Melded Wax

(And so begins the metanovel.)

I do believe the inspiration for this work came in part from the poet's rejection of the existential ideal but also with some recognition of the incompleteness of epiphenomenalism.

That's how most of these sorts of commentaries begin. Disgusting, isn't it? Placing exaggerated and trite philosophical weight upon what is, in essence, an enterprise of personal enjoyment. Authors write poetry because they like to, not because some cosmic force compels them to reconsider the nature of the universe through written word.

I promise to do no such thing. If I ever renege on this agreement, you have every right and prerogative to close this inflammatory conglomeration of wasted paper and go read something worthwhile, like Stephen King or Dan Brown. But if, as I have promised, I keep this peculiar bit of poetic commentary interesting the whole way through, I ask that you read and absorb its higher truth (how laughable a concept) or at least buy it and support me with royalties.

But alas I digress. You came to read about William Gray's intricate poem Melded Wax, not some crazed academic's ramblings about things totally superfluous.

Beginning, naturally, at the beginning, we consider the first two lines of the poem:

Until I melted by the sun's desire

I was the slayer of the wax wing's shade.

In fairly strong iambic pentameter, the poet begins with a few rather abstract lines of subtle meaning. I personally believe this section is inspired in large part by John Shade's Pale Fire (notice indeed the "shade"), but the mainstream scholarship has yet to vindicate me on this matter. Many continue to claim it is a coincident allusion to the status of poet as daedal artificer, which I find ridiculous.

But throwing aside such simple and pedantic questions, we move on to the deeper inspirations of these two simple lines. We may now ask why Gray chose to begin his master work (for clearly Melded Wax was intended to be his master work, begun when he was thirty-five and finished only two years before his death, widely acclaimed and rampant with criticism) with such abstraction, why these layered lines would augur its hundred-stanza journey.

Certainly Gray always had a complex relationship with the sun; as can be seen from lines 27 and 48, the sunrise and the sunset respectively, which seem to hold not their usual archetypes of birth and death (or even of waking and sleeping), but some deeper cosmic significance for Gray. If anything the sunrise is a kind of death, in which distant fires rage upon a virgin landscape and pillage it to nothingness (see also line 484). The sunset, however, is not so much a hopeful release from this destruction as a reminder of later, even more dire threats. For Gray the sun was a vicious, cruel beast, too powerful to be contained, too permanent to be escaped.

I'm not getting too pedantic, am I? I certainly hope not. It would be a shame for you to give up on me so soon. But I must apologize, for I'm quite sure the works of William Gray excite me personally in a way few readers can appreciate. Perhaps I can attempt some vague encapsulation of this sensation, but certainly I cannot bring my reader to wholly empathize by words alone. I must remind myself that you come from an utterly different direction to Gray's work than I (perhaps you are even a reluctant student, assigned this commentary as some sort of "required reading" in a low-level undergraduate course; good heavens, I hope not; at least save me for the graduate students).

But in any case, the first two lines of Melded Wax are subtle in their complexity, and merit at least three or four readings, (I've been known to spend hours doing nothing but!) for their complex bouquet and hidden assonance. They don't rhyme, of course; I hope by this point in your academic career you've realized that poetry by no means must rhyme to be effective, and that indeed some of the most disgusting doggerel can rhyme as smoothly as cursory and urbane invective.

Some of the lines in Gray's works do rhyme of course, often to powerful effect. I was a teenage carburetor rhymes all through (and of course as many scholars note, "carburetor" only with "carburetor" per se), and lines 118-121 and 216-229 of Melded Wax rhyme in patterns of couplets.