The Full Text of “Night Sweat”
The Full Text of “Night Sweat”
-
“Night Sweat” Introduction
-
Robert Lowell published "Night Sweat" in his 1964 collection For the Union Dead. The poem can be read as a vivid, nightmarish portrait of anxiety and self-doubt, as well as of the toll these emotions can take on a relationship. Its speaker, implied to be a writer, keeps waking up drenched in sweat—the product of his fear and anguish over being unable to write. He ultimately calls on his wife to relieve him of his burdens, as she has apparently done before. Lowell struggled with mental illness throughout his life, and his personal, emotional, and psychological experiences figured heavily into his writing. Lowell was also an important figure in the American confessional poetry movement. Like the Confessionalists Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, both of whom he taught, Lowell often included biographical details about himself and his relationships (including, notoriously, his ill-fated marriage to fellow writer Elizabeth Hardwick) in his work.
-
-
“Night Sweat” Summary
-
The speaker describes a room that might be a study or office: there's a desk, some bits of trash, books, a floor lamp, simple things like that. The speaker's work equipment is motionless, and there's an unused broom nearby. Now, though, the speaker says he's stuck in a neat and tidy room. For the past ten nights, sweat has soaked through his white pajamas. That sweet, salty sweat seems to embalm his body (preserve it in death) and wets his head. Everything around him seems to be streaming and telling him that everything is as it should be. He feels like the great passion of his one and only life, his writing, is drenched in sweat. Yet the strain of day-to-day existence saps the speaker of his creative energies and ideas. The speaker's childhood self, though gone, still forever exists within him, along with that child's desire to die. There's only one universe and the speaker has one body in it. Within this container of the human body, the animalistic, creative energy of the spirit burns. Suddenly the speaker senses someone or something behind him and feels the gray morning light against his heavy eyelids. In the patchy dawn, the speaker shivers in his soaked clothes and sheets, his body and bedding swathed in daylight. The child inside him now explodes with a burst of energy. The speaker calls out to his wife, who seems to be the only person who can lift his spirits, her gentle, tender heart helping to lighten the darkness that surrounds him. Yet he is aware of the terrible burden that his struggles place upon his wife, whom he compares to a mythological tortoise who carries the entire world on its back. And even with her help, the speaker ultimately fears that he may never be able to swim above the surface of the "troubled waters" of his mind (that is, to escape his anxieties).
-
-
“Night Sweat” Themes
-
Creative Anxiety and Self-Doubt
Robert Lowell’s “Night Sweat” demonstrates the toll of creative anxiety and self-doubt. The poem’s speaker keeps waking up drenched in sweat, a condition implied to be the result of deep anxiety tied to his writer’s block. On one level, the poem simply illustrates the terrifying, overwhelming anxiety that bubbles up at night, when people’s unconscious minds take over. But more specifically, it speaks to the pain and anxiety of feeling creatively stuck—to the terror that creeps in when one can’t seem to do what they feel it’s their life’s purpose to do.
The poem immediately establishes the invasive, horrifying nature of the speaker’s night sweats. It begins in the relatively normal setting of a “tidied room,” which is quickly invaded by the “creeping damp”—seemingly the product of some continual, looming fear.
The speaker soon feels “embalm[ed]” by his own sweat-drenched clothes, which wrap him tightly like a mummy’s casings. This claustrophobic image illustrates the frightening, overwhelming feeling of these sweats, which the poem goes on to imply are caused by the speaker’s anxiety over his writer’s block. He’s unable to quench his burning desire to create—his “life’s fever”— because he’s grappling with “stalled equipment” (i.e., his writerly brain isn’t working how he thinks he should). As such, this “fever” creates the sweat that surrounds and overwhelms the speaker, turning him into a “heap of wet clothes.”
While the speaker never says what exactly is causing this writer’s block, he feels that simply existing “wrings us dry.” Merely getting through the day seems to leech the speaker’s body of its artistic energies and ideas. The speaker is so dismayed by this, the poem implies, because his whole identity hinges upon his ability to create. He has just “one life” and “one writing,” in “one body” in “one universe”—phrasing that suggests writer’s block poses a real existential threat to the speaker. He feels compelled to create “one writing” that will define his “one life,” before time runs out—before he succumbs to the “downward glide” of life.
And at the end of the poem, the speaker worries that he may not be able to escape the “these troubled waters here.” This might suggest that self-doubt is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: that it leads to a spiral of anxiety that threatens to pull the speaker under. Figuratively speaking, the “night sweat” is just a tiny part of a larger, significantly more ominous body of water. The speaker fears that someday, instead of being able to dry off his “night sweat” and shake off his creative anxiety, he could remain submerged beneath his self-doubt.
Ultimately, then, this poem deals with the common fear that intense creative anxiety can submerge or even destroy an artist’s potential.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-28
-
The Power and Pain of Relationships
“Night Sweat” speaks not only to the nature of creative anxiety, but also the push and pull of relationships and how one partner’s comfort can sometimes become the other’s burden. While the poem’s speaker initially seems isolated from the rest of the world, his wife is able to help temper both his creative and existential anxiety. This relationship represents a vital way out of the speaker’s misery, but this aid does not come without costs to his wife. The speaker seems to acknowledge the way in which his own comfort takes a toll upon his partner and, potentially, upon their relationship.
When the speaker feels trapped beneath the overwhelming weight of his writer’s block, his wife has the unique ability to “[alter] everything,” to lift some of his anxiety with her own “lightness.” When the speaker’s wife relieves the speaker’s “night sweat,” she “tears the black web from the spider’s sack.” Given that spider webs are traditionally linked with darkness and fear, her destruction of the “spider’s sack” represents her destruction of the speaker’s spiral of self-doubt and dread.
Although the speaker’s wife supports the speaker, her assistance requires great sacrifice on her part: she cannot help her partner without taking on his burdens. Referencing Aesop’s famous fable of the tortoise and the hare as well as a popular religious myth in which the earth rests upon a giant tortoise’s shell, the speaker compares his wife to both a leaping hare and a plodding tortoise.
While her heart may be light in a way that the speaker’s own heart is not, she emotionally supports him and therefore—like the mythological tortoise carrying the world on its back—bears the burden of his suffering. Thus while their relationship is powerful enough to offer the speaker a unique comfort, her sacrifice makes it painful at the same time.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 20-28
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Night Sweat”
-
Lines 1-3
Work-table, litter, books ...
... a tidied room,The speaker starts the poem by describing his physical surroundings, noting the furniture and decorations present in his room. It's not clear whether this is a bedroom, a study, or some combination of the two; the speaker dives into this list of objects without any preamble to orient the reader.
In doing so, the speaker immediately establishes an atmosphere that feels overwhelming, hectic, and confusing. The asyndeton of these opening lines adds to that anxious atmosphere, the speaker bouncing between objects without pausing to add conjunctions between each item.
The mention of a "work-table, litter, books, and standing lamp," meanwhile, suggests that the speaker's work has to do with writing: readers might imagine the speaker hunched over a desk, surrounded by books, scraps of paper littering the floor.
When the speaker then mentions his "stalled equipment," this is the first indicator of his inability to work/write. His "equipment" might be a metaphor for his mind, which isn't working the way it should, or for a pen or pencil, which is literally "stalled"—motionless—because the speaker hasn't been able to write. When he then says that he lives in a "tidied room," this might mean he's somewhere separate from this messy workspace, or that his normally messy workspace is now neat and tidy (implicitly because he hasn't been able to do the messy work of creating lately).
The poem is written in loose pentameter, each line having approximately 10 syllables. Yet, as readers can see in these first three lines, the meter itself is pretty irregular, the pattern of stressed and unstressed beats occasionally iambic (da-DUM) but generally unpredictable:
Work-ta- | ble, lit- | ter, books | and stand- | ing lamp,
plain things, | my stalled | equip- | ment, the | old broom—
but I | am liv- | ing in | a ti- | died room,This keeps things feeling free-wheeling up top, again evoking the speaker's scattered state of mind. The use of rhyme and sonic devices like assonance, alliteration, and consonance, meanwhile, tie the lines together, lending the poem a sense of musicality and rhythm that pulls readers forward.
Here, for example, note the crisp consonance of /k/, /t/, b/, /t, and /s/ sounds, plus the assonance of "standing lamp":
Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp,
The flurry of sounds might evoke the flurry of the anxieties that lead to the speaker's "night sweats."
-
Lines 4-9
for ten nights ...
... life, one writing! -
Lines 9-12
But the downward ...
... will to die— -
Lines 13-17
one universe, one ...
... soot of night. -
Lines 18-21
I dabble in ...
... exploding into dynamite, -
Lines 22-24
my wife . ...
... like a hare. -
Lines 25-28
Poor turtle, tortoise, ...
... on your back.
-
-
“Night Sweat” Symbols
-
Drowning
The speaker uses imagery related to drowning and/or being smothered throughout the poem. The "night sweat" of the poem's title is a consequence of the speaker's creative blockage and self-doubt, and the idea of drowning thus symbolizes not being able to escape or overcome those doubts.
When the speaker describes "the creeping damp / float over my pajamas," for example, it almost seems as though he's lying in a room that is slowly filling with water. He then says that his sweat "embalms" him, a word that refers to the process of preserving dead bodies. Together, these images suggest that the speaker's creative anxiety threatens to smother or suffocate him.
The drowning symbolism is clearest at the poem's end, however, when the speaker explicitly expresses his fear of being unable to "clear / the surface of these troubled waters here." In other words, he's worried that he might not be able to overcome his mental struggles and will remain trapped below "the surface" of his anxiety.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 4-6: “for ten nights now I've felt the creeping damp / float over my pajamas' wilted white . . . / Sweet salt embalms me and my head is wet,”
- Lines 25-26: “if I cannot clear / the surface of these troubled waters here,”
-
-
“Night Sweat” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Alliteration
Alliteration makes the poem's language more fluid, intense, and lyrical. Repetitive sounds can also draw attention to important images in the poem. When the speaker describes his pajamas' "wilted white," for example, that shared /w/ sounds emphasize the image of the speaker's sweat-soaked pajamas.
Later in the poem, the speaker provides more sensory details when he feels the morning "light / lighten" his "leaded eyelids." The lilting /l/ sounds here might evoke the gentleness with which this morning light brushes against the speaker's heavy eyelids. At the same time, the alliteration highlights the play on words (technically polyptoton) between the noun "light" (which refers to the sunrise) and the verb "lighten" (which can refer to both a visual "lightening" and a reduction of weight).
The most alliterative (and assonant, for that matter) line in the poem, however, is line 18:
I dabble in the dapple of the day,
On one level, the /d/ and /ah/ sounds here simply make the line sound pleasant and musical; as daylight enters the poem, its language becomes lovelier.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 5: “wilted white”
- Line 6: “Sweet salt”
- Line 8: “soaking,” “sweat”
- Lines 15-16: “light / lighten”
- Line 16: “leaded”
- Line 18: “dabble,” “dapple,” “day”
- Line 23: “spider's sack”
- Line 24: “heart hops,” “hare”
- Line 25: “turtle, tortoise,” “cannot clear”
- Line 28: “world's,” “weight”
-
Sibilance
-
Assonance
-
Metaphor
-
Asyndeton
-
Allusion
-
Anaphora
-
Parallelism
-
Enjambment
-
Imagery
-
Simile
-
-
"Night Sweat" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Embalms
- Bias
- Urn
- Leaded
- Dapple
- Seamy
- The spider's sack
- Absolve
-
(Location in poem: Line 6: “Sweet salt embalms me”)
The process of embalming a corpse is intended to preserve it from decay; historically, it typically involved covering the body with spices and bandages (think about the mummification process). The speaker likely uses this word to refer to the way in which his night sweat (and his soaked sheets/clothes) surrounds him—at the same time, its ghastly connotations reinforce his later allusions to death.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Night Sweat”
-
Form
This poem is composed of two sonnets stacked on top of each other: lines 1-14 make up a Shakespearean sonnet, while lines 15-28 form a Petrarchan sonnet.
The Shakespearean sonnet is broken up into three quatrains, or four-line stanzas, followed by a rhyming couplet. Traditionally, the couplet of a Shakespearean sonnet wraps up or responds to the 12 preceding lines. In this poem, it communicates the danger of the speaker's creative anxiety, which burns wildly inside the "urn" of his body:
one universe, one body . . . in this urn
the animal night sweats of the spirit burn.The Petrarchan sonnet, meanwhile, is broken up into an eight-line octave following by a six-line sestet. As is typical for a Petrarchan sonnet, the octave introduces a problem of sorts (the speaker's confusion and disorientation upon waking up) while the sestet responds to that problem.
Petrarchan sonnets have a volta, or turn, between the octave and the sestet, at which point there's some sort of major shift in direction in the poem. In "Night Sweat," that volta appears in line 22, which indicates a glimmer of hope as the speaker's wife is able to lift some of his troubles:
my wife . . . your lightness alters everything,
The use of two sonnets is notable for a few reasons here. For one thing, this is a classic, very "poetic" form. Given that this is a poem about creative anxiety and writer's block, the use of such a traditional form might reflect the speaker's longing to be a great poet. Shakespeare, of course, is widely considered the greatest English-language writer, so the fact that the speaker uses the sonnet form that Shakespeare popularized taps into the lineage.
Petrarchan sonnets, meanwhile, are linked with love poetry. It makes sense, then, that the section of the poem about the speaker's relationship with his wife turns to this poetic form.
-
Meter
This poem is written in a very (very) loose iambic pentameter. That means that each line five iambs, poetic feet with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern, for a total of 10 syllables per line. Iambic pentameter is the traditional meter of a Shakespearean sonnet, which this poem contains in its first 14 lines. Line 3 is a good example of iambic pentameter in action:
but I | am li- | ving in | a ti- | died room
This meter, which sonically resembles the da-DUM of heartbeat, provides a sense of stability and predictability. At the same time, however, it could echo the anxious pounding of the speaker's heart.
Again, though, the meter is very irregular; while most lines have just about 10 syllables, that untressed-stressed pattern varies quite a bit. The very first line, for example, has 10 beats but starts with a spondee (two stressed syllables in a row):
Work-ta- | ble, lit- | ter, books | and stand- | ing lamp,
The speaker front-loads lines like this often, as in line 5 ("float over"), 6 ("Sweet salt"), 9 ("one life"), and 25 ("Poor turtle").
Such deviations from regular iambic pentameter convey the speaker's frantic state of mind. It's as though he's reaching for a steady structure, but his anxiety and doubt keep getting in the way.
-
Rhyme Scheme
As noted in the "Form" section of this guide, the poem consists of two sonnets piled on top of each other: the first 14 lines of this poem form a Shakespearean sonnet, while the latter form a Petrarchan sonnet. These sonnet forms have different rhyme schemes.
The first half of the poem follows the rhyme pattern:
ABBA CDCD EFEF GG
In most Shakespearean sonnets, that first quatrain (four-line stanza) would be ABAB (thus mirroring the pattern of the next two quatrains, which use an alternating pattern in which the first and third lines of the stanza rhyme with each other, as do the second and fourth).
- The ABBA form here (line 1 rhymes with line 4, "lamp"/"damp," while line 2 rhymes with line 3, "broom"/"room") is in fact more common in a Petrarchan sonnet, which pops up in the poem's second half.
- This might reflect the speaker being a bit off his game. As with the unsteady meter, he's reaching for a regular rhyme scheme but faltering.
The quick couplet at the sonnet's end ("urn"/"burn") then provides a brief conclusion to the poem, which abruptly shifts gears in the next line as morning breaks:
Behind me! You! Again I feel the light
The next 14 lines of the poem are, again, a Petrarchan sonnet. The rhyme scheme here, though, is even more irregular than that above. Petrarchan sonnets usually rhyme:
ABBA ABBA CDC DCD (or CDE CDE)
But here, the rhyme scheme is:
ABAB CAAC DEF FED
For one thing, note how it looks like the first four lines of the Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets have been switched! The first quatrain here should technically be ABBA, just as the first quatrain of the Shakespearean sonnet should be ABAB; the poet has swapped them.
The next four lines introduce a new rhyme sound (the "C" sound: "shivering"/"everything"), but otherwise follow the expected pattern (the first and fourth lines of the quatrain rhyme with each other, as do the middle two).
The divergence from the Petrarchan rhyme scheme is particularly notable in the sestet, or final six lines. In fact, the "E" rhymes above are also slant rhymes with the "F" rhymes. In other words, all the rhymes here sort of sound the same: "hare"/"bear" and "clear"/"here."
The big shift in the final six lines of the poem reinforces the difference between the speaker's wife's ability to lift her husband's burden and the emotional cost of this labor.
-
-
“Night Sweat” Speaker
-
This poem's speaker is a writer grappling with writer's block. This is extremely distressing to him, because it seems his entire sense of self hinges upon his being able to write. As much of the poem indicates, he is also someone who feels that daily life is draining (that the "bias of existing" saps him of his creative potential), and who is plagued by intense anxiety. The speaker is also married and experiences a moment of comfort and optimism in his wife's presence. That said, he ends the poem unsure if he'll ever pull himself out of this creative funk.
Given Robert Lowell's tendency to include autobiographical details in his poetry (particularly his experiences with relationships, creative struggles, and mental illness), it's fair to read the speaker of this poem as a representation of the author himself.
-
-
“Night Sweat” Setting
-
This poem's setting is relatively straightforward: in the first few lines, the speaker describes the ordinary details of his room. This might be a bedroom, a study, or a mix of both. And although much of the poem veers off into abstract representations of the speaker's creative anxiety, it is clear that it specifically takes place in his bed.
The contrast between this basic, mundane space and the poem's surreal, nightmarish imagery reflects the intensity of the speaker's fear and self-doubt. Such emotions transform his home itself into a terrifying world that threatens to drown him.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Night Sweat”
-
Literary Context
Robert Lowell was an American poet who lived from 1917-1977. He was an important figure in the confessional poetry movement, which emerged in the U.S. in the 1950s and '60s.
Confessional poetry was extremely personal and often touched on trauma, sexuality, and mental illness. Other famous figures often deemed confessionalists include Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, both of whom studied under Lowell at Boston University. Lowell himself counted Elizabeth Bishop and modernist poet William Carlos Williams among his strongest artistic influences.
"Night Sweat" originally appeared in 1964, in Robert Lowell's collection For the Union Dead. Although this was the poet's sixth book, it became one of his most well-known. Many of the poems in this collection focus on his relationships rather than explicitly discussing his mental illness. In this sense, they are considered less "confessional" than some of Lowell's more "taboo" earlier writing. At the same time, the intense focus on nightmarish depictions of anxiety fit right in with the confessionalist mode. "Night Sweat" also touches upon Lowell's complex relationship with his soon-to-be ex-wife Elizabeth Hardwick.
Historical Context
Many scholars take confessionalism to be, in part, a response to the many horrors of the 20th century. Events like the Holocaust and the Cold War pushed some artists to turn inward, focusing on their own deeply personal experiences. Confessonalist poets also often wrote in response to the stifling atmosphere of 1950s America, which romanticized domestic life.
Lowell himself lived with bipolar disorder and was institutionalized multiple times throughout his life. Although this poem does not address Lowell's mental illness as directly as some of his previous poetry (e.g., "Waking in the Blue," which chronicles the poet's time in a mental institution), it still alludes to material that would have been somewhat controversial in 1964, especially in the poet's upper-class New England environment.
The "wife" referenced here is the writer Elizabeth Hardwick, to whom Lowell was married for 23 years. Hardwick's own career as a writer renders the poem even more poignant, as she would have certainly understood the speaker's creative anxiety (and would have been extremely sensitive to its emotional burdens).
-
-
More “Night Sweat” Resources
-
External Resources
-
Kingdom of the Mad — Check out an overview/review of Lowell's "Collected Poems" that addresses the way the poet's mental illness was reflected in his writing.
-
For the Union Dead — An overview/review of Lowell's "Collected Poems" that explores the poet's creative process.
-
Robert Lowell's Biography — Learn more about Lowell via the Poetry Foundation.
-
Lowell and Hardwick — Learn more about Lowell's turbulent relationship with Elizabeth Hardwick, the "wife" referred to in this poem.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Lowell
-
