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Variations: XII
by Conrad Aiken
Wind, wind, wind in the old trees,
Whispering prophecies all night long ...
What do the grey leaves sing to the wind,
What do they say in their whispered song?
We were all young once, and green as the sea,
We all loved beauty, the maiden of white.
But now we are old, O wind, have mercy
And let us remember our youth this night!
The wind is persuasive, it turns through the trees
And sighs of a miracle under its breath...
Beauty the dream will die with the dreamer,
None shall have mercy, but all shall have death.
- - - - - - -
How Conrad Aiken's "Variations: XII"
works its magic on us, and why that matters:
by Ken Sanes
Conrad Aiken's "Variations: XII" is about one of the most important
themes in poetry -- our effort to come to terms with our mortality and
the passage of time.
In the poem, dying leaves are pleading for mercy from the wind to not
blow them down, just as all of us, especially in old age, would like to
ask death not to take us. In their youth, the personified leaves "loved
beauty, the maiden of white." Even in age, the leaves still embody the
love of beauty since they sing their plea to the wind, which means they
don't only represent us in a general way, but they also represent poets
and artists (including the poet himself), creating works of literature
and art to hold off death and dwell in dreams of youth.
This then is the basic symbolism of the poem, in which the leaves are us
and the wind that would blow them down is death. The conflict between
the two comes to a head in the last stanza, as we read on to see how the
wind will respond to the plea of the leaves. It begins with a deeply
ironic understatement: "The wind (namely death) is persuasive…." Then it
evokes a sense of foreboding as the wind "turns through the trees." Then
there is an intimation of hope and mystery as the wind "sighs of a
miracle under its breath…"
But Aiken's poem tells us there isn't hope in the face of death, and the
only miracle is that "beauty the dream will die with the dreamer." Not
even beauty or beautiful poems like this one can offer us the hope that
we can transcend death. Finally, in the last line, comes the
cold-hearted and definitive answer to the leaves' collective plea for
mercy, which is ironically stated as if something is being bestowed on
all of us: "None shall have mercy, but all shall have death." So the
leaves, like everything that is alive, will die, and nothing they do
will stop it.
Like many works that are elegiac in tone, Variations: XII fills our
contemplation of mortality with beauty, and makes it something sad and
evocative. And it evokes a sense of awe and irony at the profound
mystery of death.
In fact, Variations: XII is part of a long tradition of works that evoke
a sense of what I refer to as
the fateful
sublime -- which is the experience of awe, irony and loss that we
have when we contemplate mortality and the passage of time. It
accomplishes this through something that really is a miracle -- the
evocative qualities of language. Along the way, it conveys a hushed
tone, which is appropriate to its subject, by using the words,
"whispered", "sighs", and "under its breath". And as "the grey leaves
sing to the wind," we can almost hear them rustling.
Aiken's poem also offers a depiction of poetry and storytelling, and
more generally, of all aesthetic creation, one that he perhaps derived
from his readings in psychology. It isn't something that is
unambiguously stated and so, as a tentative suggestion, I would say it
goes something like this:
First, the poem depicts the love of beauty as an expression of youth and
fresh life since the leaves say that, when they were young, "We all
loved beauty, the maiden of white." But then it suggests that, when we
are older, we create art as a form of wish fulfillment to symbolically
hold off death, and dwell in dreams of youth and beauty, since the
leaves create a form of art -- a whispered song -- that says, "O wind,
have mercy / And let us remember our youth this night!"
But, Aiken tells us, death has its way in the end and, in every
instance, "beauty the dream will die with the dreamer". Since beauty is
a dream, the poem suggests that even the love of beauty is an illusion –
or at least something unreal -- in the face of death. But the poem
doesn't tell us whether it is referring to the love of beauty in youth
or (more likely) the memory of youthful beauty in age that is expressed
as a form of wish fulfillment and yearning in the song of the leaves,
which is to say, in many forms of art.
All of which suggests that good poetry and, more generally, literary
language, goes well beyond wish fulfillment. It can speak to something
deep inside us that is beyond reason, and put us in touch with profound
perceptions of existence.
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