Cons: Author inserts herself, glosses over some issues
The Bottom Line: It's probably impossible to capture every aspect of such an overwhelming personality, but this biographer gives it a good try, and for the most part, succeeds.
Penguinlady's Full Review: Nancy Milford and Kimberly Schraf - Savage Beauty:...
Warning! This is a LOOONG review. I can't discuss a biography without also discussing its subject, and this subject simply will not let me get away with only the facts. So settle in for a long read!
I have been a major admirer of Edna St. Vincent Millay since I first came across one of her poems in high school. At the tender age of 16, I didn't really "get" what it was about, but it grabbed me and propelled me into poetry with a grip that has not loosened in the intervening 40+ years. That poem remains my favorite to this day, one of the very few "real" poems I have committed to memory, and every reading of it awakens in me the same emotions that the first one did.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
What manner of woman could - indeed, would - write such adjective-invoking lines?
A few words about the subject of this biography
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born into a poor family in Camden, Maine, on February 27, 1892, which is why I'm writing this review today, her 113th "birthday." Her middle name, St. Vincent, was bestowed in honor of the hospital that had saved the life of her uncle Charlie shortly before she was born. Her parents, Henry and Cora Buzzell Millay, were as mismatched as two people could be; Henry, a charming, handsome slacker, left the family at Cora's request when their three daughters, Edna, Norma, and Kathleen, were babies, while Cora, left to support her family alone, clenched her jaw and did so without ever a glance back. Unfortunately, Cora's work, as wig-maker, nursemaid to invalids, and other odd jobs, took her out of town, and the three girls were left, with very strict rules and schedules, to fend for themselves, with frequent letters back and forth with Cora. Henry continued to wrote to them and promise visits and money, but neither ever materialized and Edna didn't see him again until he lay dying, in her young adulthood. As a foretaste of her later output, she sent him this poem in her teens:
Dear Papa, I am puzzled sore
To think why you don't send some more
Of that nice stuff you sent before.
Now, Papa darling, will you tell
When ham is fifty cents a smell
And cold soused trype is quite too swell
To view,
How in the world your daughters dear
Can keep alive - or anywhere near -
Unless from time to time we hear
From you?
But, Papa, this is not a fluff,
I've lived on sawdust long enough:
'Tis quite unsatisfying stuff.
And so
Your hat in deepest mourning drape -
Send me some pinks tied up in crape, -
Or send me something in the shape
Of dough.
Despite the privation and loneliness, Cora managed to instill into all three of her girls a ferocious literacy; all became writers of poetry, novels, and plays.
In 1912, when Edna was 20, she wrote Renascence, that lengthy poem that is a staple of the American high school curriculum:
All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood...
The poem was entered into a magazine contest, and on the strength of it, Edna was sponsored to Vassar by a wealthy patron. While at Vassar, she published The Harp-Weaver and other Poems, the first of her considerable output of poetry and some plays.
She continued to write, pouring out volume after volume of stunning verse, including, at the apex of her post-Vassar New-York-party-girl career,
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light!
And:
And if I loved you Wednesday
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday -
So much is true.
And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday, - yes - but what
Is that to me?
From a slow start, Edna kicked up her heels in the late 'teens and Roaring '20s, taking full advantage of the freedoms afforded by her status as a member of the bohemian Greenwich Village set. She was a tiny person with wild, curly red hair, compelling eyes, and a deep, mesmerizing voice. And she was entirely aware of her magnetism. She turned her wiles on to both men and women, and lived a life unfettered by convention.
How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
Is blest in every way?
Now it may be, the flower for me
Is this beneath my nose;
How shall I tell, unless I smell
The Carthaginian rose?
The fabric of my faithful love
Now power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here, - but oh, my dear,
If I should ever travel!
and...
I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day.
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favourite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
and oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far, -
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.
Everyone - men and women alike - fell under her spell. Her lovers read like a list of the literary and bohemian lights of the first decades of the 20th century.
In 1923, however, she married a man she had met a few months earlier, Eugen Boissevain, a wealthy Dutch coffee importer. He spent the rest of his life caring for her, clearing the way for her to devote herself to her muse, and ultimately, becoming the enabler of her alcoholism and morphine addiction. He also stood by and watched as she continued to carry on her flings and affairs, one of which, with poet George Dillon, included a lengthy - at least a year, from what I can tell - sojourn with him in Paris while Eugen stayed home at Steepletop, the farm they had bought in Austerlitz, N.Y. (Eugen was not entirely innocent of his share of affairs, either; their marriage was wide open on both sides.)
Her mode of composition was somewhat unconventional; she would sit curled up in a big chair for hours on end, oblivious of her surroundings. This was her composing time; she would think out an entire poem and not commit a word to paper until it was done. I have a hard time memorizing a single 14-line sonnet, but she was able to reconstruct an entire book when the original was destroyed in a fire.
And a further note: Although Millay was the acknowledged master of the sonnet form, she also wrote in all the other poetic forms extant. So it would be a mistake to focus only on the sonnets and overlook the rest.
Millay's output included A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), Second April (1921), and The Ballad of the Harp Weaver (1922), for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. She also published Fatal Interview (1931), Conversation at Midnight (1937), and Make Bright the Arrows (1940). Not content to limit her creativity to poetry, she also collaborated with composer Deems Taylor, writing the libretto for his opera The King’s Henchman (1927) and with her sometimes-lover George Dillon, she translated Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (1936). Her later works took on a social consciousness that revealed an agonized concern for world events in the 1930s and '40s. She suffered a nervous breakdown in 1947 and was hospitalized for several months.
Eugen died in 1949, and Millay followed less than a year later, as the result of a fall down the stairs of her farmhouse.
I could go on and on, but then you wouldn't need to read this book, would you?
And now for the book itself
Nancy Milford, not to be confused with Nancy Mitford, is a well-known biographer, having published Zelda, the biography of Zelda Fitzgerald. She spent almost 25 years gathering information and researching this book, time which included long visits and conversations with Norma Millay Ellis, Edna's next-younger sister. Norma was the executor of Millay's literary estate, and as such, ferociously protective of her sister's reputation.
Milford was allowed almost free access to all the letters in the estate, which include most of those written to Millay and almost none of those she wrote herself. The flow of information is supported by numerous direct quotes from this material; there is not a single page that doesn't include a citation. For a book of 509 pages, that's an impressive accomplishment. The book includes 15 pages of Notes, which cite the sources for all the citations, and a 21-page Index.
I found it difficult to get into, because the author employs a variation on the device of in media res. She doesn't really start in the middle and go back, but neither does she start at the beginning of Millay's life. Rather, we get a glimpse of the life of the three little girls with their parents and later their mother alone, and then go back to a brief chronology of her maternal and paternal families. We learn about her grandparents, how Henry and Cora met and married, and gradually work our way back to where we started. I found this confusing; at times I wasn't sure if I was reading about Cora or her mother or her grandmother... Once I hit my stride, however, I found the book hard to put down. This is a beautifully researched book, overflowing with detail and citations.
Once I'm nit-picking, I may as well go all the way. The book is divided into Book One, The Lyric Years: 1892-1923, and Book Two, Steepletop: 1923 - 1950. Each Book is further divided into chapters. However, it's not always easy to tell what year we're in; I found myself having to page back occasionally to reread a line that would place me in time. That may be a function of the fact that the level of detail in this book is so extraordinary, but it is also the cause of my being unable to say exactly how long Millay spent in Paris with her lover George Dillon without going back and figuring out dates.
Another minor irritant was the author's habit of inserting herself into the flow. She spent quite a bit of time with Norma Millay Ellis while researching this book, and inserts their conversations here and there, evidently to portray the level of guardedness Norma felt toward her and the sharing of the resource material. I appreciated the information, but would have preferred to have it up front, where it wouldn't disturb the rhythm of the book.
And finally, the author tends to gloss over Millay's sexual nature. Her book A Few Figs from Thistles, published when she was 30, spoke of sexual freedom, maintaining that it was as valid for women as for men. (Class, go back and reread the first poem I quoted in this review.) Her first sexual experience seems to have been with her female classmates at Vassar, and she continued to define herself as bisexual for the rest of her life. According to a web page dedicated to her at Sappho.com, "In 'Great Companions,' Max Eastman relates an interesting story about Millay that, if true, reveals something of her attitude about [her own] own sexuality. According to Eastman, while at a cocktail party Millay discussed her recurrent headaches with a psychologist. He asked her, "I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that you might perhaps, although you are hardly conscious of it, have an occasional impulse toward a person of your own sex?" She responded, "Oh, you mean I'm homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual, too, but what's that got to do with my headache?"
Milford mentions a few encounters with women, but leaves their nature open to some conjecture, and doesn't make the point that seems obvious to anyone who does a little research: that Millay was a sexual omnivore, unconstrained by convention in choosing her lovers, both female and male. In this case, the author's discretion does a disservice to our understanding of the complexity of the poet's character.
Lest I leave you believing that she wrote only of her fickle nature, here's a group of poems from Memorial to D.C. upon learning that a college friend had died in the flu epidemic of 1918.
It might have been today, although
You died about a year ago,
Somebody dropped her voice and said,
"You know that Dorothy is dead."
It might have been this very day.
I lied and told her that I knew,
And wished that she would go away,
So I might sit and think of you.
___
Slip her pretty gowns
From their padded hangers,
She will dance no more
In her narrow shoes
Just a rainy day or two
In a windy tower;
That was all I had of you, -
I remember three or four
Things you said in spite,
And an ugly coat you wore,
Plaided black and white.
Just a rainy day or two
And a bitter word, -
Why do I remember you
As a singing bird?
___
There will be rose and rhododendron
When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas
Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;
Still will the tamaracks be raining
After the rain has ceased, and still
Will there be robins in the stubble,
Grey sheep upon the warm green hill.
Oh, there will pass with your great passing
Little of beauty not your own, -
Only the light from common water,
Only the grace from common stone!
___
Heap not on this mound
Roses that she loved so well;
Why bewilder her with roses,
That she cannot see or smell?
She is happy where she lies
With the dust upon her eyes.
Edna St. Vincent Millay worked with the same alphabet and vocabulary that is available to all of us, just as Bach and Mozart had only the same 12 notes to use that are available to us in the shower. But like them, she fashioned that raw material into soaring creativity - lines that speak for us so simply and eloquently that which we cannot express ourselves. Clearly, she was a conduit, like Bach and Mozart, for the creative force that spoke through her. We may never really understand how it works, but this book goes a long way toward helping us understand the person through whom it flowed.
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