Giles Watson's Blog - Posts Tagged "flamingo"
The Lip of the Flamingo: A Meditation on Emily Dickinson's 'How the Old Mountains...'
The Lip of the Flamingo
A Meditation by Giles Watson
John James Audobon, in his enormous, lavishly illustrated folio, The Birds of America, wrote the following description of the bill of the American Flamingo, which is uniquely adapted for straining diatoms, algae and invertebrates out of muddy water, no doubt after dissecting a bird that he had shot:
“Bill more than double the length of the head, straight and higher than broad for half its length, then deflected and tapering to an obtuse point. Upper mandible with its dorsal line straight, convex at the curve, and again straight nearly to the end, when it becomes convex at the tip; the ridge broad and convex, on the deflected part expanded into a lanceolate plate, having a shallow groove in the middle, and separated from the edges by a narrow groove; its extremity narrow, and thin-edged, but obtuse, this part being analogous to the unguis of Ducks and other birds of that tribe. Lower mandible narrower than the upper at its base, but much broader in the rest of its extent; its angle rather long, wide, and filled with bare skin; its dorsal line concave, but at the tip convex, the ridge deeply depressed, there being a wide channel in its place, the sides nearly erect and a little convex, with six ridges on each side toward the tip. The edges of the upper mandible are furnished with about 150 oblique lamellae, of which the external part is perpendicular, tapering, pointed, and tooth-like. The edge of the lower mandible is incurved in an extraordinary degree, leaving a convex upper surface about 1/4 inch in breadth, covered in its whole extent with transverse very delicate lamellae, with an external series of larger lamellae. The whole surface of the bill is covered with a thickened leathery skin, which becomes horny toward the end. The nostrils are linear, direct, sub-basal, nearer the margin than the ridge, operculate, 1 1/4 inches long.”
The lip of the flamingo is, in other words, an extraordinarily complex and sensitive – not to mention inordinately strange – organ, adapted to a highly specialised lifestyle. It is not an obvious symbol for a reclusive, untravelled mid-nineteenth century New England poet to use.
Audobon first saw a flock of American Flamingoes off “the south-eastern coast of the Peninsula of Florida” in 1832. The atmospheric conditions at the time were, it seems, more than ideal for an encounter with birds of their size, grace and colour:
“It was on the afternoon of one of those sultry days which, in that portion of the country, exhibit towards evening the most glorious effulgence that can be conceived. The sun, now far advanced toward the horizon, still shone with full splendour, the ocean around glittered in its quiet beauty, and the light fleecy clouds that here and there spotted the heavens, seemed flakes of snow margined with gold… Far away to seaward we spied a flock of Flamingoes advancing in "Indian line," with well-spread wings, outstretched necks, and long legs directed backwards. Ah! reader, could you but know the emotions that then agitated my breast!”
Fast-forward thirty years, and Emily Dickinson is also staggered by the sublime in a sunset:
“How the old Mountains drip with Sunset
How the Hemlocks burn –”
She is certainly telling how the Sunset seems to spill its molten colour across the landscape and the conifers, but we feel that she is building up to a coming question mark – that she is also asking how – how this impression of moltenness can be quite such a “glorious effulgence”, to repeat Audobon’s words.
“How the Dun Brake is draped in Cinder
By the Wizard Sun –"
It must be winter, because the bracken is “Dun”, not green, but the magic of sunlight has set it aglow, and the spreading pinkness is so easily absorbed into the fabric of things that it appears to Dickinson that the steeples of the churches in the town of Amherst are feeding redness back up to the sun, swelling it with liquid fire as it descends:
“How the old Steeples hand the Scarlet
Till the Ball is full –”
But it’s not just that Dickinson is presenting us with a land-locked, Romantic-influenced vision that coincides in some of its details with Audobon’s description. It’s that she has clearly read Audobon’s description, not just of the sunset, but also of the flamingo, and seen his stunning, large-scale illustration of it. She knows that the glory of this sunset defies her own capacity as a poet; she cannot communicate it in words. But there is another thing she can do. She can ask an absolutely astounding question that directly confronts her – and every other poet and artist’s – inability to adequately describe or depict the beauty of the natural world in its full extent:
“Have I the lip of the Flamingo
That I dare to tell?”
Just like that, Dickinson has turned the whole enterprise on its head. She is not describing the sunset; she is marvelling at the human arrogance which thinks it can approach the sublime in nature through comparison, analogy, metaphor or simile. She stands flabbergasted at our own lack of humility, and surely, she has read Audobon’s scientific description of the bird’s bill – which necessitated the Flamingo’s shooting and dissection, with its enumerations of grooves, ridges and lamellae – and looked at the plate which, magnificent as it is, shows the bird in a pale reflection of its glory, without its three dimensions, without its movement, without its call, without its odour or its antics. The whole enterprise of description or representation is patently absurd.
It is absurd, but once we have been humbled by this realisation, it is also necessary, if we are going to communicate in any meaningful way about the world around us. We can only speak of the natural world by making representations of it, by using figurative language to describe it; we must offer pale imitations of it in order to make sense of it, or to learn from it, or even to praise it. Perhaps this is why Dickinson’s poem is not killed stone dead by the question she has asked.
“Then, how the Fire ebbs like Billows –
Touching all the Grass
With a departing – Sapphire – feature –
As a Duchess passed –”
The sun is sinking, and we seem to be back with Audobon’s seaborne quest for the Flamingoes again, for its “Fire ebbs like Billows”. The image is suddenly self-consciously conventional, and also rather far-fetched: the landscape has turned blue, as if from light filtered through the sapphire jewellery of a passing Duchess.
“How a small Dusk crawls on the Village
Till the Houses blot
And the odd Flambeau, no men carry
Glimmer on the Street –”
Dickinson lets the darkness creep into her poem through its verbs: “Dusk crawls”, “Houses blot” into indistinctness, and the stars, the Flambeaus not carried by men, “Glimmer”. The word choice itself recalls “Flamingo.”
“Now it is Night – in Nest and Kennel –
And where was a Wood –
Just a Dome of Abyss is Bowing
Into Solitude –”
Her metre is faltering as the night sky closes in – on human homes in the village, yes, but Dickinson chooses to draw our attention instead to the way darkness engulfs the homes of birds and dogs, and how it obscures the Hemlocks themselves. The sublime moment has passed, although its memory lingers, but its changing and transitory nature is yet another thing which enhances its beauty and defeats the poet and the artist:
“These are the Visions flitted Guido –
Titian – never told –
Domenichino dropped his pencil –
Paralyzed, with Gold –
Who were these people? Guido Reni painted religious and mythical subjects, often with a slanting light, in the Classical style during the Baroque period, but I can’t help thinking that even though the others in the list are certainly painters, Dickinson had a dual purpose in using that name. Perhaps she had Guido Fawkes in mind, too, who intended to cause a conflagration in the Houses of Parliament in London. In any case, Guido is “flitted” by these undepictable Visions of natural splendour: nothing he ignites with paintbrush or bomb is going to equal them. To flit was to move house – to quit, perhaps. So much for Guido. Titian gave his name so a sunset hue of hair, thanks to a certain painting of a reclining nude, but he “never told” the illimitable narrative of this sunset. Audobon, we will remember, remarked that the clouds on the evening when he saw the Flamingoes were like “flakes of snow margined with gold” – a somewhat difficult description to visualise. Domenichino, who was fond of painting annunciations by angels – but was perhaps a little less overconfident than Audobon was, standing there with his gun barrel broken over his arm – plunges into a state of paralysis at the thought of even attempting this depiction. His pencil clatters on the stone. Inside it, the graphite breaks, to his frustration the next time he tries to sharpen it.
Dickinson deftly sidesteps them all. She never really did try to “tell” us about the sunset. She told us instead about our fundamental powerlessness to represent the natural world with anything approaching justice or even understanding. And with that question about – of all things – a Flamingo’s lip, she snatched a quite different kind of paralysing beauty out of the jaws of failure.
A Meditation by Giles Watson
John James Audobon, in his enormous, lavishly illustrated folio, The Birds of America, wrote the following description of the bill of the American Flamingo, which is uniquely adapted for straining diatoms, algae and invertebrates out of muddy water, no doubt after dissecting a bird that he had shot:
“Bill more than double the length of the head, straight and higher than broad for half its length, then deflected and tapering to an obtuse point. Upper mandible with its dorsal line straight, convex at the curve, and again straight nearly to the end, when it becomes convex at the tip; the ridge broad and convex, on the deflected part expanded into a lanceolate plate, having a shallow groove in the middle, and separated from the edges by a narrow groove; its extremity narrow, and thin-edged, but obtuse, this part being analogous to the unguis of Ducks and other birds of that tribe. Lower mandible narrower than the upper at its base, but much broader in the rest of its extent; its angle rather long, wide, and filled with bare skin; its dorsal line concave, but at the tip convex, the ridge deeply depressed, there being a wide channel in its place, the sides nearly erect and a little convex, with six ridges on each side toward the tip. The edges of the upper mandible are furnished with about 150 oblique lamellae, of which the external part is perpendicular, tapering, pointed, and tooth-like. The edge of the lower mandible is incurved in an extraordinary degree, leaving a convex upper surface about 1/4 inch in breadth, covered in its whole extent with transverse very delicate lamellae, with an external series of larger lamellae. The whole surface of the bill is covered with a thickened leathery skin, which becomes horny toward the end. The nostrils are linear, direct, sub-basal, nearer the margin than the ridge, operculate, 1 1/4 inches long.”
The lip of the flamingo is, in other words, an extraordinarily complex and sensitive – not to mention inordinately strange – organ, adapted to a highly specialised lifestyle. It is not an obvious symbol for a reclusive, untravelled mid-nineteenth century New England poet to use.
Audobon first saw a flock of American Flamingoes off “the south-eastern coast of the Peninsula of Florida” in 1832. The atmospheric conditions at the time were, it seems, more than ideal for an encounter with birds of their size, grace and colour:
“It was on the afternoon of one of those sultry days which, in that portion of the country, exhibit towards evening the most glorious effulgence that can be conceived. The sun, now far advanced toward the horizon, still shone with full splendour, the ocean around glittered in its quiet beauty, and the light fleecy clouds that here and there spotted the heavens, seemed flakes of snow margined with gold… Far away to seaward we spied a flock of Flamingoes advancing in "Indian line," with well-spread wings, outstretched necks, and long legs directed backwards. Ah! reader, could you but know the emotions that then agitated my breast!”
Fast-forward thirty years, and Emily Dickinson is also staggered by the sublime in a sunset:
“How the old Mountains drip with Sunset
How the Hemlocks burn –”
She is certainly telling how the Sunset seems to spill its molten colour across the landscape and the conifers, but we feel that she is building up to a coming question mark – that she is also asking how – how this impression of moltenness can be quite such a “glorious effulgence”, to repeat Audobon’s words.
“How the Dun Brake is draped in Cinder
By the Wizard Sun –"
It must be winter, because the bracken is “Dun”, not green, but the magic of sunlight has set it aglow, and the spreading pinkness is so easily absorbed into the fabric of things that it appears to Dickinson that the steeples of the churches in the town of Amherst are feeding redness back up to the sun, swelling it with liquid fire as it descends:
“How the old Steeples hand the Scarlet
Till the Ball is full –”
But it’s not just that Dickinson is presenting us with a land-locked, Romantic-influenced vision that coincides in some of its details with Audobon’s description. It’s that she has clearly read Audobon’s description, not just of the sunset, but also of the flamingo, and seen his stunning, large-scale illustration of it. She knows that the glory of this sunset defies her own capacity as a poet; she cannot communicate it in words. But there is another thing she can do. She can ask an absolutely astounding question that directly confronts her – and every other poet and artist’s – inability to adequately describe or depict the beauty of the natural world in its full extent:
“Have I the lip of the Flamingo
That I dare to tell?”
Just like that, Dickinson has turned the whole enterprise on its head. She is not describing the sunset; she is marvelling at the human arrogance which thinks it can approach the sublime in nature through comparison, analogy, metaphor or simile. She stands flabbergasted at our own lack of humility, and surely, she has read Audobon’s scientific description of the bird’s bill – which necessitated the Flamingo’s shooting and dissection, with its enumerations of grooves, ridges and lamellae – and looked at the plate which, magnificent as it is, shows the bird in a pale reflection of its glory, without its three dimensions, without its movement, without its call, without its odour or its antics. The whole enterprise of description or representation is patently absurd.
It is absurd, but once we have been humbled by this realisation, it is also necessary, if we are going to communicate in any meaningful way about the world around us. We can only speak of the natural world by making representations of it, by using figurative language to describe it; we must offer pale imitations of it in order to make sense of it, or to learn from it, or even to praise it. Perhaps this is why Dickinson’s poem is not killed stone dead by the question she has asked.
“Then, how the Fire ebbs like Billows –
Touching all the Grass
With a departing – Sapphire – feature –
As a Duchess passed –”
The sun is sinking, and we seem to be back with Audobon’s seaborne quest for the Flamingoes again, for its “Fire ebbs like Billows”. The image is suddenly self-consciously conventional, and also rather far-fetched: the landscape has turned blue, as if from light filtered through the sapphire jewellery of a passing Duchess.
“How a small Dusk crawls on the Village
Till the Houses blot
And the odd Flambeau, no men carry
Glimmer on the Street –”
Dickinson lets the darkness creep into her poem through its verbs: “Dusk crawls”, “Houses blot” into indistinctness, and the stars, the Flambeaus not carried by men, “Glimmer”. The word choice itself recalls “Flamingo.”
“Now it is Night – in Nest and Kennel –
And where was a Wood –
Just a Dome of Abyss is Bowing
Into Solitude –”
Her metre is faltering as the night sky closes in – on human homes in the village, yes, but Dickinson chooses to draw our attention instead to the way darkness engulfs the homes of birds and dogs, and how it obscures the Hemlocks themselves. The sublime moment has passed, although its memory lingers, but its changing and transitory nature is yet another thing which enhances its beauty and defeats the poet and the artist:
“These are the Visions flitted Guido –
Titian – never told –
Domenichino dropped his pencil –
Paralyzed, with Gold –
Who were these people? Guido Reni painted religious and mythical subjects, often with a slanting light, in the Classical style during the Baroque period, but I can’t help thinking that even though the others in the list are certainly painters, Dickinson had a dual purpose in using that name. Perhaps she had Guido Fawkes in mind, too, who intended to cause a conflagration in the Houses of Parliament in London. In any case, Guido is “flitted” by these undepictable Visions of natural splendour: nothing he ignites with paintbrush or bomb is going to equal them. To flit was to move house – to quit, perhaps. So much for Guido. Titian gave his name so a sunset hue of hair, thanks to a certain painting of a reclining nude, but he “never told” the illimitable narrative of this sunset. Audobon, we will remember, remarked that the clouds on the evening when he saw the Flamingoes were like “flakes of snow margined with gold” – a somewhat difficult description to visualise. Domenichino, who was fond of painting annunciations by angels – but was perhaps a little less overconfident than Audobon was, standing there with his gun barrel broken over his arm – plunges into a state of paralysis at the thought of even attempting this depiction. His pencil clatters on the stone. Inside it, the graphite breaks, to his frustration the next time he tries to sharpen it.
Dickinson deftly sidesteps them all. She never really did try to “tell” us about the sunset. She told us instead about our fundamental powerlessness to represent the natural world with anything approaching justice or even understanding. And with that question about – of all things – a Flamingo’s lip, she snatched a quite different kind of paralysing beauty out of the jaws of failure.
