Re: Baby Villon

Philip Levine, Baby Villon

 

Philip Levine's poem “Baby Villon” is the painful story of a man whose life has been torn apart and tainted by the strife of warring countries or factions. “The war in North Africa” caused the deaths or disappearances of his father and brother, in the midst of the presumed chaos of “what came after” the fighting, and this man is still constantly haunted by the war and its after-effects on his world and his own identity. War is all-pervasive, and even after it is over, it continues to sully his perspective on the present, his memory of the past, and any hope he might have had for a brighter future.

Even if it is tentative, wars are usually followed by some kind of peace or calm after the storm. Regardless of his home's current political situation, though, it's clear that this man cannot forget about the war and the blood in his “flat brown eyes.” Even after the poem has finished its direct references to the war, the man continues to reminisce about the broken windows of a bakery – probably his family's – and the “warm smell of rye” tainted with razor-sharp glass dust that made his mouth bleed. The man in this poem has been drained of passion and anger, but he continues to focus on aspects of his life that remind him of the war.

It is somewhat strange for someone who suffered because of the war to perpetually talk of violence and suffering, but this also conveys how much the fighting and pain was ingrained into his mind and soul. He even considers hair to be a sort of soldier, protecting “the head of the fighter.” It is with strange melancholy and resignation that he considers the narrator's “fair” and fragile appearance, contrasted with the “black kinks”, head, and hair of the fighter mentioned in the section just before. This contrast – between the “fair” and “smooth” narrator and the man who is, from the beginning of the poem, enough of a roughened outcast that he is robbed “everywhere and at all times” – is quite sharp indeed.

This man is still troubled by the fact that he has changed so much, torn away from a youth where he was just as fair and smooth as the narrator, and when the comforting smell of rye bread was not yet tainted with memories of blood and broken glass. He says that he is constantly being robbed, and this is true in ways both literal and symbolic: the war robbed his youth and innocence from him long ago, a crime which has stolen the life and passion from his eyes and reduced him to a somber, lifeless war veteran.

Levine's poem, so orderly and neat in form and organization, hides a broken character whose life has been altered forever by the chaos of war and its aftermath. The idea of people hiding their damage and grief beneath the surface is truly sad to think about, and one can only hope that not all who suffer through war come out of the experience with this much pain in their hearts.

Works Cited:

Levine, Philip. Stranger to Nothing: Selected Poems. Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2006. Print.