Historical Context
World War II
The 1930s were marked by a decade of mounting aggression that ultimately led to World War II. The conflict arose from the emergence of totalitarian governments in Germany, Italy, and Japan. These militaristic regimes seized power in the wake of the Great Depression, which affected much of the world in the early 1930s, and due to the circumstances created by the peace settlements after World War I. The dictatorships in these countries promoted territorial expansion into nearby nations. In Germany, Adolf Hitler bolstered the military throughout the 1930s. In 1936, Italian forces under Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. From 1936 to 1939, Spain was embroiled in a civil war involving Francisco Franco's fascist army, which received support from Germany and Italy. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, and by March 1939, it had occupied Czechoslovakia. Italy invaded Albania in April 1939.
Just one week after Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the Treaty of Nonaggression, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, marking the beginning of World War II. On September 3, 1939, following the sinking of the British ship Athenia by a U-boat off the Irish coast, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. Another British ship, Courageous, was sunk on September 19 that same year. All members of the British Commonwealth, except Ireland, quickly joined Britain and France in their declaration of war.
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a conflict fought primarily in South Vietnam and extended into neighboring areas of Cambodia and Laos. On one side were the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese forces and an international coalition, including countries like South Korea, Thailand, and Australia. Opposing them were the North Vietnamese forces and a South Vietnamese guerrilla group known as the Vietcong. The war began in 1954, shortly after the Geneva Conference divided Vietnam into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Initially a civil war between the North and the South, the conflict escalated as the United States backed South Vietnam, first with financial aid and advisors, and eventually with troops.
Following the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, the United States increased its military support to South Vietnam. By the end of the decade, 550,000 American troops were involved in the conflict. North Vietnam received weapons and technical assistance from the Soviet Union and other Communist nations. Despite extensive bombing campaigns, the United States and South Vietnam were unable to suppress the insurgency.
Progress towards peace talks began when President Lyndon B. Johnson chose not to seek reelection in 1968. After Richard Nixon's election that year, he initiated troop withdrawals while also intensifying bombing operations. In 1970, Nixon ordered an invasion of Communist strongholds in Cambodia.
As the number of casualties increased and reports of atrocities such as the My Lai massacre emerged, public sentiment in the United States shifted against the war. Massive protests erupted in Washington, D.C., as well as in other cities and on university campuses. Although a peace agreement was signed in January 1973, hostilities between North and South Vietnam persisted. On April 30, 1975, South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh surrendered to the Communist forces. Saigon fell as the last American troops exited the country. The conflict resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 American soldiers, about 400,000 South Vietnamese, and more than 900,000 North Vietnamese.
Watergate
The Watergate scandal refers to a series of events that ultimately led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. It began on June 17, 1972, when the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C., was burglarized. Police apprehended...
(This entire section contains 938 words.)
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five men attempting to break into the party offices to install wiretaps. Two of the individuals involved were employees of Nixon's reelection campaign.
James McCord, one of the arrested burglars, wrote a letter to the trial judge, John Sirica, alleging a major cover-up orchestrated by the White House. His allegations sparked a political scandal. The media played a crucial role in the investigations, with Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovering key details about the break-in and the subsequent cover-up, assisted by their enigmatic source, "Deep Throat."
During a special Senate committee hearing on corrupt campaign activities, former White House counsel John Dean testified that former Attorney General John Mitchell had authorized the burglary and that two of the president's top aides were involved in the cover-up. Special prosecutor Archibald Cox's investigation revealed that Nixon's reelection committee engaged in widespread political espionage, including illegal wiretapping of American citizens.
Cox took legal action against Nixon to obtain tapes of his presidential conversations from the early 1970s. Nixon initially resisted but was eventually compelled to release them. One tape had a significant gap, supposedly caused by Nixon's secretary. However, another tape revealed Nixon admitting his involvement in the Watergate cover-up from the beginning, earning it the name "smoking gun" tape.
By 1974, most Americans believed Nixon was involved in the cover-up, causing confidence in his administration to decline steadily. Public sentiment grew in favor of Nixon's resignation. On July 30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon for obstructing justice. Nixon later confessed to attempting to stop the FBI's investigation into the break-in. At 9 p.m. on August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon addressed the nation on television and announced his resignation from the presidency. The following morning, Nixon officially stepped down, transferred the presidency to Gerald Ford, who assumed the role of president, and departed from the White House.
By the late 1970s, a widespread sense of pessimism seemed to take hold among Americans. The Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal had undermined their trust in government, while a growing skepticism about human nature followed the assassinations of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Style and Technique
Iambic Pentameter and Blank Verse
The poem's intricate five-part structure highlights the connection between the puzzle and the boy/poet. In the first section, stanzas 1–3, the anticipation for the puzzle is depicted in verse paragraphs often featuring iambic pentameter—ten-syllable lines with a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. This section concludes with the idea that the poem's elements come together to form a cohesive whole, much like the puzzle pieces: "The plot thickens / As all at once two pieces interlock."
In the second section, stanza 4, Merrill transitions from blank verse (unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter) to a more poetic style, with shorter and more rhythmic lines. The setting shifts to a future scene where the speaker witnesses a psychic's performance. The connection between the first and second sections is maintained by setting both scenes in a library and through the puzzle piece the psychic "sees" concealed in the box.
The third section, stanzas 5 and 6, revisits the blank verse of the initial section, as the scene returns to the boy, Mademoiselle, and the emerging picture in the puzzle, along with details of Mademoiselle's past. The fourth section, stanzas 7–14, centers on the puzzle's completion and shifts to tightly controlled quatrains (four-line stanzas) until the final stanza, which transitions into a closed couplet. A closed couplet consists of two rhymed lines that deliver a strong conclusion, as seen here, where the lines declare the last piece is found and the puzzle is finished. This section connects to the theme of the final section, emphasizing artistic creation after the puzzle is dismantled and returned to the shop. The fifth section, stanzas 15–18, reverts to the initial verse paragraph format.
Compare and Contrast
-
Early 1970s: Following a harsh and widely opposed conflict in
Vietnam, the United States withdraws its military forces. Shortly thereafter,
Saigon is overtaken by Communist forces.
Today: The United States is engaged in another unpopular military conflict, this time in Iraq. Despite elections being held, many people fear that the country is on the brink of civil war.
-
Early 1970s: Communist insurgents refuse to acknowledge the
elections in South Vietnam and persist in their fight against South Vietnamese
and American forces.
Today: Insurgents in Iraq, comprising Iraqi civilians and terrorist organizations, conduct similar attacks against occupying forces.
-
Early 1970s: The Watergate scandal reveals corrupt campaign
practices, such as break-ins at the Democratic National Committee headquarters
and illegal wiretapping of American citizens.
Today: During the 2004 presidential election, scandals arise involving smear tactics like those used by the "Swift Boat Veterans" and accusations of illegal voting procedures.
Adaptations
- In 1999, Random House Audio released an audio cassette featuring Merrill's poetry, narrated by the poet himself, as a contribution to "The Voice of the Poet" series.
Bibliography
Sources
Bloom, Harold, "The Year's Books: Harold Bloom on Poetry, Part I," in New Republic, November 20, 1976, p. 21.
Donoghue, Denis, "What the Ouija Board Said," in New York Times Book Review, June 15, 1980, p. 3.
Flint, R. W., "Metamorphic Magician," in New York Times Book Review, March 13, 1983, p. 6.
Mendelsohn, Daniel, "A Poet of Love and Loss," in New York Times Book Review, March 4, 2001, p. 16.
Merrill, James, "Acoustical Chambers," in Recitative: Prose, edited by J. D. McClatchy, North Point Press, 1986, pp. 3–4.
—, "Lost in Translation," in Collected Poems, Knopf, 2001, pp. 362–67.
Perkins, David, "The Achievement of James Merrill," in A History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After, Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 644–45.
Rodway, Allan, "Stripping Off," in London Magazine, Vol. 16, No. 3, August–September 1976, pp. 66–73.
Shaw, Robert B., "James Merrill and the Ouija Board," in New York Times Book Review, April 29, 1979, p. 4.
Simpson, Louis, "Divine Comedies," in New York Times Book Review, March 21, 1976, p. 210.
Smith, Evans Lansing, "Merrill's 'Lost in Translation,'" in Explicator, Spring 2001, Vol. 59, No. 3, p. 156.
Spiegelman, Willard, "James Merrill," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 165: American Poets since World War II, edited by Joseph Conte, Gale Research, 1996, pp. 173–87.
Further Reading
Blasing, Mutlu Konuk, "Rethinking Models of Literary Change: The Case of James Merrill," in American Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer 1990, pp. 299–317.
Blasing examines a postmodern focus in Merrill's writings.
Buckley, C. A., "Quantum Physics and the Ouija-Board: James Merrill's Holistic World View," in Mosaic, Vol. 26, No. 2, Spring 1993, pp. 39–61.
Buckley analyzes the blend of science and poetry in Merrill's work.
Vendler, Helen Hennessey, "James Merrill," in Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets, Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 205–32.
Vendler provides an extensive analysis of the Divine Comedies.
White, Edmund, "On James Merrill," in The Burning Library: Essays, edited by David Bergman, Knopf, 1994, pp. 43–55.
White highlights the "ambitious" nature of Merrill's The Book of Ephraim.
