A Dark Portrait (1984). Summary and Description

“A Dark Portrait” is another poem that refers to a work of art, this time a novel. The poem is a short, engaging portrait of a young woman whom the speaker has apparently known, which contains unusual descriptions of the young woman’s character and behavior. We are told in the beginning of the poem, “She always said ‘tu’ in such a way / as if she wanted to sleep with you / or had just had a most passionate orgasm” (ll. 1-3). The way the speaker describes the woman indicates perhaps a false sense of sophistication or worldliness.

The woman employs a French word, tu, marking her as someone who uses her familiarity with other languages as a way to appear worldly and educated. It also appears as if her sexuality is at least in part deliberately crafted. The speaker therefore implies that the young woman is not quite who she seems to be, as is confirmed later in the poem. The speaker tells us that “she / was really like Nora in Nightwood / long-gaited and restless as a mare” (ll. 5-7).

The Nightwood to which the speaker refers is a modernist novel written by Djuna Barnes and published in 1936. It concerns two disillusioned women who are dissatisfied with their lives and who meet for a brief, seemingly perfect romantic encounter, but many entanglements and disappointments result. Nora Flood is the name of one of the women and it is to her that the speaker is alluding. In the novel, Nora is generally the more honest and idealistic person, again implying that the woman in the poem is less sophisticated than she at first tries to appear.

The poem ends with two distinct images of the woman, one when she is younger and the other later in her life. While the images may initially appear to be incongruous, both images are of someone searching for that which she cannot find. The young woman cannot find a suitable lover, and, it is implied, because she spends her youth in a vain search for a lover who will satisfy her, she spends the end of her life not among people, but animals. Some readers might see the conclusion of the poem as positive since at least the woman has found some sort of companionship.

The fact that the young woman is described as a “mare” in the poem and ends up among horses may also imply that she has found, when near the end of her life, the place where she belongs. The poem could also be read as a meditation on the futility of seeking the ideal lover in a world where ideal people of any sort do not exist. The ambiguity of the ending lends itself to either interpretation and indicates the sophisticated way that Ferlinghetti writes.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Discuss the poem’s conclusion. Do you think the woman finally found peace or happiness? Why or why not?

2. What do you think the poem is saying about the nature of desire? If we, as humans, know that the ideal person/lover does not exist, why do we keep searching for the ideal? What does Ferlinghetti seem to think about those who seek for the ideal partner?

3. Compare “A Dark Portrait” with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun”). How do the speakers in each poem view the notion of perfection or an ideal other? What solutions does each seem to be proposing about the dilemma of the search for the ideal?