Toward the “City of Man”: the Opening Four Poems of Life Studies

Abstract

The four poems in the first part of Life Studies not only draw the central framework of the book, but outline a world in fragmentation as well. Through the poems, the poet establishes a context from which he is able to undertake probing self-exploration. Of particular importance in this very context are the institutionalized customs, those powerful forces that have shaped human history and civilization. That is, the first part elaborates the topography of a fragmented external world which inhibits the poet's self but without which the self cannot attain a sense of identity. Violence, alienation, and madness, all of which abound in the three poems following “Beyond the Alps," attest to the disorienting forces in the world. “The Banker's Daughter," dealing with the division within the royal family of Renaissance France, shows disintegration both in the external version and in the individual family unit. “Inauguration Day: January 1953" is a personal response to the American society which crumbled in the 1950s. The last poem of the first part, “A Mad Negro Soldier Confined at Munich," is a sketch of an isolated person, a victim of World War II. Life Studies as a collection of poems presents an almost complete structure for readers. Although the book was collected with the poems which were published in different periods, it creates a well-woven structure like a well-wrought prose. This essay seeks to examine the primary roles of the four poems heralding a long, painful journey of life studies in terms of their relations with the poems in the following parts of the book.