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Thursday
When I was a child, I remember spending a lot of time thinking about why bad things happen and how I could get the world to work in my favor. Sometimes I would make little deals with God, sometimes I figured I would be rewarded if I became a better person. I had forgotten about these efforts, however, until coming across a poem by Nobel-prize winning Louise Glück, whom I have been revisiting since her death last week.
In “The Empty Glass,” Glück examines how humans respond to uncertainty. To get a better understanding, she goes back to her childhood, revisiting the different ways she tried to achieve a modicum of control. She begins by telling us that she “asked for much”—from God? from her parents?—only to get contradictory results. In the course of the poem, she recounts various superstitions that are supposed to ward off bad luck—don’t open an umbrella indoors; don’t put your shoes on the table; don’t walk under ladders; throw salt over your left shoulder—that presumably she followed.
Sometimes she concluded that bad luck—or perhaps bullying—was her own fault, a result of “my nature.” But after beating herself up for her faults, she then notes that her fortunes changed while she herself remained the same, which means that there must have been other causes.
When she asks if those causes involved the sea or some “celestial force,” she is imagining higher powers at work. Just in case, she tries praying and then, just like me trying to placate the who or what that controls destiny, she too tries to be a better person. However, she is assured by friends, who clasp her hand intently, that she already is that better person, not pathetic at all. Perhaps she is even a queen or a saint! And so we grasp for compliments and reassurance.
Perhaps this whole tangled process—which Glück says began as terror and “matured into moral narcissism”—is “in fact human growth.” If moral narcissism is the belief that how we behave determines what happens to us—solipsistic Robinson Crusoe thinks that God punishes him with an earthquake because he has disobeyed his father—then it does indeed have something to do with how we grow up. Maybe, Glück conjectures, “some good will come of simply trying.” If we put in the effort, perhaps the “initiating impulse” is irrelevant.
In any event, these efforts to control our future, futile though they may be, are all we have “to appease the great forces.” After all,
What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate
Yet even as she casts a relatively benign eye on our struggles, Glück (as is characteristic with her) introduces a dark note into her poem, one that becomes fully realized in the final stanza. So as not to spoil the suspense, I’ll discuss it after you’ve read the poem:
The Empty Glass
By Louise Glück
I asked for much; I received much.
I asked for much; I received little, I received
next to nothing.And between? A few umbrellas opened indoors.
A pair of shoes by mistake on the kitchen table.O wrong, wrong—it was my nature. I was
hard-hearted, remote. I was
selfish, rigid to the point of tyranny.
But I was always that person, even in early childhood.
Small, dark-haired, dreaded by the other children.
I never changed. Inside the glass, the abstract
tide of fortune turned
from high to low overnight.
Was it the sea? Responding, maybe,
to celestial force? To be safe,
I prayed. I tried to be a better person.
Soon it seemed to me that what began as terror
and matured into moral narcissism
might have become in fact
actual human growth. Maybe
this is what my friends meant, taking my hand,
telling me they understood
the abuse, the incredible shit I accepted,
implying (so I once thought) I was a little sick
to give so much for so little.
Whereas they meant I was good (clasping my hand intensely)—
a good friend and person, not a creature of pathos.
I was not pathetic! I was writ large,
like a queen or a saint.
Well, it all makes for interesting conjecture.
And it occurs to me that what is crucial is to believe
in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying,
a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse
to persuade or seduce—
What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate—
What do we have really?
Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,
tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring
attempts to build character.
What do we have to appease the great forces?
And I think in the end this was the question
that destroyed Agamemnon, there on the beach,
the Greek ships at the ready, the sea
invisible beyond the serene harbor, the future
lethal, unstable: he was a fool, thinking
it could be controlled. He should have said
I have nothing, I am at your mercy.
The dark note is whether the speaker is using these coping mechanisms to endure an abusive relationship. If so, she is right that she may be “a little sick” for putting up with the man (giving him “so much for so little”) whereas her enabling friends are doing her no favors by assuring her that she’s being good, even saint-like. By trying so hard, is she playing into the pathology?
The dangers of trying too hard are spelled out in the last stanza, where we see a father’s efforts at control lead to the death of his daughter. The poet is referring to the moment at Aulis when it appears that the Greek forces, about to set sail for Troy, will be stymied by lack of wind. To appease Artemis, whom he has offended, Agamemnon is informed that he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia and he does so. Although the sacrifice does the trick, his wife (understandably) never forgives him, murdering him upon his return from Troy.
What if, Glück imagines, we were to relinquish our need to control the “lethal, unstable” future. If a lifetime spent trying to appease the great forces leads us to kill what we love, then we really do “have nothing.” Better, at that point, to drop our arms, acknowledge that control is an illusion, and ask for mercy.
Then again, Iphigenia in Euripides’s play gives up and surrenders to her sacrifice, as do some wives in abusive relationships. Glück may not be providing up with a prescription for living here, but she gets us to better understand why we think and behave as we do.