Night Sweat (Robert Lowell) Flashcards
Context [1]
In the poem ‘Night Sweat’ written in 1964, Robert Lowell powerfully writes about his struggle to create more poetry and fulfil his bipolar disorder
What is the poem about2]
- The poem explores the impact of having bi-polar disorder on a writer’s creativity and productivity. This poem in particular explores what it’s like to have writer’s block.
- Through his portrayal of his wife and how she fulfils him.
“Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp, plain things, my stalled equipment, the old broom – but I am living in a tidied room,” [3]
Opening the poem with ‘work’ suggests his preoccupation with it, and hints him to be a writer
List of possessions with pronouns or articles- detachment, the items feel impersonal
‘stalled’- suggests items are not functioning as desired (writer’s brain)
‘living in a tidied room’- the tension between the room being unlived in suggests the space to be sterile and unproductive
“for ten nights now I’ve felt the creeping damp…float over my pajamas’ wilted white . . .Sweet salt embalms me and my head is wet, everything streams and tells me this is right” [7]
‘creeping damp’ metaphor for anxiety with connotations of the word ‘creeping’ building an ominous tone that overtakes the writer when unable to write
Enjambment- reflects the feeling of losing control as sweat spreads
‘float’- suggests potentially pervasive presence (shadowy)
‘wilted white’- evokes a funeral shroud – death of the writer creativity
‘embalms’- semantic field of death
- Speaker seems to feel he deserves death as he unexpectedly welcomes being embalmed, (perhaps suggesting some level of turmoil is necessary) the sense of warped thinking is reflected in ‘Sweet salt’- antithesis+sibilance
“my life’s fever is soaking in night sweat…one life, one writing! But the downward glide…and bias of existing wrings us dry” [6]
‘life’s fever’- suggests existance is a disease and the source of relentless suffering
fever’- feels larger and more persistant than a passing illness
‘soaking’- sweat seems to soak intangible things
Anaphora+caesura- building agitation, suggests life writing and suffering to be linked, showing how integral writing is (ironically writing may refer to sweat staining him)
Enjambment- mirrors idea of an inevitable downward glide to death
‘wrings us dry’- reverses the idea of sweat reflecting productivity (life has left him barren)
“always inside me is the child who died,…always inside me is his will to die –one universe, one body . . . in this urn” [4]
Anaphora- shows how relentless his awareness of the decline is
Polyptoton- connects this past metaphorical death with his apparent preoccupation with death
-Speaker contemplates the death of his past self (innocent optimism) creating a bleak image of life as a constant process of dying
‘urn’- metaphor for the body as a container for smth already dead. This metaphor reverses the expectation of an urn containing remnants of a body, instead it holds anxieties and primal fears
“the animal night SweatS of the Spirit burn.” [5]
‘night sweats’- the physical embodiment of the speaker’s mentaln struggle
Sibilance- produces an ominous whispering sound, its lingering and elongated quality reflects his pervasive neg thoughts
‘burn’- suggests a feverish intensity
-A switch of chronological expectations (urn contains preburned ash yet here the burning is post the burning) this suggests the warped way of thinking as a product of his distressed mentality
Rhyming couplet at the end of the first sonnet is a distillation of its existential themes, with ‘urn’ and ‘burn’ representing the tension between the speaker’s implied death wish and the simultaneously productive AND destructive creative struggle
“Behind me! ‘you’! Again I feel the ‘light’ ‘lighten’ my ‘leaded’ eye’l’ids, while the grey skulled horses whinny for the soot of night” [6]
Exclamatories+2 Caesuras- disrupt the rhythm and establishes a shift (there is a new presence)
‘You’- directly addresses the wife for the first time (switching his focus in this section)
Polyptotn- emphasises the wife being linked to light suggesting, love and hope from this angelic presence (and 2 emphasises daylight symbolically lifting his anxieties by lifting his eyelids)
Liquid alliteration- reflects the transition into a more serene state of mind
‘leaded’-link to heaviness and the theme of death (leadlinned coffins) suggesting he is in a state of living death alleviated by the day > light > wife
‘skulled horses’- zoomorphic metaphor for anxiety and depression which masocistically craves to return to darkness and solitude – speaker being pulled back into despair
” ‘a heap of wet clothes’…flesh and bedding washed with light” [2]
‘a heap of wet clothes’- synecode to refer to himself as a mere pile of sweat covered clothes, hes barely a person
‘washed’- verb suggests a baptismal process of cleansing (metaphorical rebirth)
“‘my’ child exploding into dynamite…my wife…your lightness alters everything” [4]
-Another reversal of the expected order (dynamite usually does the exploding) could suggest the possibility of future creativity explosions which could be both creative (forming dynamite) and destructive (dynamite)
-Ref to inner child that seems creatively liberated by the explosion (a productive form of destruction)
Possessive pronouns- rather than def articles suggests a greater sense of identification and control over his lost inner child
Anaphora- reflects the transition from his fixation on his inner self to returning to a wider, external reality with adult focuses
“tears the ‘black’ web from the ‘spiders’ sack…your ‘h’eart ‘h’ops and flutters like a ‘hare’” [5]
-The speaker’s life can tear away the metaphorical web of anxiety that is preventing creativity, facilitating the birth of zoomorphically metaphorical spider which symbolises the creative process (the sac containing eggs)
-The spider is a creative entity linking to his identity as a writer which is causing him self inflicted strife (alleviated by his wife)
‘black’- like ink
-Metric irregularities mirrors fluttering heart
Zoomorphic similie- suggests speed, vitality, and freedom, emphasised by alliteration
“poor turtle tortoise…troubled waters…absolve me, help me, Dear Heart, as you bear this worlds dead weight and cycle on your back” [5]
Zoomorphic metaphor- refers to wife as a being who can aid navigating in times of suffering, links to cosmic tortoise (by hyperbolocally stating that she can carry the scope of the universe he suggests she can aid with his struggles)
Imperatives- imploring tone, ‘absolve’ has religious connotations, links to baptism in light
Capitalisation- shows her significance
Synecdoche- shows her as the source of life (contrasts with him as a pile of sweaty clothes)
-Refers to himself as the world, suggesting the magnitude of his issues
Symbolism of structure [1]
First sonnet within the poem is darker in theme
Second sonnet more focused on a positive vision of love as a form of salvation in a Petrarchan fashion- Petrarch wrote lots of love poems praising his female lover in a worshipful way
The two halves of the poem also represent darkness vs. light,
e.g. Note that ‘burn’ appears precisely in the middle of the poem, at the hinge point connecting the half of the poem about destruction / death and the half of the poem about creation / life.
The treatment of struggle in relation to the creative act [1]
Some element of inner turmoil is viewed as necessary, thus why the speaker seems to somewhat resist the wife’s presence and why the ‘horses’ (his anxieties, etc.) crave the return of the darkness.
Perhaps that’s because struggle is inherent in the creation of great art. His response to her can therefore be read in multiple ways, although I think it’s broadly positive. Be aware of how NUANCED this poem is!
CONTEXT: what is bipolar disorder? [1]
A mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings from emotional highs (mania or hypomania) to lows (depression).
