Death seems a popular subject in poetry, yet the deep unknowability of it deems it worthy of continued conversation. Even poets with differing styles of poetry can compare in their struggle and emotion with death.
The speaker of Charles Simic’s poem “The Immortal” dwells on
a grim past, recalling:
You’re shivering my memory.
You went out early and coatless
To visit your old schoolmasters
And their pet monkeys.
As I read “shivering” and “early and coatless,” I relive my
own experiences of grey morning skies and the pain of winter wind slicing at my
fingertips. The speaker relives this
memory with a bleak setting of physical cold, creating an ominous and
sorrowful tone.
This sorrow carries into the detailed and vivid imagery. I felt part of the memory as I read the comforting simile: “Outside it was snowing as in a dream.” Just as I felt the bliss of this image, the speaker contrasts it with despair: “You were ill
and in bed.” The hopeless experience repeats:
The blind
old woman next door
Whose sighs
and shuffles you’d welcome
Had died
mysterious in the summer.
The feeling of disappointment comes from the contrast of joyful images and sounds with illness and death.
In addition to the images, the direct second person "you" pulled me further into the poem. The speaker directly address the subject of his memory with
the second person “you,” indicating a close relationship with the subject. I
read the subject to be a specific person, rather than some other unknown
entity. This direct address enhanced my immersive experience as it also called
to me as a reader. It is as if I am partaking in the actions of the subject as
well.
This grim poem ends at the moment of death that includes physical
action:
Time had stopped at dusk.
You were shivering at the thought
Of such great happiness.
The subject is shivering (like at the beginning) at the time
of death. Death in this poem is not a silent passing. Emily Dickinson similar
considers the moment of death as more than a simple end to life. The speaker explains, “I heard a Fly
buzz—when I died—“ The fly is just one of the spectators in the room of the
speaker’s death, yet it receives a second mention at the end of the poem:
There
interposed a Fly—
With
Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—
Between the
light—and me—
And then
the Window failed—and then
I could not
see to see—
The fly is playing a significant role in the speaker’s
death. The buzz is the sound the speaker experiences the moment of death (as
seen in the beginning) and even as the speaker has gone beyond death at the end
of the poem. The fly is zooming around
the room as the speaker passes into the light (“Between the light—and me—). I
can hear the buzz of the fly given the word is an onomatopoeia, but the dashes
in the line “Between the light—and me—“ are literally between the words “light”
and me. The poem’s form also creates the sound and image of the fly
interrupting the speaker’s passing.
Simic’s speaker seems preoccupied with happiness in relation
to death. Death and illness takes the joy for the living as seen in the third
verse, but experiencing death first hand perhaps brings happiness (immortality?)
unknown to the living. Yet, Dickinson’s poem carries less sentiment and more
exploration of the unknown reality of death and what comes after.
