"Letter" Text and Notes

"Letter" in a letter to David Kalstone

"Letter" in a letter to David Kalstone

NOTES

the great god Pan is alive: The Greek historian Plutarch (ca. 46-120) recounts the story of sailors who hear a mysterious voice call out, "the great god Pan is dead," which has been interpreted as marking the end of the classical age. (See Plutarch's Moralia.)

Syrinx: Claude Debussy's music for solo flute, "Syrinx." (183). (Link to Emmanuel Pahud performing Debussy's Syrinx.) Syrinx was transformed into a reed to escape her pursuit by Pan (see Notes to "Syrinx). Her fate resembles that of Montale's "Clizia." Like Syrinx, Clytie or Clytia was a nymph, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys in Greek mythology. Clytie was abandoned by Helios and after nine days of mourning transformed into a heliotrope.

 "cannot lift a broom": Merrill is citing Brandeis' letter to him

"head behind you on the wall . . . by the war": Probably the portrait by Francis Criss (see the first page of this site) painted in Italy in 1934. Merrill recalls the portrait hanging in Brandeis' apartment in A Different Person (CProse 606).

alone escapes, if not to tell the tale: Herman Melville's citation from Job 1:17 in the Epilogue to Moby Dick, "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." 

the head is far downstream: From the fifth stanza of John Milton's Lycidas. Orpheus was dismembered by the maenads for resisting their advances, and "His gory visage down the stream was sent."

fly chorus: The lament of the of the Hebrew slaves ("Fly, my thoughts") during in the Babylonian captivity in Verdi's Nabucco.

his brother's goats: Agreus ("hunter") and Nomios ("shepherd") were two of Pan's brothers and indicate the duality of Pan's nature.

quills of the electronic porpucine: Merrill alludes to the image of porcupines in the famous last lines of Eugenio Montale's "News from Amiata" to describe Brandeis' arthritic pain. See Brandeis' translation of this and other Montale poems on this site.