Donald Hall’s secret to lasting love in “The Third Thing”
The beautiful essay “The Third Thing” by the poet and essayist Donald Hall (September 20, 1928–June 23, 2018), which was published in the fall of 2004 issue of Poetry, the most lasting and forward-thinking poetry journal in the world, examines the power of that enigmatic and magical item.
Donald Hall thinks on the secret to lasting love that blossoms between the ordinary and the extraordinary while reflecting on his life with his beloved, the poet Jane Kenyon, who is also the custodian and dispenser of uncommonly illuminating insight about writing and life.
In his monumental work on why we fall in love and how we stay in love, French philosopher Alain Badiou stated that “the contact of two differences is an event.” Love can begin and grow on the foundation of this occurrence. It is the first and most important point.”
But at the centre of this crucial event is frequently something that goes beyond the two — something that is frequently implausible and nearly never necessary in and of itself, but nonetheless manages to attract the two disparities into a cohesive whole.A generation after Virginia Woolf revelled in “the bead of sensation,” which punctuates the daily struggle of any lasting love.
Hall writes: “I had a twenty-three year marriage to Jane Kenyon. We lived in the New Hampshire farmhouse of my family for twenty years, composing poetry and enjoying the serenity of the countryside. When she passed away, she was forty-seven. We could have all come to the same conclusion if someone had asked us, “Which year was the best of your lives together?,” and said, “The one we remember least.” There were years of sadness—the passing of her father, my cancers, her depressions—but there were also years of adventure—a trip to China and Japan, two trips to India, the years my children got married, the years the grandchildren were born, and the years of triumph when Jane started her poetry career—her first book and her first poem published in the New Yorker. One quiet, repetitive day of work in our house was the happiest day of our life. Not everybody comprehended. It was common for guests, especially those from New York, to spend a weekend with us and then leave saying, “It’s really pretty here,” with many adding, “in Vermont,” with your house, the pond, and the hills, but… but… but… what do you do?”
He further writes:” We got up early in the morning and did what we did. Jane received coffee in bed from me. As I started to write, she took the dog for a walk before climbing the stairs to her own workstation to concentrate on her own poems. We had a meal. We both went to sleep. We got up and worked on unimportant things. I read aloud to Jane, we played ping pong without scoring, we read the mail, and then we got back to work. After dinner, we chatted, read novels while seated across from one another in the living room, and then went to bed. Hopefully, the phone didn’t ring once throughout the day. We lived in this old house and carried on the same exciting routine 330 days a year”.
Love is what we did.
Hall contends that the essence of this daily love is not the stuff of romantic clichés. Author of The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction,” and Hall quotes him well in his essay:
“We didn’t stare at one other’s eyes all day. We did that staring when we were making love or when one of us was in peril, but most often our gazes met and intertwined while they were focused on a third object. Third things, which include items, practises, habits, arts, institutions, activities, or people who offer a place of shared rapture or contentment, are crucial to marriages. Couples are made up of two independent people who get together for double attention. Making love is a dual activity, not a third thing. A third object may be John Keats, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Dutch interiors, Monopoly, or any of these”.
He explains third thing as: “Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment.”
The pond close to Hall and Kenyon’s house.
He claims: “For ten years, we spent our summer afternoons at the pond, which added a third thing. After naps, we packed up some books and blankets and crossed Route 4 and the abandoned railroad to our exclusive Eagle Pond beach’s steep, icy bank. Little crimson blossoms rose from soft moss beneath your feet. Wild strawberry plants are growing under ghost birches that are leaning over water. Overhead, white pines rose tall, while oaks dropped green metallic acorns in late August to warn us that summer was coming to an end. A mink occasionally moved among the ferns… Jane napped in the sun as I read and occasionally made notes in a blank book while seated in the shade. We occasionally swam and dried off outside in the heat”.
The third component, as opposed to being an unnecessary embellishment of the connection, is a key type of companionship, which is Hall’s most poignant statement. However, although being necessary, it is not irreplaceable; what matters is simply that it exists.
Hall and Kenyon still had their poetry after a landfill leak obliterated their cherished pond. He writes: “Thinking about its unmatched capacity for perspective, its capacity to relate to and comfort in the face of life’s darkest moments”.
He further adds: “We resided in the house of poetry, which also served as the home of loneliness and the arts, as well as Jane’s sadness, my malignancies, and her leukaemia. We turned to the poets of grief and outrage, dating all the way back to Gilgamesh, when someone we loved passed away. I frequently read aloud Henry King’s “The Exequy,” which he wrote in the seventeenth century following the death of his young wife. Poetry offers the griever companionship in their grief rather than relief from it. Poetry offers (over centuries, or over no time at all) the companionship of tears because it captures the complexity of feeling at its most intense and convoluted. I wrote about agony and weakness as I sat next to Jane, who was in discomfort and frailty. I once observed the changing of the leaves while in a hospital. I became aware that I had failed to observe their approach to the woods. It was a year devoid of punctuation and seasons. I started writing “Without” to capture the feelings of lives under dull, repetitive attack. I read it out to Jane after I had repeatedly drafted it. Perkins, that’s it, she said. “You have it. There you go.” Even in this poem, which was composed beside her deathbed, there was comradery”.
A book of poems by Hall published in 1999 (public library), is the incomparably gorgeous account of their constant companionship. Complement it with writings by Adrienne Rich on honourable human relationships, Wendell Berry on what poetry may teach us about marriage, and Anna Dostoyevskaya on the key to a good marriage.
