AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

There lies about Edna St. Vincent Millay a touch of mystery. Very little is known about her life. We have only the barest outline of facts - her childhood in Maine, on the ocean; four years at Vassar; her marriage in 1927 to Eugen Jan Boissevain, after which they both retired to the seclusion of their estate, Steepletop, in Austerlitz, New York; her interest in the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1927; and her more recent interest in writing war propaganda for the Allies. There are no intimate and revealing sketches, either biographical or auto-biographical. This must have been deliberate on her part, for only a woman who lived intensely and with humor could have written her poetry. There we have the key to her personality. She resented intrusion by people who were too small to understand her, yet her poet's nature demanded expression. Perhaps she felt that anyone who read her poetry would naturally sympathize with her and understand her. Through her early, more personal writing, we come to know her as a person - a woman. We see the warm-hearted, emotional girl who loved the natural beauty, and especially that of the sea, with a passionate and naive intensity. We see a girl who was sensitive at all times to the happiness and sorrow of others; a girl who refused to be bound by conventions that didn't hold real meaning for her. We learn that as a girl she tried to direct her emotions, to love casually and briefly. As she grew older her emotions deepened. She gloried in love, and yielded herself freely to the sway of emotion - yet she never lost a tendency for self-analysis and objectivity that enabled her to see just what was happening, She knew that love was largely a matter of physical attraction, and could not last, and because she knew this she never really trusted in love. She sought it eagerly, but she could not believe in it completely. By the time she wrote Fatal Interview in 1931 she had learned that love cannot be controlled, and one cannot love casually, no matter how much one would like to. She had learned, too, that the conventions she rebelled against were there because the laws of nature and psychology demanded them. One factor that added to her charm was her sense of humor. She showed, from her first writing, a readiness to laugh at her own inconsistency and her own intensity. She never laughed at others, but she often mocked her own weaknesses in a manner that is delightfully refreshing. Her first period included Renascence, A Few Figs From Thistles, Second April, The Harp-Weaver and Three Plays. The poems are intensely feminine and emotional, and often intimate to the point of being confessional. They are characterized, furthermore, by a sure confidence. Renascence, ringing with exultation just for the joy of living, seems inspired by a revelation, and is written with a direct simplicity that gives it authority. The flip defiance of A Few Figs From Thistles and the challenging independence of Second April and The Harp-Weaver all show the high confidence of youth. Her second period, containing The Buck…