Gospel & Universe 🧜🏽‍♀️ The Mermaid

The Wine-Dark Sea

Into the Drunken Depths 🧜🏽‍♀️ Gilgamesh & the Ale-Wife

Into the Drunken Depths

In the first stanza, Reid subtly introduces a nautical motif that increasingly dominates the poem. This motif starts off as a mere adjective, seasick, yet it manages by the end of the four-stanza version to link the bar-room with its dancing and song, to the waves and swells that imperil the sailor, and to the dangerous depths into which the poet and heroine dive. The sea gradually takes on the mythic meaning of Infinity: the sum of all rivers that symbolize time, as well as the sum of all the time and space that exists beyond human existence. In this sense the lyric leads, inexorably, like life itself, to the great mysteries of Infinity and Death. Yet the poet doesn’t tie down the mystery of infinity and death, nor does he capitalize either term, as if to make it more grand than it may be, if, in the end, the bottom of the ocean is a mere snuffing out and nothing else. Instead, he takes us from the port, out onto the swells of the ocean, and finally down into the depths, with only hints and vague allusions to suggest where he is going or why. He leads us bit by bit from the known, with its trays of beer, its opportunistic romantic arguments, and its sad eyes, to the unknown, refusing to say what it all means. He’s neither needlessly skeptical nor unnecessarily idealistic. In this sense his point of view may be considered agnostic.

Much of the skill in “A Whiter Shade of Pale” comes from its simultaneous clarity and ambiguity. For instance, the poet’s seasickness in the first stanza is initially a simple and obvious thing that results from too much drinking and dancing. Yet it also connects incrementally to the later stanzas, and becomes more and more difficult to tie down. Structurally, it’s the only thing (apart from the general setting and of course the music) that links the first stanza to the nautical reference in the second stanza — the vestal virgins leaving for the coast. It has stronger links, however, to the nautical references in the third stanza: she’s on shore leave, he admits that they’re both at sea, and he suggests that she took Neptune for a ride. The poet’s initial lone seasickness has even stronger links to the fourth stanza, which is the only version of the lyric to complete the frame story and knit the poem together as a whole. The first stanza’s drunken delirium (the room “humming harder / as the ceiling flew away”) crops up at the end of the lyric, where “music is the food of love” and where his mouth feels “like cardboard” and seems to “slip straight through [his] head.” The nautical references reach a double entendre climax when he and the heroine “crash-dived straightway quickly / and attacked the ocean bed.”

While the first stanza is generally easy to follow (which is helpful in a lyric that later becomes more obscure), the short sentence “I was feeling kinda seasick” subtly foreshadows the existential sea-sickness that Sartre explores in his famous novel Nausea (1938). This isn’t the “seventh seasick day” type of nausea we find in Procol Harum’s “A Salty Dog” (1969), for in that case the sea-sickness appears to lead to a salvation in “no mortal place at all.” Nor does the seasickness suggest the deep pessimism of “Crucifixion Land” (1969), where the “sick is in [his] stomach” leads him to suicidal thoughts: “Tell the helmsman, Veer to starboard / Bring this ship around to port / And if the sea was not so salty / I could sink instead of walk.” The optimism of “A Salty Dog” and the pessimism of “Crucifixion Land” may not be mutually exclusive, however, if existential nihilism reigns while one is alive or exists, yet whatever happens afterward is open for debate. I’ll leave aside for now this agnostic possibility, and return to it in dealing with the final stanza, where the nautical links come together and where the pessimistic existential elements of the poem come up against the poem’s idealistic and highly paradoxical conclusion. (In The Queen of Love, Beyond Alienation, and Myth & Mysticism I deal with the final stanza in comparative detail).

The poem opens and closes with a Dionysian hedonism where the poet hyperbolically hurtles through the air and crashes to the floor. Viewed from the perspective of the entire poem, these incidences suggest what we see in Li Po, Khayyam, or Mahfouz’s “El Gabalaawi,” where the poet-philosopher suggests a Grand Purpose in life and then annihilates the self which entertains this Purpose.

On one level the lyric recounts a riotous night of drinking and romance where the poet ends up diving into bed with the woman, and on another level it suggests a sort of lover’s leap into the Deep, a sort of annihilation that lies beyond anything. A later lyric by Reid, “In God’s Shadow,” suggests something similar, albeit without the possibility of romance, and with the possibility of God: “Wild conversation / And the hours go by so fast. / And you find a lot of wisdom there / At the bottom of the glass. // And when the lights go down / And the laughter fades away / Somewhere between the moon and the stars / All of life’s certainties … they all just slip away. / And you lie down in God’s shadow / At the end … / The end of the day.” While “A Whiter Shade of Pale” suggests the possibility of a similar drunken obliterating wisdom, it doesn’t mention the possibility of God. 

It’s tempting to conclude that “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is an unmitigatedly sad and haunting lyric (matched perfectly by the nostalgic, mournful music) about the disillusionment of drinking the cup of wine to the dregs, of living life to the lees and then finding the cup empty. Or, as Bryan Ferry puts it in “Just Like You,” “In knowledge lies wisdom, / That’s all.” Yet this would be to ignore the positive paradoxes of the final stanza (which I will analyze in detail in my final two sections — “The Queen of Love,” “Beyond Alienation,” and “Myth & Mysticism” — as well as the final actions of the poet and heroine: they dive to the sea-floor in a heroic, climactic union. Neither the poet nor the heroine are alone in facing the deep rage of the sea.

While their downward sea journey suggests an imminent disaster, they do it together and they do it in a spirit of adventure. They engage courageously with the world, as if following the advice of Sartre, who argues that we can create our own meaning, or of Camus, who urges us to keep rolling the otherwise burdensome boulder of existence up the hill. The imagery found in Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” is perhaps even more apropos: after returning to Ithaca, the archetypal epic hero determines he “will drink / Life to the lees.” He sets off again for the open sea, despite old age, despite disillusionment, despite everything. The gusto of the poet and the heroine is all the more courageous because although they may “find a lot of wisdom there / At the bottom of the glass,” there’s no guarantee they’ll find meaning once they hit the bottom. From a scientific point of view, they’ll hit rock (or muddy) bottom. For the ocean is Neptune’s realm, and the epic heroine, who is likened to a mermaid, knows better than anyone that no one can take Neptune for a ride. Neptune is a stand-in for Nature, and from this angle Neptune suggests the grim conclusion of the Naturalists, who followed in the wake of Darwin’s enlightening yet brutal thesis. At the end of my analysis of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” I’ll argue that this final downward dive is also accompanied by several positive paradoxes, and that it therefore suggests an upward dive as well. Yet I’ll put aside this more difficult argument for later; here I want to suggest several overall possible meanings yet jump more specifically back to the first stanza.

The first stanza has links to meanings that are developed later, yet overall it appears straightforward. This straightforwardness is underscored by the final line: the poet and his companions simply call for more drinks, and the stanza ends with the very down-to-earth line, “the waiter brought a tray.” While this suggests the possibility of more dancing, humming, and flying, it also brings down to earth a lyric that will in the next stanzas threaten to fly away from listeners altogether. On one hand, a poetic alternative, such as “When we called out for another dream / The waves were wrought with spray,” would have prepared the reader for the strange images to come, where vestal virgins head out to sea, the poet admits they’re already at sea, and they crash-dive to the ocean bed. On the other hand, the image of a waiter bringing more drinks does three things which are perhaps more effective. First, it brings the lyric down to earth. Second, it suggests more alcohol, and hence more strange and drunken perceptions to come. 

Third, it points to whatever wisdom lies in living for the moment, that is, in following — at least momentarily — Horace’s old Latin phrase carpe diem, that is, seize (or pluck) the day. That “the crowd called out for more” is echoed by “we called out for another drink,” suggesting a communal urge to prolong the enjoyment of the moment, an urge the protagonist seems to share despite his “feeling kind of seasick.”

The communion of a bar in unison, expressing and fulfilling desire simultaneously, might be seen as a common form of worship, which in relation to orthodox religion is post-literal and post-liturgical. Or, one could add pre-literal and pre-liturgical if one sees it in terms of polytheistic worship, whether Dionysian or Tantric. In any case, the desire is instantly fulfilled: it’s when they call out for another drink that the waiter brings the tray. Literal or realistic accuracy is replaced with subjective experience, as when the room hums and the ceiling flies away. This scenario of social integration and ecstasy may no longer constitute a recognizable form of religion, yet it does serve as an antidote to alienation, existential or otherwise. This type of experience can, at least momentarily, transcend the particular character of individuals or the particular habits of culture, language, etc. Drinking may even be one of the roots of religious ritual, from the wine of the Dionysian mysteries to the wine of the Eucharist. Perhaps it’s as much a cause of the ritual celebration of a god (or God) as it is an expression of its effect.

Gilgamesh & the Ale-Wife

I’ve suggested that the relation between alcohol and meaning can be seen in terms of mysticism, existentialism, the Greek epic, hedonism, human connection, and early religion, yet there’s another context that goes even further back in time, to the first epic, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. My use of this epic may seem tangential, yet I’ll use it to suggest philosophical and theological elements in the lyric and to bolster the general mythic and epic background which lies behind the more obvious Greco-Roman references to vestal virgins and Neptune. Implicit in my argument here is that mythic elements like a sea-journey to death are obvious in the Grceo-Roman tradition, yet are also present in the most famous epic precursor in world literature, the epic of Gilgamesh.

As in “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” alcohol plays a prominent role: after the wilderness-born Enkidu sleeps with the temple harlot Shamat for seven nights, she convinces him to drink seven goblets of wine, after which he abandons the wilds to join the human race. Alcohol helps to separate him from the natural world, where his senses and instincts play the main role, and to lead him into social relations, laws, institutions, rationality, and most of all a deep friendship with Gilgamesh. Looking at this in terms of the philosophies which lead to agnosticism, one might say that Enkidu leaves the empirical world of the senses — the same world where Naturalism and atheism are king — and enters the world in which love, friendship, family, laws, social contracts, religion, and abstract values dominate.

The further events in Gilgamesh bear out the importance of relations and law. After Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is distraught and goes off on a quest to find the afterlife, where he hopes to find again his beloved friend. Tellingly, it’s the ale-wife Siduri who is the first person to give Gilgamesh bad news: he’ll never see Enkidu again because there’s no afterlife. Yet she also gives him consoling news about living in the moment. Siduri’s connection to alcohol may be a coincidence, yet it’s hard to forget that it was alcohol that helped Enkidu to become civilized to begin with. That Enkidu drinks to become human and that the woman who tells him the hard truth about the afterlife also sells alcohol for a living, may suggest any number of things. Among these is that 1. alcohol can break down psychological barriers so that you realize who and what you are, 2. alcohol may be used as a consolation in the face of bad news, and 3. alcohol may help you live in the moment, either by numbing you from the bad news or by making you once again interested in the things around you, and in this sense by helping you to find a new moment to live in. In the end, of course, one must sober up and face the stings of outrageous fortune, even if the fortune is not just the loss of a dear friend, but also the loss of your own existence.

The ale-wife is like the heroine in “A Lighter Shade of Pale” in that both are the bearers of bad existential news. Reid’s heroine bluntly tells the poet at the beginning of the second stanza, “There is no reason / and the truth is plain to see.” (In the chapter “Neptune” I argue that these ambiguous lines are an existential assertion). Even before Gilgamesh is told the hard facts about death by Utnapishtim (the Sumerian original of Noah), the ale-wife tells him there is no meaning beyond the grave, only the gods enjoy eternal life, and he may as well enjoy the time he has left on Earth:

You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man. (trans. N.K. Sandars, Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces)

To “dance and be merry, feast and rejoice” is to live in the here and now instead of thinking about the there and after. Alcohol is a part of this, as it can break down worries about the future, dissolve the borders between ego and id, and help people live in the present. The lines “When we called out for another drink / the waiter brought a tray” thus suggest a phenomenological or experiential meaning that sidesteps puritan society and religion, creating a shortcut to unity and illumination. There may be no overarching philosophical meaning, yet there is the transient meaning that lies in the moment. This is of course no permanent state of revelation, since it alternates with nausea or seasickness. Or, as Leonard Cohen puts it in “Closing Time,” the “Johnny Walker wisdom” of intoxication (or “running high”) must come to an end at closing time, for “the Boss don’t like these dizzy heights.”

Perhaps because the religious dimension of this Johnny Walker wisdom has largely been relegated to the sacred past, the poet refers to ancient myth rather than present religion: he refers to vestal virgins and the god Neptune rather than the Virgin Mary or a monotheistic God. I’ll return to these possibilities (and to Leonard Cohen) in “The Queen of Love” and “Puzzling Evidence,” where I explore the arcane obscurities of the fourth stanza, where laughter is the queen of love, thoughts are like cardboard, and the poet asserts the paradox, “if behind is in front / then dirt in truth is clean.” Yet here I want to suggest that the drunkenness of the first stanza may be straightforward in its immediate context, yet it’s also latent with other possibilities that the lyric will return to once deeper narrative and epistemological lines are established.

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