A Long Novel
A Long Novel - meaning Summary
Intimacy and Moral Ambiguity
Ashbery's 'A Long Novel' portrays a fractured intimacy in which physical separation and moral ambiguity intertwine. The speakers occupy contrasting atmospheres: one gathers deeds and self-justification, the other endures patience, grief, and the sense that goodness is impossible. Snow and air recur as mediating images, giving the scene a cold, elegiac cast. The poem stages a hesitant reckoning—self-deception and longing coexist, leaving responsibility and emotional truth unresolved.
Read Complete AnalysesWhat will his crimes become, now that her hands Have gone to sleep? He gathers deeds In the pure air, the agent Of their factual excesses. He laughs as she inhales. If it could have ended before It began—the sorrow, the snow Dropping, dropping its fine regrets. The myrtle dries about his lavish brow. He stands quieter than the day, a breath In which all evils are one. He is the purest air. But her patience, The imperative Become, trembles Where hands have been before. In the foul air Each snowflake seems a Piranesi Dropping in the past; his words are heavy With their final meaning. Milady! Mimosa! So the end Was the same: the discharge of spittle Into frozen air. Except that, in a new Humorous landscape, without music, Written by music, he knew he was a saint, While she touched all goodness As golden hair, knowing its goodness Impossible, and waking and waking As it grew in the eyes of the beloved.
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