Cullen, keats, and the privileged liar

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 2002 by Goldweber, David E

Each time he presents these counter-arguments, the poet follows with "So I lie," and as Gerald Early has noted before me (59), the "So I lie" lines refer as much to fooling oneself as to lying on one's back in repose.

This pattern of statement (truth) versus counterstatement (lie) recurs six times in the 128-line poem, and the battle is quite close. Ultimately, the truth seems to win out-the poet resolves to "Quench my pride and cool my blood" and to recognize that "They and I are civilized." But what I find particularly interesting is that the speaker knows the real truth in the first place yet attempts to choose otherwise. Feeling unhappy, he uses a known lie to comfort himself. He does not shut the truth completely from his mind, and he does not force himself to forget it, yet he attempts to subordinate it to a lie that gives him a feeling of pride.

To Cullen, pride is often a particularly good way to fight unhappiness. Keats also saw need for "pride and egotism" (Letters 2:144) and associated himself with "Men of Power" who have a strong sense of "proper self ' ( 146 and 184). But while Keats associates pride with a straightforward acknowledgement of personal truths, Cullen's pride often requires a bit of fooling oneself. Cullen's short poem "Red" shows the hand that illusion has in producing pride:

She went to buy a brand new hat,

And she was ugly, black, and fat:

"This red becomes you well," they said,

And perched it high upon her head.

And then they laughed behind her back

To see it glow against the black.

She paid for it with regal mien,

And walked out proud as any queen.

It seems a simple, and perhaps even trite, poem. But if we view it in light of Cullen's theme of illusions and lies, it becomes more important. Cullen is not making fun of the woman; he sees her as privileged. The poem ends not with the nastiness of the jokesters but with the happiness of the woman. The jokesters unwittingly gave her a reason to feel good about herself, an important gift in Cullen's eyes.

Cullen's strongest statement of the strength of illusory pride is the sonnet "The Proud Heart":

That lively organ, palpitant and red,

Enrubied in the staid and sober breast,

Telling the living man, "You are not dead

Until this hammered anvil takes its rest,"

My life's timepiece wound to alarm some day

The body to its need of box and shroud,

Was meant till then to beat one haughty way;

A crimson stroke should be no less than proud.

Yet this high citadel has come to grief,

Been broken as an arrow drops its bird,

Splintered as many ways as veins in a leaf

At a woman's laugh or a man's harsh word;

But being proud still strikes its hours in pain;

The dead man lives, and none perceives him slain.

Like the title-character of Hawthorne's "Feathertop"-a scarecrow able to maintain actual life within himself as long as he continues to puff his pipe-this dead man is able to live on as long as he maintains his pride. We do not know exactly what type of pride this is-pride in one's past achievements, in one's future potential, in one's physical or mental prowess, or in something else. Perhaps it is a different type of pride for each of us that keeps us alive.