Beyond the Alps

'Beyond the Alps' is a poem by Robert Lowell that was first collected in "Life Studies" and then appeared in a revised form in "For the Union Dead".

Composition

Lowell finished the first published version of the poem in a productive spurt of writing in the second half of 1957. On 30 September he wrote to William Carlos Williams ["The Letters of Robert Lowell", ISBN 9780571202041, page 293] :

econd version

The main difference from the earlier collected version is the insertion of the new stanza commencing 'I thought of Ovid'. Other small differences include: 'Life changed to landscape' becomes 'Man changed to landscape, the insertion of an exclamation point after "Papa" , the insertion of a hyphen in the word 'miscarriage' and an ellipsis at the end of that line.

Cultural references

Lowell refers to
* Pope Pius XII and his defining the dogma of Mary's bodily assumption (declared November 1950).
* A Swiss attempt to climb Mount Everest (attempts actually made in May 1952 & the autumn of 1952 by Raymond Lambert)
* Benito Mussolini, 'The Duce'
* the golden bough Aeneas used to ensure safe passage through the underworld
* Ovid
* Minerva who was born from the head of Zeus

Footnotes