Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Mary Kinzie?s The Human Face explores the ineffable mystery and sacredness of the human visage, juxtaposing its complexity with our increasingly desensitized gaze in the modern world. The poem, framed by a reflection on Werner Herzog?s film Kaspar Hauser, serves as both a critique of superficial perceptions and a meditation on the face as a profound symbol of identity, humanity, and vulnerability.

The poem opens with an assessment of the film, describing it as "a film of green, unfocused plush, of fantasy, a thing ill done and temporally coy." This critique situates the narrative in a space where artifice and clumsy storytelling undermine deeper truths. Kinzie?s dissatisfaction with the film?s "crippled" parables and reliance on clichés contrasts with her later reverence for the actor who portrays Kaspar Hauser. This actor, described as possessing "a face like Caritas, all eye, proud comfort," becomes a focal point for Kinzie’s exploration of the human face’s power to convey profound truths.

The actor’s face, untainted by the "deluding trick of bone or plane or pumiced skin," represents purity and unvarnished truth. The reference to "Caritas" (Latin for charity or love) imbues the face with spiritual significance, suggesting a compassion and authenticity that transcend artifice. Kinzie contrasts this authenticity with the "careering age" of modernity, where faces are commodified and stripped of their sacredness. This critique extends to the viewers themselves, whom she accuses of having "lost the gift of reading what we see." The poet laments that contemporary audiences no longer appreciate the human face as "inviolable and hidden," instead reducing it to a mere object of "entertainments" or superficial interest.

Kinzie?s detailed description of the face—its anatomy, expressions, and meanings—reveals a profound reverence for its complexity. She examines its physical features, such as "the bones which move on secret knob and hinge," "the horrible, deep nose," and "the chin at solemn structural rest in bone." These observations highlight the face?s dual nature as both a biological structure and a vessel of emotion and spirit. The face becomes a canvas of "angles" and "moods," a site of "moisture" and "glazing elasticity," embodying both physicality and the intangible qualities of personality and intent.

The poem also delves into the face’s capacity for both connection and concealment. Kinzie notes the "secret and misgiving pool of eye" and the "will of skin about the mouth to wound, to torture and subdue." These lines underscore the face?s duality: it can express love and compassion, but also deceit, malice, and aggression. The face, she suggests, is a site of profound contradiction—both revealing and hiding, connecting and alienating.

Kinzie?s meditation culminates in an almost theological assertion of the face?s sanctity: "The face whom none can dare to say is thing that is a Being. The one none dares portray." Here, she elevates the human face to a status beyond representation, asserting its ineffable nature. This assertion challenges the "sybarites in a cult whose priests are evil," a striking indictment of modern media and society?s exploitation of the human visage for shallow entertainment.

By anchoring her reflections in the context of Herzog?s Kaspar Hauser, Kinzie reinforces the theme of the face as a vessel of innocence and truth. The film’s titular character, a mysterious figure raised in isolation, embodies the idea of the human face as an unmediated expression of the soul. Through her focus on the actor?s portrayal, Kinzie underscores the face’s role as a bridge between the inner self and the external world, a connection that modern society risks severing through its numbed perceptions.

The Human Face is a poignant critique of modernity?s failure to honor the depth and mystery of the human visage. Through its layered imagery and philosophical reflections, the poem calls for a renewed reverence for the face as a site of profound meaning and connection. In a world increasingly obsessed with appearances, Kinzie’s work serves as a reminder of the sacredness that lies beneath the surface, urging us to look beyond the superficial and rediscover the face as "a Being" rather than "a thing."

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