Baby Villon

Devin Stevens

Lit. 240

Blog Paper

10/23/12

A Dual Speaker in Philip Levine’s “Baby Villon.”

            In poetry, speakers often use cunning ways to reveal themselves.  Philip Levine’s poem, “Baby Villon,” exemplifies this technique of slowly revealing oneself to the auditor. The poem tells of the experiences of the speaker’s cousin and how he has dealt with war and prejudice throughout his life.  Throughout the stanzas, the speaker and the subject of his thoughts share a dual relationship.

            The speaker, like his cousin, has a history of pain in that he fights those who rally against him.  The cousin encourages the speaker to never “disparage/ the stiff bristles that guard the head of the fighter” (lines 19-20). The cousin says this while he is caressing the speaker’s hair. Suddenly, the subject of the poem centers on the speaker rather than the cousin’s history.  They both share the same kinds of suffering in the world such as being “robbed” (line 1).  This allows them to relate to one another in their harsh past experiences.  The “fighter” in question is the speaker himself, who remembers the people he has lost in his life and how he has slowly moved on with it.    

            But what if the speaker isn’t merely a complimentary character to the cousin but the cousin himself? That would be an entirely different matter altogether.  In the last stanza, the speaker calls the cousin “imaginary” (line 27).  If the cousin is only a part of the speaker’s imagination, then the speaker has been talking about himself all along. And the reason that the dual personality exists is that he is merely reflecting on himself and not discussing his past with an outside person.  His other personality exists due to “all his pain” (line 28).  The difficulties of life have given him a split personality, reflecting on itself.  It has been the speaker’s intent from the beginning to slowly reveal himself as the only one who is actually suffering from the wounds of the past.  By distancing himself by talking of a third-person character, he can more easily look at his anguish from a more objective perspective.  

            From the evidence of the speaker talking about himself, the auditor can infer that the speaker is going through some kind of traumatic experience from the past battles he has undergone.  Soldiers from every war seem to struggle with some form of depression or another, so the only way to deal with it is to somehow distance oneself from the reality of the situation. But even though the speaker has invented someone to share in his difficulties, he cannot escape from the reality of the situation. After all, the cousin is only “imaginary.”