Unknowable Love

In E. E. Cummings’s poem “somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond”, the reader sees a speaker fully in love with another. This love is described throughout as being an unknowable power over him. Beyond being an unknowable power, this love is an irresistible force on the speaker. Through the extensive use of nature imagery and layered similes throughout the poem, the speaker makes out the love he has to be something unwilling, an obligation to the beloved, one which she does not even know she creates in him. In the first quatrain of the poem, the speaker uses unusual syntax and paradox to express the unknowable nature of his beloved. This can be seen in the first two lines where the speaker explains that “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly
beyond/ any experience,your eyes have their silence:” (1-2). The speaker is saying, removing Cummings’s unconventional syntax, that he has never known his beloved’s eyes to be silent; they are always expressing themselves to the speaker. The effect of this constant expressing is stated In the following two lines where Cummings writes “in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,/ or which i cannot touch because they are too near” (3-4). The end of the second line ends with a colon, which would usually indicate a list or an explanation of what preceded. Here, in the third and fourth lines, the text does not act as a list or a clarification of the previous line. Instead, the text continues on to describe “… [her] most frail gesture” in as “things which enclose me,/ or which i cannot touch because they are too near” (3-4). By using the paradox present in these lines, the speaker further communicates the idea that his love is some ethereal, unknowable thing. The second quatrain of the poem establishes a compulsory aspect to the love the speaker feels through its use of nature and body imagery.
It begins with the first two lines, “your slightest look easily will unclose me/ though i have closed myself as fingers,”, which state that even though he has closed himself as one would their fist (as a violent image and a sign of aggression), his beloved can easily “unclose” him (5-6). The choice of the word “unclose” as opposed to simply “open” is because it acts as a near homophonic rhyme with “enclose” at the end of line 3. The poem largely avoids having an auditory form, lacking a definite meter though having a consistent syllable count in the first quatrain. It does, however, have a visual form through Cummings’s distinct lack of capital letters and lack of spaces following commas. In the lines “you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens/ (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose,” one word deviates from Cummings’s standard style by beginning with a capital letter (7-8). Here, the word “Spring” begins with a capital letter, emphasizing the importance of the word to the whole of the poem. In the seventh and eighth lines, the speaker likens the way his beloved uncloses him in lines five and six to the way spring would open her first rose. Again, it is explicitly described as unknowable and mysterious, but there is something more to it. A poet would want to avoid clichés unless they are using it to their benefit as
Cummings does here. Cummings want to convey to compulsive nature behind the love and does so with the specific comparison to a rose in the spring. The third quatrain creates a darker, contrasting image to that of a rose in spring by the use of the image of a rose in the winter.
Again, the dichotomy of closed and open is used, in this case to show the emotional state of the speaker. To be “open” is to be kind, to be in love. In this case, closed would be the opposite. One who is “closed” would be just the opposite: aggressive, angry. The line “though i have closed myself as fingers,”, which is where the first mention of the closed/open imagery appears, directly compares it to the image of a fist (6). In the lines “or if your wish be to close me,i and/ my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,” the use of the closed imagery does not seem to fit in with what had been previously established (9-10). However, continuing through the stanza to the eleventh and twelfth lines, where the speaker continues his thoughts vi enjambment, it is said “as when the heart of this flower imagines/ the snow carefully everywhere descending;” (11-12). Throughout literature, the image of falling snow has been used to represent death and here it is no different. It is explicitly stated as “[…] i and/ my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly” which is to simply say that if his beloved were to wish him dead, not only would he comply, it would be “beautiful” (9-10). It is also worth noting that the enjambment between lines nine and ten separates “i” and “my life”, making the two idea exist as separate things: the speaker is something other
than just his life (9-10). This concrete element adds to the effect of a compulsive need to close by showing that his life, the one thing that should be most opposed to closing (or, as it is used in the poem, dying), does so “suddenly”, with no hesitation or thought (10). This compulsivity is also expanded on in lines eleven and twelve by the use of the image of a rose in winter. Like most flowers, a rose would die in the cold, and due to the water being frozen, it would actually dehydrate and wilt. When a rose wilts, it often shrivels in on itself, closing in its own way. Abandoning the established imagery of the stanzas before it, the fourth quatrain lends an abstract sense to the poem through its use of imagery and the melodic assonance. Immediately leading the reader to beyond earth, the poem states in lines thirteen and fourteen “nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals/ the power of your intense fragility:”, using both paradox and