Because we had so many different readings to complete for tomorrow's class, I decided to focus this blog on one very specific aspect of our reading that caused me to do a lot of questioning. I thought that the poem "Touche" by Jessie Fauset was fascinating, and definitely something I would like to explicate further in class. I'll attempt to break it down a little bit here, and I'm going to include the poem in the blog so that you can see all the references I'm making.
Touche
Dear, when we sit in that high, placid room,
'Loving' and 'doving' as all lovers do,
Laughing and leaning so close in the gloom,--
What is the change that creeps sharp over you?
Just as you raise your fine hand to my hair
Bringing that glance of mixed wonder and rue?
'Black hair,' you murmur, 'so lustrous and rare,
Beautiful too, like a raven's smooth wing;
Surely no gold locks were ever more fair.'
Why do you say every night that same thing?
Turning your mind to some old constant theme,
Half meditating and half murmuring?
Tell me, that girl of your young manhood's dream,
Her you loved first in that dim long ago--
Had she blue eyes? Did her hair goldly gleam?
Does she come back to you softly and slow,
Stepping wraith-wise from the depths of the past?
Quickened and fired by the warmth of our glow?
There I've divined it! My wit holds you fast.
Nay, no excuses; 'tis little I care.
I knew a lad in my own girlhood's past,--
Blue eyes he had and such waving gold hair!
First of all, I think this poem is very beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. Fauset effectively uses the language of love to emphasize the love that the speaker feels towards the subject, emphasizing the love with a series of "L" alliterations, for example, "Loving...as all lovers do," "Laughing and leaning," (2, 3). But obviously, the speaker (who I believe to be a black woman) is experiencing a realization of the internalized and subtle racism in adult relationships, most specifically in her relationship with the subject of "Touche," who I believe to be a white man. I'm not sure about that, but in the thirds stanza, when the man says, "Black hair...so lustrous and rare,/Beautiful too, like a raven's smooth wing;/Surely no gold locks were ever more fair," he seems to be speaking from the perspective of a white man observing a black woman (7-9). I think that the speaker feels a bit of jealousy, wondering why her lover is so fixated on the color of her hair and her physical appearance. She accuses her lover of still loving another, asking "Does she come back to you softly and slow,/Stepping wraith-wise from the depths of the past?/Quickened and fired by the warmth of our glow?" (16-18). However, in the final stanza, the speaker feels almost a divine understanding of the situation at hand. Recalling her own memories of her own first dream lover with "Blue eyes...and such waving gold hair!" she is able to forgive her lover for speaking of gold locks while touching her own black hair (22).
Although not directly related, this poem reminded me of the situation that the narrator experienced before he married his wife in "Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man." Because he has spent so much time passing, the narrator is nervous and hesistant to reveal his true race to his future-wife, but he does so anyway, only to be met with apprehension and fear. She is shocked at his race, especially since she thought she knew him so well. I actually expected her to turn on him, like almost everyone else in his life so far had, but like the speaker in Jessie Fauset's poem, she has a divine realization that she needs to be more accepting of the narrator. Regardless of his race, she loved him to begin with and she forgives what she views as "flawed" about him, much like the speaker in "Touche" decides to forgive her lover for having a fixation on physical beauty.
I'm anxious to discuss Fauset's work in class -- partially because I don't completely understand her. Did anyone else notice that for a Harlem Renaissance poet, Fauset actually put as strong a focus on race as McKay and Toomer do in their writings? Fauset's poems, I feel, could easily be mistaken for those of a white poet, even though she actually worked alongside poets like McKay. I wonder why this is?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Very interesting, reading it over now I actually think both the woman and the man in the poem were black. I too feel she seems jealous at first, but then when she remembers that she herself was once interested in a white man, she understands how her lover could still be (I guess) nostalgically looking back. The way we might say, that our new boyfriend looks or acts nothing like we thought ‘our type’ was, but turns out to be perfect for us. Similarly, I just thought, if the man she was now in the relationship with was white, why would she say that she too had a relationship with a white man in her youth? It would then be obvious that she sort of preferred to be with a man of a different race.
Does she come back to you softly and slow,
Stepping wraith-wise from the depths of the past?
Quickened and fired by the warmth of our glow?
There I've divined it! My wit holds you fast.
Nay, no excuses; 'tis little I care.
I knew a lad in my own girlhood's past,--
Blue eyes he had and such waving gold hair!
This piece of the poem makes me feel that the woman in this poem really doesn’t find herself beautiful and has trouble understanding why this man finds her so beautiful that every night he says the same dreamy thoughts. So to protect her self she rebuffs with hurtful words. Or as she puts it her “wit”. She pretty much throws in his face that she thinks he is thinking and fantasizing of a lover from the past while they are being intimate in the now. Which would make any man freeze and make excuses if your current lover is accusing you of daydreaming about another woman. She then says I really don’t care about your excuses because now I will make you feel the same insecure way I do and starts to tell about her own girlhood past…
When I first read this poem I did not look at it the same way you did. I was confused with it, I did however, make the correlation with the blonde hair being race related. Also going along with Annie I agree that sometimes when you date somebody new they don't seem to be as though they are our type. Perhaps this is what happened during this poem. I thought this could poem could contribute to a scandelous affair that Fausette could have had previously. Who knows, I'm still a hopeless romantic.
Post a Comment