The central theme of this poem is the single mind. The poem is divided into four parts, which essentially represent four phases of personal experience in the pursuit of single-mindedness: it will be seen that a transition is intended from one part to the next such as implies a certain spiritual progress and a consequent shifting of aspect. As far as any definitions can be attached to these aspects, they may be termed (1) metaphysical, (2) ethical, (3) psychological; while (4) is an attempt to relate the poetic impulse with the experience as a whole. Formally, the parts fall with fair accuracy into the divisions of a theorem in geometry, i.e. general enunciation, particular enunciation, proof, corollaries. The following notes may be of assistance to the diligent; they are intended simply for the elucidation of the text, and do not necessarily imply assent to any proposition that may be advanced in them.
C. D. L.
January 1929.
1 cf. Spinoza, Letters. ‘I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.’
2 cf. Spinoza, De intell. emend. ‘But above all a method must be thought out of healing the understanding and purifying it at the beginning. …’
3 cf. Exodus x, 21 and 27.
4 cf. Deuteronomy ix, 2; also i, 28.
5 sqq., cf. page 91, line 10.
6 Cronos is here used as a symbol for desire.
7 sqq., contrast Donne:
‘But up into the watch-tower get,
And see all things despoiled of fallacies.’
8 ‘skiagram’ – a drawing in shadow, not strictly the Greek sense.
9 cf. Dante, Inferno:
‘Ed egli a me: Questo misero modo
Tengon l’anime triste di coloro,
Che visser senza infamia e senza lodo.’
10 cf. Isaiah xxxv, 1.
11 cf. Wyndham Lewis, Art of Being Ruled, Part 12, Chapter VII.
12 ‘Fear and love’ throughout this poem represent the general principles of attraction and repulsion.
13 ‘the Word’ in this poem stands for the individual poetic impulse, as a part of the Logos in the theologian’s sense of ‘mind expressing God in the world.’
14 cf. ‘The Ballad of the Twa Brothers’:
“O when will you come hame again?
Dear Willie, tell to me!’
‘When the sun and moon dance on yon green;
And that will never be.”
15 cf. Henry James, The Ambassadors: ‘Whether or no he had a grand idea of the lucid, he held that nothing ever was in fact – for anyone else – explained. One went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life.’
16 cf. note on page 59, lines 3–8.
17 cf. page 61, line 16.
18 the refrain of a song sung by Miss Sophie Tucker.
19 cf. page 59, line 15.
20 cf. Spinoza, De intell. emend. ‘Finally, perception is that wherein a thing is perceived through its essence alone. … A thing is said to be perceived through its essence alone when from the fact that I know something, I know what it is to know anything. …’
1929