s themes and style were not those of the Depression 1930s nor the war years of the 1940s.\u00a0 She died in 1950 never having seen old age.\u00a0 Basically, she was a poet of the 1920s, but since the preoccupations of youth and the passing of time are eternal themes, her poetry merits new readers.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Rene Wadlow:<\/em><\/p>\n

Representative to the UN, Geneva, Association of World Citizens<\/em><\/p>\n

Member, TRANSCEND-A Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the year 2010 as the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures. Thus we are pleased to present the creative efforts of individuals who have helped to create bridges of understanding among cultures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}