The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Virginia Woolf, Julia Patt
Elizabeth Bishop’s “Seascape” has not stimulated much scholarship. As one of her early poems, it shares many qualities with its peers in North & South – an attention to the natural landscape, an unnamed, impersonal speaker, and a clear free-verse form. Its subject matter, a scene ostensibly from a Raphael cartoon done for the Vatican, raises questions of faith and philosophy. The critique of theological ideas is not new to poetry; neither is the application of religion to the natural world. Throughout history, notions of the afterlife and the divine have preoccupied artists of all kinds. Though modernists such as Elizabeth Bishop and Virginia Woolf are the heirs to these literary and artistic traditions, they revisit religion and the natural environment with fresh perspectives and their own individual experiences and influences. The clearest influence in the case of “Seascape” is the cartoon, which seems to be Bishop’s earliest inspiration for the poem: At the Vatican Museum, she admired the tapestries in the Raphael Room, particularly “’the miraculous draught of fishes,’” “the shallow blue water, reflections, the bird feathers—very Florida-like and calm.” A few years later, these became the governing images of “Seascape.” (Miller, 131) Yet Bishop no doubt drew from her own life history as well in developing the dichotomy between the brooding lighthouse and vibrant natural scene. Raised in Nova Scotia, Bishop was part of a conservative Protestant community, which would also likely “remember something/strongly worded to say on the subject” (lines 22-23). Virginia Woolf follows a similar route in her novel, influenced by her sister Vanessa’s Impressionistic painting (Hussey, xliii), but inspired further by her memories of her family’s summer vacations during her childhood. There are striking thematic and visual parallels between Bishop’s “Seascape” and Woolf’s To the Lighthouse among them: aestheticism, the figure of the lighthouse, and the simultaneous opposition and interdependency between the feminine nature and masculine civilization in philosophy and religion. “Seascape” is, like much of Bishop’s poetry, wrought with visual imagery, especially color. Though this particular scene may seem at first to lack color, Bishop recreates it richly, drawing us to “white herons got up as angels” (line 1), “bright green leaves” (line 6), “bird-droppings/in illumination as silver” (lines 6-7), and “pea-green back-pasture (line 9). While one would normally not associate bird-droppings with beauty, Bishop dwells on this particular landscape with loving care, adding mysticism to even the most mundane details. She uses the mangrove islands and the herons as the boundaries for the scene, stretching from the sky to the top of the waters. She employs evocative similes such as “the fish jumps, like a wild-flower/in an ornamental spray of spray” (lines 10-11). Thus, Bishop creates an atmosphere of natural beauty with religious – almost spiritual undertones – in the first half of “Seascape”, and states “it does look like heaven” (line 13). These images are not dissimilar from those of the Ramsays’ garden in To the Lighthouse. Mrs. Ramsay takes special care of her gardens, and the landscaping eventually inspires Lily Briscoe to paint – “it was bright enough, the grass still a soft deep green, the house starred in its greenery with purple passion flowers, and rooks dropping cool cries from the high blue . . .” (Woolf, 23). The entirety of the scene, from sky to foliage, is reminiscent of the aerial view Bishop provides in “Seascape”; the garden is encapsulated in its entire splendor through Lily’s eyes. Mrs. Ramsay presents a similarly pleasing figure – she is beautiful, fertile, and natural. “So that if it was her beauty merely that one thought of, one must remember the quivering thing, the living thing,” (Woolf, 33) Mr. Bankes thinks of her. Mrs. Ramsay is a woman of movement, looking after her house, husband, and children, bustling with life as much as any natural scene. Likewise, she retains an innocence untainted by civilization or by the books and academia that so trouble her husband – “Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone . . .” (Woolf, 32). Like nature and its beauty, Mrs. Ramsay cycles, continues, and thrives in the moment, as any creature on Bishop’s mangrove island might. However, both works introduce doubt. In the second half of the poem, Bishop shifts to a figure prevalent in both works: that of the lighthouse. The lighthouse of “Seascape” possesses a brooding figure, the antithesis to the joyful natural scene that dominates the first half of the poem. It comes to represent an alternate view of faith, possibly a less viable one as Robin Fast suggests in her essay “A Daughter’s Response: Elizabeth Bishop and Nature”: Bishop makes not the slightest suggestion that the two views are equally valid. Salvation – knowledge of the “celestial” – simply depends upon a willing intimacy with the natural scene; a similar close attentiveness won the speaker her vision of victory and “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow” in “the Fish” (Fast, 28). Fast makes a valid point. “In black and white clerical dress” (line 15), the lighthouse looms in the background, making its own judgments. Such imagery is naturally suggestive of Catholic priests and Episcopalian ministers – symbols of older, traditional religion. Bishop repeats “thinks” twice, shedding doubt on the opinions of the lighthouse and therefore those more antiquated forms. In fact, the structure referred to as “he” (line 17) seems almost paranoid – “He thinks hell rages below his iron feet/and that is why the shallow water is so warm” (lines 17-18). The lighthouse does not trust the celestial scene around him; to him the tropical waters indicate damnation, not salvation, and the reader is likely meant to find this laughable. Generally in literature and history, the lighthouse is perceived as a guide, a safe beacon for ships to follow home. However, the lighthouse in this poem knows nothing but brightness or darkness, and consequently can only imagine that heaven will be the same (line 21). Thus, the lighthouse is blinded by its own function, unable to “remember something/strongly worded to say on the subject” (lines 22-23) until it gets dark again. It seems unlikely, however, that Bishop would include the lighthouse merely as a caricature. There is no lighthouse in the Raphaelite cartoon, “The Miraculous Draught of Fishes”, that initially inspired her. It is simply a biblical scene depicting one of the wonders of Christ. According to Miller, the feathers and sparkling water are the “governing images of ‘Seascape’” (Miller, 131), yet Bishop still added this lighthouse, this gloomy image. In this sense, it may be a tempering of the first half of the poem, a commentary on religion in general. We are all blinded by the particulars of our faith; the dichotomies of black and white, good and evil, and heaven and hell often dominate. As the lighthouse believes, “hell rages below his iron feet” (line 17). This is a darker view of faith, with the knowledge of hell in mind, rather than the simple celebration of life. Woolf’s lighthouse presents a more ambiguous figure. It is both an object of desire and anxiety in the first section of the novel, “The Window”. Mrs. Ramsay wishes to take her youngest son, James, to the lighthouse beyond the Isle of Skye, the novel’s setting. James is elated at the prospect: “To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled . . . and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch” (Woolf, 7). Yet these plans are almost immediately dismissed by Mr. Ramsay, who destroys his son’s happiness and his wife’s hope with a simple, “‘But it won’t be fine tomorrow’” (Woolf, 8). The lighthouse thus becomes a mode for examining this particular unit: two parents and a brood of eight children. Mr. Ramsay continues to almost childishly taunt James and is later joined in his endeavor by the arrogant Mr. Tansey. This dashing of childhood hopes and Mr. Ramsay’s near rivalry with his son for his wife’s attention suggest a pettiness not unlike Bishop’s would-be tyrannical lighthouse. “Mr. Ramsey is, superficially, the figure of the Victorian paterfamilias, authoritarian, detached emotionally from his family, asserting his male superiority as he pursues his concept of truth with integrity but insensitivity”, Alice van Buren Kelley states in her discussion of In the Lighthouse (van Buren Kelley, 76). Just as Mrs. Ramsay is reminiscent of Bishop’s mangrove island, Mr. Ramsay provides a parallel for the clerical lighthouse itself. He too presents an almost ridiculous figure, as he is preoccupied with fame and recognition. He appears laughable to his friends and family as well: “So now [Lily] always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay’s work, a scrubbed kitchen table” (Woolf, 27). He continually demands the attentions of his wife and, in the wake of her death, the attentions of all other women: “Mr. Ramsay sighed to the full. He waited. Was she not going to say anything? Did she not see what he wanted from her?” (Woolf, 155). Yet, like the “Seascape” lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay is not a caricature introduced for the sake of satire. He possesses moments of clarity and human empathy. In the same conversation with Lily Briscoe as the one mentioned above, she experiences a sudden surge of sympathy for him: “Thus occupied he seemed to her a figure of infinite pathos. He tied knots. He bought boots” (Woolf, 158). Mr. Ramsay is also often a reviled figure in the eyes of his children, yet he brings them to the lighthouse, fulfilling Mrs. Ramsay’s ten-year-old promise. Whether this is done for the sake of James or the sake of Mr. Ramsay’s ego remains unclear, yet he attempts to win Cam and James over during the boat ride, appealing to them. “What do you want? they both wanted to ask. They both wanted to say, Ask us anything and we will give it to you” (Woolf, 210), both children feel suddenly moved by their father’s humanity. Bishop’s personified lighthouse reflects a similar humanity, a fallibility in our own ability to understand faith and the divine. Thus both writers raise the question of rightness in this dichotomy. Are Mrs. Ramsay and the gliding herons the preferable philosophy or faith? At first they seem to be the most desirable, yet both are inundated with the principles of civilization. The “Seascape” is a loose ekphrasis of a cartoon that Raphael has created for the Pope (line 12). Whatever celebration of natural beauty there may be in the artwork, it is connected to the patriarchal Catholic Church, not unlike the clerical, skeletal lighthouse. Bishop also describes the mangrove branches as “gothic arches” (line 8), architectural structures that are also indicative of civilization and religious structures. Similarly, Mrs. Ramsay is subservient to Mr. Ramsay; she attends to his every need, sacrifices herself for him. Moreover, her greatest goal is for every young person around her to marry as she has. The Victorian ideas, which dominate the Ramsays’ marriage, prevent her from being the free, autonomous spirit that one would associate with natural-based faith. Conversely, the lighthouse and Mr. Ramsay represent a philosophy that is not entirely outmoded. Therefore, neither Bishop nor Woolf makes a definite statement that favors a single philosophical or religious ideal. The mangrove island and Mrs. Ramsay may not be cast with equal skepticism with the lighthouse and Mr. Ramsay, yet they are flawed themselves, transient and mortal: Part II, as its title “Time Passes” suggests. Enforces and explores the facts of transience and death. If the human energies and aspirations expressed in the character of Mrs. Ramsay can be thought of as the novel’s thesis, then the processes of nature are here set against them as their antithesis. (Hussey, 53) Mrs. Ramsay dies in the second section; the presence “bird-droppings/in illumination as silver” (lines 6-7), though beautiful, suggest the constant impact of the mangrove island’s inhabitants on their surroundings. The ultimate end of all natural processes is death and decomposition; therefore we turn to the divine for further information. Surly characters such as the lighthouse and Mr. Ramsay may be overly preoccupied with these ideas, but their consideration is necessary for a full view of faith and religion. Structurally, both works end with the archetype that appears to be most unpalatable. The second half of “Seascape” concerns the lighthouse; the reader is left waiting for the lighthouse to “remember something/strongly worded to say on the subject” (lines 22-23) of religion. The final section of To the Lighthouse, also entitled “To the Lighthouse”, concerns Mr. Ramsay and the journey he makes in lieu of his wife. Regardless of the natural appeal of the seascape and Mrs. Ramsay, the patriarchal figures remain. Since the island and the lighthouse, and Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Ramsay are given even weight and time within the works, it could be suggested that both writers intended their dichotomous ideas to be taken together, as one. A balance exists between both sets of ideas: “When Mr. Ramsay becomes himself, he sheds beauty and affection to shrink to a well-defined, focused point. When Mrs. Ramsay becomes herself, she sheds her human attachment and is condensed into something invisible, limitless” (80). The Ramsays provide contrasts for one another; one contracts, the other expands. Likewise, the lighthouse provides a contrast for the mangrove island. At the turn in the poem, the speaker admits “[the seascape] does look like heaven” (line 13), “but a skeletal lighthouse standing there/in black and white clerical dress/who lives on his nerves, thinks he knows better” (lines14-16). The two images are juxtaposed: heaven and this brooding authority figure. So are the Ramsays: one maternal, vibrant, and mortal, the other scholarly, pessimistic, and enduring. There is an equal need for both in the family unit, one parent to suggest hope for the lighthouse, the other to tote reality. So in faith, we must be simultaneously rejoicing and sober. Though “Seascape” concentrates on religion and To the Lighthouse on the family unit, these works indicate questions of faith and philosophy with both writers’ particular styles and unique concerns. Bishop’s solitude and contemplation of the world are as evident in this work as in “Questions of Travel” and others. Woolf’s self-reflection and artistic concerns flow throughout this and her other novels. Furthermore “Seascape” and To the Lighthouse are rich sources of imagery and symbolism. Bishop’s Floridian mangrove island persists in its delicate beauty with its paranoid companion the lighthouse; “Like Mrs. Ramsay with her clear, unflinching vision of life’s sorrow but her unending effort to reveal the peace and rest that lies beneath it, the Lighthouse beam offers both severity and bliss . . .” (van Buren Kelley, 81) There are numerous possibilities regarding the level of influence that Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse might have had on Bishop’s “Seascape”. Bishop was certainly aware of Woolf and her work’s impact on women writers, in fact “She struggled similarly with Virginia Woolf [as Emily Dickinson], with whose work she renewed her confrontation periodically throughout her life” (Harrison, 224). According to Miller, she did in fact read To the Lighthouse while staying at Blythewood (Miller, 214). More importantly however, is that the two writers shared a number of concerns as women and as modernists. The ideas of the Victorian age faded in the wake of WWI and the worlds women found themselves in were changing rapidly. Notions of personal identity and faith were continually questioned and both “Seascape” and To the Lighthouse grapple with the ideas of home, loneliness, and personal philosophy that dominated the major works of both women.
Works Cited Primary Sources Bishop, Elizabeth. “Seascape.” Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems (1927-1979). New York: The Noonday Press. 1995. 40. Raphael. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes 1515-16. Vatican Museum, Vatican City. <http://www.adorabella.com.au/HistoryTapestry.htm>. Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 2005. Secondary Sources Fast, Robin Riley. “A Daughter’s Response: Elizabeth Bishop and Nature” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association.Vol. 21, No 2. (Autumn 1988), pp. 16-33. Harrison, Victoria. “Recording a Life: Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters to Ilse and Kit Barker.” Elizabeth Bishop: The Geography of Gender ed. Lombardi, Marilyn May. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. 1993. Hussey, Mark. Introduction. To the Lighthouse. By Virginia Woolf. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 2005. xxxiv-lxviii. Miller, Brett C. Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. 1993. Moody, A. D. “To the Lighthouse.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of To the Lighthouse. Ed. Volger, Thomas A. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. 1970. Van Buren Kelley, Alice. To the Lighthouse: The Marriage of Life and Art. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1987.
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