Loss of Identity and "Petite Mort" in "An Invite to Eternity"

“An Invite to Eternity” by John Clare uses aspects of a courtly love poem to make something deeper and beyond love or life.  The speaker addresses the woman as “sweet maid” (1) and “sweet maiden” (8) implying that he is wooing her in some way.  The destination he wishes to take her to seems outer-wordly and unable to be named by the reader; “Where stones will turn to flooding streams,/Where plains will rise like ocean waves,/Where life will fade like visioned dreams/And mountains darken into caves” (9-12).  This place seems to encompass all that is grand (flooding streams, ocean waves, visioned dreams, mountains, caves) that rarely can be present together in one geographical place.  Like in courtly love and romantic poetry, the speaker goes to great, fabricated lengths to attract the attention and gain the love of the female.  So, while both the speaker and the maiden know a place like this cannot exist, the speaker invites the maiden to it anyway, going with the convention of love poetry.  Like in love poetry, the speaker is able to play within the larger language of poetic language to profess his non-poetic feelings to a sweet maiden.    

This idea of an unidentifiable place continues into the end of that same stanza, where the speaker acknowledges the inability to identify themselves, as well; “Through this sad non-identity,/Where parents live and are forgot,/And sisters live and know us not!” (14-16).  The speaker is therefore inviting the maiden and the reader down this longwinded description of a place that cannot be named and opens it up to the speaker, the maiden, and the readers who can also not be named. 

With the idea of the orgasm as the loss of ego, this poem can be seen as very sexual.  By implying the maiden (an implied virgin female) can go to an unthinkable, grand place full of streams, waves, mountains and caves and lose her identity at the same time seems to me like a disguised orgasm.  All of these geographical aspects contain a sense of something larger and stronger than things in everyday life.  The idea of the orgasm is further shown in the last stanza when the speaker says; “Say, maiden; wilt thou go with me/In this strange death of life to be,/To live in death and be the same” (17-19).  The idea of the “petite mort” or little death can be seen in the idea of living in death.  While the grandness of the previous stanzas may imply heaven, there is no cohabitation of life and death in heaven.  The one place where death can exist in life and life in death is in orgasm.  Finally, the idea of the loss of ego, or self, is in 4^th to last line where the speaker says; “At once to be and not to be,” describing this conscious loss of consciousness that can be reached in sexual interaction.  And, what must come first before sexual intercourse is marriage, which is the “eternity” in the poem’s title.

Petite Mort ballet piece

http://www.ucfkorea.com/universal/ballet/english/performances/data/smal_PetiteMort(Chaelee_Seonghyun).JPG