Heath Ledger = candle
January 23, 2008 – 10:30 pmStories about the death of Heath Ledger are reporting that his babymama’s father said this:
“I think Tennyson got it right in the poem when he described someone as having died at a young age but burning the candles at both ends, and oh what a beautiful flame he made, that was Heath, what a beautiful flame he made and a great talent.”
Grief and media pressure will make anyone say silly things — especially, oh especially, cliché — so this is not a snark aimed at Mr. Williams. Nevertheless, I want to point out that this is a very mixed-up statement. First of all, “burning the candles at both ends” usually means “working hard.” Nothing to do with being a “beautiful flame” snuffed at a young age. Second of all, Tennyson is not the originator of this phrase — he barely used the word “candle” at all, as I discovered when I searched for the word in several different full-text editions of his works on Google Book Search.
I think Mr. Williams was thinking of a few different things. First is Tennyson’s famous 1850 elegy “In Memoriam A. H. H.,” the source of such proverbs as “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” Second is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s also-famous epigram of 1922, “First Fig”:
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
It gives a lovely light!
Millay isn’t talking about work there, but about what the kids call “partying.” (If you read her other poems and about her life, that becomes clear.) But it is a carpe diem thing, a “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” thing, so it’s kinda sorta about death, too.
Third thing Mr. Williams was vaguely reaching for, I think, is the general metaphor of life as a brief flickering candle, easily snuffed out. Heaven knows where, if anywhere, that originated. It’s just kinda obvious.
Well, let’s put some better words from Tennyson’s “In Memoriam A. H. H.” into the record, words that Mr. Williams could have quoted if he hadn’t been discombobulated.
He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
