English has often drawn intense critical attention for its lack of standardized conjugation, endless declensions, and its general grammatical chaos. A clear example of this is the widespread use of an informal semi-third person “you.” “You,” of course, refers in general to a second person observer, but it is often used in everyday speech in a similar matter to the indefinite pronoun “one.” This semi-third person usage of “you” is technically frowned upon, but its use in poetry can often dramatically alter or amend the meaning of a line or a stanza. Few other languages possess such a pronoun, but English’s informal semi-third person use of “you” enables a poet to emphasize the universality of an experience while still highlighting the personal nature of the allusion, question, statement, or apostrophe.
Robert Browning, the renowned Victorian poet and husband to Elizabeth Barret Browning, illustrates this masterfully in his story poem “Incident of the French Camp.” Writing sarcastically about the glorification of dying in war, Browning satirizes the death of a joyful young messenger in Napoleon's army, highlighting the absurd pseudo-masochism and vanity of war. He uses the semi-third person “you” constantly, shifting the narrative between the farce itself and the perceived reactions of a semi-third person reader. This isn’t simply a humoristic device or a sarcastic addition, but a resonant critique of the bystanders of war and a triumphant portrayal of the common sense of the individual everyman. Browning utilizes this quirk of spoken English to heroically depict a very British concept of everyday common sense. The soldier’s death is just a game to himself, but the semi-third person observer sees it as something much more sinister:
Then off there flung in smiling joy,
And held himself erect
By just his horse’s mane, a boy:
You hardly could suspect—
(So tight he kept his lips compressed,
Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two
The empires play with lives through propaganda, but Browning’s semi-third person reader, in their simplicity, sees the absurdity behind the facade of honor and glory.
Charles Simic is a contemporary Serbian-American poet whose work is dramatically influenced by his experience in Serbia during the Second World War. He deploys the semi-third person “you” in a very different way. In “What the Gypsies Told My Grandmother While She Was Still a Young Girl,” Simic uses “you” as semi-third person and second person as he describes the all too true fate supposedly described to his grandmother. At first glance, the pronoun refers to his grandmother, but the poem is truly a commentary on the suffering of Europe as a whole, on its century’s long struggle with death and sin. His use of “you” is a way to collectivize the suffering of an individual and personalize the fate of a continent:
Already the crows are grooming themselves
for you and your people.
Your oldest son will lie with flies on his lips
without smiling or lifting his hand.
You'll envy every ant you meet in your life
and every roadside weed.
Your body and soul will sit on separate stoops
chewing the same piece of gum.
Simic uses the semi-third person “you” to elucidate the personal nature of suffering and war, suffering that is very much third person to the rest of us.
Browning and Simic’s poems are polar opposites. Browning writes rhythmically, imbuing his verse with a sing-song quality that contrasts beautifully with the morbid nature of his words. Simic writes bluntly, in a series of startling statements, highlighting the youth of the grandmother in contrast to the brutality of her fate and that of her people. Browning wrote his poem at the height of so-called “European civilization,” at the height of empire and industrialization. Simic writes of the disillusioning collapse of such “civilization” into the chaos and violence of world war. Simic exercises the semi-third person “you” to detail the personal and deeply individual nature of suffering that occurs on a continental scale. Browning uses the same tool to proudly examine the contrast of common sense and absurdity, to detail the universal nature of bearing witness.
These two poems reflect the evolution of poetry in the past two hundred years. From Browning to Simic, the aims and the methods shift, but the tools themselves remain the same. Just like a hammer can also remove a nail, the semi-third person “you” can equally imbue personality and universality.