Summary
It is neither for the people in charge who employ mercenaries to accomplish their goals, nor for writers who mostly appeal to readers seeking comfort, that the paper nautilus constructs her “thin glass shell.” The shell is a "souvenir of hope"; she gives it a white outside and glossy inside, all the while refusing to eat until her eggs are hatched.
In some respects she is a “devil- / fish”; she hides her “freight” in her eight arms. Like Hercules after he was bitten by the hydra’s loyal crab, the eggs must struggle to free themselves; she watches the eggs as, freeing themselves, they "free" the shell. Like an ancient Greek robe or the mane of a horse on the Parthenon, the newly absent shell is full of flaws and grooves; around these grooves the arms had wound themselves so tight, as if they knew that “love / is the only fortress” that one can trust.
Analysis
“The Paper Nautilus” is an exceedingly strange, complex, and eerily beautiful poem. Though it is often grouped with Moore's so-called “animal poems” or with her poems about the sea, its themes and meanings are many, ranging from motherhood to nature to the poet’s craft. The speaker refers to the argonaut in the third person, but she speaks very personally and seems to be talking about herself.
Beginning with an image of the argonaut (a cephalopod; only the female constructs a shell) and the thin glass shell containing her eggs, the speaker then evokes smothering, obsessive, and watchful love. The shell with the eggs is lovely but fragile, and the argonaut protects them like a “devil-fish” (better known as a ray). The speaker alludes to Hercules and his second labor, when he eventually slays the hydra despite being bitten by a crab. She then states that when the eggs break free of the shell they will also break the shell itself. The shell’s final image is one of diaphanous but heavy Greek drapery surrounded by tightly coiled arms in a “fortress” of love.
There is certainly something profoundly moving about the love expressed here of a mother toward her babies. As the poem was written for Moore’s young poetess friend, Elizabeth Bishop, it could be about nourishing one’s children until they are ready to go out in the world on their own. Moore herself was extremely close to her own mother and this poem was written not long after her mother died, a fact that again lends itself to a more positive reading of the poem. The shell hides the babies but does not crush them; though fragile and “perishable,” it is an enduring “symbol of hope.” The inside is white and “glossy,” delicate like the carvings of the marble Parthenon.
The juxtaposition between external and internal gives the poem a great deal of its power, for while it begins with external images of the dull outside world—“teatime fame” and “commuters’ comforts”—it then segues into the creation of the shell. Outside is the watchful mother, inside are the tiny eggs. The eggs will eventually break to the outside, however, and destroy what was once their “inside.” The outside world will be more dangerous, of course, and as critic Jeanne Heuving writes, “in comparison with Moore's earlier poems, [“The Paper Nautilus”] depends on and reinscribes the conventional oppositions of internal and external, valuing the former over the latter.” The use of the word “fortress” also stresses the safety and security present inside, especially as it is described as a fortress of love.
The poem does not have entirely benign or sentimental images or evocations, however. S Joanne Feit Diehl writes in her analysis, the image of the maternal “is not without its dangers.” The maternal devotion’s shift from sweet to “a much more ambivalent description is signaled by the image of entrapment.” The poem possesses “a complex understanding that combines the inherently adversarial potential in the relationship between daughter and mother with an abiding awareness of the dangers embodied in the mother.” There is both security and love in contrast to the harshness of the outside world, but there is also the risk of being smothered or stultified by love.
One final interpretation is the poem’s relation to photography, which Andrew Miller considers in his book. He claims that Moore uses photographic images for her animal poems, and that “The Paper Nautilus” begins in an almost nature-documentary-like fashion. She blends poetry with an accurate understanding of the science behind the argonaut and her nautilus shell of eggs, and Miller believes she was able to do so due to her familiarity with famous photographers’ work on nautili and the coral reefs. Miller concedes that some of this “evidence” might be circumstantial but that “the texture, details, and themes of Moore’s poem challenge any overt rejection of the possibility.” Moore wants her readers to keep an eye on everything the argonaut is doing, privileging the visual experience of her subject almost as if she is writing an ekphrasis (description of a work of visual art) of a photograph.
