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THE GLORY or THE NIGHTINGALES— Edwin Arlington Robinson—Macmillan
($2).
Like the late great Poet Robert Browning, Edwin Arlington Robinson writes poetry dramatically. In the work of both poets, however, psychological action, messengered emotion take precedence over narrative. But Browning had an elan that New Englander Robinson has not. A subtler poet if not a subtler psychologist, Edwin Arlington Robinson is a Browning without the bounce.
Even the title of Robinson's latest poem has a tragic irony. Nightingale is the name of the piece's villain; the glory of the Nightingales comes to a sad end. As the poem opens, middleaged, destitute, half-starved Malory, onetime bacteriologist, now a tramp, is walking country roads towards the town of Sharon, on his way to an act he thinks Fate requires of him. In his pocket is the infinite wealth of a revolver. He is going to kill Nightingale, once his best friend, his onetime rival in love, his onetime benefactor, then his ruin and (he thinks) cause of his wife's death. In the village cemetery Malory stops by his wife's grave, then goes on to Nightingale's lonely mansion by the sea. But he finds his enemy too late: Nightingale is a cripple, cramped in a wheelchair, dying fast of arthritis and locomotor ataxia. Instead of killing Nightingale Malory sits and talks to him, listens to him talk. The sick man makes an apologia, but no apology, for his life.
After two days of this strange companionship Nightingale calls in a lawyer, makes a will in which he leaves Malory money to set up a laboratory once more. Then he asks Malory and the lawyer to leave him for an hour. When Malory returns, Nightingale has shot himself.
The Glory of the Nightingales is written in a quiet blank verse. As befits the reminiscent, sometimes conversational manner, the language is keyed low, but it has a subtle tension which gradually accumulates its tragic effect. There are few memorable, marmoreal phrases, none that would sound out of place in a sober and serious colloquy. Occasionally this quiet phrasing has a bite in it which louder words somehow lack. Nightingale is telling Malory how he ruined him by not giving him warning to sell stock he knew was going to crash:
"... I was warned,
Early, of what was coming. I sold all mine For someone else to lose, which is
finance. . . ."
Poet Robinson is sometimes accused of being morbidly interested in tragic subjects, but his defenders reply that his subjects are typical of universal themes. He puts his own defense into the mouth of Nightingale (and this is as near as Nightingale ever comes to an apology): ". . . I doubt if any of this Is new, for I dare say it has all happened In Samarcand or Celebes before us."