Angels

Death Is The Mother Of Beauty

"Sunday Morning" is a meditative poem by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879 -- 1955) that celebrates the beauty of the physical world and its transience juxtaposed with themes of religion. Stevens tells his story through a beautiful woman gazing at the sea. The phrase "death is the mother of beauty" occurs twice in the poem. In stanza V, Stevens writes:

"She says, 'But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.'
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires."

In the following stanza, Stevens says:

"Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly."

On one level, Denis Johnson's first novel "Angels" (1983) could hardly be more different from Stevens' poem. Stevens and his character are erudite, highly educated, and well to do. The characters in Johnson's novel are drug users, alcoholics, and criminals all of whom are emeshed in poverty. They lack the rudiments of an education which would create interest in a writer such as Wallace Stevens.

Yet, there is a clear and often repeated allusion to Stevens' poem in "Angels". The final scene in Johnson's novel is set in a dismal prison in the Arizona desert where one of the primary characters, Bill Houston, is awaiting execution. The gas chamber in which Houston is to be executed bears the (unattributed) inscription "Death is the mother of beauty." Houston meditates on the meaning of this difficult phrase as he awaits his fate: and the haunting line becomes a way to get to think about Johnson's story.

"Angels" offers a gritty look at American low life in the 1980s. The two primary characters, Bill Houston and Jamie Mays, meet on a cross-country Greyhound bus from Oakland. Jamie has two small children and is fleeing her marriage in the hope of meeting up with her sister in Hershey, Pennsylvania. On the bus, she begins a relationship with Houston, an alcoholic ex-con and Navy veteran. The relationship takes the couple through the streets and bars of Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Phoenix and through much sleaze and violence. After Jamie is brutally raped in Chicago, she and Houston take the bus to Huston's family home in Phoenix. Huston, his two brothers, and another man attempt the heist of a large bank, in a scene reminiscent of many film noirs The heist goes awry and the four men are picked up. Bill Houston is tried for the killing of a guard. Jamie for her part suffers a nervous breakdown and is institutionalized. She works to become free of alcohol and substance addiction.

Johnson tells a story of grimness and sadness while showing as well an affection for his people with all their self-inflicted wounds. The book is less a cohesive novel than a series of interconnected vignettes. It succeeds in finding beauty in its characters and places through its writing. Like Stevens, Johnson is a poet who illuminates the lives he sees through writing and imagination. While in "Sunday Morning" Stevens saw the transience, beauty, and spirituality of life through the thoughts of a cultivated, beautiful woman, Johnson works to show these traits in the lives of his down and out characters.

Johnson is probably best known for his book "Jesus' Son" which I have read together with his late novella "Train Dreams". In many ways, the lurid beauty of "Angels" may capture Johnson at his best. I was glad to read this first novel and to think about it together with one of my favorite poems and poets.

Robin Friedman