‘Immaturity’ and ‘youth’ in poetry

I was amused (for reasons about to emerge) that the first hit I had for my last post, ‘Quetzalcoatl’, came from Mexico…but I was astonished that no-one wrote in to ask why on earth the poem was called ‘Quetzalcoatl’ and what it is all about. Perhaps you are all too polite! For, although I headed it ‘Poem after a summer rain shower in Moscow, 1970’, the context was surely so opaque as to make the poem impenetrable.

A poem written by a young person that has no common context with the reader, that is therefore pretty incomprehensible to a reader, and seems to have been written only for the poet’s satisfaction, is an immature poem; and ‘Quetzalcoatl’ is just that. After the longest, coldest and most depressing winter in Moscow that I ever experienced, even the Russian spring was so violent as not to lift the spirits much. But a sudden, soft, sun-soaked shower of rain in early summer, complete with rainbow, was, as they say, an epiphany. Before me was a dusty Moscow square. Heady with joy, I imagined the arc of the rainbow zooming down into the middle of the square, as in a cartoon, or comic (‘shh-tunk!’).

And what would it do next? Well, it was the incarnation of all colours, defying all the grisaille of Moscow and, frankly, Soviet life, so this creature would dance! And as soon as I saw it doing that before me, I thought of Quetzalcoatl, the radiant ‘plumed serpent’ Mexican god, who was a happy, joyful, dancing god amongst so much Aztec fatalism, morbidity and death. He threw his bird beak in the air (‘beakproud’) and shook all his gorgeous, quetzal bird feathers (‘the jewels flew’).

But — I jest not — this is a political poem. The rainbow took shape for me as Quetzalcoatl because I had been translating (in Moscow) a book from German for Cambridge University Press about the Spanish Conquest of South America, so I was very aware of Quetzalcoatl’s place in the Aztec pantheon. He was opposed to human sacrifice. As a twenty-two-year-old in the USSR, I felt I was living in another society that was built on human sacrifice (the genocide of Stalinism was actually presented by some Russians as a ‘necessary’ sacrifice for the Communist future). Therefore when in the second half of the poem the rainbow takes on Quetzalcoatl’s other nature — as a snake — and ‘eels’ through hearts, he is ‘lacing’ together again those hearts that were ripped out and flung on the Aztec/Soviet altars; healing them in enactment of his new faith of life and joy.

Alexander Pushkin as a fifteen-year-old schoolboy. An 1822 engraving by G.-J. Geitman from a drawing made from life at the Imperial Lyceum by an unknown artist.

Obscurity, not to say pretension, combined with extreme ‘Romantic’ solipsism (‘written for your own satisfaction’) are what marks an immature poem. But ‘immaturity’ in poems is not the same as mere ‘youth’, because you find immaturity in quite old poets! The clearest example of a body of ‘young’ poems that I can think of in literature is Pushkin’s hundred or so ‘Lyceum Poems’, which were immensely popular in his lifetime. They were written between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, so they are by definition ‘young’. But they are not ‘immature’, because they are always free of pretension. They sparkle with wit, self-irony, verve and virtuosity. Consequently, they give an impression of surprising maturity. On the other hand, he did keep revising them up to the age of thirty…

‘Quetzalcoatl’ is an immature poem — mercifully short — but I would never deny that its sense of excitement, its pace, its genuine spontaneity, breathe youth — my own. Although it was writtten down over fifty years ago, I recognise an authentic youthful energy in it, which is why I have chosen to include it in my collection The New Dark Blue Cowboys and foreground it against such a fantastically vibrant painting of Kandinsky’s.

Postscript: I’ve never read D.H. Lawrence’s novel The Plumed Serpent, although I had read his Mornings in Mexico long before I went to Russia, and loved that book.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.