Reading “Renascence”: The Difficulty of Remaining Just One Person
by Brooke Morgan
As a senior in high school, I have often questioned my authority to comment on the works of those who we remember today as great poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay among them. While I would consider myself well-read, I am not a particularly learned individual, or some sort of literary genius; I do not hold any degrees and have published no groundbreaking works of my own. Yet as I have found myself reading and rereading "Renascence" for going on a month, searching for the courage necessary to speak with some authority on the significance of the poem or its poet, I have realized that this search is futile, and at the same time is precisely what I am able to speak with authority about.
Ultimately, "Renascence" is exactly what the title implies: a rebirth. It is the inheritance of a widened understanding of the world by a speaker who feels "bound" by their perception of a limited environment. However, this knowledge comes to the speaker at a great cost. With "Infinity," the speaker also receives an immediate awareness of mankind's evils, of sin and regret and greed, which overwhelm them. Through wavelike enjambment, Millay seems to pull the speaker, and the reader alongside them, down through the stanzas of this gruesome reality into the speaker's grave, the only place where some sort of solace is found. There is a sense of relief in this path of escape, respite found in the earth's "cool hand" and "soft breast."
But in the grave, there is a sense of loss, as well. The "pitying rain" seems to weep for this loss, providing the now-buried speaker with both a sense of companionship and of melancholy. An incredible sense of intimacy comes over the poem as the speaker wishes "to kiss the fingers of the rain," recalling the beauty of such showers, and also the beauty left in their wake. This is perhaps the greatest calamity: to escape the pain of conscience, one must also forsake the knowledge of beauty, and love, and goodness. It is this realization that drives the speaker to beg God to free them from the grave, a prayer which is soon answered, and it is in the midst of this freedom, this return to rain and sky and wind, that the speaker remarks to God: "no dark disguise / Can e'er hereafter hide from me / Thy radiant identity!" Thus it is realized that only through faith in the ultimate presence of goodness will the speaker be able to shoulder the burden that is knowledge of the pain and suffering present in the world.
There is an immense sensitivity of the soul that is necessary for us to "widen" ourselves to this beauty, making tolerable the struggles and calamities that we each encounter daily. It is through this same sensitivity that we must read poetry. In his 1968 poem "Ars Poetica?," Czeslaw Milosz proposes that "The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person." I believe that this may be interpreted not only as indicative of the power that poetry has to internally alter the self, but also as a reference to poetry's reminder of how hard it is to stand alone. To live in such a complicated and crushing world as ours is not something that one person can do on their own. As "Renascence" reminds us, the weight of the world is much too great to fall on a single person's shoulders, so we are dependent upon the relationships that we build with others. Our saving grace is the sensitivity with which we have all been blessed, the sensitivity through which we connect daily, via poetry and art and conversation, opening our eyes to the beauty in the world and in each other along the way. It is this sensitivity which makes us human, and which makes being human bearable. It is what gives me the courage to share in the reading of poetry, and it is what gives me the confidence to face the world every day, with a belief in its ultimate beauty, and a faith in the ability of others to see that beauty as well.
Brooke Morgan is a senior at Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham, where she particularly enjoys studying life sciences. When not in school, Brooke enjoys reading, riding horses, and spending time outdoors with friends and family.
