The Inner Room
"The Inner Room" is a poem by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in his 1898 poetry collection Songs of Action. Unlike most of Doyle's poetry, the poem is "a deeply personal, highly introspective effort," which has been interpreted as "describing the various battles within [Doyle's] mind."
The poem describes Doyle's "inner room"—his own brain or soul—as being inhabited by several different individuals. In Doyle's own words, these "describ[e] our multiplex personality." Discussing the poem, Doyle's biographer Daniel Stashower observes that Doyle "conceived of his own personality as a 'motley company' of conflicting impulses, each represented by a different character—a soldier, a priest, an agnostic—and all of them struggling for control of his soul." Another biographer, Martin Booth, describes this "intensely serious" poem as "fascinating, for it lays bare the powers that [Doyle] believes were in him, eternally fighting to get the upper hand on his soul."
The poem's fifth stanza introduces "a stark-faced fellow, / Beetle-browed, / Whose black soul shrinks away / From a lawyer-ridden day, / And has thoughts he dare not say / Half avowed." Stashower describes this as "quite possibly the most personal and revealing line Conan Doyle ever wrote," perhaps reflecting the difficulties of Doyle's personal life in the mid-1890s.
"At the end of the poem, Doyle resigns himself to what he is." He suggests that none of the competing personalities will prevail over the others. Instead, "if each shall have his day, / I shall swing and I shall sway / In the same old weary way / As before."
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