Bath
Bath - meaning Summary
Music as Sudden Salvation
The poem sketches a man who sees life as meaningless and dead until he attends a Mischa Elman concert. The music physically and emotionally reshapes him: it "washed" and "rebuilt" what was inside, prompting encores and changing the way his feet met the sidewalk. He returns to the same world unchanged in circumstances but reanimated in perception, now viewing it with a "singing fire" and a perpetual climb of roses.
Read Complete AnalysesA man saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went to a Mischa Elman concert. Two hour waves of sound beat on his eardrums. Music washed something or other inside him. Music broke down and rebuilt something or other in his head and heart. He joined in five encores for the young Russian Jew with the fiddle. When he got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. He was the same man in the same world as before. Only there was a singing fire and a climb of roses everlastingly over the world he looked on.
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