Paterson IV

Abstract

One version of Book IV begins ‘Paterson or a slave to Passion’ and is followed by vernacular ‘details’ of couples parting. Another note hints that here is to be discovered ‘a miracle of resuscitation’. It reads ‘A calm lies over the whole of this book — / an effete calm at the beginning but revived by a “transfusion” at the end. The river, the foulest glinter in the world, next to the Severn(?) but a river, a to and from river’ (Yale, 189/3). IV, i is set mockingly as ‘An Idyl’,¹ including two traditional English pastoral figures, Corydon and Phyllis, Corydon being a lesbian whom Dr Paterson rivals for Phyllis’s favours.² Phyllis, for her part, is unable to respond to any man sexually.