We meet this knight in the book’s second poem, “An Adventure.” “It came to me one night,” begins the poem, “as I was falling asleep / that I had finished with those amorous adventures / to which I had long been a slave.” Having no one to be faithful to, or faithless with, she reassures her heart “that many profound discoveries / awaited us,” although she hopes, “at the same time,” she “would not be asked / to name them.” “But the belief that they existed” - a kind of faith - “surely this counted for something?”Īnd once more I alluded to the vast territory Faithful, then, to something greater than itself? And here the image emerges, dreamlike and dreamy in classically galloping dactyls: a faithful and virtuous knight, sturdy and chivalrous, questing. One can keep faith or be faithful during the night - virtues, to be sure - but how could the night be faithful, and to whom? The night could be faithful to you by dependably returning, but one tends to think that regularities of nature lack virtue and vice, unless you’re a child. FAITHFUL AND Virtuous Night - Louise Glück’s title is at once familiar and utterly strange.
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