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The House of Dust: a Symphony
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
- GenresPoetry
94 pages, Paperback
Published July 17, 2006
15 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
Conrad Aiken
299 books81 followersKnown American writer Conrad Potter Aiken won a Pulitzer Prize of 1930 for
Selected Poems
.
Most of work of this short story critic and novelist reflects his intense interest in psychoanalysis and the development of identity. As editor of Selected Poems of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson in 1924, he largely responsibly established her posthumous literary reputation. From the 1920s, Aiken divided his life between England and the United States and played a significant role in introducing American poets to the British audience.
He fathered gifted writers Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_...
Most of work of this short story critic and novelist reflects his intense interest in psychoanalysis and the development of identity. As editor of Selected Poems of Emily Elizabeth Dickinson in 1924, he largely responsibly established her posthumous literary reputation. From the 1920s, Aiken divided his life between England and the United States and played a significant role in introducing American poets to the British audience.
He fathered gifted writers Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_...
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 14, 2016
When I was very young, one of my favorite things to do was to browse the books in my father's library. I've never been much of a fan of poetry, but when I was looking through one of my dad's poetry anthologies from the '60s (probably bought when he was in college), the first lines of Conrad Aiken's poem, "Portrait of One Dead," from the third part of The House of Dust, hit me hard:
I've never forgotten those lines, and, recently, after I read Aiken's interview in an old collection of Paris Review author interviews, I decided to seek out and read the entire four-part, book-length poem to which this shorter poem belongs.
Tracking down a copy was harder than I'd thought it would be. Despite rubbing elbows with T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Malcolm Lowry, and having won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in his lifetime, Aiken is not as widely read as he once was. Although there's a short collection of his poems still in print from Oxford University Press, the rest of his vast oeuvre (including novels, short story collections, and numerous poems) is out of print--including The House of Dust (unless you count all those poorly scanned "reprints" that proliferate on Amazon and elsewhere, which I don't).
Fortunately, access to a major university library saved me from having to download and print the poem from the Internet. I found a copy of the original hardcover published by The Four Seas Company in 1920. And let me tell you, it was worth tracking down. This is a beautiful poem.
It reads like a series of deeply philosophical short stories (which is the best compliment I can give a poem, considering my general disinterest in poetry). I'm glad to say that those four lines from "Portrait of One Dead" that have stuck in my head these last thirty years are sure to be joined by a host of other gems from this book.
In fact, it has inspired me to read more out-of-print Aiken. Up next: his first novel, Blue Voyage (from 1927).
This is the house. On one side there is darkness,
On one side there is light.
Into the darkness you may lift your lanterns--
O, any number--it will still be night.
I've never forgotten those lines, and, recently, after I read Aiken's interview in an old collection of Paris Review author interviews, I decided to seek out and read the entire four-part, book-length poem to which this shorter poem belongs.
Tracking down a copy was harder than I'd thought it would be. Despite rubbing elbows with T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Malcolm Lowry, and having won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in his lifetime, Aiken is not as widely read as he once was. Although there's a short collection of his poems still in print from Oxford University Press, the rest of his vast oeuvre (including novels, short story collections, and numerous poems) is out of print--including The House of Dust (unless you count all those poorly scanned "reprints" that proliferate on Amazon and elsewhere, which I don't).
Fortunately, access to a major university library saved me from having to download and print the poem from the Internet. I found a copy of the original hardcover published by The Four Seas Company in 1920. And let me tell you, it was worth tracking down. This is a beautiful poem.
It reads like a series of deeply philosophical short stories (which is the best compliment I can give a poem, considering my general disinterest in poetry). I'm glad to say that those four lines from "Portrait of One Dead" that have stuck in my head these last thirty years are sure to be joined by a host of other gems from this book.
In fact, it has inspired me to read more out-of-print Aiken. Up next: his first novel, Blue Voyage (from 1927).
August 15, 2022
Transitory and fractured dreams, characters, scenes. All is dust, but we still search it for something more - beauty, love, and horror entwined.
July 5, 2015
A lot of people are going to make comparisons of Aiken to T.S. Eliot, and rightly so. However, in the case of 'The House of Dust', the comparison should go the other way. It appeared ahead of Eliot's famous poem and in it you will find many similar lines that will make you say, "Ah ha!... isn't that in The Waste Land?"
'The House of Dust' is subtitled: A Symphony, and I would liken it to Schubert's 8th... some forlorn and stormy theatre where man is simultaneously enthralled and endangered by the elements without and within.
The beginning is esoteric, setting and theme. But as the poem is swept by rain and snow and wind, by sunlight and moon and ever crashing sea, by the endless music of man's untamed emotions, it vignettes: it spirals into the specific, the horrible and mosaic, lives and deaths and regrets are played as knotted notes, with virtuosity.
'The Waste Land' is a poem of the mind. 'The House of Dust' is a poem of the blood.
Also, be sure to keep an eye out for the 'The Witches' Sabbath' in Part III, it is wonderful!
'The House of Dust' is subtitled: A Symphony, and I would liken it to Schubert's 8th... some forlorn and stormy theatre where man is simultaneously enthralled and endangered by the elements without and within.
The beginning is esoteric, setting and theme. But as the poem is swept by rain and snow and wind, by sunlight and moon and ever crashing sea, by the endless music of man's untamed emotions, it vignettes: it spirals into the specific, the horrible and mosaic, lives and deaths and regrets are played as knotted notes, with virtuosity.
'The Waste Land' is a poem of the mind. 'The House of Dust' is a poem of the blood.
Also, be sure to keep an eye out for the 'The Witches' Sabbath' in Part III, it is wonderful!
January 15, 2023
right when I started it, i thought "hey, this kinda reminds me of Prufrock" and of course it suffered from the comparison but still.
We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence.
You say (but use no words) 'this night is passing
As other nights when we are dead will pass. . .'
Perhaps I misconstrue you
What do you whisper, brother? What do you tell
me? . . .
We pass each other, are lost, and do not care.
And might I say there were SO MANY important staircases in these verses, so many happenings on staircases which I really really appreciated.
We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence.
You say (but use no words) 'this night is passing
As other nights when we are dead will pass. . .'
Perhaps I misconstrue you
What do you whisper, brother? What do you tell
me? . . .
We pass each other, are lost, and do not care.
And might I say there were SO MANY important staircases in these verses, so many happenings on staircases which I really really appreciated.
July 22, 2015
Beautiful.
So many emotions were triggered by these short stories/poems.
So many emotions were triggered by these short stories/poems.
May 6, 2016
I didn't expect this to be near as interesting as it was; my mistake was not knowing enough about Conrad Aiken and his importance. I'll be rereading this in the future. It deserves closer attention.
January 29, 2009
This is an excellent collection of thematically-related poems by Conrad Aiken. Aiken's poetry is haunting and dreamlike (at times, nightmarish). Aiken's poetry is stylistically similar to T. S. Eliot's, but is much darker in tone. Highly recommended.
January 2, 2025
'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died—you know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'
A fascinating poem, situated close to Eliot's voice in The Waste Land (sometimes almost too close to a poem which Eliot would write only a year later: here too are shuffling footsteps, reminiscent bells, raindrenched remembered women, an ominous fortune telling, and always the towers of the city (though here rising, not falling)) but never quite breaking out of an almost Swinburnian 19thC rhythm. Thus it can become tiring by the thirtieth poem of similar lexis and style, though the atmosphere remains powerful. Particularly great moments included the man dreaming of falling, and the mammoth Witches Sabbath bacchanal that ends the third part. A high 3.5, maybe one day a 4
From III.X - Letter, the whole of which is worth reading to understand Aiken's drift:
No matter what we touch,
Dust is the answer—dust: dust everywhere.
If this were all—what were the use, you ask?
But this is not: for why should we be seeking,
Why should we bring this need to seek for beauty,
To lift our minds, if there were only dust?
This is the central chamber you have come to:
Turning your back to the world, until you came
To this deep room, and looked through rose-stained windows,
And saw the hues of the world so sweetly changed.
January 31, 2025
Beautiful and haunting. If you like Aiken's 'Senlin: a Biography' you ought to read this. It contains the same species of dreamlike images as 'Senlin', evocative of a Maxfield Parrish painting, perhaps too indefinite for some readers, but stimulating to the imagination, and the words just sing.
He does get down to earth, though, with modernist cityscapes and characters, some unpleasant to the point of nightmarish. There's a hint here and there of his pal T.S. Eliot's early poems, particularly 'Prufrock', but it's clear that Tom when writing 'The Waste Land, which came out two years after this, balanced the books by doing his own borrowing from this work. Perhaps it's truer to say they had similar preoccupations and their poetry resulted from discussions between them over shared modernist influences.
Aiken, of course, indulges in vaporous, pastel poesy that you don't find in Eliot, but under it his psychological insights can be hard-edged and dark. This is great poetry and straightforward to read, at least at a surface level.
He does get down to earth, though, with modernist cityscapes and characters, some unpleasant to the point of nightmarish. There's a hint here and there of his pal T.S. Eliot's early poems, particularly 'Prufrock', but it's clear that Tom when writing 'The Waste Land, which came out two years after this, balanced the books by doing his own borrowing from this work. Perhaps it's truer to say they had similar preoccupations and their poetry resulted from discussions between them over shared modernist influences.
Aiken, of course, indulges in vaporous, pastel poesy that you don't find in Eliot, but under it his psychological insights can be hard-edged and dark. This is great poetry and straightforward to read, at least at a surface level.
February 19, 2025
The House of Dust is a breathtaking work of poetry that reads like one grand symphony composed of smaller movements and stories. The stories within are heartbreaking, haunting, and beautiful, they muse on love, memory, and loneliness. As the title suggests, a sense of loss and melancholy pervades, but there's also exquisite beauty in each poem. A true work of art.
Currently reading
August 30, 2012This is wonderfully haunting. The pictures he creates with words are dark and captivating.
November 11, 2012
It's been a while since I've curled up for some poetry. Really enjoyed this. Will read again.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews