James Merrill's manners and Elizabeth Bishop's dismay

Twentieth Century Literature, Summer, 2004 by Luke Carson

Why does Merrill not shrug? As Hooten attacks the Marschallin, he is also attacking Merrill, who discovers that he has been implicitly identified with the aging diva with whom he identified as a young man. His impulse to shrug confirms the identification, but he refuses to step on stage as the Marschallin. Although his exchange with Hooten is not a scene of rejection, Merrill's impulse indicates his dramatic role as aging lover. The attack exposes the possibility that Merrill's own shrugs, with which Hooten was likely familiar, might simply be a performance for an audience that can acknowledge the maturity and dignity they attempt to signify, and that his occulted theatricality has been exposed by another, more skeptical audience. The gesture of the aging lover, like the gesture of the aging diva, may simply transform "dreams of immolation and all-consuming love" to dreams of dignity.

Nonetheless, though he refrains from shrugging, Merrill inwardly maintains that "[t]he hold of art wasn't to be broken that easily" (115). He still feels the shrug would be proper but recognizes that it might seem offensive and dismissive--perhaps even cruel. In this account of his restraint, however, Merrill nonetheless shrugs to his audience, his readers, and acknowledges that he does so at Hooten's expense. Merrill allows us to see that his apparent respect for Hooten's feelings amounts to no more than mere politeness. He feels the hold of art at the moment he withholds what he feels is the gesture that belongs. Moreover, the gesture is called for in two senses: first by the aesthetic criteria of art, which are satisfied by the Marschallin's shrug; second, and more important, by the moral criterion of respect and friendship. If Hooten were his equal in these matters, Merrill could have shrugged, and the gesture would make both a moral and an aesthetic claim. Merrill, in this situation, is the grown-up. The problem with this particular alignment of manners and morals is that the moral sensitivity Merrill displays in his restraint amounts to no more than politeness because Hooten has violated the implicit rules of behavior that must be followed if one is to command the respect of others within a community defined by aesthetic criteria of behavior. Hooten places himself outside a community of those who would appreciate Merrill's shrug, which is also a community of those who would understand the Marschallin's shrug. The shrug signifies "the hold of art" because it is a minimal theatrical display, an expressive reticence. It signifies maturity and experience by expressing one's ability to refrain from "fall[ing] to the floor when nothing else availed."

These are among the reasons the Marschallin's shrug "turned out [not] to be much of a help in day-to-day living" (141). Merrill implicitly holds out for the possibility that "the hold of art" can be qualified by a moral purpose not dependent on the aesthetic criteria that constitute a small community of insiders. Rather than Mina or the Marschallin, it is Elizabeth Bishop whom Merrill identifies as the "female role model" who taught him about not only the art but the ethics that can attempt to align manners and morals so that their overlapping criteria cannot only be satisfied in "the right company" identified by the "tribal scarification" of its upbringing (22). Rather than being "theatrical" in the operatic sense, Bishop managed "life-long impersonations of an ordinary woman" (Recitative 121) that provided Merrill with an example of a morally respectable selfhood that contrasts with the "opera-going self" and its performances.