Gospel & Universe 🧜🏽‍♀️ The Mermaid

The Epic Heroine

Introduction 🧜🏽‍♀️ Interpretation 🧜🏽‍♀️ Argument 🧜🏽‍♀️ Textual Variants

Introduction

Keith Reid’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967) is a powerful, ambiguous lyric which explores 🦋 living for the moment, 🦋 finding meaning in romantic love, 🦋 the impossibility of mythic design, and 🦋 epic heroism in the face of meaningless and death. In this chapter I’ll argue that the lyric is a unique mix of the existential and the agnostic: it faces the empirical and material facts of life and death, it hints ambiguously at possibilities which are mystical and poetic, yet it doesn’t make any final judgment about theism or atheism.

On this first page I give the overall argument of this chapter, and I also explain the differences between the three main versions of the lyric. In The Wine-Dark Sea I explore the overall use of nautical imagery, suggesting that alcohol and drunkenness can be seen in terms of mystical experience and in terms of the first existential epic sea-journey in literature, Gilgamesh. In The Miller I argue that the illusive reference to the miller in the chorus is an allusion to Chaucer’s famous miller, who argues for free speech, even in relation to the hallowed tale of Noah’s Ark. In Neptune I take a closer look at stanzas 2 and 3, arguing that the heroine is existential in the manner of Sartre, and that her words reverberate with the epics of Greece and Mesopotamia. In the final three pages, The Queen of Love, Beyond Alienation, and Myth & Mysticism, I interpret the final stanza in light of four Keith Reid / Procol Harum lyrics and two Leonard Cohen lyrics. I also argue that the final stanza completes the romantic scenario as welll as the existential argument: while the language may seem contradictory, and while it’s poetic to the point of obscurity, it makes sense in light of ambiguity, paradox, non-doctrinal mysticism, and agnosticism.

Interpretation

While “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is very short, it’s notoriously difficult to interpret. This difficulty becomes incrementally greater as one goes from the famous two-stanza version (here) to the three-stanza version (here) to the four stanza-version (here). The famous two-stanza version (used in Procol Harum’s hit single of 1967, which sold over 10 million copies) starts off relatively clear, yet becomes murky in the second stanza. In the first stanza the poet is partying in a bar or dance-hall of some sort, and in the second stanza he has a vague romantic encounter with a woman, who I refer to as the heroine. The listener can’t be sure what the poet means when he says that he wouldn’t let the heroine be “one of sixteen vestal virgins / who were leaving for the coast.” The chorus (which is the same in all versions) is even more obscure, since it refers to an unknown miller whose unknown tale makes the heroine’s face, “once just ghostly,” turn “a whiter shade of pale.” The two longer versions add more puzzling elements, yet also create a stronger narrative line. In the third stanza the heroine says, “I’m home on shore-leave,” after which the poet tells her that she “must be the mermaid / who took Neptune for a ride.” The final stanza completes the romantic narrative when together they crash-dive “to the ocean bed,” yet adds puzzling elements when the poet tells us that laughter is the queen of love and that “if behind is in front / then dirt in truth is clean.”

The inability to arrive at a singular meaning for the lyric isn’t a problem. A clear interpretation may even be counter-productive in a lyric that’s powerful precisely because it evokes rather than defines. The fact of its ambiguity makes it an ideal subject of agnostic analysis, since for the agnostic life itself — both its meaning in the moment and its meaning vis à vis death — remains in doubt.

Ambiguity can be seen in the title itself, a whiter shade of pale, which Reid says is reverberant, impressionistic, mysterious, and inscrutable. He says that “you can just kind of sit back and look at it endlessly.” In an early chapter (Montaigne, Pyrrho, Zhuangzi, & Hegel) I noted that Zhuangzi urged readers to stand at “the pivot of the Dao,” at “the center of the ring of thought, where one can respond endlessly to the changing views — endlessly to those affirming, and endlessly to those denying.” Reid also arrives at this word, endlessly, in his comments on the title:

It struck me as a very useful phrase, a whiter shade of pale. I mean people now use it all the time. I was just reading an article in the New York Times and they were talking about a drink called absinthe and they called the absinthe a lighter shade of green. It went into the Oxford Book of Quotations as a phrase, so it reverberates. I think the reason is really because it’s kind of something which is impressionistic, so people never really get to the bottom of it. So it has some kind of mystery to it like a painting, you can always find new levels of meaning. So in answer to your question why can something inscrutable be so popular, you can just kind of sit back and look at it endlessly. (from Huffpost — here)

The lyric isn’t a straightforward narrative based on lines of coherent plot or logical association. Rather, it suggests ideas based on a setting, a relationship, a few clear references, various images, numerous vague and resonant statements, and a number of obscure allusions. Nevertheless, there are enough connecting elements to create plausible interpretations. Reid notes,

It’s sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. It’s about a relationship. There’s characters and there’s a location, and there’s a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there’s a journey going on, it’s not a collection of lines just stuck together. It’s got a thread running through it. (from a Songfacts interview — here)

The setting, the relationship, and the journey are three key elements around which other elements swirl and sometimes take speculative trajectories. For instance, in the second stanza the poet refers to vestal virgins leaving for the coast. This refers to the romantic relationship as well as to the mythic figure of Neptune, who is referred to in the third stanza. The Classical references suggest a sea journey and perhaps an epic context. How a reader connects this epic context to the relationship remains a matter of interpretation.

Because the lyric has numerous obscure elements, the approach I favour is to allow the text’s allusions and metaphors to breath in the interpretive spaces the lyric creates overall. I see the ambiguities as watery currents that mingle and shift, yet nevertheless take the listener in the general emotional directions of nostalgia, sadness, and awe. Combining a close reading with a reader-response reading that allows a wide degree of latitude, I construct an interpretive structure that may appear larger than the lyric itself. For instance, while the heroine is an object of seduction, I also see her as an epic heroine who helps the listener explore the general idea of an epic existential journey. While some may see a typical bar-room encounter, muddled with vague allusions that make a simple scenario appear profound, I see the bar-room scenario as skirting, skimming, and diving into an existential predicament that evokes a deep sense of nostalgia for meaning itself.

I should emphasize that I don’t see a contradiction between these two takes on the lyric. An ambiguous lyric is many things: it’s what it is, with all possible interpretations held at bay; it’s what the lyricist thinks it is; it’s what someone in a car listening to the radio thinks it is; it’s what a careful reader argues it to be; and it’s also what a different careful reader argues it to be. A critical interpretation in this context is an offering of a point of view, as well as a path into a word-scape of discovery and appreciation. The important thing as I see it is to make the interpretation start from the text and not contradict what’s in the text. The critic is then free to illuminate the text, and to give readers more than they may already have in mind.

Argument

In structural terms, the two-stanza version of the song telescopes its existential paradox, while the third stanza deepens it in terms of romance and narrative continuity. The fourth stanza goes even further in these directions, splintering and then unifying the narrative in what might be seen as a foray into agnosticism or ‘poetic mysticism.’ 

Because existentialism has several definitions, I should clarify here that I use Sartre’s notion that the existence of our bodies and the physical world is undeniable, yet essence is a construct that is slippery, if not illusory. As the following excerpt from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy makes clear, Sartre focuses on the ontology of the world that we can verify rather than on the metaphysics that we can’t. His position allows for a clear phenomenological distinction between what we experience (existence) and what we may hope this experience entails in terms of things such as an immortal soul or a God (essence):

Like Husserl and Heidegger, Sartre distinguished ontology from metaphysics and favored the former. In his case, ontology is primarily descriptive and classificatory, whereas metaphysics purports to be causally explanatory, offering accounts about the ultimate origins and ends of individuals and of the universe as a whole. Unlike Heidegger, however, Sartre does not try to combat metaphysics as a deleterious undertaking. He simply notes in a Kantian manner that it raises questions we cannot answer.

Sartre’s existentialism doesn’t allow for conclusions about our cosmic origins or fates, and hence doesn’t deal with the cosmic meanings of religion or mysticism. Sartre is helpful in my argument because he presents a clear position from which we can gauge the degree to which the poet of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” acknowledges Sartre’s hard existential truths and yet adventures beyond them.

The role of the heroine in the song is paramount. She stands in contrast to the poet, who is enamoured by her yet doesn’t initially understand her need to return to the depths and dangers of the sea. While the poet uses the sea to suggest a romantic encounter, and while at one point he admits that they’re both metaphorically “at sea,” she’s more interested in the types of things explored by epic poets like Byron, Tennyson, Eliot, or Joyce, who see in the epic a vast Meaning that’s forever beyond our reach. In his poem “Ulysses” Tennyson has his epic hero say that “all experience is an arch wherethrough / Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades / For ever and forever when I move.” Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, the heroine tires of earthbound security and yearns for the open sea.

In some ways the heroine is the inverse of the woman in Looking Glass’ 1972 hit “Brandy,” of whom the sailors say, “your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea.” Brandy yearns to understand what the ocean is about, yet she can only try to grasp the call of the sea felt by the sailor she loves: “Brandy used to watch his eyes / When he told his sailor stories / She could feel the ocean fall and rise / She saw its ragin’ glory / But he had always told the truth, Lord, he was an honest man / And Brandy does her best to understand.” The sailor tells her, “What a good wife you would be, such a fine girl, / But my life, my lover, my lady is the sea.” One might see Reid’s heroine as Brandy later in life, once she’s been pulled from the bar and the land by the magnet of the sea. In a feminist turn of events, she becomes the epic heroine who men in the bar do their best to fathom. In a mystic twist (and tryst), she becomes both the lover and the sea.

The heroine wants to get off the pedestal others construct for her, as they did for the vestal virgins in Ancient Rome. She wants to ‘leave for the coast,’ presumably to set sail for the open sea, new vistas, and foreign lands. She sees a sedentary life as a momentary “shore-leave,” as if whatever is important to her lies elsewhere: in the lure of the sea; in the unknown; in the enormous, mysterious, dangerous depths of the ocean. Yet she isn’t egotistical or naive about this: she doesn’t assume that she can tame or understand the forces of Nature that await her. Instead, she sadly downplays the notion that she’s “the mermaid / Who took Neptune for a ride.”

Finally, the heroine convinces the poet to dive with her to the depths of the sea: together they’ll ‘attack the ocean bed.’ This final action could mean a number of things, including 1. the heroine will go to bed with the poet, 2. they’ll attack their nautical fate with gusto, 3. they’ll take their sea-travels to their furthest point, even to the point of ship-wreck and death, and 4. they’ll directly confront the fact of death as well as its philosophical and existential implications.

The heroine embodies, and subtly articulates, the following paradox: our existential predicament (being caught between the hedonistic pleasures of the bar and the harrowing depth of the deep blue sea) is rendered more intense the more we sound the depths of the intoxication the bar provides. The anguish of mortality pushes us to seize the day, and the more we seize the day the deeper we dive into Camus’ absurdity (wanting meaning but finding none), creating a spiral that circles downward like a whirlpool. The heroine helps us see that life’s absurdity (telling ourselves stories about vestal virgins, mermaids, and romance, all the while standing next to the abyss) becomes greater as the stories become deeper and more seductive, more full of life, love, and humour.

The heroine indirectly communicates two things we find hard to accept. First, we can’t control our fate or happiness, which means that it’s going to be very difficult to create our own meaning. This is suggested by her clear, disillusioned perception of the overwhelming power of Nature, represented by Neptune. Second, we can’t understand a higher or ultimate truth, about the universe or about ourselves. This is suggested by her more-than-ghostly reaction to the miller’s tale, which represents love, comedy, and disillusionment, as well as a liberating yet tragic escape from any Grand Meaning or Grand Narrative (or at least this is the argument I’ll make about “the miller’s tale” in the chorus). Because we find these things so hard to accept, her communication is oblique, subtle, humble, brave, and sad. This is perfectly matched by the music, which is haunting, understated, nostalgic, powerful, and melancholic.

I’ll conclude by arguing that while the lyric is bleak in its existential implications, it nevertheless holds out aesthetic and mystical possibilities of meaning. The song is rich in music and imagery, its solemn tone and imagery balanced by deep harmony and oblique meanings. These underlying features suggest connection in the face of disconnection, consonance in the face of dissonance, gusto in the face of depression, and wholeness in the face of dissolution. This aesthetic fusion, at once stirring and soothing, allows for a final point: neither physical obliteration nor lack of Grand Meaning preclude the possibilities of mystical annihilation, by which I mean the obliteration of the self into a cosmos whose depth cannot be measured. The poet and the heroine may crash-dive to the ocean bed, yet the sea has been so richly laden with possibilities that we can’t say for sure that their journey has ended.

This possibility operates in the realms of mysticism, poetry, and agnosticism, rather than in religious doctrine or scientific fact. It operates in a synesthesia where music is the food of love and in the paradoxical metaphor where behind is in front. In terms of agnosticism, one might say that while the heroine doesn’t believe in leaps of faith, this doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t continue her journey if she could. The poet is, after all, talking in extended metaphors, not proposing a plan of action. And while the metaphorical direction is clearly downward, we can’t be sure that this trajectory doesn’t continue into another realm, one in which down is up.

Textual Variants

Before getting to the details of my argument, I want to go over the structures of the various versions of the lyric. The stanzas begin with the following lines:

Here is the four-stanza version, which you can play within this page:

The reason for the textual variants is that in creating the hit single in 1967 the band shortened Reid’s four stanzas to two stanzas, and then also did renditions of the three and four stanza versions. Shortening the lyric to two stanzas made sense given the radio preference for shorter songs, and given the absence of an equally mesmerizing musical strategy to accompany a longer version. I suppose a strategy for an equally-successful longer version might have emerged — with perhaps a “Kashmir” heaviness in the third stanza and a “Stairway to Heaven” climax in the fourth (such a ‘ledzeppelinization’ might also suggest that poetry critics ought to mind their own business!). In any case, the three-stanza version retains the elusive aestheticism of the famous two-stanza version, and it creates a stronger romantic narrative, yet it doesn’t add any powerful musical variation, and therefore risks becoming musically repetitive. The four-stanza version is valuable for those who want a conclusion to the narrative, and to those who want to extend the sort of moody trance the song evokes. This long version is more musically repetitive than the three-stanza version, and therefore risks tiring listeners who aren’t intrigued by the haunting mood, by the possibilities of the romantic narrative, or by the heightened challenge of poetic and mystical ambiguity.

While the famous two-stanza version is brilliant as a song, it’s not as successful lyrically as the longer versions. As a poem, the short version contains elements that aren’t clear enough, or fully explored enough, to be fully appreciated within an aesthetic whole. As a song, this isn’t a problem, since the haunting nostalgia of the music takes over and the listener doesn’t think so much about the unconnected or unfinished ideas. Or, the musical depths carry the lyrical suggestions to a satisfying end. In any case, the longer versions stand more clearly on their own as poems. They take the ambiguities and obscurities of the famous two-stanza version and make enough sense of them to allow the listener to appreciate a more extended and coherent treatment of both narrative and theme.

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