Summary
The speaker recounts her impression of the country she left as a child. This country is represented by sunlight in the speaker’s memory, and no current news of war or dictatorship can darken the speaker’s impression of the place she comes from.
As time passes, the white streets of the city and its graceful slopes become even clearer in the speaker’s memory. The passing of time is compared to war, with tanks rolling past and frontiers rising between the speaker and her country of origin.
The speaker left with only a child’s knowledge of her native language, but this vocabulary makes possible a whole other kind of understanding of the world and the speaker’s place in it. This understanding is described as “a whole grammar” consisting of “coloured [molecules].” The language tastes like sunlight on the speaker’s tongue, and though it may be banned by the state, the speaker will never forget it.
Without a passport, the speaker is unable to return to her country. However, the city where she was born still exists in her consciousness. It lies down in front of the speaker in a pliant manner. The speaker cares for the personified city, combing its hair and loving its shining eyes. The city takes the speaker dancing through a different city of walls, which may refer either to the current state of the speaker’s city of origin or to the city to which the speaker had to immigrate. Here, an unidentified group encircles the speaker and accuses her of absence and darkness. The speaker’s city hides behind her, and as the onlookers threaten them, the speaker describes her own shadow as evidence of her city’s sunlight.
Analysis
In “The Émigrée,” Rumens uses imagery and personification to show the speaker’s relationship to her unidentified country of origin, which no longer exists the way it once did. The spelling of the title indicates that the speaker is female. An “émigrée” is a person who has left their country to live in another, often for political reasons. As no particular country is specified, this poem represents the archetypal experience of the émigrée, one defined by absence, memory, and longing.
The poem is organized into two octets and one nonet, and is written in free verse. This could reflect the lack of control the speaker has over her physical whereabouts as she is unable to return to her country of origin.
The poem begins with the line “There was once a country…” indicating that this country only existed in the past. The phrase “there was once” is distinctive in that it gives the poem a fairytale-like or fantastical tone. The use of an ellipsis creates an interlude immediately after the first phrase, perhaps representing the speaker’s hesitation or a pause in which she must gather her thoughts. The poem takes place inside the speaker’s mind and memory, and so the ellipsis could also represent the way the speaker enters her inner realm in order to speak about her country of origin.
The first line continues with the phrase “…I left it as a child.” Later in the poem, the country is personified as a childlike figure. This gives the first line a double meaning: not only was the speaker a child when she left her country, but the country itself is represented as a child. Rumens complicates time and memory in “The Émigrée” (as well as in other poems in the collection), making them fluid and nonlinear.
Despite the temporal and physical distances between the speaker and her country of origin, her memory of her country is “sunlight-clear.” Here, Rumens evokes the transparency of sunlight rather than its warmth, keeping the image safely out of the realm of cliché. According to the speaker, her memory of her city is sunlight-clear because she “never saw it in that November / which…comes to the mildest city.” In the Northern Hemisphere, November is the time approaching winter, meaning that the days are getting darker and colder. A November that “comes to the mildest city” brings to mind unexpected storms and bouts of cold temperature that sometimes afflict even places with usually mild weather. This is a metaphor for the war and political issues that afflict the speaker’s country. The phrase “which, I am told” aligns with the very first line “There was once a country…” in that both present the poem as a fantastical story or fairytale.
The storms or darkness of November can be read as a metaphor for the terrible news that the speaker receives about her country. Though the country may be suffering due to war or authoritarian leadership, nothing can break the speaker’s sunlit impression of her place of origin. Her original view of the country is described as a “bright, filled paperweight.” A paperweight is an object used for organization that keeps papers from being scattered. In this way, the speaker’s memory of her country keeps her centered despite the ongoing devastation occurring there. However, the speaker's memory of her birthplace also carries a certain heaviness.
The anaphora of the subjunctive “it may be” builds tension and dramatizes the final line of the first stanza: “but I am branded by an impression of sunlight.” Branding is the process by which a mark is burned into skin with the intention of leaving a permanent scar. Thus there is violence in the way the speaker is permanently marked by her country. Just as a paperweight implies both security and heaviness, branding intimates permanence as well as pain.
In the following stanza, the speaker describes the city’s white streets and graceful slopes. The color white indicates cleanliness and innocence, and the sibilance of “graceful slopes” contributes to the evocation of the city’s beauty. Though time usually leads to the loss of memory, the speaker’s memories “glow even clearer” as time passes. Perhaps the speaker gains a better grasp of history as she grows into adulthood. The war afflicting the speaker’s country forced her to emigrate, and time itself is described in the context of warfare because of the distance it creates between the speaker and her country. Despite the fact that the speaker’s memories only get brighter over time, time is described as an assaulting force that “rolls its tanks” and raises frontiers. A frontier is a line or border separating two countries. The frontiers raised by time are “close like waves,” implying an impermanent but constant force. When one wave passes, another comes. In this way, time is further depicted as fluid in the poem.
Because the speaker was only a child when she left her country, she carried with her a “child’s vocabulary.” This knowledge stays with her as an adult. Children have a particular affinity for language because their developing brains are programmed to learn language. When the speaker left her country as a child, she carried her native language “like a hollow doll,” insinuating that it was an insufficient childhood companion. But now as an adult, the speaker’s knowledge of her native language “opens and spills a whole grammar.” This refers not just to the ability to learn the language more fully, but to an understanding of the world and the speaker’s place in it.
The purpose of language itself is to communicate by expressing oneself and listening to others. Grammar refers to the system and structure of language. The speaker’s childhood grasp of her native language is treasured in the present day because it allows her to zoom in and see “coloured molecule[s]” of relation. A molecule is the smallest fundamental unit of a chemical compound in which the compound can be divided but retain its properties. In other words, the speaker sees the possibilities that her native language grants her as tangible, physical things.
Though the speaker’s native language opens colorful possibilities of relation inside of herself, the language faces erasure in the wider external world. Along with notions such as food, art, and place, language is an essential tenet of culture. The speaker’s language of origin may “now be a lie, banned by the state.” This means that political turmoil splinters the lives of the country’s refugees because it prevents them from relating to each other through their native language. Banning a language from being spoken serves to dissolve the bonds between those who speak it. But in the poem, the speaker still finds truth and beauty inside herself through her native language. This language tastes of sunlight, reinforcing the way that the speaker’s relationship to her country is defined by sunlight.
In the final stanza, the speaker states that she has no passport and thus no way to physically return to her country. This shows how human-made borders and “frontiers” can cause immense suffering. But this does not stop the speaker from internally encountering her place of origin through memory and imagination. This is demonstrated when the speaker’s city comes to her in its own “white plane.” Earlier in the poem, the speaker describes the “white streets of that city.” The repetition of whiteness emphasizes the purity that this city holds in the speaker’s mind.
The word “plane” has multiple definitions. One is a level of existence, thought, or development, while another is a flat surface in which a straight line between any points on it lies wholly on that surface. These definitions demonstrate both the physicality and immateriality of the speaker’s memories and imagination concerning her country. A plane is also a mode of air travel, something prohibited to the speaker if she were to try to return to her city. But the city itself is able to travel to meet the speaker inside of her mind.
Personified as a childlike figure, the city lies in front of the speaker, “docile as paper.” To be docile is to be passive or submissive. The speaker responds by performing acts of care for the personified city, combing its hair and loving its shining eyes. In return, the city takes her dancing “through the city / of walls.” This other city could refer to the present-day city in contrast to the speaker’s memory, or to the city to which the speaker immigrated. In either case, the “city / of walls” is a threatening place. An unspecified “they” encircle the speaker and accuse her of absence and darkness. The repetition of “they” shows the segregation and discrimination that the speaker experiences. “They” could refer to residents from the speaker’s old country, or to the citizens of her new one. Their accusation that the speaker is “dark in their free city” could allude to racism. All the while, the speaker’s city hides behind her, emphasizing its childlike nature as the speaker attempts to defend her city from the outside world.
The speaker is alienated and threatened by this group who mutter about death. But just as the speaker cannot break her sunlit impression of her country despite the darkness of war, here the speaker sees her own shadow as evidence of her city’s sunlight. Whatever darkness the speaker carries inside herself (whether it be trauma, guilt, or anger), she ultimately sees this as evidence of her love for where she comes from.
