James Merrill's manners and Elizabeth Bishop's dismay

Twentieth Century Literature, Summer, 2004 by Luke Carson

In "A Class Day Talk," Merrill affiliates Bishop with the social world of which he is a member by citing a letter to Anne Stevenson in which Bishop identifies herself as a snob among other snobs:

      I think snobbery governs a good deal of my taste. I've been lucky
       in having had some witty friends--and I mean real wit, quickness,
       wild fancies, remarks that make one cry with laughing.... (qtd.
       in Recitative 162)

Simultaneously, as if to draw attention to the danger of identifying oneself in terms of such a small social world, Merrill notes that in "another letter to the same person" Bishop identifies herself as one of a group of barbarians: "I think we are still barbarians, barbarians who commit a hundred indecencies and cruelties every day of our lives ..." (162). In juxtaposing these two passages from different letters, Merrill aligns the group of "witty friends" with the "we" who are identified as barbarians, suggesting that the snobbery entailed by membership in the community of friends is affiliated with a barbarian cruelty and indecency that manifests itself "every day of our lives" in episodes like the small cruelty of Merrill's patronizing attitude toward Peter Hooten. Though he and Bishop share aesthetic criteria for what constitutes friendship, Merrill identifies in Bishop's work an acute sensitivity to "[t]he threat of human indecency and cruelty" that "can be felt always between her lines" (162). In his obituary of her, Merrill tells a story that exemplifies not only Bishop's moral sensitivity, which is a concomitant of respect, but also her "gift to be simple": prisoners in Brazil were able to talk to her quietly, "like an old friend who would understand" (122).

Bishop herself struggled with the question of the relationship between manners and morals, understanding manners as Merrill does to be the form in which the moral quality of respect is expressed. Her notes for a review of Marianne Moore's work reveal Bishop's admiration of Moore's "absolute refusal to differentiate between people at all":

      I don't think I've ever really given her enough credit for her
       democracy--being put off by the tediousness of her politeness,
       etc.... If her manners are too ceremonious, at least they are
       equally so for "Gladys," "Tom," (TSE), or the elevator man. I
       wish I could quote Pascal's remark exactly, about how all men are
       not counted equal but it is spiritual death if we don't behave as
       if they were. (qtd. in Goldensohn 152)

Just as Bishop tries to learn something of democratic manners from Moore, Merrill tries to learn the meaning of manners from Bishop. Indeed, in "Self-Portrait in a Tyvek Windbreaker," to express what he learns, Merrill turns to Bishop's summary of Pascal: "For while all humans aren't / Countable as equals, we must behave / As if they were, or the spirit dies (Pascal)" (Poems 671). (4)

Merrill's poem dramatizes the very problem that concerned Bishop and Pascal. Merrill represents himself as a superior outsider who, dressed down in a Tyvek windbreaker with a world map on it, is mistaken for "Everyman ... the whole world's pal!" Not recognizing that his green "terry-cloth headband" is the laurel that distinguishes him as a poet, people on the street, to his veiled horror, hail him familiarly. A "smiling-as-if-I-should-know-her teenager," also wearing a windbreaker, waves at him, and though he doesn't welcome the wave he returns it "Like an accomplice." His good manners have no substance, however, as his Pascalian imperative for reciprocating the greeting makes clear: we must behave as if others are our equals, though we know they are not. Merrill cannot quite make himself treat the people on the street reciprocally as equals, and his scorn, which is perceptible, leads him to question whether there is such a thing as "we": "'We'? A few hundred decades ... / / Between us and the red genetic muck" doesn't make for an "Everyman." (5)