Historion
Historion - meaning Summary
Identity as Borrowed Selves
The poem describes selfhood as a translucent center that temporarily absorbs other great souls. The speaker claims to become Dante, Villon, Christ or other masters for brief instants, losing personal being and functioning as a reflection of those larger minds. The experience is fleeting and almost sacrilegious to name, yet it suggests creativity as possession or participation in a continuity of influential voices that live through the poet.
Read Complete AnalysesNo man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass athrough us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and thief, Or am such holy ones I may not write Lest blasphemy be writ against my name; This for an instant and the flame is gone. 'Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphere Translucent, molten gold, that is the "I" And into this some form projects itself: Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine; And as the clear space is not if a form's Imposed thereon, So cease we from all being for the time, And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on.
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