Summary
"A Foreshortened Journey" is the seventeenth poem in Louise Glück's Faithful and Virtuous Night. It is also one of the many short prose poems in the collection. It tells the story of an elderly man, who finds the stairs difficult to climb and decides to rest in the middle of his ascent. Seeing him lying on the stairs, a young girl and her grandmother approach, with the young girl crying out that the old man is dead. In response, the grandmother then utters some key words of wisdom to her granddaughter: she says he is not dead; rather, "He is at that point in life at which neither returning to the beginning nor advancing to the end seems bearable; therefore, he has decided to stop, here, in the midst of things, though this makes him an obstacle to others, such as ourselves. But we must not give up hope; in my own life, she continued, there was such a time, though that was long ago" (9–12). Having said this, the grandmother then passes the man with her granddaughter.
The elderly man thinks to himself that he would have liked to hear more of the old woman's story, but she and her granddaughter draw farther and farther away with time. The granddaughter asks her grandmother if the old man will still be there upon their return, to which the grandmother replies that, by then, he will have decided which direction he is going in. In response, the young girl says that she will go and say goodbye to the old man, then approaches and speaks the words of the Kaddish (the Hebrew prayer for the dead) over him. The young girl then speaks the final words in the poem by saying to the old man, "Sir, [...] my grandmother tells me you are not dead, but I thought perhaps this would soothe you in your terrors, and I will not be here to sing it at the right time. // When you hear this again, she said, perhaps the words will be less intimidating, if you remember how you first heard them, in the voice of a little girl" (19–23).
Analysis
Like "The Melancholy Assistant," the poem which immediately precedes it, "A Foreshortened Journey" showcases the way in which the grief and ennui of old age pave the way for connection with another person. Unlike the former, however, these aspects of old age are more implicit in the allegorical language of "A Foreshortened Journey," and the connection made between the central old man of the poem with the girl and her grandmother is more fleeting. Even so, by looking closely at the language of the poem, one sees that this message is no less strong or unequivocal. This also distinguishes the poem from the other prose poems in the collection, which take on a more spiritual and mystic air in their allegorical renditions.
The central allegory of the poem is, after all, quite realistic and familiar: the stairs are mapped to the journey of life, with each having a beginning, end, and lengthy middle portion rife with trials and exertion. The old man, in feeling that there is little in life worth looking forward to, has stopped advancing up the stairs. Notably, however, he also does not descend the stairs and return to the beginning. The weight of metaphorically dwelling exclusively on the past is also too great for him to bear. Rather, like the painter in the central poems of the book, he stops midway on his journey, unable to face the fact of death while also unable to accept the past as something vanished. This is an intensely personal experience and issue: having been there herself, this is why the grandmother refuses to assist the old man, though she and her granddaughter would likely be able to. Rather, she knows that he must decide for himself which way he will go, either towards the future or regressively inward to the past.
The sense of mutual struggle or empathy between the grandmother and the old man is not lost on our speaker, either: he himself wishes to hear more from the woman, as an advisor, since she "seemed, as she passed by, a vigorous woman, ready to take pleasure in life, and at the same time forthright, without illusions" (14–15). This is implicitly presented as the ideal way of living, commensurate with the other lessons of the collection—moving forward in life with recognition of one's limitations, while also maintaining the ability to enjoy the life that is delimited by these factors.
More advice on how one is meant to enjoy such a life, then, is provided by the little girl's gesture at the end of the poem. Knowing that the old man faces death, the little girl approaches him and offers him the only thing that can make an old and empty life worth living—intimacy and comfort. By reciting the Kaddish for him, even as he lives, she offers him evidence that he will have company when he passes, and also be remembered afterwards. This kind of human connection is the highest virtue that Glück wants to instill in her readers, and it will come back in "The White Series," the last of the "painter poems". In sum, "A Foreshortened Journey" represents yet another spiritual lesson in the collection disguised as a prose poem; at the same time, however, note that the sense data of this poem are distinctly closer to reality. As Glück pulls back the masks of her personae more and more, striking each time closer and closer to the heart of what she really means to say about life and death, so too does she do so here, presenting a clear allegory that is easily picked up and understood by readers.
