Any man who sings of the inherent beauty and freedom of emptying his bladder in a public urinal with ‘the sun splashing over [him]’ as Miller does in Black Spring, 1936, Obelisk Press, IBSN 0-8021-3182-4, will always be a friend of the irreverent. To speak of such bodily delights during a period so darkly under the shadow of a fast approaching world war simply redoubles the alliance.
Henry Miller slept, without a doubt, on a burning bed. Not a restful, drowsy sleep, of course, but a fitful, spasmodic thing, riddled with magnificent, whirling, Technicolor dreams, all communicated to the reader in the morning, or on a Saturday afternoon while urinating freely in a ‘pissotiere’, under the twittering birds.
How to Transcend Socio-political Conditions
It was Miller’s characteristic irreverence which allowed him to transcend the social and political conditions of the mid to late thirties. Miller displays only marginal social and next to no political context because he did not allow any conscience to hold forth in these areas, and perhaps the first question that ought to be asked is: why should he have?
Is it up to a single man to voice the doom of an era? To keep a finger on its figurative pulse when he is well occupied with measuring his own; noting its rhythms and urgencies? Miller had a healthy grasp of his own sense of doom – ‘O death, where is thy sting?’ – ought he necessarily encumber himself with that of his entire generation? These are not questions any of us need to answer with a firm conclusion, rather, allow Miller’s choices the breathing space they deserve, relax, and follow his hummingbird mind as it whirs amongst the fuchsias.
How to Appreciate the Grace in Stream of Consciousness
Much of Miller’s prose relies on the notion of stream of consciousness; one statement launches a dozen others, permitting free associations and thickly communicated moods. ‘The Angel is my Watermark!’ is one section exhibiting such free-form shuffling. The chapter skips about between the authors dogged description of his fast evolving painting, vibrantly detailed scenes from the past, momentary lapses into somewhat caustic visions of humanity and, naturally, Mr. Miller’s raison deter – his lust for life:
‘I am radiant, radiant. Something dreary, cloying, oppressive has been washed away forever’
This in response to the addition of liberal amounts of ‘bright liquid yellow…the finest of all yellows’ to the oeuvre of the cemetery gates.
Miller’s lyrical hyperactivity in such sections tends to capture, with more natural grace, the ebb and flow of the human mind. While in other sections, such as ‘The Tailor Shop’, the narrative flow is more organic, full with root system and branches, each passage leading sensibly to the next, throughout ‘The Angel is my Watermark!’ we can glimpse, perhaps, the uninterrupted stuttering of another’s mind at full tilt.
Such a thing is always a fine spectacle to witness and may even be at the very heart of any authors preference for the first person as a narrative device. Certainly, for Miller, it was an astute decision; how best can we appreciate a man’s exultation in his own beating heart, his buzzing mind, except though his own eyes? Those eyes which so easily become ours, which swing round one hundred and eighty degrees and watch with interest the reader's own heart, their own mind.
Henry Miller is the author of numerous novels, memoirs, letters, essays and observations, including Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and the three volumes of The Rosy Crucifixion: Sexus, Nexus and Plexus.
