This is Mine, and I Can Hold It: Edna St. Vincent Millay and Her Music

Abstract

While Hegel might have insisted that “the word is the most intelligent means of communication, the most adequate to the spirit,” and Berlioz celebrated “the power of true expression: the incomparable beauty of melody that comes from the heart,” the artist whose talents and allegiances are divided between literature and music knows that the two arts cannot be evaluated hierarchically. Simply put, one means of expression accomplishes what the other cannot. For someone who writes as well as she composes, the decision to work within one discipline rather than the other cannot be final or absolute. The example of Robert Schumann, the so-called “literary musician,” serves well here. As a youth, Schumann had difficulty deciding which of his two passions he would pursue as a career. Though he is now better known for his musical compositions, Schumann actually had a firmer grounding in literature than music, and only decided to become a piano virtuoso at the age of twenty. Throughout his life, Schumann continued to write prolifically; indeed, even his musical compositions betray his love of narrative, as he created and developed a private “musical language” based on literary and personal allusions. Schumann delighted in weaving these subtexts into his scores; though for the most part they remain mysteries even to his critics, they add an intensely intimate feeling to his works.

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Without music I should wish to die. Even poetry, sweet patron muse forgive me the words, is not what music is (Edna St. Vincent Millay to Allan Ross MacDougall; MacDougall 101).