Another Way of Looking at a Blackbird
[In the following essay, Ramsey analyzes the role of the blackbird in "The Japanese Quince, " concluding that "the reader is left with the pathos of life missed, life here understood as dark, mysterious, dangerous, not quite proper. " ]
Laurence Perrine's brief analysis of John Galsworthy's "The Japanese Quince" seems to have begun and ended all consideration of that very short story. In Perrine's view, the two characters, Mr. Nilson and Mr. Tandram, "are clearly meant to be representative of a social class," the ordered and measured life style of the British upper crust as it is reflected in several images, especially the cuckoo clock [Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 1970]. The quince tree itself is "a radiant symbol for beauty, joy, life, growth, freedom, ecstasy" [Perrine, assisted by Margaret Morton Blum, Instructor's Manual for Literature: Structural, Sound, and Sense, 1970]. The men confront the tree but fail to respond adequately to it, thus missing out on a great part of life. The story is therefore static, almost inert, and the other "symbol," the blackbird who sings in the tree, "functions simply as part of the tree symbol."
But there is another way of looking at this blackbird and consequently at the action of the story. In the first paragraph, Mr. Nilson, from whose point of view the story is related, cannot judge the value difference between the tree and the temperature; both serve only to make it a comfortable day. At the close of the story, however, the quince "seemed more living than a tree." A dramatic change in Mr. Nilson's perceptions has indeed taken place; this is the action.
Mr. Nilson does not notice the blackbird until he is down in the courtyard; in fact, it is the blackbird's song which draws his attention to the "little tree, in the heart of whose branches the bird was perched." As Mr. Nilson admires the tree, Mr. Tandram suddenly appears. Without a word from Galsworthy, the blackbird disappears. Mr. Nilson looks "furtively at the stranger," and later he is "visited somehow by the feeling that he had been caught out." The two men have the same physical characteristics. All of this is mysterious to the reader, but to the prosaic Mr. Nilson it is merely awkward. Ill at ease, he offers a greeting as he passes Mr. Tandram and seems anxious to quit the tree, the courtyard, and the stranger.
To his surprise, Mr. Tandram detains him by responding heartily and engaging him in conversation. The exchange is superbly modulated by Galsworthy, at once oblique, vacuous, and indicative. Mr. Nilson finds himself picking up Mr. Tandram's informality and affability. When Mr. Tandram drops a "g" ("Quite a feelin'"), Mr. Nilson responds with "It was a blackbird singin'." When Mr. Tandram looks at Mr. Nilson "in an almost friendly way," Mr. Nilson responds by thinking to himself, "Nice fellow, this, I rather like him." Together they gaze at the tree, which quivers and glows as if acknowledging them.
The influence which Mr. Tandram seems to have on Mr. Nilson is abruptly truncated when "from a distance the blackbird gave a loud, clear call." Mr. Tandram immediately appears foolish to Mr. Nilson. They separate. As Mr. Nilson reaches the top step of his house, he pauses and notes the tree and the blackbird. "The blackbird had returned to it, and was chanting out his heart." Whose heart? The possessive pronoun is ambiguous. It likely refers to the bird, although it has not anywhere before been identified as male. It surely refers to Mr. Nilson, who has abandoned the "tree of life" but can now hear his own heart's call clearly.
The bird at the heart of the branches of the tree can then be identified with the unusual feeling Mr. Nilson has "just under his fifth rib." Its song is a plea for attention and a call to life, just as the bird literally directed his attention to the Japanese quince. Of course, Mr. Nilson ultimately rejects the call; it is a call to the darker places of the heart for which he finds no place in his regulated world. As Herbert J. Muller said long ago about Galsworthy's characters, "They do not come really to grips with life, they never know it profoundly" [Modern Fiction: A Study of Values, 1937]. It is also to be noted that Galsworthy never describes the bird's song as joyous; Perrine assumes this when he defines it as "the expression of lyric ecstasy" [Perrine and Blum]. Although Mr. Nilson rejects the call, he can no longer ignore it; he has been tempted.
As indicated earlier, Mr. Tandram has also tempted Mr. Nilson, drawing him very near to a meaningful human relationship. At this point it would appear that the blackbird and Mr. Tandram and the empty feeling in Mr. Nilson's heart are all one. They call Mr. Nilson to life. The parallels are clearly indicated when the reader notes two devices: the word heart applied to the blackbird's position in the tree and to Mr. Nilson's feeling of emptiness; the disappearance of the bird when Mr. Tandram appears and its reappearance when he leaves. A further, less obvious device is the use of the color black.
The darkness of the heart's recesses, the bird's blackness, and the black frock coat worn by Mr. Tandram imply the world of unknowns. Blackness may suggest nothingness, in the sense which Robert Martin Adams suggests: "Nothing is frequently what we do not know or cannot imagine" [Nil: Episodes in the Literary Conquest of Void during the Nineteenth Century, 1966]. It might suggest a destructive principle or element, in the manner of Conrad. (Dare one relate "The Japanese Quince" to "The Secret Sharer" which appeared in 1912, two years after Galsworthy's story?) Darkness might even suggest evil, as it has since Beowulf. Perhaps any enticement out of his routinely proper world would appear to Mr. Nilson as evil. In any case, the reader is not likely to honor Perrine's dictum: "There is no symbolic significance in its being black" [Perrine and Blum].
Finally, the reader is left with the pathos of life missed, life here understood as dark, mysterious, dangerous, not quite proper. As the bird chants out "his" heart, both Mr. Nilson and Mr. Tandram sigh. The failure to immerse himself in this "destructive element" makes Mr. Nilson almost nostalgic. As Muller says of Galsworthy, "His melancholy is a gentle melancholy, quite lacking in wild, strange, rebellious moments." The dark place of his heart continues to sing, to call, while Mr. Nilson returns to his morning paper, to an 8:30 breakfast, and to that other, safer bird song—the cuckoo clock.
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