Is the Heart Made to be Broken?

:
The Exploration of the Aftermath of Heartbreak in Time Does Not Bring Relief by Edna St.
Vincent Millay and Apart by Louis Simpson
The heart was made to be broken. These famous words spoken by Oscar Wilde have
been tested again and again since the beginning of time. Even as time continues on, the fragility
of the heart remains universal to all human beings. Falling in love, falling out of love, breaking
up, getting back together, loss of a loved one, death. These are just a few events that a person
will experience across the span of a lifetime and each holds the power to induce extreme
emotion. Edna St. Vincent Millay and Louis Simpson both had the audacity to explore some of
these emotions in their work. The alternating perspectives of a man and woman applied to the
tragedy of a break up are ventured in their poems, Time Does Not Bring Relief and Apart,
respectively. While they both search deep into the heart of the disaster left by a break up, they
also demonstrate their personalized perspectives on its effects. The theme of heartbreak appears
in much of Millays work, particularly aimed at women. Louis Simpson on the other hand
speaks in a more collective voice. Hirsch describes Simpsons work as he notes, His appetite
has increasingly been for re-creating quintessentially American stories of ordinary
peopleliving out lives of quiet desperation. He has turned his ardor and ingenuity to
uncovering the secret and public lives of people stripped of their expectations and bewildered by
their fates Both authors allude to relatable experiences that many will face or have faced in a
lifetime. Millay and Simpson travel into the mind of the common person as they explore the
emotional state of the heart, the memories that linger after a break up, and the coping
mechanisms of the broken-hearted in the poems Time Does Not Bring Relief and Apart.

Time Does Not Bring Relief is a poem in the long list of Edna St. Vincent Millays
work that touches on matters of the heart. Her career coincided with womens suffrage in the
early 20
th
century, which inspired a unique, feminine intonation in the lines of her poetry. Dobbs
illustrates her as one of the number of bright, young women who converged on New York and
the capitals of Europe in the early 1920s to pursue the new liberated life women felt they had
won along with suffrage. This important historical event impacted the tone of voice in her work
as well as the work itself. In this particular poem, she touches on the struggle of a woman
separated from a lover. Whether the poem is from her point of view or an outsiders is unclear
when the speaker first declares, Time does not bring relief/you all have lied who told me time
would ease me of my pain! (ll. 1-2). The persona in the poem speaks out towards her unnamed
ex-lover with strength and assurance of her emotions. Dobbs supports this demonstration of
female power in asserting that Millay's New Women type poems are successful and interesting;
but the speakers usually are not portrayed as real, individualized women. They are witty and
clever and sexually emancipated. The speaker proclaims her sorrows without refrain. She
basks in the memories she has of her lover and expresses the magnitude of her heartache as she
admits, I miss him in the weeping of the rain/I want him at the shrinking of the tide (ll. 3-4).
The loneliness she feels without him in the darkness of both the night (low tide) and a rainy day
persists as time goes on. Her life moves forward, yet the effects of separation continue to burden
her heart. The old snows melt from every mountain-side/And last years leaves are smoke in
every lane/But last years bitter loving must remain/Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts
abide (ll. 5-8). As her life continues, so do the changing seasons, but a lingering shadow of her
past hangs over her head. The world around her holds constant reminders of the life she once
had with her lover, for There are a hundred places where [she] fear[s]/To go,so with his

memory they brim (ll.9-10). The persona tries to avoid the despair she feels from his memory
in places they have been together. She attempts this by entering with relief some quiet
place/Where never fell his foot or shone his face (ll. 11-12). The belief that alienation will ease
the pain she feels seems accurate because, in unfamiliar places, a memory of him could not exist.
Unfortunately, the attempt proves to be fruitless as she discovers, There is no memory of him
here!/And so stand stricken, so remembering him (ll. 13-14). His memory chases her
regardless of the setting, which is an occurrence common to lost love that the reader can easily
relate with. When a heart breaks, the pieces fall everywhere. In order to pick them up and put
them back together, old memories must be visited. Louis Simpson also touches on the fear and
struggle of facing memories in his work.
Louis Simpson exemplifies the way a person copes with repercussions of parting from a
lover in the poem Apart. The persona attempts to distance himself from his lost love to spare
heartbreak. Simpson dares to take a closer look at the human heart in the poem. Mole states of
Simpson, he's aware of the dangers of a romantic, hobo-ing sentimentality in this, and
continually checks it. Sometimes it's fascinating to watch him mixing a limpid brew of simile
and sententiousness. Apart demonstrates this method in the opening stanza as the persona
commands his ex-lover, Do not write. I am sad, and want my light put out./Summers in your
absence are as dark as a room./I have closed my arms again. They must do without./To knock at
my heart is like knocking at a tomb./Do not write! (ll. 1-5). The comparison his heart to a tomb
gives the impression that he is overcome with grief from the break up. A feeling similar to those
that come with death fills his heart and overwhelms him with solitude. Another reference to
death follows soon after, as the speaker orders once again, Do not write Let us learn to die, as
best we may./Did I love you? Ask God. Ask yourself. Do you know? (ll.6-7). The questions

directed towards his nameless lover emphasize his emotional distress. By asking, the speaker
allows the reader to question whether or not the love he lost is worth concern. His agony
emerges as he cries, To hear that you love me, when you are far away,/Is like hearing from
heaven and never to go./Do not write! (ll.8-10). A bubbling anxiety brews as the distance
grows between him and his lover. The separation is a torturous ordeal and to compare it to
heaven once again references a similarity to the aftermath of a death. Also, just as Millay does in
her poem, Simpson refers to the overbearing panic instilled by memories in a third demand, Do
not write. I fear you. I fear to remember,/For memory holds the voice I have often heard (ll. 11-
12). Although the woman he speaks of is physically gone, her memory remains with him. In
addition to this, a sense of anger is unveiled as he proclaims, To the one who cannot drink, do
not show water,/The beloved one's picture in the handwritten word./Do not write! (ll. 13-15).
The persona does not want to face the temptation for his lost lover if she writes to him. The
words would cause him more pain than he could handle so he explains, Do not write those
gentle words that I dare not see,/It seems that your voice is spreading them on my heart,/Across
your smile, on fire, they appear to me,/It seems that a kiss is printing them on my heart./Do not
write! (ll. 16-20). He simply wishes to move past his heartache and the sting of severance.
Receiving letters from her would push him past the boundaries of his sanity. The repetition of the
line Do not write! plays a strong role in the poem to highlight the persistence of the persona to
overcome his post-break-up blues. Simpson successfully voices the inner workings of a mans
heart in this poem through the speakers expression of anger and distress.
Both Simpson and Millay convey the commanding powers memories hold over the heart
from the distinct perspectives of a man and a woman. Side by side, the two poems present a
strong similarity, but as Dobbs points out, the relationships between women and men and the

differences between the sexes are thematically important to Millay's work. A strong female
presence radiates in the lines of Millays poem that references situations in which she misses a
mystery him and shifts the blame of her misery to an unknown source when she proclaims,
you all have lied! Although this female persona has a strong voice, the persona in Simpsons
poem is much more commanding towards his ex-lover. He uses urgent, straightforward
commands to prevent her from writing to him. He also continues to repeat the same demanding
line Do not write! at the beginning and end of each stanza, which demonstrates his sense
manly authority over the woman. Clark notices the difference between the sexes of the writers by
announcing, Women writers may have had a different task than men writers in the early
twentieth century, involving not alienation from history but the building of agreement, not the
tragic vision but the dialogue of human exchange. Millay represents the female perspective as
the persona speaks of the forlornness she feels for her lover. Contrastingly, Simpson represents
the male view as his persona speaks of the bitterness caused by his tragic heartache. Both
authors successfully convey both the male and female vision of a break up.
Broken hearts are a recurring phenomenon in human history. The impression they leave
behind holds the power to last an eternity. Each person they affect has an individualized
perspective and his or her unique way to cope with the pain it causes. Edna St. Vincent Millay
and Louis Simpson do a magnificent job in transmitting the differing views of a common man
and woman by exploring into the depths of the heart and the memories that refuse to let go. All
in all, the question remains: was the heart made to be broken? No matter the answer, the heart
will continue to break until the end of time.

Works Cited
Clark, Suzanne. "The Unwarranted Discourse: Sentimental Community, Modernist Women, and
the Case of Millay." Genre 20.2 (Summer 1987): 133-152. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century
Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 169.
Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Nov. 2012.
Dobbs, Jeannine. "Edna St. Vincent Millay and the Tradition of Domestic Poetry." Journal of
Women's Studies in Literature 1.2 (Spring 1979): 89-106. Rpt. in World Literature
Criticism, Supplement 1-2: A Selection of Major Authors from Gale's Literary Criticism
Series. Ed. Polly Vedder. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web.
18 Nov. 2012.
Hirsch, Edward. "Better to Stay Than to Leave." The New York Times Book Review (13 Nov.
1988): 32. Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 18 Nov. 2012.
Mole, John. "Seeing and Believing." Encounter 67.4 (Nov. 1986): 54-63. Rpt. in Contemporary
Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 149. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Nov. 2012.

Time Does Not Bring Relief by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last years leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last years bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, There is no memory of him here!
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.








Apart by Louis Simpson

Do not write. I am sad, and want my light put out.
Summers in your absence are as dark as a room.
I have closed my arms again. They must do without.
To knock at my heart is like knocking at a tomb.
Do not write!
Do not write. Let us learn to die, as best we may.
Did I love you? Ask God. Ask yourself. Do you know?
To hear that you love me, when you are far away,
Is like hearing from heaven and never to go.
Do not write!
Do not write. I fear you. I fear to remember,
For memory holds the voice I have often heard.
To the one who cannot drink, do not show water,
The beloved one's picture in the handwritten word.
Do not write!
Do not write those gentle words that I dare not see,
It seems that your voice is spreading them on my heart,
Across your smile, on fire, they appear to me,
It seems that a kiss is printing them on my heart.
Do not write!