Brenda Saldanha Melo SILVA
(Mestranda em Liberal Studies
pela
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
(UNCG)
Graduada em
Letras-Inglês pela (UFMG)
ABSTRACT: To
master. According to the The
American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms, to “be or become completely proficient or skilled in; to deal with
successfully,” or to “have a firm understanding or knowledge (...).” Most
people manage to master several skills throughout their lives. An art, however,
or “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic
principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary
significance” (Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)) is
considered to be mastered by few. This article aims at analyzing the way Elizabeth
Bishop have certainly mastered the art of poetry, and in her poem “One art”,
she uses such an art to discuss another one, which she calls the “art of
losing”.
KEYWORDS: Elizabeth Bishop. Art of Losing. “One Art”.
RESUMO: Dominar. De acordo com o dicionário The American Heritage ® de Idiomas,
ter domínio significa “ser ou tornar-se completamente proficiente ou especialista;
lidar com sucesso”, ou “possuir
uma grande compreensão ou conhecimento (...)”. A maioria das pessoas consegue dominar várias habilidades
ao longo de suas vidas. Uma arte, no entanto, ou “a qualidade, produção, expressão ou domínio,
de acordo com princípios estéticos, do
que é belo, atraente, ou do que é mais do que um significado comum” (Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)) parece
ser dominada por poucos. Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar a forma como Elizabeth Bishop certamente
domina a arte da poesia. Em seu poema "Uma arte", Bishop usa tal arte para
discutir um outro tipo de arte, que a autora chama de “a arte da perda”.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Elizabeth Bishop. A arte da perda. “One Art”.
the art of losing isn’t hard to master;So many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their lost is no disaster.(Roberts and Jocobs)
To master. According to the The American
Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms, to
“be or become completely proficient or skilled in; to deal with successfully,”
or to “have a firm understanding or knowledge (...).” Most people manage
to master several skills throughout their lives. An art, however, or “the
quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles,
of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance” (Dictionary.com
Unabridged (v 1.1)) is considered to be mastered by few. Elizabeth Bishop
can be said to have certainly mastered the art of poetry, and in her poem “One
art”, she uses such an art to discuss another one, which she calls the “art of
losing”.
But what exactly would this “art of losing” be
and why would it be something to be mastered? It is arguably true that the very
act of losing is accidental by definition. You misplace something and then
cannot find it, you forget something somewhere, or it falls off your bag and
you do not see it. Thus, how can Bishop argue that it is actually possible to
master loss?
Bishop had a far from ordinary life. Of
Canadian decent, her father died when she was only eight years old, and her
mother would have several break downs, finally being institutionalized
permanently when Bishop was five. She was then taken to Nova Scotia Massachusetts New York , then travel to Europe ,
where her love for exotic places would begin. She would also go to Mexico, and
later, Brazil, where she spent several years, considered to be the “happiest and most settled
period of Bishop's life, and her companion” Lota de Macedo Soares “was
instrumental in getting her to seek help for — and to achieve some control over
— her alcoholism, her asthma, and her chronic depression” (KENNEDY and GIOIA).
Bishop lived with Lota in the mountains near Rio de Janeiro ,
but fled Brazil and returned
to Boston Boston
Looking
at her life, it is possible to start making some sense of the concept she
proposes in “One Art” towards the mastery of loss. Bishop went through a lot
and certainly survived all sorts of minor and major losses in her life. It is
likely that in the poem, she not only wants to show that she can overcome loss,
but that overcoming the losses was a survival necessity for her. Being able to
master the losses around her, being able to deal with such losses is the real
art she longs to master – it is a philosophy of survival, “an expression of what Bishop desperately wants to
be true” (SIRCY, 2005, p. 241).
In an attempt to tell
herself that losses are natural, Bishop goes one step further in “One Art”,
stating that not only losses are accidental, but they are meant to be. “Things
are filled with the intent to be lost” so why should we not accept it naturally
and easily? By thinking like this, it becomes easier to accept the loss of
something as less of a disaster and more of a natural part of life. And that is
a conclusion she both tells the readers and herself – she wants to believe in
it. Her philosophy of survival becomes based in the thought that “if we are
used to dealing with loss, we can learn to accept it; acceptance is the
prevention of disaster (… ) the art of losing, then, is the art of survival” (Schwartz and Estess, 1992, p. 150).
From the beginning to the
end of the poem a gradation of size and importance in the examples stated by
Bishop can be observed,
Lose something every day. Accept the
fluster
Of lost door keys, the hour badly
spent.
(…)
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And,
vaster;
Some realms I owned, two rivers, a
continent.
I miss them but it wasn’t a
disaster.
“- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. (…)
(Roberts and Jocobs, p. 858)
From trivial door keys, to houses,
to continents, to a person. She lists such things based on her own life
experience, her own losses, but they are all carefully chosen in an attempt to
“stress the homogenous nature of loss. Whether it be the “fluster of losing (…)
‘door keys’ or losing something as vast as ‘a continent,’ both are ultimately,
Bishop argues, the same ‘one art’” (SIRCY, 2005, p. 241). Denying the
differences between such elements, classifying them as all belonging to the
same group, allows Bishop to make sense of the acceptance of those which may
seem harder to overcome, such as a loss of a beloved one (SIRCY, 2005, p. 241).
Once one masters the “art
of losing”, or the art of surviving loss, a certain level of control over the
unpredictability of life is gained. If one can control his feelings, he is much
more in control of what happens in his life, or at least feels he is. Control
is, therefore, also something that appears to be central to this poem. Bishop
longs to have more control over such a chaotic life she seemed to have. Always
struggling with her asthma, and alcoholism, along with other unwanted changes
in her life, Bishop must have been affected by the lack of control over the
world around her, and translated that into her poetry.
This effort to obtain
control, to master, can also be said to be embedded in the form Bishop chose to
write this poem: a villanelle, one of the most difficult and structured forms
of poetry. According to Susan McCabe, “the formal demands of the villanelle keep
‘squads of undisciplined emotion’ from overwhelming the poem” (McCABE, 1994, p.
26). A more loosely and free formed form of poem, with more usage of personal
expression, would have been much more intimate (McCABE, 1994, p. 26), possibly
not expressing the controlling massage of mastery Bishop wanted to convey.
Thus, the very form of “One Art” seems to express a will to control all the
emotions related to her losses.
- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s
evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to
master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster
(Roberts and Jocobs, p. 858)
The last stanza of this villanelle brings a
final twist. The poet reveals a change in her own philosophy. Although she
seems so certain of “the art of losing”, as being not hard to master on the
five previous stanzas, she contradicts herself in the last one, confessing she
does find it hard, and changing her sentence to “not too hard to master”. She still
wants to believe she has control over this art, but here the reader sees a sign
that though she might have overcome the loss of all the other things, losing
her love was so difficult for her, that she starts to doubt she can really
master this one loss. The art of losing is a struggle of several different
levels, but this one, for Bishop, seems to have weakened her beyond the point
her philosophy of survival can help.
Finally, “One Art” is a poem about the one art
that we live our lives wondering whether we will ever be able to, as the poem
says, master, and have control of: the art of losing. Not only Bishop shows the
reader that loss is something possible to be mastered, but she also shows that
it is primordial that anyone learns to master it. The “art of losing”,
therefore, is not actually the act of losing things, places or people, but the
act of moving on regardless of whatever losses we may face in life. Through the
use of her own memories and life events, Bishop manages to relate to all readers
easily, as she tells them it is ok to lose something. She goes as far as
encouraging them to do so, “Lose something every day/ (…) Then practice losing
farther, losing faster” (Roberts
and Jocobs, p. 858) as a means to
show that mastering loss, and surviving the mourning feeling of such losses is
not only possible but necessary for life, and the more one does it, the less it
will hurt them – the less it will feel like disaster.
References
“Art.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 05 Nov.
2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Art>.
“Master.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Houghton Mifflin Company. 05 Nov. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/master>.
Kennedy, J. X.; Gioia,
Dana. Literature. An introdiction to
Fiction, Poetry and Drama. Person Longman. Elizabeth Bishop Biography. http://wps.ablongman.com/long_kennedy_lfpd_9/0,9130,1490005-,00.html
McCabe, Susan. Elizabeth Bishop: her poetics of loss. The Pennsylvania
State University University Park Pennsylvania
Schwartz, Lloydç Estess,
Lybil P., eds. Elizabeth Bishop and her
art. The University
of Michigan
Sircy, Jonathan. Bishop's ONE ART. Explicator; Summer2005, Vol. 63 Issue 4, p. 241-244,
4p. <Academic Search Premier http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=18347291&site=ehost-live
