George MacBeth - An Approach

Clutching at things, plain things

The poetic universe of George MacBeth is determined and defined, in a large number of his poems, by plain, common, everyday things, personal objects and sometimes plants or animals which are obsessionally used in a variety of poetic images. But the poetic image is not created for its own sake; it carries along with it a great number of connotations which sometimes elevate it to the point of becoming a universal symbol and a key for the poet's philosophical anxiety.

In his poem entitled The Drawer MacBeth uses the contents of this drawer in order to reconstruct the memories of his entire life and even conjure, through the enumeration of little, otherwise insignificant objects, the ghosts of his parents, whom he lost at an early age (and particularly his father). The image of his father returns in many other poems as well, like in The Passport or The Compasses and The Miner's Helmet, through the very presence of the objects mentioned in the titles. The things belonging to the deceased person acquire thus a quality of both a fetich and a talisman; the passport becomes a figurative passport for accessing the no longer existent beloved person, the compasses retell the story of his working life and so does the miner's helmet, placing him, at the same time, in a certain social order, a real or imaginative kind of hierarchy both in life and inhuman society.

Other poems contain a less autobiographical aspect of things, like Scissor Man where the humorous and apparently entairtaining personnification of the enamoured but unlucky pair of scissors ends up in an original and brightly carried out piece of social critique and satire, while poems like Bats and On the Arrival of a New Cat use familiar objects in unexpected poetic images, subverting the usual visual aspect of the world and creating very interesting effects: the bats hanging upside down are compared to "collapsed umbrellas" or underground passengers, while in The Arrival of a New Cat the animate and inanimate beings are invariably personified: pot bears "sniff the temperature", faience frogs are on the alert, fuchsia flowers are "ringing their bells" in order to welcome the new-born kitten. The atmosphere created by the use of all these poetic artifices is, according to the theme of the poem, either light and euphorical or mock-heroic, solemn, magnifying the most insignificant everyday object or event and attributing a new, unthought of aspect, like in the funeral procession in honor of the dead cat in the relevant poem, entitled To a Slow Drum.

Objects of more specific nature and use, like the shell which killed the poet's father, are put forth in order to serve as universal symbols. In the poem entitled The Shell the futility and tragic ridicule of war is deplored in terms of personal experience, while the unbearable lack of originality in everyday routine is described in the poem entitled The Sewing Room, where the associations are provided by the presence of a sewing machine. Guilt and remorse are symbolised by a toy sword in Divorce Poem and promise for tenderness is expressed through the offering of a new-born hedgehog in The Gift.

The strange and surprising personification of the giant ants in Bedtime Story (the narrator in this poem is, in fact, a female giant ant telling a bedtime story to her little ant) is a tragi-comic (and, because of this, even more horrifying) allegory for a probable nuclear destruction. The agony of life struggling to overcome fatal misfortunes is expressed by the search for the lost sheep in the snow, compared to "rugs on legs" in A Poem for Breathing. And, finally, the multitude of objects isted in the Thunnersee poem where the baron's aristocratic house is amply described (curtains, paintings, clothes, the bedroom and bathroom, the terrace breakfast table, the baron's breakfast itself) serve to pay a memorial tribute to a world about to disappear (13 years before World War I, as we are informed by the poet), enjoying the luxury of its stature before committing its literal and metaphorical suicide, following tha baron's example.

MacBeth's insistence on all these details and his ability of making the best and most original use of them are a proof of his virtuosity and expertise in the handling of language and its possibilities, and at the same time contribute to a different "reading" of reality, to a liberation of the poetic imagination and, finally, to the creation, by means of known and material things, of a new, completely renovated universe.