'The Magic of Association'

I found a series of digital photographs my brother had sent me years ago. There was no context, not even people, just scenes from the yard outside the house where we lived as kids, mostly flowers and trees. The first was a closeup of lapis lazuli-blue morning glories growing up the wrought-iron railing my father had built on the front porch. That’s where I first sowed the seeds in the early sixties, training the vines up the railing, a tradition my brother later continued. I instantly found myself in memory back in 1962 or so, where I saw the pew-like wooden bench on the porch, the mailbox with the raiseable metal flag painted red, and the silver maples in the neighbor’s front yard – all long gone. This internal scene was almost spookily photographic.

I’m assuming the American poet James Russell Lowell (1819-91) is largely forgotten today, except perhaps for his work as an abolitionist and a line in “The Vision of Sir Launfal”: “What is so rare as a day in June?” In his day, Lowell was an influential critic, essayist and editor of The Atlantic Monthly. A collection of his prose, The Function of the Poet, was published posthumously in 1920. In the 1855 title essay Lowell writes:

 

“The square root of -x is nothing in comparison with the chance-caught smell of a single flower which by the magic of association recreates for us the unquestioning day of childhood.”

 

The scent of Lowell’s flower sounds like Proust’s madeleine. The photo of a flower did the same thing for me.