Not Waving but Drowning

[Stevie Smith (1957)]

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he's dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

TRADUZIONE

Non salutavo, affogavo

[trans. Gabriele Poole, 2005]

Nessuno lo sentiva, il morto,

Ma continuava a lamentarsi per terra:

Ero molto più a largo di quanto pensavate

E non salutavo, affogavo.

Poveraccio, gli è sempre piaciuto far scherzi

E ora è morto

Deve essere stato troppo freddo per lui il cuore ha ceduto,

Dissero.

Oh, no no no, era troppo freddo sempre

(continuava il morto a lamentarsi per terra)

Ero troppo a largo tutta la vita

E non salutavo, affogavo.

LITERARY APPRECIATION

The poem is a short lyric divided in three quatrains [oppure "four-line stanzas"] written in a rather colloquial and simple language. The first stanza can be divided in two sections of two lines each. The first two lines, voiced by an anonymous unobtrusive narrator introduce the "main character" of the poem and the supernatural situation. A dead man lies on the ground moaning and nobody can hear him. Thus we have a divided perspective: the people in the poem have a "realistic" perspective, which makes it impossible for them to hear the dead. The readers of the poem have a "supernatural" perspective which allows them to hear him. His not being heard reinforces the sense of his loneliness, making his situation more pathetic. This mood is reinforced by the adverb "still" (l. 2) which suggests a desire of the dead man to express his suffering: though nobody can hear him he is still trying to communicate.

Though there are no quotation marks, the presence of a colon at the end of the second line suggests that what follows is the direct speech of the dead man, i.e. what he is "moaning." As in the equivalent Italian expression, the verb "to be too far out" in this context means that to be too far from the coast (the fact that he is at sea is obvious from the later verbs "swimming" and "drowning"). The dead man is trying to tell somebody (indicated by the pronoun "you" which in English can refer to one or more individuals and to male or female alike) that he was misunderstood: that he was further at sea than he or she or they thought and that he was not "waving", he was gesturing to salute, but to ask for help because he was drowning. This misunderstanding further reinforces the sense of isolation that characterizes the dead man’s situation. However, the man’s helplessness, his inability to make himself understood and the somewhat foolish way in which he died also make his situation somewhat ridiculous, a mixture of tragedy and comedy.

The second stanza is a comment in direct speech by various people on the dead man. However, because of the absence of quotation marks and introductory statements, this becomes fully evident only in the last line ("They said" l.8). The first line suggest that the dead man’s friends thought he was waving to them as a joke. This line is in fact slightly ambiguous, because it could suggest that the friends thought the dead man was pretending to drown, whereas the previous line "not waving but drowning" suggested that the friends thought he was waving to them to salute them. In any case, the misunderstanding remains insofar as the friends believe that the cause of death was heart failure and not drowning. His waving is attributed to a playful attitude that had always been characteristic of him in the opinion of his friends ("he always loved larking" l. 5).

The third stanza begins with a direct response and denial of what the friends said ("Oh no no no…" l. 9), and the parenthetic remark in the following line by the anonymous narrator ("still the dead man…" l. 10) specifies that the denial is voiced by the dead man. This indicates, of course, that the dead man can hear the other people, the living, though they cannot hear him. The entire poem takes thus the form of a tragicomic "semi-dialogue" in which the people speak about the dead man with the deadman trying unsuccessfully to converse with them.

In the first line of the third stanza, the dead man takes up again the words of the living ("too cold" l. 7) but with a significant addition and correction. The adverb "always" (l. 9) added to the adjective "cold" ("it was too cold always") indicates that the coldness is not the occasion-specific, material coldness of the water but a general coldness that, the dead man says, was always present. Thus, the coldness of the water becomes in this line a metaphor of the unhappiness that characterized the dead man’s life. An analogous effect is achieved by the addition of the expression "all my life" to the words "much too far out" in the second line of the third stanza. "Too far out" had a practical, occasion-specific value in the first stanza, but here it is applied to the man's entire life. It suggests his being psychologically distant, alienated from other people and perhaps also the precariety of his condition. It becomes a metaphor of the dead man’s isolation and loneliness during his life. Finally, the expression "all my life" applies grammatically also to the expression "not waving but drowning" in the last line, achieving the same effect. It suggests that, throughout his life, the man was not really "waving" that his playful attitude or "larking" as his friends called it was only an appearance or mask, and that, in reality, he was "drowning," i.e. he was unhappy and asking for help, though nobody understood him.

Thus, the final stanza skilfully develops and transforms the tragicomic situation outlined in the first two stanzas--the man’s death, his isolation and his inability to communicate during and after his death--making it a symbol of his entire life.

Gabriele Poole

University of Cassino