Through Ellis Island
Pascal D’Angelo was born, he says in an autobiographical sketch which he has let me see, “near the old walled city of Sulmona, Italy. It is a small town in the beautiful valley that was once the stronghold of the Samnites, walled in by the great blue barrens of Monte Majella. Few roads run to this quiet land and ancient traditions have never entirely died out there. Below the town is the garden of Ovid with its wild roses and cool springs, and above is an ancient castle that in summer is fantastically crowned with the mingling flight of pigeons which take care of their young on its towered heights. In the valley below are finely cultivated fields dotted with the ruins of Italica, the capital of fierce Samnium.” There Pascal D’Angelo went to school a very little during his childhood, handicapped by the fact that his parents at home could neither read nor write and that, because of their poverty, he was frequently obliged to stay at home to herd the family’s six or seven sheep and four goats. At sixteen he came with his father and a number of fellow-villagers to the United States.
“In this country immigrants from the same town stick together like a swarm of bees from the same hive and work where the foreman, or ‘boss,’ finds a job for the gang. At first I was water-boy and then shortly after I took my place beside my father. I always was, and am, a pick-and-shovel man.” Pascal D’Angelo worked here and there at similar rough labour, in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, West Virginia, Maryland—at first unable to read newspapers printed in English and unaware that there were any printed in Italian. But gradually he learned to read, and always he was a poet. “When night comes and we all quit work the thud of the pick and the jingling of the shovel are not heard any more. All my day’s labours are gone, for ever. But if I write a line of poetry my work is not lost, my line is still there—it can be read by you today and can be read by another tomorrow. But my pick-and-shovel works can be read neither by you today nor by another tomorrow.... So I yearn for an opportunity to see what I can accomplish... before suffering, cold, wet, and rheumatism begin to harm me in the not distant future.”
One of the finest lyrics of his which I have seen thus gives a picture of the world in which he then moved:
In the dark verdure of summer
The railroad tracks are like the chords of a lyre gleaming across the dreamy valley,
And the road crosses them like a flash of lightning.
But the souls of many who speed like music on the melodious heart-strings of the valley
Are dim with storms.
And the soul of a farm lad who plods, whistling, on the lightning road
Is a bright blue sky.
As a result of being taken by a bar-tender to an Italian vaudeville show on the Bowery, the boy began to write—a farce, jokes, anecdotes “of the type for my class of people.” Then he bought a small Webster’s dictionary for a quarter and set out to master it. His companions laughed at him, but he persisted tirelessly. “I made them understand by spelling each word or writing it on a railroad tie or a piece of wood anywhere, just to express myself.” As his ardour and his reputation grew some young brakemen undertook to discipline him. “What they did was to bring new words every morning. They used to come half an hour before working time and ask me the meaning of the new words. If I could answer the first word all was well and good; then they were quiet all day. If not, when noon came all the office people, both men and women, crowded the place where everybody was present and tried to show me up. But their trials and efforts were all useless, as useless as I could make them. But one day they brought me before all the crowd, just to have me ridiculed perhaps, because they all were high-school lads. So they brought five words of which I knew only three. Then they began to proclaim themselves victorious. But I gave them two words they did not understand. Then I bet them I could give them ten words, and two more for good measure, that they could not understand. And I began: ‘troglodyte, sebaceous, wen, passerine, indeciduity, murine, bantling, ubiquity, clithrophobia, nadir’; and instead of two I added seven more to make their debacle more horrible. So I again wrote seven more words with the chalk which they provided me, writing them against the office façade where every one could see their eternal defeat: ‘anorexia, caballine, phlebotomy, coeval, arable, octoroon, risible.’ Then to complete I added ‘asininity’ and explained its meaning to them immediately.... After that triumph they named me ‘Solution’ and all became friends.”
Later he went to Sheepshead Bay to hear “Aïda” in the open air. “Suddenly when I heard the music I began to feel myself driven toward a goal—a goal that became more and more distinct each day. There were parts of such eloquent beauty in that opera that they tore my soul. At times, afterwards, even on the job amid the confusion of running engines, cars, screams, thuds, I felt the supreme charms of the melodies around me.” But he could not compose music, for he did not know one note from another—“as I still don’t know.... Music is not like the English language, that I began to write without a teacher.... In poetry I fared better. In the library I wandered upon Shelley and was again thrilled to the heart. Shelley I could proceed to emulate almost immediately.... It was a hard job to put my words in order. The stuff I used to write at first was unthinkable trash. But I was always bothering people to point out my mistakes. Grammar gave me plenty of trouble and still does. Rhyme stumped me. Then I began to read all kinds of poetry and saw that rhyme was not absolutely necessary. I also discovered that a good deal of what is called poetry is junk. So from the first I have tried to avoid echoing the things I have read, and to bring an originality both of expression and thought.”
Pascal D’Angelo has taught himself French and Spanish and has read most of the best poets of those tongues as well as of English and Italian. At present he is living under the most difficult conditions, asking no favours, and writing poetry which, though much of it is naturally full of imperfections, occasionally strikes such notes as these in The City:
We who were born through the love of God must die through the hatred of Man.
We who grapple with the destruction of ignorance and the creation of unwitting love—
We struggle, blinded by dismal night in a weird shadowy city.
Yet the city itself is lifting street-lamps, like a million cups filled with light,
To quench from the upraised eyes their thirst of gloom;
And from the hecatombs of aching souls
The factory smoke is unfolding in protesting curves
Like phantoms of black unappeased desires, yearning and struggling and pointing upward;
While through its dark streets pass people, tired, useless,
Trampling the vague black illusions
That pave their paths like broad leaves of water-lilies
On twilight streams;
And there are smiles at times on their lips.
Only the great soul, denuded to the blasts of reality,
Shivers and groans.
And like two wild ideas lost in a forest of thoughts,
Blind hatred and blinder love run amuck through the city.