Abse, Dannie : The Origin of Music

Literature Annotations

	On-Line Text and Audio
Genre	Poem
Keywords	Anatomy, Death and Dying, Human Worth, Suffering
Summary	The speaker has taken "two small femurs of a baby" from the Pathology Laboratory. He keeps them in his pockets. Whenever someone tells him a tale of grief ("woeful, intimate news"), the speaker takes the femurs from his pockets "and play[s] them like castanets."
Commentary	This short poem (17 lines) is from Dannie Abse’s collection, Remembrance of Crimes Past, first published in Great Britain in 1990. At one level it evokes the universality of human suffering: in fact, we all carry the bones of dead babies within us. This “connectedness in suffering” is particularly apt for one speaking as a physician (“When I was a medical student / I stole two femurs . . . ”). At another level, however, the poem is transformative. Though he takes the bones from his pocket “sadly,” he uses them as castanets to create music. Thus, shared suffering becomes “the origin of music.”
Source	Remembrance of Crimes Past
Publisher	Persea
Edition	1993
Place Published	New York
Miscellaneous	First published: 1990
Annotated by	Coulehan, Jack
Date of Entry	05/05/94
Last Revised	09/05/06