"In a Room": Elizabeth Bishop in Europe, 1935–1937

According to historian Eugen Weber, war was regarded as inevitable by many in France in the mid-'30s, in part because Hitler had been able to gain support from Germans who resented the punishing terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which in turn were widely credited with causing a terrible economic depression in Germany. [...]it seems that the personal traumas of Bishop's childhood were closely associated with the larger traumas of war. The "endless intersecting circles" likely refer to Lazy Eights, an aerial maneuver and also a term for a gunman's method of looping back and forth around a target in his sights, in order to center the shot and make it as precise as possible.14 "This sky," the sky above Paris, has already witnessed destruction - "It is a dead one, or the sky from which a dead one fell." [...]a third image of overlapping target sights, aimed at a "carrierwarrior-pigeon," is superimposed upon the star-like faces of the clocks, upon Time itself, already superimposed with the plan of Paris. [...]it may be of some historic interest to note that the ancient Romans were in the habit of greeting their generals with the Fascist salute" ("At the Squire").