Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> I think there's a misprint in this line:
>
> Any in the poppy-pod the poppy-flower
>
> That "Any" should be "And," right?
You're quite correct about the typo in the version of this poem here on The Eldritch Dark - the line should indeed read as:
Quote:And in the poppy-pod the poppy-flower:—
> The title might sound the keynote of irony right
> away, since it suggests there is no detachment
> from illusion possible to us that would open us to
> a transcendent realm: there is no such realm.
This is a very perceptive comment, and strikes at the heart of what makes the poem so interesting for me. The narrator in "Transcendence" is simultaneously mapping a certain path while acknowledging that very path leads nowhere. If CAS was indeed a "nay-sayer", this poem strikes a different note for me than an attitude as bleak as nihilism or defeatism. And yet the outlook expressed in these lines is neither exactly in sympathy with something like the Buddhist path towards Nirvana and the accompanying escape from the cycle of death and rebirth.
All of which i to say that it's a poem that fascinates and intrigues me!