A "TWINTORETTE" IN THE MORNING PAPER

     To understand how James Whitcomb Riley conceived of himself, it would have helped to open up a Hoosier newspaper, The Indianapolis Saturday HERALD," on August 24, 1878. The citizens of Indiana found one of the strangest writings in all of literature on its page 6. What was it? The piece called itself a "Twintorette." What was that? As it turns out Riley was objectively writing about his subjective self, his "twin." Riley's twin turned out to be a complicated cast. No literary figure in history had attempted such a thing. The Twintorette was embedded in a column calling itself: "Respectfully Declined" Papers of The Buzz Club, Number IV. What was the Buzz Club?  Who wrote it? The piece had a cast as a play does.  Was it a play?

     Time revealed that the author of "The Flying Islands of the Night" was the young Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley, very early in his career and long before fame settled upon him. In this "flight" lies the answer to Riley's poetry of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, the kenotic categories of expression of the spirit

     Kenotic poetry of which Riley’s is the most prominent in America is a poetry based upon theological principles of humility and dependence upon a Christ who as God took a fleshly form to save humanity. The "Christ Hymn" of Philippians is normative for kenotic analysis.  It reads: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and give him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow..."

     Riley’s kenotic outlook was a birthright from Protestant frontier Methodist family. Hoosier German or Deutsch Methodism had embraced the kenotic outlook at the time of Riley’s youth. The first Incarnation theologians of the Nineteenth Century were the Germans: Thomasius, its founder, Neander, Dorner, Van Oosterzee, Pressense, Schneckenburger, Liddon, Uhlhorn, Edersheim, soon joined by such as J.P. Lange, and

C.A. Ross. A primary text of the German inception is found in the Nineteenth Century lectures of Alexander Bruce, D.D, in THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST and R.J. Cooke's THE INCARNATION AND RECENT CRITICISM. A more recent work (1965) is Claude Welch, GOD AND INCARNATION IN MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMAN THOUGHT. An easy-to-read introduction to the subject is found in the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, ed. by F.L. Cross under "Kenotic theories." Interesting variations of Incarnation Theology appeared concurrently in Germany such as Hegel's conception that the Incarnation was manifest in the human race in general and not in individuals. Even at the theological level, Incarnation Theology engaged the age's social Darwinism. SEE: Herbert Spencer's SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY, "First Principles," part 1, in which God is seen as an unknown and unknowable substratum of all phenomena rather than one known through human appearance. These should get started someone interested in Nineteenth Century theology

such as became expressed popularly by James Whitcomb Riley's poetry. None of course explains the phenomenon of the Incarnation because, as theologian Edward Towne says, "What is a mystery if it can be dissolved away in an explanation?"

     "Kenoticism" is a more technical name for Incarnation Theology of the Nineteenth Century. It is an idea of "emptying out oneself." It derives from the Greek adjective

"kenos" - the adjective used in the Philippian's "Christ Hymn" to describe Jesus's act of casting off pride, advantage and power to find satisfaction in a humble life.  James Whitcomb Riley’s poetry finds its spirit in the “kenos.”

THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT

     Marcus Dickey, the secretary of James Whitcomb Riley once wrote, "It was not the habit of the Hoosier Poet to explain. Again and again his friends saw him as through a

glass darkly. At times he took conspicuous pride in concealing his thought and his way of doing things. My assumptions concerning him remained assumptions. The more his friends sought to know his history the more capriciously he concealed it."

In the cryptic poem that follows Riley revealed his own life in the form of an autobiography with himself in his various "soul-selves" as the cast except for the woman who was his great encourager and "soul partner."

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY: THE POET AS FLYING ISLANDS OF THE

NIGHT: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO RILEY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM

It is a simple fact that James Whitcomb Riley tended to write out of his own experiences. There is not a single poem where Riley's fantasies are not based on some projection out

of his life. Riley's prodigious imagination used himself always to create his poetry.

If this is so, where does Riley's "The Flying Islands of the Night" fit in? It is certainly obscure at places. It stands out so in the body of his poetry like a sore thumb because of its length as well as its oddity. The only answer appears to be that Riley made it obscure

for a reason. It was the most "personal" poem he ever wrote. The poem describes the groping of his own soul. It is the last rush of the madness from his impetuous youth. Then

Riley sheltered his soul from criticism by obscuring his poetic expression of it. Riley's autobiographical poem (from age 28-but revised at intervals) originally contained two great themes and a minor one. The most important was Riley's "dark play" on his own dire alcoholism. The language is a combination of Middle English spiced with American folklore, and "intoxicatese" creating a fantastic and wildly "astronomically" extravagant

imagery. The origins of all of this will be explained later. For now we need only remember Riley's fear of his alcoholism as its most basic theme. Riley portrays himself

"married" to alcoholism personified as the "nasty" Queen Crestillomeem. Riley is first introduced as his minstrel self called Jucklet. This is Riley's "survival self" at the soul level. Jucklet has to live "underground" and he can only "peep out" when Crestillomeem permits. Riley lived by his wits and was often penniless during the period of his "minstrel wandering" twenties. Now he had begun consoling himself from tragic events in his life with overuse of alcohol. This poem tells us of the outcome of all of this. You will be very surprised. In "The Flying Islands of the Night" Riley must experience the effects of alcoholism. The "night" in the title is a reference to alcohol addiction. Riley's

contempary of the related book FIFTEEN YEARS IN HELL, Luther Benson, says:"...From time to time until I tried to break the terrible chain...of intemperance, my life was one long, hopeless, blank, black night." Riley's alcoholism was his

night too. He feared himself sinking into a "night" of depression, delirium and madness.

The second great theme is Riley's groping for salvation from his alcoholism. As his mind turns to recollections of loving encouragement and true friendship he has known, he

remembers Nellie Millikan Cooley, a married friend, who has just died in Illinois critical days before the poem was written. Nellie is the only other character in the original

play which is not a Riley "personified personality breakdown." Nellie is "Dwainie" who tells the fearfully drunken Riley she will continue to encourage him and love him

even though she is now dead. How can this be? Another surprise is in store!

The version of "The Flying Islands of the Night" which follows was the original one. In a later expansion of the original play for a book, Riley adds his mother, Elizabeth as "AEo" as an encourager along with Nellie. Dwainie will eventually convince Riley in the poem that she is still encouraging him in spirit and this gives Riley the strength to produce the Godly poetry of "Spraivoll," the "tune fool" of Riley's cast of self-characters.

A minor comical but tragic theme is the "Murphy" pledge that temperance ladies were requiring young men to sign at the time the play was written. This pledge committed a person not to drink intoxicants. Riley had recently seen how futile such a pledge was and enjoyed harpooning it. His brother, Hum (Reuben Alexander Humboldt Riley), took one as revealed in this letter to brother John Riley, in 1877:

                    "... within the last few days, on the evening of the 4th of  July, I

commenced a work that will in time make me more money than any other work I could engage in. I think it is the most honorable work a young man can engage in. I celebrated the 4th in a better way than I ever did before. On that morning I signed the Murphy Pledge and have been at work ever since in that great cause and hope before a great while to bring a great many more into the ranks and try and bring the cause to
a great and glorious end. We have already taken in some of
the boys such as Jim Walsh, John Huley, John Skinner and his
father and many others to (sic) numerous to mention. When I
went up to take the pledge Father Wilson kissed me and told
me to stick to it. I told him I would try..."

Hum couldn't make it. Disastrous drinking soon followed. The Murphy pledge was a joke. Signing a pledge proved not a real commitment to anything. Hum became an alcoholic so severely that often he would disappear without word requiring his family to try to locate him wherever they could find him. In this same year Riley was dealing with his own alcoholism he saw what alcoholism was doing to his brother Hum. A letter contemporaneous to Riley's "The Flying Islands of the Night," reads:

Friend "Meeks" --

Hum left on noon train to-day and as he was "full", and none of us knew where he started for, we are all greatly distressed. He went east, and it has occurred to me that possibly he had gone to see you -- thence this letter of inquiry. And now, dear Jim tell me if he is with you, and if so I charge you, with all earnestness, do what you can to keep him from whisky - for he is killing himself and breaking all our hearts at home. He is good, and wouldn't act as he does could he realize what he is doing -- and I trust and believe that you will do all in your power to turn him from it. I tried to see him before he went, and was at the depot, but he slipped me somehow. I wanted to tell him that if he got hard up to write to me for money -- I will raise it if he needs it, and if you see him you must tell him so for me. If he is not with you try to find him along the line by telegraphing, and I will compensate you for your trouble. It may be that he has not gone far, but let me know at once if

you know anything of him.

Very truly yours

J.W. Riley.

     Hum's fitful life continued. We know he was in Indianapolis in Feb., 1881, and wrote sister Mary to send him "his things" by express train in a telegram of Feb. 25th. Hum died November 24, 1881 at 5 a.m. at age 25 from severe hemorrhage of the bowels according to the Riley family Bible at the Riley Birthplace in Greenfield, Indiana. Someone noted underneath the entry "typhoid fever," but the suspicion is a complication of alcoholism. Hum's funeral was apparently on the Friday following. Hum isn't mentioned thereafter in family correspondence. Crestillomeem got his younger brother and now the alluring siren was after James Whitcomb Riley! The version of "The Flying Islands of the Night" which follows is the first one published. The poem seems an

excellent point of departure for a biography of the poet's life. I apologize if "The Flying Islands of the Night" is sometimes hard to follow. Riley wrote it that way to cause

it to be mysterious and secretive to protect his very fragile ego. Just remember that Riley was all the characters in the cast that follows except "Dwainie."

     Only a creative genius might conceive of himself in such an odd but imaginative way. This was James Whitcomb Riley.

     His poem continues into Three Acts which we will examine in greater detail as an aid in unraveling the knot of his life - a chapter per character at a time.

     Perhaps we should allow Riley to introduce his own autobiography as he did at his "Buzz Club" newspaper article - through Mr. Clickwad - one of the fictional

members-who says of the piece: "This is an affliction," continued Mr. Clickwad, unrolling an enormous manuscript, "too great for me to bear alone, and I ask your succor and assistance as humbly and earnestly as ever beggar asked for alms."

THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT.

A Twintorette.

Dramatis Personae1

KRUNG.........................King of the Spirks

CRESTILLOMEEM..........................The Queen

SPRAIVOLL..........................The Tune Fool

AMPHINE.............................Son of Krung

DWAINIE.............................Of the Wunks2

JUCKLET....................................Dwarf

CREECH, )

)........................Nightmares

GRITCHFANG, ) Counselors, Courtiers, Etc.

1. The names of the characters have loosely evocative

associative qualities. Krung is Riley's triumphant public

reputation- or his hopes about it, a sober and rational

personality in responsibility, success and empowerment. It is

Riley as Cronus (or "Kronus"), the Titan, and "King."

Spraivoll is the poetic "tune-fool" Riley. It is Riley the

"Christ hymn" poet. The aspect of poetry has the feminine

gender, as Calliope, the muse of poetry was feminine. Amphine

evokes Riley as a lover like Amphion, son of Zeus and

Antiope, who, in Greek legend, built Thebes by music of lute

which he played so melodiously that the stones danced into

walls and houses. Riley played the guitar and violin for

romantic purposes. Dwainie is his inspirational friend,

recently deceased at the time of the first writing of "The

Flying Islands," Nellie Millikan Cooley, wife of George B.

Cooley. "Dwainie" suggests the Old English word "Dwine"

meaning waste away. Nellie was recently dead when "The

Flying Islands" was first written in August 1878. Riley

shared the author Thomas Chatterton's fascination with old

English sounding names. Chatterton's writings were major

inspiration for this poem. "Jucklet" the dwarf is Riley as

self-admitted prankster but also Riley's survival self since

Riley can only survive by his wits. The name evokes juggler

from the Latin joculator, a jester, or joker in the Middle

Ages. Jugglers of those days accompanied minstrels and

troubadours and added entertainments to musical performances,

e.g. sleight of hand, antics, feats of musing prowess and a

staple of tricks. The form is in the diminutive just as

Riley was small. The nightmares suggest interior aspects of

creed for Creetch and dreads of novel encounters or

depressive events where Riley is "greenhorn" and engaged or

bitten as by fangs as Gritchfang. That the names are not

entirely imaginative, but rather referential and elliptical

is supported by some evidence. The poet in his 1898 edition

of "The Flying Islands" added a footnote to additions to

"Spirk and Wunk Rhymes," saying, "So, too, in numberless

other aspects, must the reader's fancy freely-play- even as

the writer frankly confesses his own has done,- in such

particulars, for instances, as fancying the "ont-l-dawn-bird"

of the Flying Islanders is our nightingale; their "trance-

bird" our humming-bird; their "echo-bird" our mocking-bird,

etc., etc., ad infinitum."

2. A wunk is a Hoosier folklore figure. It is not what it

appears to be. It is like a ghost that can take on outward

appearance at night of anything or anyone it wishes to.

ACT I

SCENE - THE FLYING ISLANDS Scene I. - Spirkland at Moondawn -

Interior of the King's Court - A star burns dimly in the dome

above the throne- Enter Crestillomeem.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

The throne is throwing wide its gilded arms

To welcome me. The throne of Krung! Ha! ha!

Leap up, ye lazy echoes, and laugh loud!

For I, Crestillomeem, the queen - ha! ha!

Do fling my richest mirth into your mouths

That ye may fatten ripe with mockery!

I wonder what the kingdom would become

Were I not here to nurse it like a babe,

And dandle1 it beyond the silly reach

Of sycophants and serfs. Ho! Jucklet, ho!

`Tis time my twisted warp of nice anatomy

Were here to weave away upon our web -

Of silken villainies. Ho! Jucklet, ho!

1."Dandle" is something like dangle and handle

mixed up.

(Lifts a secret door to the pave, and drops a star-bud

through the opening. Enter Jucklet.)

JUCKLET.

Spang sprit1! my gracious queen, but thou hast

scorched

My left ear to a cinder, and my head

Rings like a ding-dong on the coast of death!

For, patient hate! thy hasty signal burst

Full in my face as thitherward I came;

But though my lug2 is fried to a crisp, and my

Singed wig stinks like a little sun-stewed wunk,

I stretch my fragrant presence at thy feet,

And kiss thy sandal with a blistered lip.

1. "Sprit" is Chatterton's representation of the verb for

"gives spirit" at "AElla," 2.1332. Chatterton, living in the

century prior to Riley, wrote poetry which he fraudulently

claimed was written by a monk named Rowley of the 15th

Century. Chatterton sold these forgeries for income. The

poetry was actually rather good and came to be much admired

by Riley. There was no such monk as Rowley, of course, and

Chatterton killed himself with arsenic at the age of 17 when

his deception was discovered.

2. The external ear in this use.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Hold! rare-done fool, lest I may call the cook

And bake thee brown! How fares the king by this?

JUCKLET.

I left him sleeping1, but uncorked his nose,

And o'er the odorous blossom of his lips2

I squeezed the tinctured sponge, and felt his pulse

Come staggering back to regularity.

And four hours hence his highness will awake

and Peace will take a nap.

1. The setting is Riley sleeping off intoxication which

becomes subject to delirium in Act II, with recovery in Act

III.

2. "Liquor breath."

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Ha! what mean you?

JUCKLET.

I mean that he suspects our knaveries.

Some traitor spy is burrowed in the court

Whose unseen eye is ever focused fine

Upon our actions, and whose hungry ear

Eats every crumb of counsel that we drop

In these our secret interviews -for he -

The king - thro' all his talking-sleep to-day

Has jabbered of intrigue, conspiracy,

And treachery and hate in fellowship,

With dire designs upon his royal self,

To oust him from the throne.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

He spoke my name?

JUCKLET.

I never hear him speak but that thy name

Makes melody of every sentence. Yes, -

He thinks thou art as true to him as thou

Art fickle, false and subtle! O how blind,

and lame and deaf and dumb, and worn and weak,

And faint and sick, and all-commodious

His dear love1 is!

1. Riley's love of alcohol.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Wilt thou wind up thy tongue

Nor let it tangle in a knot of words!

What said the king?

JUCKLET.

He said: "Crestillomeem -

O that she knew this great distress of mine!

For she would counsel with me, and her voice

Would flow in limpid wisdom o'er my wounds,

And, like an ointment, lave my hidden grief,

And heal my bleeding heart;" and so went on

Spinning the web of love in which he lies

Bound hand and foot and buzzing helplessly.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

And did he drop no hint of his distress,

And how, and when, and whence his trouble came?

JUCKLET.

He spoke as the tho' some woman talked with him -

Full courteously he said: "In woman's guise

Thou comest, yet I think thou art indeed

But woman in thy form; they words are strange,

And I am mystified! I feel the truth

Of all thou hast declared, and yet so vague

And shadow-like thy meaning is to me,

I know not how to act to ward the blow

Thou say'st is a hanging o'er me even now."

And then, with open hands held pleadingly,

He asked, "Who is my foe?" and o'er his face

A sudden pallor flashed like death itself,

As tho' if answer had been given it

Had fallen like a curse.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

I'll stake my soul

`Tis Dwainie1, of the Wunks, who peeks and peers

With those fine eyes of hers in our affairs,

And carries Krung, in some disguise, these hints

Of our intent! See thou that silence falls

Forever on her lips, and that the sight

She wastes upon our secret action blurs

With gray and grisly skum that shall for aye

Conceal us from her gaze while she writhes blind

And fangless as the fat worms of the grave.

Here, take this tuft of downy druze, and when

Thou comest on her, fronting full and fair,

Say "Sherzham!" thrice, and fluff it in her face.

1. Nellie Millikan Cooley, Riley's beloved married friend,

who died shortly before the publication of this piece.

JUCKLET.

Thou knowest little magic, O, my queen,

But all thou dost is very excellent.

And now for Amphine - he, too, doubtless, has

Been favored with an outline of our scheme.

And I would kick my soul all over hell

If I might juggle his fine figure up

In such a shape as mine.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Then this: if thou

Canst ever find him bent above a flower,

Or any blooming thing, and thou canst slip

Behind and reach it first and touch it fair,

And with thy knuckle strike him on the breast,

Then his fine form will shrink and shrivel up

As warty as a toad's - so hideous

Thine own will seem a marvel of rare grace,

Tho' idly speakest them of mystic skill

`Twas that which won the king for me - `twas that

Bereft him of his daughter1 ere we had

Been wedded for a month; she strangely went

Astray one morning from the palace steps;

And when the dainty vagrant came not back

And all the spies in Spirkland in her quest

Came straggling empty-handed home again

Why, then the wise king wiped his rainy eyes

And sagely tho't the little toddler strayed

Out to the island's edge and tumbled off.

I could have set his mind at ease on that;

I could have told him when she tumble off.

I tumbled her, and tumbled her so far

She tumbled in another land, from which

But one charm known to art can tumble her

Back into this.

1. Spraivoll, Riley's poetic self, in this delirium tremens

attack from alcoholic binge.

JUCKLET.

Ay, true enough, perhaps!

But dost thou know that rumors float about

Among thy subjects of thy sorceries?

And if my counsel is worth aught to thee,

Then have a care thy charms do not revert

Upon thyself!

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Ha! ha! no fear of that

While Krung remains -

(She pauses abruptly, and a voice of exquisite melody is

heard singing.)

VOICE.

When kings are kings, and kings are men -

And the lonesome rain1 is raining -

O who shall rule from the red2 throne then,

And who shall wield the scepter when -

When the winds3 are all complaining?

When men are men, and men are kings -

And the lonesome rain is raining -

O who shall list as the minstrel sings

Of the ermine robes and the signet rings

when the winds are all complaining?

1. Rain most often refers to God's judgment on sinners in

frontier American poetry. Such imagery often derives from

scripture in this case possibly Ez. 38.22.

2. Red is the color of sin in frontier American Protestant

folklore. This probably derives from Isaiah 1.18. The sin in

this use would be the overuse of alcohol.

3. The wind is often a depiction of the operation of the Holy

Spirit within the world in the same folklore tradition. John

3.8. In light of the imagery of Spraivoll's initial poem, we

would suspect the answer to the poem's question is no one.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Whence flows that sweetness, and whose voice is

that?

JUCKLET.

The voice of Spraivoll if mine ears are tuned.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

And who is Spraivoll, and what song is that she

sings?

JUCKLET.

Spraivoll, the Tune Fool is she called

By those who meet her in her nightly rounds.1

She comes from Wunkland, as she so declares,

And has been roosting round the palace here

For half a moon.

1. Riley only wrote poetry at night.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

And pray, where is she perched?

JUCKLET

Under some dingy cornice1, like enough.

She is no woman, tho' - and yet, indeed

She is licensed idiot, and drifts

About as restless, and as useless, too,

As any lazy breeze in summertime.

I'll call her forth to greet your majesty -

Ho! Spraivoll! Ho! my plumeless bird, flit here!

1. Riley was writing most of his poetry at this time in a

place he called the "Morgue," an upstairs space in row office

buildings in downtown Greenfield, Indiana.

(From behind a group of statuary Spraivoll enters.)

SPRAIVOLL. (Singing1)

Ting-along aling-ting! Tingle-tee! Ting-aling,

aling-ting! Tingle-tee!

The world runs round and round for me;

Wind it up with a golden key

Ting-aling, aling-ting! Tingle-tee!

1. Spraivoll's songs contain ellided and unintelligible

words because, we remember, Riley cannot write poetry

while he is intoxicated as he is in Acts I and II. Spraivoll

does much better in Act III when she is "herself" or rather

Riley "himself."

JUCKLET.

Who art thou, woman, and what singest thou?

SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)

What sings the breene1 on the wertling-vine2,

And the tweck3 on the bamner-stem4?

The song they sing is the same as mine,

And mine is the same to them.

1. Probably a brown wren. Under Chatterton's "Rowley"

technicalities, any word that can take a terminal "e"

does so. Riley's poem has elements of Chatterton "takeoff."

2. Wert, wyrt, wairt, wurt, wort (as in liverwort) refers

to a herb in Middle English. A "wertling-vine" is possibly

a herb-vine.

3. Probably suggestive of a "twaddling" (or silly) "peck" or

"woodpecker" although the "tw" might refer to the Middle

English twecche (twitch).

4. A "bamner-stem" is possibly a "runner bamboo stem" or some

such.

JUCKLET.

Your majesty may be surprised somewhat,

But Spraivoll cannot talk; her only mode

Of speech is melody; and thou might'st put

The gifted fool a-thousand questions, and

In full return, receive a thousand songs,

Each set to different tunes - as full of naught

As space is full of emptiness.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

A fool?

A fool, and with a voice so strangely sweet?

A fool?

JUCKLET.

Ay, warranted! Around the world

She walks unrivalled, and a queen of fools -

Eh, Spraivoll?

SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)

O, Aye! Tho' Spirkland has grown great

In foolish ways, I ween

Her greatest fool will intimate,

He bows to me as queen.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

So! my Jucklet finds his peer!

Come hither woman, and be not afraid,

For I like fools so well I married one.

And since thou art a queen of fools, and he

A king, why I've a mind to bring you two

Together in some way. Canst use thy tongue

in such a wise thy hearer can but list?

SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)

If one should ask me for a song

And I should answer, then my tongue

Would twitter, trill and troll along

Until the song was done.

Or should one ask me for my tongue,

And I should answer with a song,

I'd trill it till the song was sung

And troll it all along.

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Thou art indeed a fool, and one I think

To serve my purpose well. Give ear to me!

And Jucklet, thou go to the king and wait

His waking; then repeat these words: "The queen

Impatiently awaits his majesty,

And craves his presence in the Tower of Stars,1

That she may there express all tenderly

Her great solicitude and" - there, say this:

"So much she bade, and drooped her glowing face

Deep in the shadows of her unbound hair,

And with a flashing gesture of her arm

Turned all the moonlight pallid, saying, "Haste!"

1. A "tower of stars" is the prison of his hopes for

success. In Riley's personal symbolism, a tower is a place of

bondage where one is made a prisoner. SEE: Contemporaneous

Riley letter to the Cooleys and his beloved married friend,

Nellie Cooley, dated October 28, 1877 "...take me your

prisoner and `fasten me down forever in the round tower of

your heart; and I'll never murmur for release till heaven

dawns thro the gates." In Riley imagery, stars have to do

with success. In a letter to his brother John of Nov. 16,

1874, Riley states, "In those dark hours (of drifting while a

sign painter), I should have been content with the twinkle of

the tiniest star."

JUCKLET.

And would it not be well to hang a pearl

Or two upon thy silken lashes?

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Go! (Jucklet disappears.)

Now fool, I'll furnish thee a topic for

A song: A woman once, with angel in

Her face and devil in her heart, had cause

To breed confusion to her sovereign lord,

And work the downfall of his haughty son -

The issue of a former marriage, who

Inspired her hatred from the very first;

Thro' her the king is haunted with a dream

That he is soon to die, and so prepares

The throne for the ascension of the son.

The woman now has won the husband's love,

And by her craft and wanton flatteries

Sways him to every purpose but the one

Most coveted. And so, to serve that end

She would make use of thee, and if thou dost

Her will as her good pleasure shall direct.

Why, thou shalt sing at court, and thy sweet voice

Shall woo the echoes of the listening throne.

At present does the king lie in a sleep

Drug-wrought and deep as death - the after-phase

Of an unconscious state in which each act

Of his throughout his waking hours is so

Rehearsed in manner, motion, deed and word

Her spies may tell her of his very tho't,

And should he come upon the throne to-night

Where his wise counselors sit waiting him,

Then has she cause to think her purposes

Will fall in jeopardy; but if he fail,

Thro' any means, to lend his presence there,

Then, by a former mandate, is his queen

Empowered with all sovereignty to reign

And work the royal purposes instead.

Therefore the queen has set an interview

With him that will occur at noon to-night -

One hour ere the time the throne convenes -

And with her thou shalt go, and lie in wait

Until she signal thee to sing, and then

Shalt thou so work upon his mellow mood With that

unearthly magic of thy voice -

So dazzle all his serious tho't with dreams -

The queen may, all unnoticed, slip away,

And leave thee singing to a throneless king.

SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)

And who shall sing for the haughty son

While the good king droops his head?

And will he dream when the song is done

That a princess fair lies dead?1

1. If he is drunk, can he forget about his dead friend,

Dwainie (Nellie) recently deceased?

CRESTILLOMEEM.

The haughty son has found his "song" sweet curse

And may she sing his everlasting dirge!

She comes from that near-floating land of thine,

And with her fairer skin and finer ways,

Has caught the prince between her mellow palms And

stroked him flutterless. Didst ever hear

Of Dwainie, of the Wunks?

SPRAIVOLL. (Singing.)1

Ay, "Dwainie! My Dwainie!"

The lurloo2 ever sings,

A tremor in his flossy crest

And in his glossy wings,

And "Dwainie! My Dwainie"

The winnow welvers call,

But Dwainie hides in Spirkland

And answers not at all.

The teeper3 twitters "Dwainie!"

The tcheucker4 on his spray

Teeters up and down the wind

And will not fly away;

And "Dwainie! My Dwainie:"

The drowsy oovers5 drawl;

But Dwainie hides in Spirkland

And answers not at all.

O Dwainie! my Dwainie,!

The breezes hold their breath;

The stars are pale as blossoms,

And the night as still as death;

And "Dwainie! My Dwainie!"

The fainting echoes fall;

But Dwainie hides in Spirkland

And answers not at all.

1. A poem of Riley's anguish over his separation from his

great soul-mate, Nellie Cooley, so recently deceased.

Spraivoll, Riley's poetic self, cannot reach Nellie; only

Amphine, Riley's manifestation of love, can as we will soon

discover.

2. Dwainie (Nellie Cooley) is evoked to Riley by an alluring

but hidden spirit. "Lurloo" is a name in intoxicated

onomatopoeia through formation of allegorical qualities

rather than from animal sounds. The name probably derives

from the archaic form "lure" in the sense of an enticement or

allure and the loo which suggests a masking of an appearance

as in the loo or mask a woman wore to avoid tanning her

complexion. The fantastic bird creatures of "Dwainie" are

spirits, a common Riley catachresis extending the obvious

"bird" word into a proper poetic, as in "Song of the Rain."

3. Something which "tees" draws, tugs, pulls. Such a spirit

twitters about Dwainie. Possibly a tree-toad which is said

to "twitter" in Riley's poem "A Treat Ode" of roughly

contemporaneous time. ("Scurious-like!" said the tree-toad, -

\"I've twittered for rain all day...")

4. A tcheucker has the intoxicatese onomatopoeic ring of a

squirrel's call.

5. oover suggests a compaction of "owl hooting overhead"

giving its "hooooooooot."

CRESTILLOMEEM.

A melody ecstatic, and thy words

Altho' so meaningless, seem something more -

A vague and shadowy something, eerie-like,

That makes me catch my breath all tremulous,

But save thy music! Come, that I may make

Thee ready for thy royal auditor. (Exeunt).

ACT II

Scene 2. - A garden of Krung's palace, screened from the moon

and lighted with star flakes. An arbor, near which is a

table spread with a repast. A fountain, near which Amphine

sits thrumming a trentoraine.1

1. "Thrumming" is like strumming with his thumb. Trentoraine,

is probably something like a "trembling instrument sounding

like rain" or some such, most likely Riley's guitar with

which he entertained Nellie on many evenings in his early

twenties.

AMPHINE.

O warbling strand of silver, where, oh where

Hast thou unraveled that sweet voice of thine,

And left its silken murmurs quavering

In spasms of delight? O golden wire,

Where hast thou spilled thy precious twinkerings

What thirsty ear ear has drained thy melody

And left me but a wild, delirious drop

To tincture all my soul with vain desire?

O, Trentoraine, how like an empty vase

Thou art - whose clustering blooms of song have

drooped

And faded, one by one, and fallen away

And left to me but dry and tuneless stems,

And crisp and withered tendrils of a voice

Whose thrilling tone, now like a throttled sound

Lies stifled, faint, and gasping all in vain

For utterance. (Enter Dwainie1, unperceived)

O empty husk of song,

If deep within my heart the music thou

Hast stored away might find an opening,

A fount of limpid laughter would leap up

And gurgle from my lips, and all the winds

Would revel round me riotous with joy;

And Dwainie in her beauty would lean o'er

The battlements of night, and like the moon,

The glory of her face would light the world,

For I would sing of love,

1. Riley's beloved - and dead - Nellie appears in spirit.

Riley elsewhere calls her his "truest friend on earth, or now

in heaven" in a letter to Nellie's daughter, Mrs. Emma Cox,

on April 10, 1885. He adds, "God bless us always with the

sweetness of her memory!"

DWAINIE. (Concealed.) And she would hear,

And reaching overhead among the stars

Would scatter them like daisies at thy feet.

AMPHINE.

O voice, where art thou floating on the air?

O angel-soul, where art thou hovering?

DWAINIE.

I hover in the zephyr of thy sighs,

And tremble lest thy love for me shall fail

To buoy me thus forever on the breath

Of such a dream as heaven envies.

AMPHINE

Then

Thou lovest! O my angel, flutter down

And nestle to the warm home of my breast

So empty are my arms, so full my heart

The one must hold thee or the other burst.

DWAINIE.

(Throwing herself in his embrace.)

I think the hand of God has flung me here;

O hold me that he may not pluck me back.

AMPHINE.

So closely will I hold thee that not e'en

The hand of death shall separate us.

DWAINIE.

So,

May sweet death find us, then, that, woven thus

In the corolla of a ripe caress,

We may drop light, like twin plustre-buds1,

On Heaven's star-strewn lawn.

1. Buds which are purely lustrous.

AMPHINE.

So do I pray,

But tell me, tender heart, as thou dost love,

Where hast thou loitered for so long?

For I have ordered merl1 and viands to be brought

For our refreshment here, where all alone

I might sip with thee words as well as wine. Why

hast thou kept me so athirst, for I

Am jealous of the very solitude

In which thou walkest. (They sit at table.)

1. Merl is an alcoholic beverage, probably wine, and named

after a fictional character of Riley poetry. SEE: Riley's

poem of 1879, "To the Wine-God Merlus" (the "God" of "drink"

who "blowest all my cares.")

DWAINIE

Nay, I will not tell,

Since, if I did a thousand questions more

Would vex our interview with idle tho't

And speculation vain. Let this suffice -

I talked with one who knew me long ago

In dreamy Wunkland,1 talked of mellow nights And

long, long hours of golden olden times

When love lay like a baby in my arms.

And life was like a tinkling toy. We talked

Of all the past, ah, me, and all the friends

That now await my coming and we talked

Of many, many things, so many things

That I forget them all in dreams of when,

With thy warm hand clasped close in this of mine

We walk the floating bridge that spans the gulf

Between this isle of strife and gloom, and doubt,

And my most glorious realm of joy and peace,

Where summer-night reigns ever, and the moon

Hangs ever ripe and lush with radiance

Above a land were roses gloat on wings

And fan their fragrance out so lavishly

The winds dive out of heaven to bathe in it.

1. Earthly life. In Hoosier folklore, Wunkland persons are

those who have been "wunks" on earth, personalities or selves

or souls within shapes and sizes of humanity for homes.

AMPHINE

O empress of my listening soul, talk on,

And tell me all of that rare land of thine,

For even tho' I reigned a peerless king

Within mine own, I think I could fling down

My scepter, signet, crown and royal robes,

And so walk naked down the path of life,

If at the dwindling end my feet might touch

Upon the shores of such a land as thou

Dost paint for me. O tell me more of it,

And tell me if thy sister-woman there

Is like to thee - but nay! for it thou didst

These foolish eyes would not believe - but thou

Canst tell me of thy brothers. Are they great,

And can they grapple with God's arguments,

And cipher out the problems of the stars?

DWAINIE.

Aye, they have leaped all earthly barriers.

`Twas Wunkland's son1 that voyaged round the moon,

And talked with Mars, and buckled Saturn's belt;

`Twas Wunkland's son that bent the rainbow

straight.

And walked it like a street, and so returned

To tell us it was made of hammered shine,

Inlaid with strips of selvedge2 from the sun,

And burnished with the rust of rotten stars.

`Twas Wunkland's son who comprehended first

All grosser things, and took the world apart

And oiled its joints with new philosophies;

For now our goolores3 say, below these isles

A million million miles are other worlds -

Not like to ours, but round, as bubbles are,

And like them, ever reeling on thro' space,

And anchorless thro' all eternity;

Not like to ours, for our isles,4 as they say

Are living things that fly about at night,

And soar above, and cling, throughout the day

Like bats, beneath the rafters of the skies:

and I myself have heard, at dawn of moon,

A liquid music filtered thro' my dreams,

As tho' a thousand trilling voices pent

In some o'erhanging realm, had spilled themselves

In streams of melody that trickled thro'

the chinks and crannies of a crystal pave

Until the wasted juices of harmony,

slow-leaking o'er my senses, drowned my soul

With ecstacy divine. And afferhaiks5

Who scour our coasts on missions for the King,

Declare our island's shape is like the zhibb's6

When lolling in a trance upon the air,

With open wings upslant and motionless.

O such a land it is - so all complete

In all wise habitants, and knowledge, lore,

Arts, sciences, perfected government -

In kingly wisdom, worth and majesty -

So furnished forth in all things lovable,

O Amphine, love of mine, it lacks but thy

Sweet presence to make it a Paradise.

1. Riley seeks the soul within as rendering those in earthly

bodies as "wunks" and the earth as we know it as "wunkland."

Persons in the "beyond" will have activities including

universal explorations, musical enjoyments, ministerial

functions for God, etc.

2. Variant spelling of selvage, an edge of woven material

which prevents ravelling out of the weft.

3. Probably an ellipse of "good lores" or "best books."

4. Riley confirms to us that "The Flying Islands" are lives

that he lives at night. These are himself in fragmented

souls or selves.

5. A haik is worn by an Arab explorer into the deserts. It is

an outer cloth. "Afferre" is Latin meaning "to conduct

inward." Afferhaiks may refer to functionaries in the

universal sphere.

6. An inventive creature of Riley's vivid imagination

possibly striped as a zebra and thus "ribbed" or some such.

(Takes up the Trentoraine.)

And shall I tell thee of the home1 that waits

For thy glad coming, Amphine? Listen, then -

1. After describing the people of the "beyond" and their

activities, Dwainie now tells Riley of the land itself in

song in an imaginative fanciful vision in which Riley and

Nellie can live together. Dwainie gives Amphine to know that

their "heaven" is a garden-party.

SONG

A palace veiled in a gleaming dusk;

Warm breaths of a tropic air,

Drugged with the odorous Marzhoo's1 musk

And the perfumed cynchottaire2; Where the

trembling hands of the lilwing's3 leaves

The winds caress and fawn,

As the dreamy starlight idly weaves

Designs for a damask4 lawn.

Densed in the depths of a dim eclipse

Of palms in a flowery space,

A fountain leaps from the marble lips

Of a girl with a golden vase

Held atip on a curving wrist,

Drinking the drops that glance

Laughingly in the gleaming mist

Of her crystal utterance.

Archways looped o'er blooming walks

That lead thro' gleaming halls;

And balconies where the tune-bird talks

To the tipsy waterfalls.

And easements gauzed with a filmy sheen

Of a lace that sifts the sight,

While a ghost of bloom on the haunted screen

Drips with the dews of light.

Weird, pale shapes of sculptured stone,

And marble nymphs agaze

Ever in fonts of amber sown

With seeds of gold, and sprays

Of emerald mosses ever drowned,

Where glimpses of shell and gem

Peer from the depths as round and round

The nautilus nods at them.

Faces blurred in a mazy dance

And a music wild and sweet,

Spinning the threads of a mad romance

That tangles the waltzer's feet:

Twining arms, and warm swift thrills

That pulse to the melody,

Till the soul of the dancer dips and fills

In the wells of ecstacy.

Eyes that melt in the quivering ore

Of love, and the molten kiss

Bubbling out of the hearts that pour

Their blood in the molds of bliss;

`Tis worn to a languor slumber-deep,

The soul of the dreamer lifts

A silken sail on the gulfs of sleep,

And into the darkness drifts.5

1. Possibly an ellipse of "martyrs of the Hoosiers" or such.

2. "Sin-choked air" or such.

3. Possibly "Littlest winged cupid" kind of thing.

4. A lawn of ornamental variegated pattern as is damask.

5. What kind of place is Riley heading as Dwainie tells him

his destination? Is this overblown, sensation-sated place

described with bawdy house parlor accouterments a delirium-

evoked description of where Riley is really heading due to

his alcoholism, i.e. hell?

(The instrument falls from her hands; and Amphine in a gust

of passionate delight, embraces her.)

AMPHINE

Thou art not all of earth, O angel one!

I do not wonder me those eyes of thine,

Have peeped above the very walls of Heaven!

What hast thou seen there? Hast thou looked on God!

And did he fling as bright a smile as thine

Back to thee as he beckoned thee within?

And tell me, didst thou meet an angel there

Alinger at the gates, nor entering

Till I, her brother, joined her?1

1. Riley's sister, Martha Celestia, born February, 1847,

died as a baby in 1851, two years after Riley was born.

DWAINIE

Why, hast thou

As sister dead? Truth, I have heard of one

Long lost to thee - not dead?

AMPHINE

Of her I speak.

She strayed away from us long, long ago,

But I remember her - wondering eyes

That seemed as tho' they ever looked on things

We could not see, as haply so they did,

For she went from us all so suddenly,

So strangely vanished, that I of times think

She found a pathway leading back to God,

And bent her steps therein and slipped away

Unseen of earthly eyes.

DWAINIE

Nay, do not grieve

Thee thus, O loving heart! Thy sister yet

May come to thee in some sweet way the fates

Are planning, even while thy tear-drops fall;

so calm thee while I speak of thine own self.

And I have listened to a whistling bird

That pipes of waiting danger. Did'st thou note

No strange behavior of thy sire of late?

AMPHINE

Ay, he is silent, and he walks as one

In some deep melancholy, or as one

Asleep.

DWAINIE

And does he never speak with thee,

Nor ask thy counsel?

AMPHINE

Once he stopped me on

The palace stairs, and whispered, "Lo! my son,

thy reign draws near - prepare!" and so passed on

And vanished like a ghost - so pale he was.

DWAINIE

And didst thou never reason on this thing?

Nor ask thyself "What dims my father's eye,

And makes a sullen shadow of his form?"

AMPHINE

Why, there's a household rumor that he dreams

Death lurks forever at his side, and soon

Will signal him away.1 But Jucklet says

Crestillomeem has said the leeches say

There is no cause for serious concern;

As so I am assured it is nothing more

Than childish fancy; so I laugh, ha! ha!

And wonder, as I see him gliding past,

If ever I shall waver as I walk

And stumble o'er my beard, and knit my brow,

And o'er the dull mosaics of the pave

Play checkers with mine eyes.2 Ho, ho! Ah,ha!

1. A possible subtle hint of a Riley suicide plan if he

cannot get himself together enough to write poetry. SEE: the

contemporary poem in Hoosier dialect, "Lines to an Onsettled

Young Man." ("An' what is Death?" - W'y, looky hyur -\ Ef

Life an' Love don't suit you, sir, \Hit's jes' the thing yer

lookin' fer!"). At this point, Riley's poetry contains the

theme of the relief from life that comes with nihilation.

SEE the 1879 poem "Death," with its final line "Soh, bless

me! I am dead!"

2. Riley is in a stupor and the fears he will die while

intoxicated in tremens if he cannot come to. His intoxicated

self, Crestillomeem, however, doesn't deter him from alcohol

consumption. Riley notices himself tumbling about glancing in

distraction as do checkers jumping about on a board, square

by square.

DWAINIE (Aside)

How dare I tell him? Yet, I must - I must?

AMPHINE

Why, art thou, too, grown childish, that thou canst

Find crazy pleasure talking to thyself,

And staring frowningly with eyes whose smiles

I need so much?

DWAINIE

Nay, rather say their tears, poor thoughtless

prince!

AMPHINE

What mean you?

DWAINIE

Why, I mean, one hour agone,

The queen, thy mother -

AMPHINE

Nay, say only "queen!"

DWAINIE

The queen, one hour agone, as so I learn,

Sent message craving audience with the king

At noon to-night, within the Tower of Stars.

Thou knowest one hour later that the throne

Convenes, and that the king has set his seal

Upon a mandate that proclaims the queen

Shall there preside if he do not appear.1

And therefore she, as I have been apprised,

Connives to hold him absent purposely

That she may claim the vacancy - for what

Covert design I know not, but I know

It augurs danger to you both.

1. If Riley can't get over his alcoholism, he will consign

himself to a life as an alcoholic under Crestillomeem's

control.

AMPHINE

I feel

Thou speakest truth, and yet how know you this?

DWAINIE

Ask me not that; my lips are welded close,

And more - since I have dared to speak, and thous

To listen - Jucklet is accessory,

And even now is plotting for thy fall -

But, passion of my soul, think not of me,

For nothing but sheer magic was avail

To work me harm; but look thee to thyself!

For thou art blameless cause of all the hate

That rankles in the bosom of the queen.

So have thine eyes about thee, that no step

May steal behind thee ever - for in this

Unlooked of way thy enemy will come.

This much I know, but for what fell intent

And purpose dire I dare not even guess;

So look thee, night and day, that none may come

Upon thee from behind.

AMPHINE

And thou, O precious heart!

How art thou guarded, and what shield hast thou

Of safety?

DWAINIE

Fear thou not for me at all;

Possessed am I of wondrous sorcery -

The gift of holy magic at my birth,

My enemy must face me as he comes

And I will know him at one utterance,

And then I may disarm him tho' he be

A giant and of thrice a giant's strength,

But hist! What wandering minstrel comes this way?

VOICE (In the distance.)

The drowsy eyes of the stars grow dim;

The wamboo roosts on the rainbow's rim,

And the moon is a ghost of a shine:

The soothing song of the crool1 is done,

But the song of love is a sweeter one,

And the song of love is mine.

Then wake! O wake!

For the sweet song's sake,

Nor let my heart with the morning break!

1. Crooning oriole or some such.

AMPHINE

Some serenader, but what does he in

The gardens here at glare of noon? Let us

Conceal ourselves within the bower and watch.

(They go within.)

VOICE. (Drawing nearer.)

The mist of the morning, chill and gray,

Wraps the night in a shroud of spray,

The sun is a crimson blot:

The moon fades fast, and the stars take wing;

The comet's tail is a fleeting thing,

But the tale of love is not,

Then, wake! O wake! For the sweet song's

sake, Nor let my heart with the morning break.

(Enter Jucklet.)

JUCKLET

Ho! ho! what will my dainty mistress say

When I shall stand knee-deep in the wet grass

Beneath her window, and with upturned eyes

And swaying head, and all-melodious tongue

Out-lolling like the clapper of a bell,

Fling her a song like that? I wonder now

If she will not put up her finger thus,

And say, "Hist! heart of mine! the angels call

For thee!" Ho! ho! Or will her blushing face

Light up her dim boudoir, and from her glass

Flare back to her a flame upsprouting from

The red-hot socket of a soul whose light

She tho't long since had guttered out - Ho! ho!

Or, haply, will she chastely bend above -

A parian phantom with its head atip,

And twinkling fingers dusting down the dews

That glitter on the tarpysma vines

That riot round her casement, gathering

Their blooms to pelt me with, as I below

All winkingly await the fragrant shower?

Ho! ho! how jolly is this thing of love!

But how much richer, rarer, jollier

Than all the loves is this rare love of mine!

Why, my sweet mistress does not even dream

I am her lover; for, to tell the truth,

I have a way of wooing all my own,

And waste no speech in creamy compliment,

And courtesies all gaumed with winy words.

In fact, I do not woo at all. I win!

How is it now the old duct glides off?

SONG1

How is it you woo? and now answer me true, -

How is it you woo and you win?

Why, to answer you true, - the first thing to do

Is simply, my dear, to begin.

But how can I begin to woo or to win

When I don't know a Win from a Woo?

Why, cover your chin with your fan or your fin

And I'll introduce them to you.

But what if it drew from my parents a view

With my own in no manner akin?

No matter, - your view is the best of the two

So I hasten to usher them in.

But stay! Shall I grin at the Woo or the Win?

And what will he do if I do?

Why, the Woo will begin with "How pleasant it's

been"

And the Win with "Delighted with you."

Then supposing he grew very dear to my view?

I'm speaking, you know, of the Win?

Why, then you should do what he wanted you to,

And now is the time to begin.

The time to begin? O then usher him in -

Let him say what he wants me to do!

He is here - he's a twin of yourself, - I am Win,

And you are my darling - my Woo.

1. An amusing song-poem of courtship and marriage in which

Jucklet contemplates his hope of marriage with Dwainie

(Nellie, already married of course.) One who "woos" is an

object of courtship and one who "wins" gets married. When

Jucklet says, "I am win" he is expressing his confidence that

he can become a groom. The phrase is found in an early 1971

Riley courtship poem, the "Unexpected Result," as a "casual"

phrase for the ritual of courtship and marriage. ("...If I

were you/ I'd marry that woman, that's what I'd do,/ As

certain as one and one make two!/ Or ain't you much on the

marry now?/ Well, she's a mighty fat take anyhow!"/ "Well

now, you can bet she ain't so slow,/ Hang it! I won't play

off on her so!/ Where's my overcoat? I'm going to go!/ And

you needn't sit up till I come in,/For I am right on the

`woo' and the `win!'")

That song I call most sensible nonsense;

And if the fair and peerless Dwainie were

But here with that sweet voice of hers, to take

The part of "Woo," I'd be the happiest "Win"

On this side of futurity! Ho! ho!

DWAINIE. (Aside to Amphine.)

What means he?

AMPHINE.

Why he means that throatless head

Of his needs further chucking down between

His ugly shoulders!

(Starts forward, Dwainie detains him.)

DWAINIE.

Nay, thou shalt not stir!

See; now the monster has discovered our

Repast, so let us mark him further.

JUCKLET.

What!

A roasted wheffle and a toe-spiced whum1 -

Tricked with a larvey and gherghling's tail

And, sprit me2! wine enough to swim them in!

Now I should like to put a question to

The guests, but as there are none, I direct

My interrogatory to the host:

Am I behind time?

1. A "wheffle" is probably something like a waffle and a

truffle mix and a "whum" a wheat bun or some such.

2. Give me spirit.

(Showing humbly.) Then I can but trust

My tardy coming will be overlooked

In my most active effort to regain

A gracious tolerance by service now:

Directing the attention to the fact

That I have brought my appetite along,

I can but feel - ahem! that further words

Would be a waste of time.

(Sits at table, pours out wine, and eats voraciously)

There was a time

When I was rather backward in my ways;

But somehow, as I think I have outgrown

The nice, shy age, wherein one makes a meal

Of two estardles and a fork of soup.

Hey, Sanaloo; but my starved stomach stands

With mouth agape, awe-stricken and aghast

Before the rich profusion of this feast;

So will I lubricate it with a glass of merl

And coax it on to more familiar forms

Of fellowship with these delectables.

(Pours out wine and holds up the goblet.)

Mine host - thou of the viewless presence and

Hush-haunted lip - thy most imperial,

Ethereal, and immaterial health!

Live till the sun dries up, and comb thy cares

With star-prongs till the comets fizzle out

And fade away and fall and are no more!

(Drinks and refills the goblet.)

And if thou wilt permit of the remark, -

The gleaming shaft of spirit in this wine

Goes whistling to its mark, and full and fair

Zipps to the target center of my soul.

Why, now, I am the veriest gentleman

That ever buttered woman with a smile,

And let her melt and run, and drip and ooze

All over and around a wanton heart;

And if my mistress bent above me now,

In all my hideous deformity,

I think she would look over, as it were,

The hump upon my back; and so forget

The kinds and knuckles of my crooked legs

In this enchanting smile, that she would leap

Love-dazzled, and fall faint and fluttering

Within these open, all-devouring arms

Of mine! Ho! ho! and yet Crestillomeem

Would have me blight my dainty mistress with

This feather from the Devil's wing, but I

Am far too full of craft to spoil the eyes

That yet shall pour their love like nectar out

Into my own, and I am far too deep

For royal wit to wade my purposes.

DWAINIE.

What can he mean.

AMPHINE.

I will rush forward and

Tear out his tongue, and slap it in his face!

DWAINIE.

Nay, nay! It's what he says!

JUCKLET.

How big a fool -

How all magnificent an idiot -

I would be to blight her, when I have power

To crush the only object that now lies

Between her love and mine! Ho! ho! ho! ho!

I wonder, when she sees the human toad

Squat at her feet, and cock his filmy eyes

Upon her, and croak love, if she wilt not

Call me to tweezer him with two long sticks,

And toss him from her path - O, ho! ho! ho!

Hell bend him o'er some blossom quick, that I

May have one brother in the flesh! (Nods drowsily.)

DWAINIE. (Aside)

Ha! See!

Look, Amphine, he grows drunken; bide a spell

And I will vex him with my sorcery1;

Then will we leave him, for the hour draws on

When all our arts and strategies must needs

Be called in action.

1. The spirit of Nellie and her faith in Riley's poetic

possibility invests Jucklet, Riley's survival personality,

with awareness that his drunkenness may kill him.

Jucklet yawns drowsily, stretches, and gradually sinks at

full length on the sward.1 Amphine and Dwainie come forward.

Amphine is about to place his foot contemptuously upon the

sleeper's breast, but is held back by Dwainie, who motions

him to turn away and hide his face; this time, she unbinds

her hair, and throwing it forward over her face, and bending

till it trails the ground she lifts to the knee her dress,

and so walks backward round the sleeper, crooning to herself

an incoherent song.2 Then pausing, letting fall her dress,

and rising to full stature, waves her hands above the

sleeper's face, and runs to Amphine, who turns about and

looks upon her wonderingly.

1. A grassy surface.

2. A song of reminder of her faith in Riley which will soon

combine with the terror of dementia tremens from his

alcoholism to reform Riley and wake him out of the poem's

delirium.

DWAINIE.

Now shalt thou look on

Such misery as thou hast never dreamed.

(As she speaks a chorus of unearthly voices is heard chanting

to strange discord.)

CHANT

When the fat moon smiles

And the comets kiss,

And the Spirkland elves rejoice,

The whanghoo twunkers1

A tune like this,

And the nightmare nips the royce2:

1. "whanghoo twunkers" is possibly an ellipse for a wailing

spirit evoking a "twang" or "plunk" sound.

2. Possibly an ellipse for "royal arse."

(As these words die away, a comet-freighted with weird

shapes, dips from the sky, and trails near the sleeper's

feet, while from it two nightmares, Creech and Gritchfang,

alight; the comet hisses, switches its tail and disappears,

while the two goblins hover over Jucklet, who stares at them

with starting eyes and horribly comforted features.)

CREECH (To Gritchfang.)

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

Flutter your wings like your grandmother does,1

Tuck in your chin, and wheel over and whir

Like a dickerbug fast in the web of the wurr,

Reel out your tongue and untangle your toes,

And rattle your claws o'er the bridge of his nose;

Tickle his ears with your feathers and fuzz,

And keep up a hum like your grandmother does.

(Jucklet moans and clutches at the air convulsively.2)

1. In Middle English mythology, the "nightmare" was

a female monster supposed to settle upon people and animals

in their sleep producing a feeling of suffocation or great

distress from which the sleeper vainly tries to free one's

self. The grandmother of nightmares would be the ultimate

ancestral nightmare herself.

2. An account of Riley's "survival self" in tremens.

AMPHINE (Shuddering)

Most horrible! See how the poor worm writhes!

DWAINIE

But good will come of it, a far voice sings.

GRITCHFANG (To Creech.)

Let me dive down in his nostriline caves,

And keep an eye out as to how he behaves;

Fasten him down while I put him to rack,

And don't let him flops from the flat of his back.

(Shrinks to minute size, disappears in the sleeper's nose,

and calls gleefully from within:)

Lo! I have bored thro' the floor of his brains,

And set them all writhing with torturous pains;

And I shriek out the prayer as I whistle and whizz,

I may be the nightmare that my grandmother is!

(Appears, and assuming former shape, crosses to Creech, and

they dance on the sleeper's stomach in broken time to

chorus.)

CHORUS

Whing! whang! so our ancestors sang,

And they guzzled hot blood and blew up with a bang;

But they ever tenaciously clung to the rule

To only blow up in the hull of a fool -

To fizz and explode like a cast-iron toad

In the cavernous depths where his victuals were

stowed -

When chances were ripest and thickest and best

To burst every button-hole out of his vest.

(They pause, float high above, and fussing together into a

ponderous iron weight, they drop heavily upon the chest of

the sleeper, who moans piteously.)

AMPHINE (Hiding his face.)

Ah! Heavens! take we hence!

(Dwainie leads him off, looking backward as she disappears

and waving her hands.)

CREECH (To Gritchfang.)

Zipp! Zipp! Zipp! Zipp!

Sting his tongue raw and unravel his lip:

Grope, on the right, down his windpipe, and squeeze

His liver as dry as a petrified flea's.

(Gritchfang bows, shrinks and disappears.)

Throttle his heart till he's black in the face,

And bury it down in some desolate place,

Where only remorse in her agony lives

To dread the advice that your grandmother gives.

(The sleeper struggles convulsively, while the voice of

Gritchfang calls from within.)

Ho! I have clambered the rounds of his ribs,

And riddled his lungs into tatters and dribs;

And I turn up the tube of his heart like a hose

And squirt all the blood to the end of his nose;

I stamp on his stomach, and caper and prance,

With my tail tossing round like a boomerang lance,

And thus may success ever crown my intent

To wander the way that my grandmother went.

(Appears, falls hysterically in Creech's outstretched arms.

They dance and chorus.)

CHORUS

Whing! Whang! so our ancestors sung.

And they snorted and pawed, and they hissed and

they stung,

And they took a terrific delight in their work

On the fools that they found in the lands of the

Spirk.

And each little grain of their powders of pain

They scraped up and pestled again and again,

And they mixed it in doses for gluttons and sots

Till they strangled their dreams with abdominal

knots.

(The comet again trails past, upon which the nightmares leap

and disappear. Jucklet staggers to his feet, glares

frenziedly about him, and with a wild, unearthly howl of

agony, rushes off.)

ACT III

Scene I. - Court of Krung -The royal ministers and counselors

in session - Crestillomeem, in royal attire presiding - She

signals to herald on her right, who steps forward - Blare of

trumpets, greeted with loud murmurings and tumult from

without.

HERALD.

Hist, ho! Ay,ay! Ay,ay! Her majesty,

The all glorious and ever gracious queen

Crestillomeem, to her most loyal, leal1

And right devoted subjects, greeting sends -

Proclaiming, in the absence of the king,

Her royal presence, as by him empowered

To sit upon the throne in sovereign state

And work the royal will. (Confusion)

Hist, ho! Ay,ay! Ay,ay!

And be it known, the king, in view of his

Approaching dissolution -

Hath decreed The reading of this royal document.

1. A Middle English word meaning "true."

(Sensation among the counselors, etc. within and wild tumult

without; cries of "Long live the king!" and "Down with the

sorceress!")

(Unrolls a scroll with royal seal attached. Sensation in

court - wild tumult without, and cries of "Plot!"

"Conspiracy!" "Down with the Queen!" "Down with the

sorceress!")

CRESTILLOMEEM. (Wildly)

Bring me the traitor-knave who dares to cry

"Conspiracy!"

(Wild confusion without - sound of rioting, and a voice, "Let

me be taken!" Enter officers, dragging Jucklet, wild-eyed and

hysterical.)

CRESTILLOMEEM. (Starting.)

Why bring you Jucklet here?

OFFICER.

Because `tis he who cries "conspiracy!"

And who incites the mob without with cries

Of "Plot" and "Treason!"

CRESTILLOMEEM.

Ha! Can this be true?

I'll not believe it! Jucklet is my fool,

But not so great a fool that he would tempt

His sovereign's ire. Let him be freed. Come here,

My Fool.

JUCKLET. (Wildly)

Thy fool? Ho! ho! Why, thou art mine!

(Confusion. Cries of "Strike down the traitor!")

JUCKLET.

Back! all of ye! I have not waded Hell

That I should fear your puny enmity!

But I will give you proof of what I say.

(Presses toward the throne, hurling his opposers left and

right. Crestillomeem sits as tho' stricken speechless,

waving him off, while Jucklet folds his arms and stands

before her.)

JUCKLET. (To the throng)

Lo! do I here defy her to lift up her voice

And say this is a lie that Jucklet speaks.

(The queen motions to officers, who, unperceived, close

behind Jucklet.)

And further - I pronounce the document1

That craven herald there holds in his hand

A forgery - a trick - and dare the Queen

Here in my listening presence to command

Its utterance.

1. Probabaly an anti-temperance Murphy pledge to remain

alcoholic rather to remain sober.

CRESTILLOMEEM. (Wildly rising to her feet)

Hold, hireling! traitor! fool!

The Queen thou dost in thy mad boasts insult

Will utter first thy doom.

(Jucklet is seized from behind, and hurled, face upward on

the dais at her feet, while a minion, with a drawn sword

pressed against his breast, stands over him.)

Ere we proceed

With graver matters let this demon-knave

Ben sent back home to Hell. Give me the sword -

The insult has been mine - so even shall

The vengeance be!

(As she bends forward with the sword, Jucklet, with a super

human effort frees his hand and with a sudden motion, and an

incoherent muttering, flings something1 at the queen, who

staggers, dropping the sword, and with her arms tossed wildly

aloft, totters forward and falls prone upon the pave. In the

confusion following, Jucklet mysteriously disappears, and as

the bewildered and awe-stricken courtiers lift the fallen

queen, a clear and piercing voice is heard singing.)

1. Sobriety which will change Riley from Crestillomeem's

influence in drunkenness to Krung a respectable person in

society.

VOICE.

The pride of noon must wither soon,

The dusk of death must fall;

Yet out of darkest night the moon

Shall blossom over all.

(For an instant a dense cloud envelops the throne, then

slowly lifts, discovering Krung seated in royal state, with

Jucklet in the act of presenting the scepter to him. Blare

of trumpets, and chorus of courtiers, ministers, heralds,

etc.)

CHORUS.

All hail! All hail! All hail! Long live the King!

KRUNG.

Thro' God's great providence, together with

The intervention of an angel whom

I long ago tho't lost to earth and me,1

Once more, as your sovereign, do I greet

And tender you my blessing. Until late

I have been subject of the baleful spells

And witcheries2 of this poor woman here3

Who grovels at my feet, blind, speechless, and

So stricken with a curse herself designed

Should light upon hope's fairest minister.

Remove her from my sight.

1. Nellie.

2. Intoxication.

3. Crestillomeem, Riley's drunken self.

(As the queen is led away Spraivoll appears in royal attire.

She kneels and kisses the king's hand; in return he kisses

her upon the brow, and lifts and seats her at his side.1)

1. Spraivoll, Riley's "versifier" self can now write

humble poetry.

Behold in this sweet woman here my child, who,

when a babe,

The cold, despicable Crestillomeem -

(He bows his head within his hands and shudders)

By spells

And wicked necromancies spirited

To some strange real, where, happily

A Wunkland princess1 found her, and undid

The spell by a most potent sorcery2

She doth possess, God-given, to right wrong.

Lo! let the peerless princess now appear!

1. "Dwainie-Nellie."

2. The power of encouragement and love.

(He lifts his scepter, and a gust of melody, unearly

beautiful, sweeps through the court. The star above the

Throne drops slowly downward, bursting like a bubble on the

scepter-tip, and issuing therefrom Amphine and Dwainie, hand

in hand, full at the feet of Krung, who bends above them with

his blessing, while Jucklet capers wildly round the

group.)

JUCKLET.

Ho! ho! but I could shriek for very joy -

For tho' fair Amphine even now bends o'er

A blossom, I, ho! ho! have no desire

To meddle with it, since with but one eye

I slept the while she backward walked around

Me in the garden.

(Amphine laughs gaily, Jucklet blinks and leers, and Dwainie

bites her finger.)

KRUNG.

Peace! good Jucklet, peace!

For this is not a time for juiceless wit -

Tho' I have found restored to me my life -

Tho' I have found a daughter, I have lost

A son - for Dwainie, with her sorcery,

Will, on the morrow, carry him away.1

1. Riley's bond with Nellie causes his "lover-self" to go

live with Nellie in her grave or perhaps heaven as her

"soulmate."

SOME COMMENTS ON THE POEM FROM THE TIME OF ITS FIRST PUBLICATION

Riley never talked about the substance of the poem. There is an account of a Riley acquaintance of the time, Minnie Belle Mitchell, who was in her brother-in-law, George F. Hauck's Greenfield Grocery in 1878 when the Saturday HERALD arrived with "The Flying Islands" in it. Riley's brother, Hum, working in the store as a clerk received the newspaper from the paper carrier and spread it out on a counter. While she and Hum were reading it, Riley and his friend Frank Hayes came into the store. Minnie Belle remembers saying to Riley, "It's wonderful, simply marvelous," with her teen-age exuberance. She continued, "It's beautiful to look at too, but do you know, I can't understand a word of it - I don't know what it's all about." She adds, "My extravagant remarks were followed by an explosion of laughter from the three young men, and I knew instantly that I had said the wrong thing and my face was scarlet."

Riley's autobiographical poem was a lark to him at the time. He was "Thomas Chatterton" putting forth a prank poem but without so serious an intent as to try to make any money out of a Middle English "forgery" as Chatterton had tried. Riley eventually replied, "Well, Minnie Belle, I have to confess-I don't know what that poem is all about myself. If was given to me, you know." Riley was not about to tell his young friend that it was a soul journey while he was intoxicated.

The public was just as confused about "The Flying  Islands of the Night" as was Minnie Belle Mitchell. The Kokomo TRIBUNE published the following about "The Flying Islands of the Night" on September 26, 1878. Our young friend, J.W. Riley, has covered himself all over with glory by his "The Flying Islands of the Night" recently published in the Indianapolis HERALD. Never since the days of Poe has there been such a fanciful piece of versification written. It is so unique and purely original that any attempt to describe it or criticize it would result in a miserable failure. It must be read to be appreciated. Mr. Riley has been before the public but for a short time, but in that time his poems have placed him at the head of the poets of the West. For sublimity, originality, conception and purity of diction, Mr. Riley ranks the leading literary lights of the state. His sonnet on the death of Mr. Philips was one of the grandest concepts that was ever penned. Christ hears the wailing of the tired soul, and reaching down from Heaven, takes him by the hand and helps him up. We are pleased to learn Mr. Riley's engagements to lecture are numerous and financially his prospects are bright." Yes, but what about the subject matter? The poem was really a play. The play was about Riley's life. The strange thing about it was that Riley was all the characters except for Dwainie.

THE FLYING ISLANDS AS THEATER

There is something like the great Shakespearian explanation that "All the world's a stage" in Riley's autobiographical poem. Riley loved to act and was considered a great actor in his time. We might digress to talk about Riley and the theater in his life. Riley was a great actor. We have the testimony of other actors to confirm this. Riley played in the soul-roles he described in his poem. At a dinner given in London for Riley by Sir Henry Irving, the great Nineteenth Century actor of England, with Coquelin, the great actor of France present, Coquelin remarked to Irving upon hearing Riley, "This Monsieur Riley has by nature what you and I have spent twenty years to acquire." This remark was made on Riley's famous summer trip of 1891 through Scotland to see Robert Burns' "wee cot" that ended up in London. Riley was a great American actor as well as poet. He lived in a play cast of himself on the stage of his soul.

ALCOHOLIC'S CONFESSIONAL GENRE LITERATURE

What about the plot? Who would have guessed that Riley's genius had produced the most novel use of a purely American genre in all of literature. Riley had  transformed the Alcoholic's Confessional Genre of literature into poetry. He had come close to strangling it. He used it absurdly. Literature had never seen such a mischievous minstrel as Riley before. One of the most original aspects of Riley's writing of "The Flying Islands of the Night" was the use he made of the Alcoholic's Confessional Genre. In that genre generally, an alcoholic describes himself as a despicable alcoholic. Then along comes a "saving soul" or perhaps the "agent of salvation." It is a special person to the doomed alcoholic who pleads to the deranged intoxicated person and inspires them to escape their drunkenness while in tremens or delirium of one sort or another. Presto! The alcoholic is saved and a "new person." This genre was very popular in Riley's time when great temperance movements swept the country. However no other poet made even the slightest use of the genre. Nor does it appear that any other author followed Riley's lead in applying it to autobiographical poetry. "The Flying Islands of the Night" is really a very complex puzzle. Once we see that Poe's "Scenes from Politian" and mock Thomas Chatterton trumpery were sources of form and language, then we must look to the movement of Riley's piece. Alcoholic's Confessional Genre literature provides that more dominant influence. The key to the genre is an initial description of alcoholic "hell" followed by the saving influence of somebody and then a final scene where sobriety triumphs. In Riley's autobiographical use of the genre, the spirit of the dead Nellie Cooley, his married inspiration of days gone by, is the saving force. Later, during his revisions for subsequent publications, Riley adds his mother's love as AEo as a saving force too. Riley's triumph is that of Krung in achieving great fame and respectable status. We find the alcoholic's confessional genre in the prose of Luther Benson's FIFTEEN YEARS IN HELL. In that book, which Riley was reading at the time he wrote "The Flying Islands of the Night," Benson describes the following sequence in his life in which his mother saves him. "My wild revel was protracted for days out of dread of the awful sorrow and remorse that I knew must surely come on my getting sober. My mother appeared to me in my troubled dreams, and talked to me as in life. Many times in my slumber, and in my waking fancies did I see her pale, troubled face, with her pitying eyes looking on me as from that bed of pain and death, and at such times I reached out my hands toward her in mute pleading for forgiveness, forgetting or not knowing that she was dead." Riley looked on Benson with awe and reverence. But was he for real? Was he just another "charlatan" with a product  to sell - piety and salvation - as did Docs McCrillus and Townsend sell "miracle cures." Luther was someone of national significance as can be seen in two representative press reports of his time. From the Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) GAZETTE: Luther Benson, Esq. of Indiana, has just closed one of the most powerful temperance lectures ever delivered here. The house was one solid mass of people, with not one spare inch of standing-room. For nearly two hours he held the audience as any magic. At the close a large number signed the pledge, some of them the hardest drinkers here. The people are so delighted with his good work that they have secured him for another lecture Wednesday evening." From the Manchester (New Hampshire) PRESS: "Smyth's Hall was completely filled, seats and standing room at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, with an audience which came to hear Luther Benson. The officers of the Reform Club, clergymen and reformed drunkards occupied seats upon the platform. Mr. Benson is a native of Indiana, and says he was a drunkard from six years of age. He was within three months of graduation from college when he was expelled for drunkenness. Then he studied for a lawyer, and was admitted to practice, being drunk while studying and drunk while engaged in a case. At length he reduced himself to poverty, pawning all he had for drink. At length he started to reform and  though he had once fallen he was determined to persevere. Since his reformation two years ago, he gave temperance lectures. He is a young man, a powerful, swinging sort of speaker, with a good command of language, original with peculiar intonation, pronunciation and idioms, sometimes rough, but eminently popular with his audiences. He spoke for an hour and a half steadily, wiping the perspiration from his face at intervals, taking up the greater part of his address with his personal experience. He said he had delirium tremens several times, once for fifteen days, and gave an exceedingly minute and graphic description of his torments. A number of men signed the pledge at the close of the meeting. Among them was one man, who sat in front of the audience and kept drinking from a bottle he had evidently in a spirit of bravado, but at the conclusion of the address he signed the pledge, crying like a child." In another example of the genre, THIRTY-THREE YEARS A  LIVE WIRE, the autobiography of John T. Hatfield, another reformed alcoholic and incidentally a childhood friend of James Whitcomb Riley who went on to lecture on holiness, the Act II stage (the saving agency) is referred to as an "Anointing." Instead of a "Dwainie" as with James Whitcomb Riley or a "doting mother" as with Benson, Hatfield's inspiration is Christ. Riley was as much aware of Hatfield's writing in the genre as he was Benson's. As to their boyhoods together, Hatfield writes, "James  Whitcomb Riley and myself were boys together. We werein the same class at school, and at the same "swimming hole," since  made famous in one of Mr. Riley's poems. During the Civil War we marched the streets together with tin pans for drums and broomsticks for guns. Little did passers-by imagine, as they cast indifferent glances at us little dust-begrimed urchins out in the road playing soldier, that, in the coming  years, little Johnnie Hatfield would bless his country asJohn T. Hatfield, "The Hoosier Evangelist," and little Jim Riley would be known the world over as James Whitcomb Riley, "The Hoosier Poet." Hatfield held revivals country-wide as a primary speaker of the American "Holiness movement" and founded a religious  college in Pasadena, California. rom his boyhood memorials, he says, "My father, in those days, frequently kept a bottle of "Old  Kentucky Rye" in the cupboard and its contents were offered to both children and guests. This custom of the home had something to do in kindling to great intensity my appetite for strong drink, and at the age of twenty years I was frequenting saloons and seeking companionship among the vile, soul-destroying influence of saloon life. (Biographer's Note: This crowd probably included James Whitcomb Riley.) Like a meteor in the night I was fast going down, and nothing less powerful than the mighty attraction of heavenly gravitation could reverse my hellward course and draw me to the heights of noble Christian manhood. Thank God, the Holy Spirit interposed, the blood of Christ was supplied, and my young life was transformed from a disgraceful career of drunken profligacy to one of eminent usefulness in the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ." Strangely enough, James Whitcomb Riley's life passage had the same result. An anointing incident which saves Hatfield from his life of sin is described as occurring at a typical Midwestern camp-meeting of the period. Hatfield says, "People who witnessed the scenes of that day declared that they saw flashes of Divine light appear over the congregation as wave and wave of heavenly power descended upon the assembly of thousands." After the meeting, Hatfield went to a farmer's home exhausted and went to bed, but couldn't sleep until "I again closed my eyes and there appeared before me a vision. I saw a silver horn lined with gold, the large end resting upon my breast. It appeared to be many feet in length from the large end to the mouthpiece which appeared to be quite small. I looked up from the large end, and had never held anything so indescribably beautiful. Suddenly the opening at the small end was darkened and there appeared a halo of light, which seemed to envelop a fast-approaching figure. As nearer and nearer the lovely vision approached, I soon recognized the central figure as that of Jesus and the beautiful halo proved to be a band of bright, shining angels. All the angels were singing and such exquisite tones cannot be described, neither can they be compared to any earthly melodies. In a short time, Jesus stood close beside me, and looked down upon me with an expression that, in clearer tones than words, spoke of tenderest love, then He disappeared. At the same time I felt a sensation in my throat as though I was swallowing something. Then the horn passed away, the angels disappeared and the music ceased. I opened my eyes and then closed them again, hoping that the  vision would appear one more, but I waited and listened in vain." The call was for Hatfield to preach just as James Whitcomb Riley's call from his deceased Dwainie was inspiration for him to write poetry and recite it from the lyceum circuit stages around the country. Whether Riley was intoxicated while writing "The Flying Islands of the Night" is unknown. There is this possibility. Recent study by Mark Brunke and Merv Gilbert in "Alcohol and Creative Writing" in PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORTS (1992,71, 651-658) found that alcohol facilitates creative writing and specifically the use of novel figurative language. The testing of the hypothesis had intoxicated persons write brief stories or streams of consciousness, all of which were  fictional. There were significantly more  novel tropes while intoxicated than sober. Subjects also wrote significantly more words when intoxicated. There is obviously very marked used of figurative language and novel trope use in "The Flying Islands of the Night." Nevertheless, the writing bears great sense as an autobiographical exposition under the circumstances of its writing. Whether Riley wrote the piece while intoxicated is debatable but unnecessary to know for its value in this biography. We cannot fully explore "The Flying Islands of the Night" in this preface to the life of the most important of the late Nineteenth Century American poets, James Whitcomb Riley. We must however confirm its autobiographical nature as the basis of this biography. Crestillomeem, Krung, Juckletand others are the self- visualization which Riley embodied in his wonderfully "astronomically" impossible vision of self- alienation and personality fragmentation he called "The  Flying Islands of the Night" which will govern the biography to follow.  Why bother with such an impossible person?  There may be other reasons for a study of Riley - and some of them will be explored - but ultimately the very mix of his personality, and the eventual triumph of his poetic self, "Spraivoll," (usually) was brought about by an intervening instrumentality of spirituality that I find so compelling it must be written about. At its point of greatest flourish, this aspect of Riley became transforming to Riley's poetry as well as literally "saving" him from Crestillomeem. At its very best the quality in his life became kenotic poetry. Kenotic poetry is the finest poetry of Post-Civil  War American literature and Riley wrote its greatest singing verse. The reason it is the finest poetry of the period is   that it connected ecstatically with the American soul and expressed its song.Some mention of the obscure kenotic theological movement originating in Germany must be interwoven into this account  and also its odd peripatetic journey into the American mid- continent where Riley wrote his poetry. This will come with   a discussion of Riley as Spraivoll later on in this biography. But for now let us meet Riley as a cast of himself as he knows himself to be at the level of his soul. There is simply no way of accounting for the life of James Whitcomb Riley without meeting his dialoguing "self- cast" play partners.