The Voyage

ROBERT LOWELL'S most recent book, The Voyage, is a splendid new presentation of old poems. These versions of 14 poems by Baudelaire appeared among Lowell's "translations" of a number of poets in his Imitations of 1958. The significance of The Voyage lies both in the accompanying paintings by Sidney Nolan and the exclusive selection of the Baudelaire imitations. The paintings and poetry are of equal importance and--as Lowell describes them--"absolutely welded together."

Nolan redefines and enlarges Lowell's vision of Baudelaire's inspiration. His paintings are not illustrations for Baudelaire but for specific lines of the Lowell text. Nolan's and Lowell's concentration on Baudelaire seems explainable in terms of sympathy with the French poet's sense of frustration, search for meaning, and social concern.

The energy of the poetry and the drawings is boredom, which drives the desire and lust of "the true voyager," one of "those who move simply to move -- like lost balloons!" Each illustration has a dark brushstroked background, as if it were an image cast upon a dark imagination -- "a mirage of agony."

Nolan's cover is an overture for the book. Its color is old-moss green, the green of stale water. The page is divided by an unbroken sea-horizon. Running the edge of the even ocean is the boat of the poems -- "our soul...a three master seeking port." An old-fashioned wire grave fence spans the dark sky. Behind the fence hover five "characters" -- anonymous creatures. They are placed like a line-up of black sheep to carry us into the dream-vision of the book. We see them again and again -- hermetic figures, alone, hungry, against the austere backgrounds of the illustrations. They are composed in strong patterns of dark and light -- like the black and white judgements of the seeker-voice which moves through the poems demanding experience. The figures of the cover are aspects of this split soul -- of which part wants rest, and part wants "dancing, gin, and girls." But the real land met in either search is only bare rock or rotting flesh -- "How sour the knowledge the travellers bring away."

NOLAN confronts us with startling images from this lurid and abortive voyage. His illustrations suggest monotypes -- brilliant rag strokes of detail. The reader -- hypocrite, mirror-image of the poet -- peers from another of Nolan's paintings. Only the essential features of the face are defined -- in heavy skeletal patterns. The obscure background overcomes the face's body. We are forced to recognize the identity of the face, the soul. "Its BOREDOM.... This obscene beast chain-smokes yawning for the guillotine--you--hypocrite Reader--my double--my brother!"

In the illustration of the line "playboys who live each hour" (from the poem "The Voyage") two figures make love. They are flat pleasureless forms against an utterly bleak background. They lie on a black band which spans the middle of the page like blacktop crossing a desert. Nolan connects the bodies into the hopelessness of this world by continuing the brushstrokes of the black across their forms. There is no clarity or vitality in their bodies or their act.

Nolan's choice of colors -- muddy and wine-toned greens, blues, reds and yellows -- is effective. One fascinating monochrome is of a red hissing swan coiled in a white bankrupt-of-shade-or-blue-sky -- "Its heart was full of its blue lakes, and screamed: 'Water, when will you fall?'" The color illustrations are more specific and representational than the black and white -- and less effective. They are less of dream, less inventive, less demanding of imagination.

Through the special capacity of the visual imagination, Nolan extends the language of Lowell's imitations. The Voyage is a complicated fabric of translation -- from Baudelaire through Lowell to Nolan. The genius of Lowell and Nolan encompasses the source and brilliantly reveals it to the reader.