Edgar Lee Masters’ “Cassius Huffier”
From Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters’ American classic, the epitaph “Cassius Huffier” is written in the American-Innovative sonnet tradition: reversing the Petrarchan octave and sestet, while revealing the depravity of the speaker.
Introduction and Text of “Cassius Hueffer”
Edgar Lee Masters’ “Cassius Hueffer” from the Spoon River Anthology offers up the acerbic belly-aching of a man who hated life so completely that even after his death, he continues his belly-aching about the epitaph written on his tombstone.
Cassius Hueffer
They have chiseled on my stone the words:
“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man.”
Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty rhetoric.
My epitaph should have been:
“Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he made warfare on life,
In the which he was slain.”
While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!
Commentary on “Cassius Hueffer”
From Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters’ American classic, the epitaph “Cassius Huffier” is written in the American-Innovative sonnet tradition: reversing the Petrarchan octave and sestet, while revealing the depravity of the speaker.
The Sestet: “They have chiseled on my stone the words”
They have chiseled on my stone the words:
“His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man.”
Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty rhetoric.
The speaker, Cassius Hueffer, lays out the epitaph that is carved into his grave marker: “His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him / That nature might stand up and say to all the world, / This was a man.”
In order to refute the truth of such a claim, Huffier reports that the statement will make the people who were well acquainted with him “smile” because those folks would know well that those kind words are merely, “empty rhetoric.
The epitaph states that Hueffer had been a gentle, loving man in whom “the elements” stacked themselves up to render him a genuine “man.” The epitaph leads people to believe that Cassius Hueffer was a warm man, who always had a kind greeting for those he encountered, and he behaved as a caring soul who was loved and admired by everyone he met.
Of course, Hueffer knows otherwise; therefore, he declares that those words are merely “empty rhetoric.” Huffier is also aware that the people who chafed under his abusive character flaws would comprehend immediately the emptiness of that rhetoric.
The Octave: “My epitaph should have been”
My epitaph should have been:
“Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he made warfare on life,
In the which he was slain.”
While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!
After striking down such a beautiful yet vacuous epitaph as it is written, Hueffer suggests his own version, the one that he knows ought to be chiseled on his grave marker: “Life was not gentle to him, / And the elements so mixed in him / That he made warfare on life, / In the which he was slain.”
Hueffer contests the idea that his life was “gentle,” but he does not actually dispute the accuracy of the claim that his own life was gentle, just the “idea” that life was gentle “to him.”
Hueffer contends that life did not deal gently with him. He then employs the same form to assert, “the elements” were “mixed in him” in such a way as to urge him always to be at “warfare on life.” Thus, he battled in life like a warrior, but finally, he “was slain.”
The speaker does not elaborate about the manner in which he was “slain,” but he does contend that he was not able to abide “with slanderous tongues.” He continues in his vagueness, however; thus, the reader remains without any information about either the nature of the slander, or how Hueffer left this earth.
But his last dig at life and society and particularly the person who is responsible for the inaccurately carved epitaph is especially focused as it points an accusing finger: “Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph / Graven by a fool!”
Resentful in Life, Resentful in Death
Although many readers of this poem may remain puzzled by the specifics of Hueffer’s life—why he carried on as such a misanthrope? what was the nature of the slander he actually suffered? how did he finally die?—such issues, in the long run, are not vital to the message of the poem, which is simply the grievance of a man who lived a resentful life and now undergoes a resentful death.
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