18 pages • 36 minutes read
Ilya KaminskyWe Lived Happily During the War
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Home
As poet, essayist, and translator, Kaminsky is a lover of words and their root relationships. Etymologically, house or home takes on a larger meaning. Further, ecology—the study of relationships between living organisms—comes from the Greek word for home (eco). In this sense, the way a person keeps their house can reflect the way they want the world to be. Inversely, the world can be the macro dimension of a terrestrial house. Kaminsky carefully chooses the context for these words to unlock their potential and offer varied dimensions of reality.
In “We Lived Happily During the War,” Kaminsky’s diction is whittled down to its most human, elemental core: the desire for a house, and the longing for shelter and joy. The decision to also utilize the more archaic meaning of the word house (“disastrous reign in the house of money” (Line 9)) speaks to the nation as a kind of home. But it also shows that this house can be ruled by forces like money and its power to distance people from others. In this way, the home becomes a symbol for the human desire for safety in a shared global reality.
Money
Along with “house” and “war,” “money” is the most repeated word in the poem, occurring five times in a row. Money becomes a symbol of value, but also the power to comfortably, safely live while others suffer. As one of the richest countries in the world, for the privileged, America is seen as a place of shelter and safety with potential for upward mobility. However, in the context of the poem, the first invocation of living in “the house of money” is also the first invocation of a “disastrous reign” (Line 9), complicating what symbols of money and power truly are.
Kaminsky explains:
I think, partly because we live in the United States, in the late capitalism, where we literally sterilize it from the rest of the world, we have an illusion that we live on a Mount Olympus, overlooking the rest of the world. It’s not true, but that is the illusion we have. We think that the violence happens somewhere else. But of course, violence happens in our own communities, we shouldn’t fail to see. (Freeman, John. "Fables Allow You to Break Bread With the Dead." Literary Hub).
Sun
Throughout literary history, authors invoke the sun as the epitome of beauty, cycles of nature, and of joy; Shakespeare’s often acknowledged “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is a pivotal example. In the context of the poem, the sun is a major turning point. Both in regard to form and content, it functions in an unexpected, ironic way, creating a profound tension with the rest of the poem. It is also placed in the context of lunar cycle (in the sixth month), alluding to the cycles of nature that contain for both.
