Even if Sufjan Stevens never released five Christmas albums, or spoke to Pitchfork about his fundamental “love of God,” his listeners would know he was a passionate Christian. His faith is woven into the fabric of his discography; many of his best songs feature lyrical references to Jesus and his works. The most profound and painful expression of Sufjan’s religious beliefs comes in “Casimir Pulaski Day,” a towering musical accomplishment and one of the saddest songs ever written.
The song is easy on the ears, as Sufjan utilizes his signature hushed and double-tracked vocals to croon delicately over a fingerpicked acoustic folk melody. The effect, as always with Sufjan Stevens, is one of crushing intimacy. It is only at the very end, when the narrative turns to a pitch-black darkness, that bright trumpets join in with Sufjan’s melodies.
Goldenrod and the 4-H stone
The things I brought you
When I found out you had cancer of the boneYour father cried on the telephone
And he drove his car into the Navy yard
Just to prove that he was sorry
The opening lines of “Casimir Pulaski Day,” a story-song about a young woman’s death from bone cancer, set a devastating scene. Adorable, pointless gifts that the young male narrator brings to his girlfriend’s sickbed; her father’s aimless misery.
This song was my entry point to Sufjan Stevens as a teenager, drawn in by the song’s maudlin storytelling. Ten years and several hundred listens (at least) later, I have started to see layers of theological and personal meaning that extend beyond its central sob story. The tragic death of the song’s subject is framed as a great trial that its narrator must overcome to build his scarred and resilient faith in God.
In the morning, through the window shade
When the light pressed up against your shoulder blade
I could see what you were reading
All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications you could do without
When I kissed you on the mouth
The effectiveness of this stanza hinges on its structural ambiguity. The phrase “the complications you could do without” is strung between two poles: the glory of the Lord’s creation in the preceding line, and the messy, beautiful nature of a kiss in the next line. Do our complications stem from the actions of God, or the fragile reality of human love? Sufjan leaves the question unanswered, forcing the listener to stew in the in-between.
Tuesday night at the Bible study
We lift our hands and pray over your body
But nothing ever happens
This scene—in which the narrator participates in ineffectual group prayer—will scan to many as a dismissal or rejection of God’s role in the world. But there’s a clue in Sufjan’s flat and affectless vocal delivery of “nothing ever happens.” The sense you get here is that the narrator never expected anything to happen from prayer, because that’s not how prayer works.
In A Grief Observed, written after the death of his wife, C.S. Lewis wrote: “Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face.”
On the floor at the great divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom
For me, the image of a young man with his shirt tucked and shoes untied has always evoked the formal awkwardness of a school dance or wedding reception. But go back to the first line, go back to the narrator being on the floor at the great divide. What does this mean? What is the “great divide?”
I know of two songs that make this reference. One is “The Last Resort” by The Eagles, a melancholy slow jam about (more or less) American colonization/Manifest Destiny. When Don Henley croons that “they came from everywhere, to the great divide,” he is using its literal geographic meaning: the Continental Divide of the Americas that extends from the Bering Strait to the Strait of Magellan.
The other song, which hews closer to Sufjan’s intended meaning, is “Ft. Worth Blues,” a stunning tribute song that Steve Earle wrote for his mentor-icon-abuser Townes Van Zandt after his death. Earle sings:
Somewhere up beyond the great divide
Where the sky is wide
And the clouds are few
A man can see his way clear to the light
Just hold on tight
Here the “great divide” is a metaphysical barrier that separates life from death, or the gap between the physical and spiritual realms. This is the version of the idea that Sufjan refers to. In the face of bone cancer, his narrator has been thrust into a terrible new knowledge. The River Styx is suddenly coursing through small-town Illinois, and he has been forced to see that the people he loves can and will die.
In the morning, when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head hung low
And the cardinal hits the window
In the morning, in the winter shade
On the first of March, on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing
On the first of March—the Chicago holiday of Casimir Pulaski Day—the young woman finally dies. Where a lesser writer might focus on the physical, dying body, Sufjan supplies portent through the indelible images that surround death. The nurse running in with her head hung low; the symbolic cardinal hitting the window. It is poetic, oblique, but somehow also direct in its meanings.
All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications when I see his face
In the morning, in the window
All the glory when he took our place
As “Casimir Pulaski Day” concludes, Sufjan delivers his clearest statement of Christian belief. He reaffirms God’s glory in creation, and notes the places where he sees God’s face: in the morning, in the window. This revelatory tone is intensified by his reference to Jesus’ sacrificial atonement on the cross. These are affirmations of faith, statements of belief, and they serve as the establishing shots for the song’s final lines, where a raw expression of wounded belief comes into full view.
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes, and he takes, and he takes
Think of what it means to say that God took my shoulders, to say he shook my face. These are acts of divine discipline. God is right here, in the morning, in the window, and he takes and he takes and he takes. Sufjan Stevens’ God is not a distant, inactive deity. His sovereignty is active and eternal, even in its inscrutability. We do not know why we lose people. We do not know why young people die of cancer. But implied here—I think—is an insistence that there are reasons, hidden in the mystery of God’s plan for the universe.
And this brings me to a bigger point, which is that we should grapple with the religious faith of our greatest artists as more than a weird personal quirk. Most cultural criticism has a distinctly secular nature, which makes sense; nonreligious people don’t like to think about religion. But in the case of Sufjan Stevens, at least, a full appraisal of his work must take his Christianity into account. It’s at the very core of his artistic approach, and “Casimir Pulaski Day” is just one example of that thematic centrality.
So much of the delivery of this number channels Nick Drake.
"Casimir Pulaski Day" is my favorite song of all time, though it is devastatingly sad. It's so nice to read someone else's thoughts about this song, because I don't know anyone who has heard of Sufjan Stevens let alone this song, but I will always love it.
I grew up in an evangelical household. I still consider myself Christian but I'm part of a more mainline church now. Maybe this is just my projection because of my upbringing, but I sense more cynicism about religion in this song. When you're young and God has been framed as all-powerful and everyone seems to genuinely believe in things like faith healing, how do you reconcile that with the fact that very faithful people die untimely deaths and terrible things happen, even though you prayed that they wouldn't?
I don't think there's cynicism about God in the song; rather, a realization that God is far more mysterious and complex that the narrator's specific religious practices have accounted for or prepared him to understand ("and the complications when I see his face"). I do think there was an expectation that the narrator's prayers would be answered and his friend healed, and disappointment that they were not. But what is being criticized is the religious practices, not faith itself.
Anyway thanks, I loved this!