SOURCE: Richards, Bertrand F. “Jarrell's ‘Seele im Raum’.” Explicator 33, no. 3 (November 1974): 22.

In the following essay, Richards interprets the poem “Seele im Raum” as it universalizes a form of ontological psychosis.

At first glance Randall Jarrell's “Seele im Raum,” while perplexing, seems not too difficult. It is obviously the monologue of a psychotic woman (cured or not cured) reminiscing on her malaise. She presents an almost clinical picture of psychosis—of delusions of grandeur in “My whole city sent me cards like lilac branches.”

Soul in space! But space can be isolation, and Seele means not only “soul” but also “mind.” The mind withdrawn, the retreat from reality: these are the marks, almost the definition of insanity. Insanity, however, is not confessed bluntly and outrightly. It is expressed through the metaphor of the eland. It is the eland, not her deranged mind, which interposes itself between her and her...