W.S. Merwin’s Homecoming in the Heart of Europe

Abstract

Even before publishing his first volume of poetry, A Mask for Janus (1952), W.S. Merwin spent years living in Europe. Written as he traveled through and tutored in Portugal and Spain before temporarily settling in London, Merwin’s early poetry is imbued with his European travels and the European traditions he encountered. This Europeanness only intensified when he bought a rundown farmhouse in the southwest of France in 1954. Composed while living “In the Heart of Europe,” to quote the title of one of his poems from Green Beasts (1956), Merwin’s early poems seemed so intent on preserving traditional forms of poetry, such as ballads, sestinas, and roundels, that they read retrospectively as a rejection of the American way of life he grew up with. This chapter investigates what drew Merwin to the European tradition. Even more than American poets such as Adrienne Rich, Robert Lowell, and James Merrill, who also lived in Europe around the same time, Merwin appears to feel that Americans could “assume custodianship of European cultural traditions” in the postwar era, to cite Robert Von Hallberg (71). Yet it is also possible that Merwin was already exhibiting his conservationist side that he directed toward more environmental concerns in later decades.