Notes on Dhalgren, Chapter 1: Prism, Mirror, Lens

Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren has been called “a riddle that was never meant to be solved.” I would contend that any book that has a “solution” is somewhat shallow. Literature at its best reveals depths of mystery in which any given solution merely gives way to greater depths. Mystery creates a debt which can only be repaid (though never in full) by engaging with the questions which it raises. In such engagement do we find meaning, the debt and its repayment being mere devices which serve to facilitate the art.

Seven distinct themes seem to run like rivers through Delany’s book. These themes are indicated by the chapter titles. The themes are interrelated, yet each stands on its own. Each is highlighted in its particular chapter, yet is explored throughout the whole of the book.

The chapters are as follows:

I           Prism, Mirror, Lens

II         The Ruins of Morning

III        House of the Ax

IV        In Time of Plague

V         Creatures of Light and Darkness

VI        Palimpsest

VII      The Anathemata: A Plague Journal

Somewhere in the depths of the 3rd chapter, the poet Newboy pontificates upon the “shield of the poet” as he calls it. On one side of the shield is written “be true to your art so that you can be true to yourself”, and on the other, “be true to yourself so that you can be true to your art”. The shield, he says, first appears as a mirror, then becomes a lens, and then a prism. So does the poet’s narcissism slowly transform into the means of observation, at length refining into an instrument by which the very nature of light itself may be analyzed.

In the title of the first chapter, it is the prism which comes first. A prism divides light into seven particular rays. It is fitting that the prism is indicated first in the chapter title, as the table of contents is the first thing in the book that the reader encounters. Delany seems to indicate that the seven themes that run throughout the book each have their source in a single light, but, in order to analyze the nature of that light, it must first be broken down into its constituent parts so that each part may be understood independent of the rest.

After determining and naming the components into which the light has been divided, it is indicated that this light will serve as a mirror. The mirror is intended to reflect the image not only of the reader and of the author, but also of the main character. After all, having forgotten his name, he is not without need of one. Lastly, the light will serve as a lens through which to see not only ourselves but something of the world in which we live.

Thus is the intent of the book encapsulated in three simple words. The fact that the main character (we’ll call him Kidd) has forgotten his name makes him an appropriate mirror for the reader. It’s easier to identify with a character that has no official name, just as it’s easier to identify with a simple image than it is with a complex image. The lack of particularity and distinction allow us to project our own image upon the ambiguity. The fact that Kidd is bisexual (and androgynously monikered) may be an attempt to allow readers of both sexes to identify, at least to some degree, with this character.

A river, reminiscent of the river Lethe, runs along the border of Bellona. A river makes a lousy mirror. The waters are ever flowing and constantly changing, unlike a pond who’s waters offer a still surface for reflection. This river, appearing as it does at the beginning and end of the book, calls to mind the first sentence of Finnegan’s Wake, which is wrapped around from the end: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

The first sentence of the first chapter of Dhalgren, as with the Wake, is pregnant with a thousand meanings: “to wound the autumnal city.” Strangely, the first sentence doesn’t wrap around so perfectly with the last, “I have come to”. The ‘to’ is repeated. Is this a pun on ‘to’ and ‘two’? The result of the ‘wound’? A typo? It seems somehow fitting that the end of the book would jar ever so slightly with the beginning.

A city in the autumn of its years is a city who’s time is nearly up. Bellona is the name of a Greek Goddess who is also called the waster of cities. She has come to wound, indeed. Autumn is also the time of the equinox, a time when light and darkness are equal. After the autumnal equinox the light descends toward the time of greatest darkness in winter. Both aspects of autumn will be explored in greater depth in the analysis of the remaining themes.