Jean Otsuki: Peer Commentary for Ada Palmer's essay

English 354/Finley: 4 October 1999

In her commentary on Blunden's "Preparations for Victory," Ada Palmer usefully notes

that the poet separates "the self into three parts: the soul, the body, and the unnamed part of

the self that we could call the will." Palmer proceeds to remark that this will "[keeps] a

gloss of necessary optimism," for this belief, albeit superficial, in the possibility of victory

serves a crucial role in motivating the other two parts on in battle. While Palmer's

discussion of the three parts of the self as distinct parts possessing different virtues such as

the ability to inspire confidence(the soul) and animalistic instinct(the body) is cogent, I

would highlight Palmer's employment of the word "gloss" in describing the will's

confidence, as well as her adjectival choice in her phrase "necessary optimism," in order to

emphasize further the will's own fears, thus lessening the distinction between the will and

the other two openly resisting aspects of the self. For, whereas the will coaxes the soul to

"dread not the pestilence that hags / The valley,"(1-2) the will's use of the verb "hags,"

almost savage in its desperation, reveals its own agony-ridden response to the very

spectacle that he tries to coerce the soul to dismiss. Similarly, in his order to "flinch not

you, my body young / At these great shouting smokes and snarling jags / Of fiery iron,"(2-

4) the will's insistence in describing this scene in such detail speaks to its own suppressed

fear of these horrors. Thus, while the third stanza does indeed witness an explicit

reunification of these three elements, they were never truly separate, for the will cannot

help but exude a dread too permeating and fatal for the "gloss" ever to hope to cover.