BOOKS
327
place to begin is with the imagery. The most recurrent image in Mr.
Merrill's poetry is the mirror, and closely related to this central symbol
are images of glass panes, images of dreams that reflect hidden thoughts,
of
art
that reflects reality, or sometimes distorts it, and the camera lens
that reflects appearances. At a farther remove, but still related, "voices
from the other world" reflect voices of the living, and images of the
maze suggest the bewildering, winding way that lies among so many
spheres. In a universe of reflections the first question must always be,
"Where is the locus of reality?" The first act should be to reach to–
wards it. But the effort is difficult; for reflections are always reflec–
tions
in
something that stands as a barrier between the observer and
the shadows it projects beyond itself. It is for this reason that panes
of glass and mirrors are not only reflectors in Mr. Merrill's poems, but
cold walls that tum one back from vision, in which alone communica–
tion in love with others is possible. Returned into himself, the person
withers in loneliness, rejected by a universe of mirrors that only holds
him
from reality. This meaning is stated most forthrightly and simply
in one of the most beautiful poems in the volume, "The Octopus."
Vision, "asleep in the eye's tight translucence," is sometimes
coaxed out
fry
lusters
Extlraordinary, like the octopus
From the gloom of its tank half-swimming half-drifting
Toward anything fair, a handkerchief
Or child's face dreaming near the glass.
...
Vision with its arms reaches out "in holiness of indirection"
Till on glass rigid with its own seizure
At length the sucking jewels freeze.
To live in a universe of reflections is not to know where reality is,
and it is to distrust one's own. This impasse is brilliantly stated in "Some
Negatives: X. at the Chateau:"
Where skies are thunderous, by a cypress walk
Copied in snow, I have you: or
Sitting beside the water-jet that here
Is jet. You could be an Ethiop with hair
Powdered white as chalk
Instead of simple diffidence on her tour
Of monuments. Yet these first
Images of images I shall keep.
