The Man-Moth

“Each night he must

be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.

Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie

his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,

for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,

runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease

he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep

his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.”

(from “The Man-Moth” by Elizabeth Bishop)

I have read bits of Elizabeth Bishop poetry before, but today I discovered her surrealist poem “The Man-Moth” for the first time. The poem tells of an almost-human man who lives underground and only occasionally comes to the surface—in the night, of course—and climbs the buildings in an attempt to reach the moon, which he assumes is a hole in the sky. He is fearful and timid of all around him, and though he fails to understand the world, he is also captured by an intense curiosity.

The poem is, more or less, an affirmation of imagination and the pure emotion that accompanies the solitude of an artist’s life. However, the man-moth also has an obsession. In the stanza quoted above, he is constantly tempted to touch the third rail of the subway, the electrical current that, upon touching, kills immediately. He even must “keep/ his hands in his pockets” to keep from touching it.

At what point does an individualistic curiosity flirt with death? Is this dark tendency a prerequisite for art (or at least, great art)? With how many great poets, writers, and artists become obsessed with death—even suicidal—I’m inclined to think it might be so. In fact, I don’t know how one can truly express a curiosity for the world without an intense curiosity of mortality.

Sure enough, the man-moth is a tortured soul, but his tears are “cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.”