Night Sweat
By Robert Lowell
Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp,
plain things, my stalled equipment, the old broom---
but I am living in a tidied room,
for ten nights now I've felt the creeping damp
float over my pajamas' wilted white . . .
Sweet salt embalms me and my head is wet,
everything streams and tells me this is right;
my life's fever is soaking in night sweat---
one life, one writing! But the downward glide
and bias of existing wrings us dry---
always inside me is the child who died,
always inside me is his will to die---
one universe, one body . . . in this urn
the animal night sweats of the spirit burn.
Behind me! You! Again I feel the light
lighten my leaded eyelids, while the gray
skulled horses whinny for the soot of night.
I dabble in the dapple of the day,
a heap of wet clothes, seamy, shivering,
I see my flesh and bedding washed with light,
my child exploding into dynamite,
my wife . . . your lightness alters everything,
and tears the black web from the spider's sack,
as your heart hops and flutters like a hare.
Poor turtle, tortoise, if I cannot clear
the surface of these troubled waters here,
absolve me, help me, Dear Heart, as you bear
this world's dead weight and cycle on your back.
Line-by-Line Analysis:
Line 1
The reader is introduced to things—a short list of solid objects, furniture in a room used for working,
a lamp, books—the usual stuff a writer needs for the daily grind. They're all wrapped up in
pentameter—10 syllables, with trochees to the fore (stress on the first syllable of a foot, such
as litter).
Line 2
It seems there's nothing special about these things; they're plain enough. But what about the
equipment? Is it stalled, broken or about to be mended? Or is it simply paused? Something that
should be working isn't?
Here we see hesitant syntax, we might say, lots of commas and a dash at the line end—the reader is
being gently shown around the room, this space.
Line 3
The first person speaker appears. I am. 'I think therefore I am', said Descartes. The mind exists to
convince the body it is so.
And this speaker knows he is living and that the room is tidied, which suggests that this is a relief
after the litter of the first line. But has the speaker used the old broom to do the tidying up himself?
We don't know yet.
Lines 4 and 5
The atmosphere changes; we're taken into the speaker's confidence as he reveals ten nights worth of
creeping damp, oh dear, affecting his white pajamas, which are wilting like something organic—like
the leaves of a plant.
Note the enjambment, when a line flows on into the next without punctuation to pause it, carrying
the sense on. This speaker is uncomfortable; that's an uncomfortable image the reader is given.
And so far, all of the lines are pentameters, with a mix of feet: iambic, trochaic, pyrrhic and
spondaic.
Line 6
Alliteration and sibilance color this line (me and my, Sweet salt) as the graphic images become more
intense and slightly disturbing. What about that word embalms suggesting that the speaker feels dead
or in need of preserving as the sweat surrounds him in his bed.
It's cerebral, man! His head is wet. He's having to think too much; his dreaming is heavy; he's
working out as he sleeps, making his in-built thermostat work overtime.
Line 7
This line is a little more obscure. Everything streams. does this mean that he feels as if he's on a
river? In a river? Feels that his sweating is so profuse it creates the sensation of watery flow?
Whatever it is, the messages he's getting—the feedback from these sweats—is a positive one. That is
some relief at this point in time.
Lines 8 and 9
His life is running a temperature; something's getting too hot and he's having to sweat at night to
douse the flame and cool himself off.
His life is totally focussed on writing and it is this that is making him sweat. Perhaps he has
deadlines; maybe it's just the internal agony of having to wrestle with thoughts all day long then
having to get them in the right order so that life runs smoothly.
Line 10
But there is a catch. He's writing his life; life is writing, for him, but it is existence—being—that
is wringing (the way you would squeeze a cloth out dry). It's not only him but a collective us . . . so
he's gone from concentrating on himself to including everyone else? or the people he's living with?
His family?
Lines 11 and 12
And there is now a psycho-emotional element to ponder as the speaker goes into his past by stating
that his inner child is no more . . . such a thing to say. We know that Lowell did have his mental
issues, being manic-depressive and having to take medication over many years.
These lines are contradictory or complementary depending . . . there is the child who died; there is
the will that lives to die. It seems the inner child isn't happy being dead or is still willing to die and
can't quite manage it because life keeps getting in the way, and the writing has to be done. This is an
integral part of his psyche.
Lines 13 and 14
All is one. His body is an urn (again associated with death and funerals) burning up at night and
turning his emotions to ash.
Lines 15–17
The internal monologue intensifies, the speaker waking up but not quite into consciousness as the
light affects his eyes and he conjures up images of horses who are not happy in the day but long for
the darkness of night.
What do these animals represent? They must be symbols, of the speaker's instincts, active as he
sleeps, producing the sweat with their presence.
Lines 18 and 19
He is definitely awake now, the alliterative dabble-dapple-day straight out of a Gerrard Manley
Hopkins poem.
There he is in his sweaty clothes, shivering as if he just got out of a cold bath, becoming acutely
aware that he is a creature of flesh and blood.
Lines 20–24
The daylight takes to the stage, he's feeling washed by the light, focusing in on the bed, that sweaty
pool he must swim in at night.
A quicksilver change in the next line sees a child...his child by marriage or his inner child? It's
difficult to know at first but the following line, with mention of his wife, seems to infer that this child
of line 21 is his actual flesh and blood offspring.
There is great energy in this child exploding into dynamite...wow.
And the wife becomes the source of change, positive change, getting rid of the black web...a
metaphorical web...straight from the spider's sack as she busies herself in a hare-like manner (note
the simile flutters like a hare).
This is becoming a menagerie of a poem, with horses, spiders and hares so far appearing.
Lines 25–28
The final animal to make it out of the night sweat is the turtle or tortoise (a tortoise is a land turtle)
which according to the Hindu religion, which is full of animal symbology, is the creature carrying
the world on its back. It is also related to water, music and children in Greek mythology.
The gist of these final four lines is that the wife is the one who can relieve the burdens of the day,
life's baggage, for the speaker. She is the one entrusted with the weight, the dead weight, and only
she can absolve ( declare guilt free) him.
He is also saying that he is struggling to keep his head above water, because it can be choppy and he
isn't so strong when life gets challenging.
