The Iowa Review
Volume 34
Issue 2 Fall
Article 52
2004
Simic's Surrealist Metaphysics: A Review of Charles
Simic, "The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and
New Poems"
Jerry Harp
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Harp, Jerry. "Simic's Surrealist Metaphysics: A Review of Charles Simic, "The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems"." The
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JERRY HARP
Simic's Surrealist Metaphysics: A Review of Charles Simic,
The Voice at 3:00 a.m.: Selected Late and New Poems
to
connects
For many
the term
'surrealism'
readers
readily
in
Six"
Les
of Mervyn
"Canto
of
Chants de
Lautr?amont's
description
on a dissecting
he is as fair "as the chance meeting
Maldoror?that
and an umbrella"
table of a sewing-machine
(trans. Alexis Lykiard
of a definition,
has become
1970). The description
something
by
as
But
of
of
Maurice
surrealist
Nadeau
way
example,
procedure.
points out in his The History of Surrealism, this movement
developed
than a literary or artistic
with their interests in dream states,
school. Rather, its practitioners,
and
the
chance, madness,
unconscious,
sought to free themselves
convention
from stultifying
and to discover new ways of
bourgeois
the World
between
Wars
more
in the world.
As Nadeau
also points out,
movement
to show up
has
tended
decidedly French,
as something
in the United
of a mongrel
States. Despite
the work
a
the Chicago
Surrealist Movement
of
version,
(See
home-grown
understanding
this European,
and being
as much
Surrealist Subversions, ed. Ron Sakolsky, Autonomedia
2002), which
a rather
to
in
has
have
the
tended
surrealism
sixties,
developed
in the artistic
existence
life of this country, even with
haphazard
the work of James T?te, the early Mark Strand, and certain strains of
as
John Ashbery. But then the influence of surrealism has dispersed,
to do, spreading
through many parts of the
This
is
well demonstrated
poetry writing world.
dispersal
by Strand
Another
and Simic's well-known
17
European and
anthology
Republic:
strong
influences
tend
of writers whom
the editors claim
South American Writers, composed
as influences,
them
?talo
and Vasko
Calvino,
Julio Cort?zar,
among
Popa, the latter of whom Simic has translated at length.
These
considerations
of Charles
poetry
as an exemplar
Simic's poems
interest
of a given movement,
in light of surrealist
in the shadow
to surrealism's
from his
form a helpful
no poet
Simic. While
in taking
backdrop
should be considered
up
the
solely
to read
it is illuminating
For example,
his
protocols.
life of the unconscious
forms
a strong link
poetry comes
legacy. Much of the imagery of Simic's
in Yugoslavia
childhood
during the Second World
War.
170
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A Fly in the Soup (Michigan 2000), he describes
his
across
in the bombed-out
in Belgrade, playing
building
of jungle
from his family home: "Our wartime
equivalent
In his memoir
childhood
the street
to be found in
forts, and mazes were
gyms, slides, tree houses,
left.
that ruin across the street. There was a part of the staircase
We would
the debris, and all of a sudden there
climb up between
be the sky!" This is a passage at once
about certain of surrealism's
implications
would
with
eerily stark and rich
sources, the world's
Simic also describes watch
violence.
and inexplicable
a
as
of
little boy, the bombings
Belgrade from his grandfather's
ing,
house in the country. His grandfather would give him some cheese
listen for the explosions:
and a sip of wine, and they would
brokenness
He didn't say anything, but he had a smile on his face that I still
remember. My father's father had a dark view of the human spe
As
cies.
far
as he was
house. Events
full bloom,
The
we
were
all
inmates
in a nut
like this confirmed what he already suspected.
there
the meantime,
concerned,
were
the night
scents
of a country
garden
In
in
the stars in the sky, the silence of a small village.
line about
may work well as a sum
as
of the world,
long as one bears in mind
toward his fellow inmates and the
of his attitude
in a nuthouse
inmates
sense
mary of Simic's
the congeniality
the
he includes himself
among them, whether
surety with which
as
an
to
in
institution
be
configured
asylum
happens
("Relaxing
a Madhouse")
or a prison
("Penal Architecture,"
"Serving Time").
in the distance with the
of the bombings
Further, the juxtaposition
almost
Edenic moment
sets
Simic's
in the village
is one
forth.
that, taken as a whole,
are
and conversation
poetry
Eating, drinking,
all but surreal by a violent world.
concerns
Simic's
have him raising philosophical
rendered
a kind
that have
been
asked
for centuries.
of
questions
In his essay "Poetry is
(Michigan 1994), Simic
in The Unemployed Fortune-Teller
reports Hayden Carruth saying to him that "poets of the second half
of the
of the twentieth
century are really displaced metaphysicians
the Present"
century." In fact, it seems that the title of Simic's vol
ume, The Voice at 3:00 A.M. (Harcourt 2003), has its roots in exactly
to his struggles
this idea of the poet as metaphysician.
Alluding
in
Simic
"I've
for sixty years
lain
the
dark
with
insomnia,
says,
nineteenth
171
vileness
from my own life to the world's
sweating over everything
at 3 a.m., that's me" (A Fly in the
and stupidity. The metaphysician
some
in a mode
Simic
faces
questions
weighty
Soup). Certainly,
concerns.
Thomas
of
his
"St.
the
whose
depth
jocularity registers
a poem with a heavyweight
title if ever there was one,
of the self: "I left parts of
begins by alluding to the fragmentation
absent-minded
The
/
way
people leave / Gloves
myself
everywhere
to synthesize
Whereas
and umbrellas-"
Aquinas was attempting
to the Divine,
the
ideas about human nature and its relationship
Aquinas,"
of
of the bric-a-brac
composed
speaker of this poem finds himself
some
in search of
the everyday world
through which he wanders
to
In
of quest, he
this
mode
make
of
himself.
and
call
further
thing
takes a cue from the poem's
ironically
Since
"man
naturally
desires
theologian:
happiness,"
According to St. Thomas Aquinas,
Who gave irrefutable proof of God's existence
I loaded trucks in the Garment Center.
A
black
In the
situation
man
and
I stole
a woman's
and purpose,
red dress.
is a part, the ideal
of which Aquinas
tradition
in the
'eudemonia'
of beatitude?or
for the achievement
one that is not taken up merely with a
of Aristotle?is
classical
language
includes plenty of room for pursuits
struggle for survival, but which
worth carrying out for their own sake (See Joseph Pieper's Leisure as
the Basis of Culture). The garment center job that the speaker takes
on lies some distance
In the context of this
from such pursuits.
the act of stealing
is the sort of prank
favor as an act of rebellion
numbing work,
"holding one sleeve,"
the dress, each person
sur
that the old-school
realists might
the work-a-day
against
rather
the drudgery of
in the
poignantly
world. This prank works especially
an item from the work-a-day
into a ges
world
it
way
incorporates
ture at once rebellious
and in a sense artistic, a kind of two-partner
dance with a red dress.
this gesture hardly suffices, and the speaker goes in pursuit
as conversation
and poetry. He eventually
leisure activities
on
himself
takes
the identity suggested
by his reading, announcing
as "amedieval
in exile," an identity he can assume only
philosopher
in partial terms. After all, the demands of chronology
aside, he does
But
of such
172
not spend his time working up theological
"in the movies
all day long." Nevertheless,
another persona:
Imet
Everyone
Wore
"I'm
part of my destiny
the
Bartleby
"Me,
he
too,"
treatises, but rather stays
his reading affords him
like a carnival mask.
Scrivener,"
I told
the
Italian
replied.
And I could see nothing but overflowing
The
waiter.
flies
human-faced
were
busy
ashtrays
examining.
Like a fly living off carrion, the speaker lives off the leavings of the
its history of letters. There is a long
and its history, especially
and letters on a page, the latter
of
association
between
death
history
world
the living breath of readers to remain alive. In this piecing
an identity, there is a further relation to Aquinas, who
of
together
from the riches of the Biblical, classical,
his writings
synthesized
requiring
In a similar way, the poem's
patristic, and medieval worlds.
weaves himself from the texts and encounters
of his world.
into Simic's
Woven
texts
are encounters
with
speaker
a world
by turns
abound with
and cruel. On the one hand, the poems
war:
of
;
images
"Night of distant guns" ("For the Sake of Amelia")
"The
"We played war during the war, / Margaret"
("The Big War");
love potion"
/ Spoke of war as of a magic
("Paradise
president
"I had a small, nonspeaking
Motel");
part / In a bloody epic. Iwas
marvelous
one of the / Bombed
and fleeing humanity"
("Cameo Appearance");
"The butchery of the innocent / Never
stops" ("Sunday Papers").
imminent
the threat of this butchery may
however
Nevertheless,
be, there may exist in the midst of the chaos world enough and time
like celebration:
for something
We
To
don't
come
even
up
take
time
for air.
We keep our mouths full and busy
Eating bread and cheese
And smooching in between.
("Crazy About Her Shrimp")
173
such moments
But
of
ease
tenuous
remain
in a world
whose
of
cruelty show up in the most
commonplace
In "The City" the reader encounters
"at least one cruci
fied at every corner." As the poem proceeds,
it illustrates Auden's
in "Mus?e des Beaux Arts,"
that suffering
"takes place /
dictum,
injustice
moments.
and bizarre
someone
While
or opening
is eating
else
a window
or just walking
dully along":
There
were
saw
who
many
none
A couple lingered on kissing
Right
where
someone
of
this.
lustily
lay under
a newspaper.
His bloody feet, swollen twice their size,
Jutted out into the cold of the day,
Grim proofs of a new doctrine.
I tell you,
Iwas
afraid.
A man
Everyone
Was
whose
I sought
eyes
screamed
as if nothing had happened.
And continued walking
avoided
mine.
to resemble him a little?
I beginning
To no avail the speaker tries to come up with an adequate response,
but all his responses
remain confused. The only response
that the
seems
to
is
offer
that
of
those
swollen
"Grim
feet,
poem
proofs of a
new doctrine" of suffering and abuse.
There
are times when
the searches of these poems
find Simic
of
"First
Frost," for exam
delving
mystical
experience.
time
the
"The
of
for
the
/ October
year
ple, begins
mystics.
sky and
the Cloud of Unknowing."
The second line alludes to the medieval
into realms
on the contemplative
life, The Cloud of Unknowing, a famous
of
which
humans'
example
negative
theology,
emphasizes
inability
to know the Divine,
before whom
human
language and categories
remain utterly
The poem goes on to feature famous
inadequate.
treatise
of Western
such as Jakob Boehme,
the German
tradition,
mystics
wrote
Renaissance
cobbler who
The Way of Christ. Simic has Boehme
tea
on
and
the need for silence. But the poem
sipping
discoursing
refuses
The
Hair
174
this counsel:
young
fallen
woman
over
paid
her
eyes,
no
attention.
Breasts loose and damp in her robe,
Stubbornly scrubbing a difficult stain.
Then the dog's bark brought us all outdoors,
And that wasn't just geese honking,
But Dame Julian of Norwich herself discoursing
On
the marvelous
Julian of Norwich,
God as our Mother,
ness) of God, gets
some human
courtesy
and
homeliness
of
the Maker.
a medieval
who
English mystic
emphasized
with
the
courtesy
along
(meaning the courtli
God in
the final word. The need to understand
term or another
is reasserted
in the poem,
which
is
times and
allegory exactly, but rather a world of intersecting
turn
out to
in which
the honking
interwoven
texts, a world
geese
in the
be a mystic of the Middle Ages talking about the miraculous
terms of courtesy and the homeliness
of domesticity.
commonplace
not
in the world of the poem remains in constant flux. It is
Everything
in this flux that is the mar
the way that Simic addresses and moves
as well
vel and delight of his poems. At once skeptical and mystical,
as both poignant and humorous
in the midst of tragedy, his poems
a surrealism that ranges through history and thereby illu
constitute
minates
the struggles
and pressures
of the present moment.
175