Vicarious Love

[PrinceMyshkin]

You’re reading this novel
and you’re at the point
where the narrator is falling in love
with the woman who, you know,
will later become his wife

and you’re in love
with the two of them
–no, you’re in love
with them falling in love with each other
as if they were doing it for you.

You go, boy! You want to say:
You go, girl! As if the world,
the Fall, the flood, all the wars
were just the backdrop
for these moments between the two of them.

[AuntShecky]

The first two stanzas ("strophes") are very interesting, as is often the case with your efforts. The only thing I can't quite understand is in the third (verse, stanza, strophe): does the phrase the "two of you" refer to the boy and girl in the novel or to a different twosome, one of which is the speaker?

[PrinceMyshkin]

The first two stanzas ("strophes") are very interesting, as is often the case with your efforts. The only thing I can't quite understand is in the third (verse, stanza, strophe): does the phrase the "two of you" refer to the boy and girl in the novel or to a different twosome, one of which is the speaker?

It seemed to me that it had to be the two characters in the novel. (The Book Against God, by James Wood, which I came to by way of Marilynne Robinson's enthusiastic reference to it in an interview she gave. I'm currently up to my... ears in Robinsoniana: that novel + her first which my very dear neighbour found among her books and loaned to me + The Death of Adam, a collection of Ms R's essays on literature and contemporary thought, which arrived this am from a 2nd-hand internet booksite...)

[Virgil]

I had the same trouble as Aunty with that last line, but what a marvelous triangle. :lol: I really think the first two stanzas are fabulous. The last left me a little with an anticlimatic feeling. But there is something definitely there in this poem. :)

[qimissung]

But that's what it is, isn't it? A triangle, and the three of you falling in love?

[Pendragon]

As if the world,
the Fall, the flood, all the wars
were just the backdrop
for these moments between the two of you.


I, for one, loved the closing lines. You seem to indicate that love is more important than everything bad that has happened since the world began

[PrinceMyshkin]

I had the same trouble as Aunty with that last line, but what a marvelous triangle. :lol: I really think the first two stanzas are fabulous. The last left me a little with an anticlimatic feeling. But there is something definitely there in this poem. :)

"anticlimax" is something I (too?) readily accept in my poems, in the hope that the unresolved chord might continue to resonate in the reader's mind.


I, for one, loved the closing lines. You seem to indicate that love is more important than everything bad that has happened since the world began

I may not believe that but I do believe that it is endemic to the heady experience of falling or being in love, what others have called a folie a deux. Thank you, Pen


But that's what it is, isn't it? A triangle, and the three of you falling in love?

Perhaps Euclidean geometry falls short here, because I felt myself to be a fourth line, as it were, craving not one or the other of the primary lovers but for their continuing love of each other. It is like that with Luc & Julie, two week-end visitors to my cafe, who have been lovers - as far as I know - for two years but always speak with each other as if they are in the first five minutes of mutual discovery. I told them, the other day, that together they were my "lucky charm."

[qimissung]

I think that is what I meant-a bystander, or a fond relative or friend, or fairy godmother, who just wishes the others much happines and would sprinkle them with fairy dust if they could.

[Virgil]

"anticlimax" is something I (too?) readily accept in my poems, in the hope that the unresolved chord might continue to resonate in the reader's mind.

Yes, I have noticed that, and it does work well in many places. Perhaps it's not the anticlimax per se here, but this way of ending it. I don't know. It could be me. What do others say?


I, for one, loved the closing lines. You seem to indicate that love is more important than everything bad that has happened since the world began

After re-reading it, perhaps you are right. It took a while, but I am relenting. It's a good ending. :)

[firefangled]

Yes, I have noticed that, and it does work well in many places. Perhaps it's not the anticlimax per se here, but this way of ending it. I don't know. It could be me. What do others say?


I agree that the first two stanzas are interesting and present the boy and girl falling in love (their love affair) as the thing the narrator is falling in love with.

It seems there is something missing before the way this currently closes. It is because the use of second person is both singular and plural at the same time in the closing line, and because of the words "two of you," which creates the ambiguity.

You in this poem is referencing four people. This is always an interesting use of "you are," when a narrator (of the poem, not the novel) is saying you (the reader) and also meaning himself (or herself). When "you" addresses the boy and girl individually in the last stanza, "you" changes its referents from the reader/narrator of the poem to the characters in the novel, addressing them individually. This breaks "their" (to whom you could say "the love affair of you") love affair into its individual parts.

Finally, when the poem narrator says, "the two of you," it is ambiguous as to who the "two" are. If it is the boy and girl just referenced, the syntax calls for "them." If the poem narrator wants it to mean the poem reader and the boy and girl, then the syntax needs to refer to the affair with its parts, once again, brought together under the word affair. Then, there is a very interesting reading of the last three words where "you" means the reader and the love affair (including the boy and girl) and the poem narrator.

To accomplish this I think something is missing in S3, L4: "were just the backdrop for the affair,/for these moments between the two of you."

The use of second person this way, to include the reader and the narrator never can have them simultaneously as the actor. All this is done in our heads, but it is either you the reader or you the narrator addressing himself in the second person, which the reader "you" never knows about. It provides very interesting relationships.

This is the only way I could remove the uncomfortable ambiguity I felt in the last line as I read it.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I agree that the first two stanzas are interesting and present the boy and girl falling in love (their love affair) as the thing the narrator is falling in love with.

It seems there is something missing before the way this currently closes. It is because the use of second person is both singular and plural at the same time in the closing line, and because of the words "two of you," which creates the ambiguity.

I've taken your advice to change the final "you" to them,but as for the rest of it, I feel as if this were already carved in stone and if - to attempt a megalomaniacal & possibly blasphemous analogy - if the Lord had gone back to change even one word of the Decalogue, might not the tablets have cracked and been useless? (Yes, I remember that Moses himself destroyed them when he encountered piedmontese Israelites worshipping the golden calf.)


You in this poem is referencing four people. This is always an interesting use of "you are," when a narrator (of the poem, not the novel) is saying you (the reader) and also meaning himself (or herself). When "you" addresses the boy and girl individually in the last stanza, "you" changes its referents from the reader/narrator of the poem to the characters in the novel, addressing them individually. This breaks "their" (to whom you could say "the love affair of you") love affair into its individual parts.

Finally, when the poem narrator says, "the two of you," it is ambiguous as to who the "two" are. If it is the boy and girl just referenced, the syntax calls for "them." If the poem narrator wants it to mean the poem reader and the boy and girl, then the syntax needs to refer to the affair with its parts, once again, brought together under the word affair. Then, there is a very interesting reading of the last three words where "you" means the reader and the love affair (including the boy and girl) and the poem narrator.

To accomplish this I think something is missing in S3, L4: "were just the backdrop for the affair,/for these moments between the two of you."

The use of second person this way, to include the reader and the narrator never can have them simultaneously as the actor. All this is done in our heads, but it is either you the reader or you the narrator addressing himself in the second person, which the reader "you" never knows about. It provides very interesting relationships.

This is the only way I could remove the uncomfortable ambiguity I felt in the last line as I read it.

Phew! You've taken a lot of trouble to make these helpful points, for which I thank you and as I wrote above, after I first read your comments I went back and made one of the changes you recommended.