Whether spoken or written, poems are language, so to some extent it's absurd to claim that poems grow in language the way plants grow in soil.
The idea behind such a comparison can be useful to poets, however, because sometimes poets are so determined to say something--to send a message, make an argument, or get a point across--that they forget they are making something (a poem) not just saying something.
At one point in his famous book on creative writing and the teaching thereof, the late Richard Hugo, a Pacific Northwest poet who went to high school near Seattle and worked at Boeing for a while, advises, "If you want to communicate, buy a phone." With exaggeration and with tongue close if not in cheek, Hugo is trying to get young poets not to focus exclusively on getting a message across, on being profound. His book is The Triggering Town, and in it he develops a variety of strategies and techniques for learning how to dance between "saying" and "making." He often urges the reader to err on the side of letting language "tell" you what to write rather than on the side of insisting that the language say what you want it to say. He is not, I hasten to add, arguing on behalf of obscurity or obfuscation, or for laziness that leads to lack of clarity. He worked hard on his poems, and he insists that all poets should work hard. Nor is he pointing the way to what is now known as L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry, in which poets seem, at least, to write words randomly, or at least to make leaps of thought and free-association that are hard to follow. I'm among those who simply don't "get" L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry, but I confess that in this as in other matters, I may be revealing myself to be a curmudgeon, and I don't object to the fact that others do "get" such poetry.
Hugo writes, "Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up on the option of finding something better. If you have to say it, you will." That is, another part of his approach is to operate from the belief that our obsessions, the things we "have" to say, are going to emerge in our work no matter what, so it's best for us to concentrate on the making, not the saying, and often to let language and revision lead us and our poems-in-progress to surprising places and, one hopes, to surprisingly better poems.
Here is a poem that sprang from language itself; in fact, it started with a two-word phrase that had stuck in my head: "padre, noonday." I've always loved the word padre. It just sounds so great, and for a native Californian, it conjures images of Spanish priests wearing dark robes and getting missions built on El Camino Real. "Noonday" is a pleasing word, too, but it's also a bit confusing. What not just say "noon" or "mid-day"?
At any rate, I started playing with the phrase, and at some point, I came up with the first stanza:
Old padre, dry
as a cricket’s chirp,
as a lizard’s burp—
old padre, why
I associate crickets and grasshoppers not just with the sounds they make but with the dry summer grass of the Sierra Nevada in summer, and sometimes crickets do sound as if they need to wet their whistle--although I believe they make that sound by rubbing their legs together, so they don't literally chirp with their mouths. I followed that cricket-comparison witch "a lizard's burp," so I'd effectively committted myself to a certain rhyme-scheme--the In Memoriam rhyme-scheme, named after Tennyson's long poem of the same name, in which the stanzas rhyme a-b-b-a. I'd also commited myself to very short lines, and with the fourth line, I'd commited myself to asking the priest a question. Eventually, I managed to finish the poem, with the rhyme-scheme and short lines and also with the suggestion of a story concerning a priest in a village who, like mad dogs and Englishmen, goes out in the noonday sun:
Padre, Noonday
Old padre, dry
as a cricket’s chirp,
as a lizard’s burp—
old padre, why
do you go to the well
at blazing mid-day
when everyone’s away
in shade, in sleep? Tell
why even the town’s
lunatic has enough sense
to nap under an immense
oak, but not you. My own
notion is it’s not
for water that you
come, surely not to
set an example. What
then? Is it to show
yourself to God’s blaze
of scrutiny, God’s gaze,
before you go?
I seem to have invented the possibility that the padre is showing himself to God--confessing himself--by going out in the brutal heat. I think the poem does end up communicating something, saying something, but it got there by the circuitous route of my having concentrated first on playing with language, or working with language. The poem pleases me in part because it's a surprise, a nice little gift given to me by the process of writing. I like the combination of very short lines and the a-b-b-a scheme, and I like the half-rhyme of town's/own, although I would certainly understand if other readers wanted a full rhyme there. Richard Hugo may not have liked the poem at all. I just don't know. I don't think he liked poems this terse, this short. But he may have liked the play of language, and he may have liked the hint of an invented town, a "triggering town," in this case some imaginary village in arid or semi-arid territory. In any event, "Padre, Noonday" is, like all other poems, made of language, but figuratively, at least, it also grew from language-itself, as opposed to being driven by a message.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Bible Needs Refreshing Says Dickinson
That's what I imagine the headline to be in a local or national newspaper, if Emily Dickinson were alive and if she'd just published her poem #1577 (or, under the older numbering-system, #1545). Here is the poem:
The Bible is an antique Volume -
Written by faded Men
At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -
Subjects - Bethlehem -
Eden - the ancient Homestead -
Satan - the Brigadier -
Judas - the Great Defaulter -
David - the Troubadour -
Sin - a distinguished Precipice
Others must resist -
Boys that "believe" are very lonesome -
Other Boys are "lost" -
had but the Tale a warbling Teller -
All the Boys would come -
Orpheus's Sermon captivated -
It did not condemn -
Before I muse on the poem, I should probably discuss Dickinson. If pressed to say who my favorite poets are, I'd invariably answer, "Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins." Their poetry has always captivated me; it takes on big subjects freshly and small subjects ingeniously; and both writers "attacked" poetry in the same original way in which the most successfully innovative visual artists attacked paint-and-canvas.
At the same time, having taught poetry for many years, I know the degree to which even people who like poetry are put off by the poems of Dickinson and Hopkins. Neither poet has ever seemed insuperably difficult to me, but I find it easy to understand why others resist the poems so much. There's no doubt that both poets are quirky, stubbornly eccentric in a variety of ways. Hence their poetry alienates people, even people who read a fair amount of poetry. Both poets are thought of as being ethereal as well--Dickinson, the New England recluse; Hopkins the British Jesuit priest. I think these perceived personae are not terribly accurate; to me, both seem to have been rather earthy people. Hopkins's famous or infamous "sprung rhythm," in which he jams stressed syllabes and alliteration together, is a hurdle over which some readers can't jump. Dickinson's shorthand, elliptical references, her use of dashes, and her almost Germanic penchant for capitalizing words prove difficult for readers. Even when I was an undergraduate, I didn't find these elements discouraging. I found that I either enjoyed them or, if at times they got in the way, I could move easily around them. Mostly I think it's a matter of luck. Sometimes you get lucky and are simply able to "get" poems and poets with which and with whom others struggle. I've always struggled with Milton's poetry, for example, whereas others take to it easily.
Many of Dickinson's poems seem "modern" in the sense of being ahead of their time, and this poem is certainly in that category. She views the Bible from an historical point of view, seeing it not as revealed truth but rather as old stories written by humans, by "faded men." She deliberately reduces parts of the Bible to easily labeled topics there in lines 3-8; to refer to Eden as "the ancient Homestead" seems so wonderfully American, and to call Satan "the Brigadier" brings Satan down to size. Satan becomes merely the head of one part of an army, and one might think of a petty if murderous dictator, dressed up in a uniform that's covered with fake medals. David becomes a traveling musician, singer of psalms, and Sin becomes "a distinguished precipice." I love that comparison. If you sin, you fall, but you fall from a very "distinguished"--that is to say, special--place. Not only your bones will break, but also your soul.
"Others must resist." Just as the poetry of Dickinson and Hopkins proves difficult to many readers, so the Bible (according to Dickinson) proves difficult to people in 1882, when she wrote the poem. The Bible is old fashioned. It's a difficult text. The boys who believe in it are lonsesome, isolated, probably because most of their friends disklike going to church and reading the Bible. Solution? The Bible requires a "Warbler," some "Teller" (speaker or preacher) to freshion up the telling. Churches must invite "the Boys" (potential new believers; converts) with an aesthetically pleasing sermon that's like the song of Orpheus.
This is a strikingly counter-Victorian, counter-Puritan (as in New England Puritan) poem. It is at once whimsical and light and theologically serious. What Dickinson's own religious views were is open to question. She certainly wasn't traditionally Christian in her Amherst community, but her poems are imbued with the rhetoric and rhythm of hymns. She certainly wasn't a thoroughgoing atheist, but her view of heaven and things spiritual seems to have been independently forged. She was a free-thinker, that's for sure. To me she is the unbeatable poet (not that poetry has to be a competition). I just can't think of an American poet who's written a more magnificent, original body of work than she did, and she seems uncannily to have anticipated so many "moves" in poetry that we associate with the Modernist movement. Hail Dickinson.
The Bible is an antique Volume -
Written by faded Men
At the suggestion of Holy Spectres -
Subjects - Bethlehem -
Eden - the ancient Homestead -
Satan - the Brigadier -
Judas - the Great Defaulter -
David - the Troubadour -
Sin - a distinguished Precipice
Others must resist -
Boys that "believe" are very lonesome -
Other Boys are "lost" -
had but the Tale a warbling Teller -
All the Boys would come -
Orpheus's Sermon captivated -
It did not condemn -
Before I muse on the poem, I should probably discuss Dickinson. If pressed to say who my favorite poets are, I'd invariably answer, "Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins." Their poetry has always captivated me; it takes on big subjects freshly and small subjects ingeniously; and both writers "attacked" poetry in the same original way in which the most successfully innovative visual artists attacked paint-and-canvas.
At the same time, having taught poetry for many years, I know the degree to which even people who like poetry are put off by the poems of Dickinson and Hopkins. Neither poet has ever seemed insuperably difficult to me, but I find it easy to understand why others resist the poems so much. There's no doubt that both poets are quirky, stubbornly eccentric in a variety of ways. Hence their poetry alienates people, even people who read a fair amount of poetry. Both poets are thought of as being ethereal as well--Dickinson, the New England recluse; Hopkins the British Jesuit priest. I think these perceived personae are not terribly accurate; to me, both seem to have been rather earthy people. Hopkins's famous or infamous "sprung rhythm," in which he jams stressed syllabes and alliteration together, is a hurdle over which some readers can't jump. Dickinson's shorthand, elliptical references, her use of dashes, and her almost Germanic penchant for capitalizing words prove difficult for readers. Even when I was an undergraduate, I didn't find these elements discouraging. I found that I either enjoyed them or, if at times they got in the way, I could move easily around them. Mostly I think it's a matter of luck. Sometimes you get lucky and are simply able to "get" poems and poets with which and with whom others struggle. I've always struggled with Milton's poetry, for example, whereas others take to it easily.
Many of Dickinson's poems seem "modern" in the sense of being ahead of their time, and this poem is certainly in that category. She views the Bible from an historical point of view, seeing it not as revealed truth but rather as old stories written by humans, by "faded men." She deliberately reduces parts of the Bible to easily labeled topics there in lines 3-8; to refer to Eden as "the ancient Homestead" seems so wonderfully American, and to call Satan "the Brigadier" brings Satan down to size. Satan becomes merely the head of one part of an army, and one might think of a petty if murderous dictator, dressed up in a uniform that's covered with fake medals. David becomes a traveling musician, singer of psalms, and Sin becomes "a distinguished precipice." I love that comparison. If you sin, you fall, but you fall from a very "distinguished"--that is to say, special--place. Not only your bones will break, but also your soul.
"Others must resist." Just as the poetry of Dickinson and Hopkins proves difficult to many readers, so the Bible (according to Dickinson) proves difficult to people in 1882, when she wrote the poem. The Bible is old fashioned. It's a difficult text. The boys who believe in it are lonsesome, isolated, probably because most of their friends disklike going to church and reading the Bible. Solution? The Bible requires a "Warbler," some "Teller" (speaker or preacher) to freshion up the telling. Churches must invite "the Boys" (potential new believers; converts) with an aesthetically pleasing sermon that's like the song of Orpheus.
This is a strikingly counter-Victorian, counter-Puritan (as in New England Puritan) poem. It is at once whimsical and light and theologically serious. What Dickinson's own religious views were is open to question. She certainly wasn't traditionally Christian in her Amherst community, but her poems are imbued with the rhetoric and rhythm of hymns. She certainly wasn't a thoroughgoing atheist, but her view of heaven and things spiritual seems to have been independently forged. She was a free-thinker, that's for sure. To me she is the unbeatable poet (not that poetry has to be a competition). I just can't think of an American poet who's written a more magnificent, original body of work than she did, and she seems uncannily to have anticipated so many "moves" in poetry that we associate with the Modernist movement. Hail Dickinson.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
To Acquiesce--Or Not?: A. E. Housman
A.E. Housman is best known now for the poem, "To An Athlete Dying Young" and other verses from A Shropshire Lad. He was born in 1859, the year of Origin of Species, and died in 1936, after the world had indeed become modern in the best and worst of ways--to echo Dickens. Housman was a classical scholar and professor first and, in his mind at least, a poet second. Posthumously, he is a poet first and shall remain so, and it's his fault because he wrote some terrific poetry. (Apparently he was also something of a gourmand and liked French food; given English cooking, especially in his day, the preference seems reasonable.) In my view, his most remarkable poem is the following one, from "Last Poems":
The laws of God, the Laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
I don't think the poem could be phrased any better at any point than it is. The iambic tetrameter carries the pithy philosophical argument without straining--and what an argument it is! What is one to do if one feels, as the speaker of this poem feels, that he (in this case) is a stranger in a world he never made? Does he pretend not to feel as if he is a stranger? Does he acquiesce to the laws of man and God--to the systems of society and religion? Or does he play it honestly and, like Melville's Bartleby, respond, "I prefer not to"? To my mind, the poem to some extent also foreshadows Camus's The Stranger.
The speaker here notes that he judges and condemns certain deeds of men--and of God? Or of God's alleged spokespersons? What is the source of the criteria by which he has judged and condemned these deeds? That is not clear; nonetheless, he seems to have established for himself his own way of living life and assessing behavior, but he has no desire to impose his way on others, by whom he wants to be left alone. But of course society and religion are not in the business of leaving people alone. And the speaker is not naive. "They will master," he says, "right or wrong." They have the power, and they will use it.
The lovely question the end of the poem always induces me to ponder is this: Has the speaker convinced himself to acquiesce? After all, he concludes that since he and his soul can't fly away to other planets, they're stuck with and on Earth and therefore must remain strangers in a strange land. "Keep we must," he says to his soul, "if keep we can/These foreign laws of God and man." But the poem begins by asserting,
The speaker here notes that he judges and condemns certain deeds of men--and of God? Or of God's alleged spokespersons? What is the source of the criteria by which he has judged and condemned these deeds? That is not clear; nonetheless, he seems to have established for himself his own way of living life and assessing behavior, but he has no desire to impose his way on others, by whom he wants to be left alone. But of course society and religion are not in the business of leaving people alone. And the speaker is not naive. "They will master," he says, "right or wrong." They have the power, and they will use it.
The lovely question the end of the poem always induces me to ponder is this: Has the speaker convinced himself to acquiesce? After all, he concludes that since he and his soul can't fly away to other planets, they're stuck with and on Earth and therefore must remain strangers in a strange land. "Keep we must," he says to his soul, "if keep we can/These foreign laws of God and man." But the poem begins by asserting,
The laws of God, the Laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I....
So if we go by the opening assertion, the advice to the soul and himself at the end seems hollow.
Although the poem certainly expresses a stance that might belong to a hermit, an outlaw, or a sociopath, the rhetoric itself is urbane and mild. I sense I'm being spoken to by someone who just so happened to have been born, grown up, and discovered that he didn't fit into or agree with most of what was going on around him. The poem doesn't celebrate this eccentric status, nor does it argue that the world should conform to the speaker's view. This is not the speech of a revolutionary, a terrorist, a megalomaniac, a drop-out, or a protester. This is not, like the oft-quoted "Invictus," a poem of pride. This is the utterance of someone who simply believes his independent view of things is correct and who desires what he knows makers and enforcers of laws--literal and figurative--will not allow: to be left alone. This is the utterance of someone who is so reasonable that he even tries to convince himself and his soul to acquiesce, given the situation. "Let's try to go along to get along," he seems to be telling himself and his soul at the end, and the end comes before we find out whether he and his soul will take the advice. Oddly enough, the poem is something of a cliffhanger, although I'm inclined to think the speaker's inclined to stick with the assertion he brought to the dance.
Although the poem certainly expresses a stance that might belong to a hermit, an outlaw, or a sociopath, the rhetoric itself is urbane and mild. I sense I'm being spoken to by someone who just so happened to have been born, grown up, and discovered that he didn't fit into or agree with most of what was going on around him. The poem doesn't celebrate this eccentric status, nor does it argue that the world should conform to the speaker's view. This is not the speech of a revolutionary, a terrorist, a megalomaniac, a drop-out, or a protester. This is not, like the oft-quoted "Invictus," a poem of pride. This is the utterance of someone who simply believes his independent view of things is correct and who desires what he knows makers and enforcers of laws--literal and figurative--will not allow: to be left alone. This is the utterance of someone who is so reasonable that he even tries to convince himself and his soul to acquiesce, given the situation. "Let's try to go along to get along," he seems to be telling himself and his soul at the end, and the end comes before we find out whether he and his soul will take the advice. Oddly enough, the poem is something of a cliffhanger, although I'm inclined to think the speaker's inclined to stick with the assertion he brought to the dance.
Often we find ourselves perplexed and befuddled but then have things cleared up, one way or another. We learn. We are formed, and we conform. Sometimes, however, we are perplexed and befuddled and stay that way because we believe there is every good reason to be so; --believe that to disagree is simply the correct response; --believe the emperor is naked; --contine to wonder, stubbornly, about things that don't add up, such as why air-force fighter-jets weren't scrambled when the planes were hijacked on 9/11. Gore Vidal, among others, keeps wondering, stubbornly, about this question. He is dismissed as a "conspiracy theorist" (I believe this is known as an ad hominem arguument), but although he expresses skepticism about what he regards as the American Empire and the Bush/Cheney "Junta" (junta is classic Vidal), he doesn't actually offer a theory, conspiratorial or otherwise, concerning the jets. He justs asks for a thorough, clear, believable answer to the question and chooses not to accept what he calls RO: Received Opinion. This poem gives voice to those who simply, independently disagree with RO, but who also probably do not reflexively embrace a theory. The poem is stubborn but well reasoned; it is firm but not enraged; it's even a little whimsical, with the reference to interplanetary travel. I picture the speaker and his soul, a bit world-weary but by no means defeated, walking off into the foggy night, rather like Louis and Rick (Raines and Bogart) at the end of Casablanca. This independent man and is independent soul, although potentially threatened with jail, gallows, and hellfire, have a beautiful friendship. . . . Here's a link to a fine article by a political scientist who connects the film Cool Hand Luke with Housman's poem:
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/haltom22.htm
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/haltom22.htm
Friday, September 14, 2007
Fathers and Sons, Faith and Faithlessness: A Sonnet by Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers tended to write in long-lined free verse in which ideas and images were mortared together like stones. The lines are well and patiently built. Although one might be tempted to compare his verse to that of Whitman or Sandburg--other American masters of the long line--Jeffers is much more rhetorically and metaphorically restrained; unlike Whitman, he's not an excitable poet. He tends to stalk his subject coldly.
It was interesting to me, then, to run across a sonnet Jeffers wrote. I found it in a lovely pulp paperback, The Penguin Book of Sonnets (1943), the kind of compact paperback published on cheap paper that I remember fondly from my childhood. The westerns by Zane Grey and Max Brand that my father read--in bed, while smoking a cigar--came in this form. I think most people who love books love them not just because of the reading but because of the physicality, and one may cherish a cheap paperback--the feel of the thing--as much as an expensive leather-bound book with exquisite paper and printing. An old soft paperback is like an old soft baseball glove, in some respects.
In any event, here's Jeffers's sonnet:
To His Father
Christ was your lord and captain all your life,
He fails the world but you he did not fail,
He led you through all forms of grief and strife
Intact, a man full-armed, he let prevail
Nor outward malice nor the worse-fanged snake
That coils in one's own brain against your calm,
That great rich jewel well guarded for his sake
With coronal age and death like quieting balm.
I Father having followed other guides
And oftener to my hurt no leader at all,
Through years nailed up like dripping panther hides
For trophies on a savage temple wall
Hardly anticipate that reverend stage
Of Life, the snow-wreathed honor of extreme age.
Jeffers does well in the sonnet-form here, in my opinion, but I feel him straining against its limits, sense his wanting to let the lines find their own length, rather like the Pacific coastline on which he lived. Jeffers here is like a fine athlete who's been asked to perform within the proscribed limits of a team-sport; you can feel him wanting to overwhelm the sonnet-form.
And Jeffers's characteristic brutal honesty is by no means discarded in the sonnet form. Faith in Christ served his father well; that's the truth, and Jeffers speaks it, and he explains precisely how that faith worked in his father's life. The faith helped the father through "all forms of grief and strife," and it kept his father noble and calm.
The surprising adjective "coronal" is terrific. Because of his father's faith, his father's age became a kind of crown, and death became a kind of balm.
This is a Shakespearian or English sonnet in form, but, like an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, it breaks after line 8, and "turns" to another view of the topic. Now we learn that Jeffers couldn't imitate or adopt his father's Christian faith. He has followed "other guides," namely Classical models, including Stocism and Greek tragedy. But how brutally honest Jeffers is about his own lack of faith; often the guides he's chosen have not soothed his pain, have not helped him through grief and strife, and the years lived in faithlessness are compared to "nailed up" "dripping panther hides/For trophies on a savage temple wall." How wonderful of Jeffers to find a pagan image for what he admits is his own version of paganism, and to state that such trophies can't do for him what faith in Christ did for his father. Nor does Christ escape Jeffers's honest assessment. He claims Christ "fails the world," meaning what? Meaning, one supposes, that Christ has not returned yet, and that evil marches on? Perhaps. The final hard truth Jeffers leaves for himself: His worldview will not leave him in as good a shape, spiritually and philosophically, as his father when he, Jeffers, is old; "extreme age" will not be the equivalent of a "snow-wreathed honor." He's not looking forward to growing old. Old age will be harder for Jeffers, in the absence of faith in Christ, than it was for his father. I find this to be a bracing poem in which Jeffers honors his father and his father's faith without being sentimental and in which he honestly contrasts his own world-view with his father's without being argumentative or combative.
It was interesting to me, then, to run across a sonnet Jeffers wrote. I found it in a lovely pulp paperback, The Penguin Book of Sonnets (1943), the kind of compact paperback published on cheap paper that I remember fondly from my childhood. The westerns by Zane Grey and Max Brand that my father read--in bed, while smoking a cigar--came in this form. I think most people who love books love them not just because of the reading but because of the physicality, and one may cherish a cheap paperback--the feel of the thing--as much as an expensive leather-bound book with exquisite paper and printing. An old soft paperback is like an old soft baseball glove, in some respects.
In any event, here's Jeffers's sonnet:
To His Father
Christ was your lord and captain all your life,
He fails the world but you he did not fail,
He led you through all forms of grief and strife
Intact, a man full-armed, he let prevail
Nor outward malice nor the worse-fanged snake
That coils in one's own brain against your calm,
That great rich jewel well guarded for his sake
With coronal age and death like quieting balm.
I Father having followed other guides
And oftener to my hurt no leader at all,
Through years nailed up like dripping panther hides
For trophies on a savage temple wall
Hardly anticipate that reverend stage
Of Life, the snow-wreathed honor of extreme age.
Jeffers does well in the sonnet-form here, in my opinion, but I feel him straining against its limits, sense his wanting to let the lines find their own length, rather like the Pacific coastline on which he lived. Jeffers here is like a fine athlete who's been asked to perform within the proscribed limits of a team-sport; you can feel him wanting to overwhelm the sonnet-form.
And Jeffers's characteristic brutal honesty is by no means discarded in the sonnet form. Faith in Christ served his father well; that's the truth, and Jeffers speaks it, and he explains precisely how that faith worked in his father's life. The faith helped the father through "all forms of grief and strife," and it kept his father noble and calm.
The surprising adjective "coronal" is terrific. Because of his father's faith, his father's age became a kind of crown, and death became a kind of balm.
This is a Shakespearian or English sonnet in form, but, like an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, it breaks after line 8, and "turns" to another view of the topic. Now we learn that Jeffers couldn't imitate or adopt his father's Christian faith. He has followed "other guides," namely Classical models, including Stocism and Greek tragedy. But how brutally honest Jeffers is about his own lack of faith; often the guides he's chosen have not soothed his pain, have not helped him through grief and strife, and the years lived in faithlessness are compared to "nailed up" "dripping panther hides/For trophies on a savage temple wall." How wonderful of Jeffers to find a pagan image for what he admits is his own version of paganism, and to state that such trophies can't do for him what faith in Christ did for his father. Nor does Christ escape Jeffers's honest assessment. He claims Christ "fails the world," meaning what? Meaning, one supposes, that Christ has not returned yet, and that evil marches on? Perhaps. The final hard truth Jeffers leaves for himself: His worldview will not leave him in as good a shape, spiritually and philosophically, as his father when he, Jeffers, is old; "extreme age" will not be the equivalent of a "snow-wreathed honor." He's not looking forward to growing old. Old age will be harder for Jeffers, in the absence of faith in Christ, than it was for his father. I find this to be a bracing poem in which Jeffers honors his father and his father's faith without being sentimental and in which he honestly contrasts his own world-view with his father's without being argumentative or combative.
Stoic Detachment
A friend's having quoted a poem by Robinson Jeffers is the occasion for this blog-entry. Here is the poem:
Be Angry At the Sun
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
The poem was published in 1941, in a book of the same title, and one of the 100 copies that were signed by Jeffers goes for about $750.00, in case you're a collector. Later, during World War II, Jeffers published another book, with Random House, and the anti-war stance in the book was so pronounced that Random House published a disclaimer in the book, noting the Jeffers' views were not necessarily those of the publishing firm. Jeffers was too old to serve, or to be asked to serve, in the military at the time, so he didn't have to make the choice that two other poets, William Stafford and William Everson, made, which was to become conscientious objectors instead of joining the armed services. I believe both men were sent to work-camps.
As in many poems, Jeffers in this one implicitly advises the listener or reader to adopt a stance of stoic detachment toward politics, and the reference to the wheel makes history seem almost mechanistic, fated. "Don't involve yourself," Jeffers seems to advise.
My colleague quoted the lines, "the cold passion for the truth/Hunts in no pack." The lines don't need paraphrasing, but one way to amplify their meaning is to suggest that, if you seek the truth in political matters, don't look to "the pack"--which might refer to political parties, received opinion, mass sentiments, and/or the Media; instead, follow the facts and the evidence as they come to you. --Not always an easy task, especially when the pack tends to hide or to spin the facts, and especially when we may see ourselves as part of a group, if not part of a pack.
In the penultimate stanza, is Jeffers talking to himself or at least to poets in general? Perhaps. He seems to suggest that to be publicly or politically involved, as a poet, is no longer possible or at least not advisable. Perhaps it never was advisable to be so involved, in Jeffers's opinion.
The last stanza reveals some biases that belong to Jeffers' era. Pleasure is the exclusive turf of boys, apparently, not of girls. Power is the exclusive turf of men, not of women. And only women are interested in fame? Hmmm.
One "not unreasonable" (as a Brit might say) response to the poem is: "Easy for you to say, Mr. Jeffers." What if events conspire to place you in the midst of politics or of the effects of politics? If you're an African American in 1941, or in the 1950s, for example, you might have a different attitude toward political involvement, and you might want relatively privileged men like Jeffers to give you a hand, and you might not regard fatalism to be as safe a haven as Jeffers makes it out to be.
At the same time, "the gang serves lies" is a nice reminder about how the political world really works, regardless of "party affiliation." And "observe them gesticulating" is excellent advice for watching such events as presidential candidates' debates, wherein almost all gestures and phrases seem scripted, so much so that when candidates go off-script and--for example--turn to each other and argue like real human beings, oxygen seems to rush back into the proceedings.
For any person investigating anything--scholar, scientist, consumer, mere citizen--"the cold passion for the truth/Hunts in no pack" is great advice; --and also often very difficult advice to follow. It's an awful thing to have one's opinion confused by the facts. It creates what's known as cognitive dissonance. Apparently, the brain itself has a chemical response in such situations--that's the premise of a new book called Mistakes Were Made--But Not By Me.
Having lept from Jeffers' poem to cognitive dissonance, thereby creating cognitive dissonance, I'll leap to the topic of cats, for when I read "Be angry at the sun for setting/If these things anger you," I think of cats. That is, being angry at the sun for setting and at cats for any of their feline behavior gets you to exactly the same place with the sun and with cats: nowhere. And in some ways (as I try to wrench myself back to the poem), Jeffers is advising us to take a cat's stance toward politics: merely observe, detached, stoic.
Be Angry At the Sun
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
The poem was published in 1941, in a book of the same title, and one of the 100 copies that were signed by Jeffers goes for about $750.00, in case you're a collector. Later, during World War II, Jeffers published another book, with Random House, and the anti-war stance in the book was so pronounced that Random House published a disclaimer in the book, noting the Jeffers' views were not necessarily those of the publishing firm. Jeffers was too old to serve, or to be asked to serve, in the military at the time, so he didn't have to make the choice that two other poets, William Stafford and William Everson, made, which was to become conscientious objectors instead of joining the armed services. I believe both men were sent to work-camps.
As in many poems, Jeffers in this one implicitly advises the listener or reader to adopt a stance of stoic detachment toward politics, and the reference to the wheel makes history seem almost mechanistic, fated. "Don't involve yourself," Jeffers seems to advise.
My colleague quoted the lines, "the cold passion for the truth/Hunts in no pack." The lines don't need paraphrasing, but one way to amplify their meaning is to suggest that, if you seek the truth in political matters, don't look to "the pack"--which might refer to political parties, received opinion, mass sentiments, and/or the Media; instead, follow the facts and the evidence as they come to you. --Not always an easy task, especially when the pack tends to hide or to spin the facts, and especially when we may see ourselves as part of a group, if not part of a pack.
In the penultimate stanza, is Jeffers talking to himself or at least to poets in general? Perhaps. He seems to suggest that to be publicly or politically involved, as a poet, is no longer possible or at least not advisable. Perhaps it never was advisable to be so involved, in Jeffers's opinion.
The last stanza reveals some biases that belong to Jeffers' era. Pleasure is the exclusive turf of boys, apparently, not of girls. Power is the exclusive turf of men, not of women. And only women are interested in fame? Hmmm.
One "not unreasonable" (as a Brit might say) response to the poem is: "Easy for you to say, Mr. Jeffers." What if events conspire to place you in the midst of politics or of the effects of politics? If you're an African American in 1941, or in the 1950s, for example, you might have a different attitude toward political involvement, and you might want relatively privileged men like Jeffers to give you a hand, and you might not regard fatalism to be as safe a haven as Jeffers makes it out to be.
At the same time, "the gang serves lies" is a nice reminder about how the political world really works, regardless of "party affiliation." And "observe them gesticulating" is excellent advice for watching such events as presidential candidates' debates, wherein almost all gestures and phrases seem scripted, so much so that when candidates go off-script and--for example--turn to each other and argue like real human beings, oxygen seems to rush back into the proceedings.
For any person investigating anything--scholar, scientist, consumer, mere citizen--"the cold passion for the truth/Hunts in no pack" is great advice; --and also often very difficult advice to follow. It's an awful thing to have one's opinion confused by the facts. It creates what's known as cognitive dissonance. Apparently, the brain itself has a chemical response in such situations--that's the premise of a new book called Mistakes Were Made--But Not By Me.
Having lept from Jeffers' poem to cognitive dissonance, thereby creating cognitive dissonance, I'll leap to the topic of cats, for when I read "Be angry at the sun for setting/If these things anger you," I think of cats. That is, being angry at the sun for setting and at cats for any of their feline behavior gets you to exactly the same place with the sun and with cats: nowhere. And in some ways (as I try to wrench myself back to the poem), Jeffers is advising us to take a cat's stance toward politics: merely observe, detached, stoic.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
One Degree of Separation
Here is a poem by Robert Browning, and the "Shelley" of the first line is Percy Bysshe Shelley, famous British Romantic poety who died young and whom Browning, of a later generation, would have seen as a poetic hero:
Memorabilia
1
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!
2
But you were living before that,
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at--
My starting moves your laughter.
3
I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:
4
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A molted feather, an eagle feather!
Well, I forget the rest.
A note in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume Two (Fifth Edition), p. 1250 says, "Browning reports that he once met a stranger in a bookstore who mentioned having talked with Shelley. 'Suddenly the stranger paused, and burst into laughter as he observed me staring at him with blanched face. . . . I vividly remember how strangely the presence of a man who had seen and spoken with Shelley affected me.' "
So to some extent, the poem is about "degrees of separation," in this case only one degree, between us and someone we think of as almost super-human, or at least special: a great artist, a great performer, someone who has achieved much, someone with a lot of power. The stranger thinks Browning's reaction is funny because, after all, the stranger is simply talking about having talked once to another human being.
The "six degrees of separation" concept is meant, I think, to show how interconnected everyone is, at least in some mathematical way, even in a global society of--what are we at now, seven billion" (And of course, the imagination can make no distinction between one billion and ten billion; at some point, the imagination shuts down.) Perhaps the concept also makes ordinary, nondescript people think that they are always only six degrees away from--what? Celebrity? "Immortality"?
An author whose work I've spent a lot of time studying is Langston Hughes. Three times I've had an experience similar to Browning's. I got to meet and to speak briefly with the jazz musician, Billy Taylor, who knew Hughes. I also heard photographer Roy DeCarava speak at a conference; he and Hughes had collaborated on a book. And at the same conference, I met a woman who had visited Hughes once, not long before he died. She described how he lit one cigarette after another and how the ashes fell on his clothes and how he casually brushed the ashes off while he talked. For some reason, I cherished that odd detail; maybe it helped make Hughes "plain," to borrow Browning's word. I'm sure at some point I got the vacant look that Browning got in front of the stranger in the bookstore, as I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm talking to someone who talked to Hughes, a poet I really admire, and one of the few writers, dead now, I would have liked to meet."
Back to Browning's poem: I love the shift in stanza three. It seems like a complete change of subject, and it may be disconcerting to some readers, but of course Browning is merely developing a comparison, and we soon find out that picking up an eagle's feather is a bit like meeting the stranger who spoke to Shelley: it's something to hang on to, a talisman. And the eagle-feather works nicely a place-holder for Shelley, who wrote Prometheus Unbound and Mont Blanc, and whose imagination soared to great idealistic heights. Of all the Romantics, William Blake included, Shelley probably took the most chances, tried most to make poetry do as much as it could, worried least about looking before he lept.
Browning is of course best known for his dramatic monologues, including "To His Last Duchess," but I also like this smaller lyric, "Memorabilia," which was published in 1855. Shelley drowned accidentally off the coast of Italy in 1822. He was only 30. Langston Hughes died in Spring of 1967, at age 65. I had not heard of him or of his poetry yet. I started high school in the fall of that year. The first African American writer whose work I remember reading was James Baldwin. I found a copy of The Fire Next Time in the back of a classroom and read it straight through. I do not have a vivid memory of when I first encountered Hughes's work.
Shifting presumptuously to a first-name, zero-degree-of-separation basis, let us say "Well done!" to three departed poets who achieved so much so differently: Percy, Robert, and Langston. Calling Browning "Bob" would, I believe, cross the line, however.
Memorabilia
1
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!
2
But you were living before that,
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at--
My starting moves your laughter.
3
I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:
4
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A molted feather, an eagle feather!
Well, I forget the rest.
A note in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume Two (Fifth Edition), p. 1250 says, "Browning reports that he once met a stranger in a bookstore who mentioned having talked with Shelley. 'Suddenly the stranger paused, and burst into laughter as he observed me staring at him with blanched face. . . . I vividly remember how strangely the presence of a man who had seen and spoken with Shelley affected me.' "
So to some extent, the poem is about "degrees of separation," in this case only one degree, between us and someone we think of as almost super-human, or at least special: a great artist, a great performer, someone who has achieved much, someone with a lot of power. The stranger thinks Browning's reaction is funny because, after all, the stranger is simply talking about having talked once to another human being.
The "six degrees of separation" concept is meant, I think, to show how interconnected everyone is, at least in some mathematical way, even in a global society of--what are we at now, seven billion" (And of course, the imagination can make no distinction between one billion and ten billion; at some point, the imagination shuts down.) Perhaps the concept also makes ordinary, nondescript people think that they are always only six degrees away from--what? Celebrity? "Immortality"?
An author whose work I've spent a lot of time studying is Langston Hughes. Three times I've had an experience similar to Browning's. I got to meet and to speak briefly with the jazz musician, Billy Taylor, who knew Hughes. I also heard photographer Roy DeCarava speak at a conference; he and Hughes had collaborated on a book. And at the same conference, I met a woman who had visited Hughes once, not long before he died. She described how he lit one cigarette after another and how the ashes fell on his clothes and how he casually brushed the ashes off while he talked. For some reason, I cherished that odd detail; maybe it helped make Hughes "plain," to borrow Browning's word. I'm sure at some point I got the vacant look that Browning got in front of the stranger in the bookstore, as I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm talking to someone who talked to Hughes, a poet I really admire, and one of the few writers, dead now, I would have liked to meet."
Back to Browning's poem: I love the shift in stanza three. It seems like a complete change of subject, and it may be disconcerting to some readers, but of course Browning is merely developing a comparison, and we soon find out that picking up an eagle's feather is a bit like meeting the stranger who spoke to Shelley: it's something to hang on to, a talisman. And the eagle-feather works nicely a place-holder for Shelley, who wrote Prometheus Unbound and Mont Blanc, and whose imagination soared to great idealistic heights. Of all the Romantics, William Blake included, Shelley probably took the most chances, tried most to make poetry do as much as it could, worried least about looking before he lept.
Browning is of course best known for his dramatic monologues, including "To His Last Duchess," but I also like this smaller lyric, "Memorabilia," which was published in 1855. Shelley drowned accidentally off the coast of Italy in 1822. He was only 30. Langston Hughes died in Spring of 1967, at age 65. I had not heard of him or of his poetry yet. I started high school in the fall of that year. The first African American writer whose work I remember reading was James Baldwin. I found a copy of The Fire Next Time in the back of a classroom and read it straight through. I do not have a vivid memory of when I first encountered Hughes's work.
Shifting presumptuously to a first-name, zero-degree-of-separation basis, let us say "Well done!" to three departed poets who achieved so much so differently: Percy, Robert, and Langston. Calling Browning "Bob" would, I believe, cross the line, however.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Tourist
My family and I recently traveled to San Diego--or San Diahgo, as anchorman Ron Burgundy would have it-- on official business. Before we left, someone asked me, "What do you want to do there [in addition to the official business]?" I said, "I don't want to do anything touristy."
We had gone to Berlin this summer, only for a week, but nonetheless (or perhaps because it was only a week) we did a lot of touristy things, visiting famous sites, going to museums, drinking German wine (the latter just seems like a matter of good sense, not tourism). Also, the older I get, the more quickly I seem to get tourist's fatigue, a weariness born of a desire not to be experiencing things I am supposed to experience. I must admit that the unique Pergamon Museum, with its Pergamon Altar (reconstructed) and its Gate of Ishtar (reconstructed) knocked my socks off. Still....tourist's fatigue.
My wife was okay with not doing touristy things, too, in San Diego. However, we were unable to preserve a clean slate. We ended up going to Balboa Park, to the history museum, to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, which, ironically, had been in a city near where we live, not long ago. It is, of course, a fascinating exhibit, even if it's implicitly, and at moments obviously, saturated with contemporary politics. But the few examples of scrolls (pieces thereof) and the copper scroll found in Jordan were, indeed, fascinating, as are the tales of discovery, haggling, recovery, translation, preservation, and so on. I had already read quite a lot about the scrolls, but still it was great to revisit some of the circumstances and to think about those Essenes hiding the scrolls in the little caves. Unfortunately, I couldn't ward off tourist's fatigue. So I set a pretty brisk pace as I went through the exhibit--but was nowhere near as fast as my brother was, in 1981, as he fairly sprinted through the Uffizi. He was sick unto death of Famous Art. I can't remember why he simply didn't go into the museum, but I did enjoy the spectacle of his literally jogging past masterpieces.
In fact, the technique could be expanded into a special form of tourism. We'll call it The Hasty Tourist. It would be a new way of experiencing the famous places around the globe, the equivalent of speed-reading a famous novel. "It's better when it's blurred." That might be the slogan.
According to the OED, the word "tourist" seems to have arrived in printed English toward the end of the 18th century. From the OED (online), here is the second earliest example:
PEGGE Anecd. Eng. Lang. (1814) 313 A Traveller is now-a-days called a Tour-ist.
And the OED also has references to "tourist class" accommodations"--on cruise-ships, for example--accommodations that were second-class, at best.
Anyway, here are two poems concerning tourists and tourism (and "Goodnight, San Diahgo.")
We had gone to Berlin this summer, only for a week, but nonetheless (or perhaps because it was only a week) we did a lot of touristy things, visiting famous sites, going to museums, drinking German wine (the latter just seems like a matter of good sense, not tourism). Also, the older I get, the more quickly I seem to get tourist's fatigue, a weariness born of a desire not to be experiencing things I am supposed to experience. I must admit that the unique Pergamon Museum, with its Pergamon Altar (reconstructed) and its Gate of Ishtar (reconstructed) knocked my socks off. Still....tourist's fatigue.
My wife was okay with not doing touristy things, too, in San Diego. However, we were unable to preserve a clean slate. We ended up going to Balboa Park, to the history museum, to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, which, ironically, had been in a city near where we live, not long ago. It is, of course, a fascinating exhibit, even if it's implicitly, and at moments obviously, saturated with contemporary politics. But the few examples of scrolls (pieces thereof) and the copper scroll found in Jordan were, indeed, fascinating, as are the tales of discovery, haggling, recovery, translation, preservation, and so on. I had already read quite a lot about the scrolls, but still it was great to revisit some of the circumstances and to think about those Essenes hiding the scrolls in the little caves. Unfortunately, I couldn't ward off tourist's fatigue. So I set a pretty brisk pace as I went through the exhibit--but was nowhere near as fast as my brother was, in 1981, as he fairly sprinted through the Uffizi. He was sick unto death of Famous Art. I can't remember why he simply didn't go into the museum, but I did enjoy the spectacle of his literally jogging past masterpieces.
In fact, the technique could be expanded into a special form of tourism. We'll call it The Hasty Tourist. It would be a new way of experiencing the famous places around the globe, the equivalent of speed-reading a famous novel. "It's better when it's blurred." That might be the slogan.
According to the OED, the word "tourist" seems to have arrived in printed English toward the end of the 18th century. From the OED (online), here is the second earliest example:
PEGGE Anecd. Eng. Lang. (1814) 313 A Traveller is now-a-days called a Tour-ist.
And the OED also has references to "tourist class" accommodations"--on cruise-ships, for example--accommodations that were second-class, at best.
Anyway, here are two poems concerning tourists and tourism (and "Goodnight, San Diahgo.")
Tourist
Down a long cascade of white
steps in a seaside town, a man hurries.
By contrast people of the town
move slowly. They’re the most
recent generation who are where
they are supposed to be, something he
is not, hence the rush. No one in this
town will recall having noticed him.
* * *
On the Tour
. . . And here is a ruin of the palace
where the emperor claimed to have made
love to three virgins every night. That
was Emperor Zikka, nicknamed
Zikka the Liar. And just
off the coast here is where
a fleet carrying several tons
of important poetry sank.
The poems were heavy
and decorated with allusions,
tradition, and so forth. Salt-water
depth has preserved them.
SCUBA gear may be rented
at the wharf. Here is
a refreshment stand, not radically
different from a public hearth
in the ancient city whose ruins
we have toured today. This
stand represents perhaps
the strongest link between our
civilization and theirs.
Those people, too, were concerned
chiefly with replenishment of liquids
on hot days, getting inexpensive food,
having a few laughs, and finding shade
in which to ponder why they let someone
talk them into leaving their own beds
to join a package tour in quest
of illusory gains in foreign lands.
(First published in Writing on the Edge.)
So We'll Go No More A-Roving
Here is a short poem by George Gordon, Lord Byron:
So We'll Go No More A-Roving
1
So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
2
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
3
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go nor more a-roving
By the light of the moon.
(The even-numbered lines are supposed to be indented, but for some reason the blog-machinery doesn't go along with that, try as I might. And the numbers are supposed to be centered over the stanzas.)
A footnote in The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Volume 2), Fifth Edition, p. 512, reports, "Composed in the Lenten aftermath of a spell of feverish dissipation in the Carnival season in Venice, and included in a letter to Thomas Moore, Feb. 28, 1817. Byron wrote, 'I find "the sword wearing out the scabbard," though I have but just turned the corner of twenty-nine.' The poem is based on the refrain of a Scottish song, The Jolly Beggar, 'And we'll gang nae mair a roving/Sae late into the nicht...."
To rove, as Byron is using the word, is literally to wander and figuratively to wander around "partying," of course. The noun "rove," incidentally, refers either to a scab or a piece of metal, but I've never heard or seen "rove" used in this way.
It's interesting that Byron claims to be withdrawing from the party-life and the life of amorous roving not because Lent has arrived but because he is weary. He also seems to think that age 29 is a bit too early to be weary of partying. Some people never cease to go a-roving (and that construction is fascinating: adding "a" to "roving"): Keith Richard, for example, or my distant older cousin, Erik, who was literally the town drunk of my small town. Into his 70s, he drank and "roved" almost every day of his life; of course, alcoholic roving is not a pretty sight.
The third line of the poem has always tended to throw me off, even after innumerable readings. My mind wants to read it as "Though the heart be still" as in "be still my heart"--that is, "Thought heart be quiet," but then of course the line wants to convey the following: "Though the heart is still (or "nonetheless") capable of loving." It's not a flaw; it's part of the poem's charm now, like a favorite little nick in an antique desk.
"[t]he heart must pause to breathe": I like the plain factuality of that, and I like the way the poem at this point recognizes the heart as a biological or anatomical entity, not just the symbol or locus of love. "And Love itself [must] have rest." That's good, too--Love, a force unto itself, requires periods of rest, regardless of which human is experiencing that force.
The last stanza is "counter-carpe-diem." That is, even though humans (especially those under the age of 30) were made to go a-roving, and even though time passes very quickly (hence the advice to "seize the day"), there are limits. We get tired. Even, apparently, at age 29. So carpe the diem all you want, but you're going to have to take a break.
In 1981 I traveled to Venice, from Germany, via Austria, and happened to get there just as Carnivale was starting: fortuitous. Out of that experience came, eventually, a poem, first published in The Washington English Journal, I think, in 1985 (?). My roving wasn't up to Byronic standards, by any means, but I had a good time. Here's the poem:
Venice, Carnivale
Who will you be in Venice
beneath the year’s third moon
when crowds of Carnivale
pour toward you all in greasepaint,
all in masks and capes? Who will
you be in this humanity and alleys
floating on moonlight and sewage?
Laughter from a canal-taxi
skips across painted water,
ricochets off rotting brick.
Your personality hangs like a rusted
iron shutter. Be anyone but yourself
and John Ruskin, Carnivale advises.
Be sewage, puke in the canal, beg,
sleep with cats, eat rats. Be
moonlight, fall in love, swell
like Caruso’s voice. A Danish woman
winks at you from across a restaurant.
An Italian boy lights a firecracker; therefore,
pigeons scuttling your tourist’s boredom
panic and swoop up through your heart.
Be Italian. Close your window
to riotous streets. Return to your tidy
apartment, your statuette of Mary, and
a proper life of grief, lace, and spices. Be
American: gawk and gaudy jazz architecture
of San Marco; order beer and puzzle
at this sinking city (why don’t they fix it?). Be
European, wear that history for an evening.
Work hard at language, gesture, shout, pose,
Strut. Forget your Kansas, blond in corn heat.
Forget about flat American English that naps
on your tongue, then saunters toward a barn.
Be the crowd, be the anonymous mime’s face,
talk another’s conversation, kiss another’s other,
tilt your head back and laugh a lunatic’s
hysteria to Carnivale moon.
from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006
So We'll Go No More A-Roving
1
So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
2
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.
3
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go nor more a-roving
By the light of the moon.
(The even-numbered lines are supposed to be indented, but for some reason the blog-machinery doesn't go along with that, try as I might. And the numbers are supposed to be centered over the stanzas.)
A footnote in The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Volume 2), Fifth Edition, p. 512, reports, "Composed in the Lenten aftermath of a spell of feverish dissipation in the Carnival season in Venice, and included in a letter to Thomas Moore, Feb. 28, 1817. Byron wrote, 'I find "the sword wearing out the scabbard," though I have but just turned the corner of twenty-nine.' The poem is based on the refrain of a Scottish song, The Jolly Beggar, 'And we'll gang nae mair a roving/Sae late into the nicht...."
To rove, as Byron is using the word, is literally to wander and figuratively to wander around "partying," of course. The noun "rove," incidentally, refers either to a scab or a piece of metal, but I've never heard or seen "rove" used in this way.
It's interesting that Byron claims to be withdrawing from the party-life and the life of amorous roving not because Lent has arrived but because he is weary. He also seems to think that age 29 is a bit too early to be weary of partying. Some people never cease to go a-roving (and that construction is fascinating: adding "a" to "roving"): Keith Richard, for example, or my distant older cousin, Erik, who was literally the town drunk of my small town. Into his 70s, he drank and "roved" almost every day of his life; of course, alcoholic roving is not a pretty sight.
The third line of the poem has always tended to throw me off, even after innumerable readings. My mind wants to read it as "Though the heart be still" as in "be still my heart"--that is, "Thought heart be quiet," but then of course the line wants to convey the following: "Though the heart is still (or "nonetheless") capable of loving." It's not a flaw; it's part of the poem's charm now, like a favorite little nick in an antique desk.
"[t]he heart must pause to breathe": I like the plain factuality of that, and I like the way the poem at this point recognizes the heart as a biological or anatomical entity, not just the symbol or locus of love. "And Love itself [must] have rest." That's good, too--Love, a force unto itself, requires periods of rest, regardless of which human is experiencing that force.
The last stanza is "counter-carpe-diem." That is, even though humans (especially those under the age of 30) were made to go a-roving, and even though time passes very quickly (hence the advice to "seize the day"), there are limits. We get tired. Even, apparently, at age 29. So carpe the diem all you want, but you're going to have to take a break.
In 1981 I traveled to Venice, from Germany, via Austria, and happened to get there just as Carnivale was starting: fortuitous. Out of that experience came, eventually, a poem, first published in The Washington English Journal, I think, in 1985 (?). My roving wasn't up to Byronic standards, by any means, but I had a good time. Here's the poem:
Venice, Carnivale
Who will you be in Venice
beneath the year’s third moon
when crowds of Carnivale
pour toward you all in greasepaint,
all in masks and capes? Who will
you be in this humanity and alleys
floating on moonlight and sewage?
Laughter from a canal-taxi
skips across painted water,
ricochets off rotting brick.
Your personality hangs like a rusted
iron shutter. Be anyone but yourself
and John Ruskin, Carnivale advises.
Be sewage, puke in the canal, beg,
sleep with cats, eat rats. Be
moonlight, fall in love, swell
like Caruso’s voice. A Danish woman
winks at you from across a restaurant.
An Italian boy lights a firecracker; therefore,
pigeons scuttling your tourist’s boredom
panic and swoop up through your heart.
Be Italian. Close your window
to riotous streets. Return to your tidy
apartment, your statuette of Mary, and
a proper life of grief, lace, and spices. Be
American: gawk and gaudy jazz architecture
of San Marco; order beer and puzzle
at this sinking city (why don’t they fix it?). Be
European, wear that history for an evening.
Work hard at language, gesture, shout, pose,
Strut. Forget your Kansas, blond in corn heat.
Forget about flat American English that naps
on your tongue, then saunters toward a barn.
Be the crowd, be the anonymous mime’s face,
talk another’s conversation, kiss another’s other,
tilt your head back and laugh a lunatic’s
hysteria to Carnivale moon.
from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Robert Burns and the Mouse
Robert Burns (1759-1796) is the poet--and song-writer--of Scotland. He wrote, among other things, "Auld Lang Syne," which I believe translates as Old Time Past; apparently Burns borrowed from other popular songs as he crafted this one. He is also famous for lines that he did not literally write: "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." Steinbeck, of course, borrowed from the line to create a title for one of his most famous books. Because Burns wrote in Scottish dialect, the line(s) actually read as follows: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gan aft a-gley,/An' lea'e us noght but grief an' pain,/For promised joy." If you hear people quote these lines at all any more, they usually simply say, "Best laid plans," and sigh, never even getting as far as mice and men. Attributed to John Lennon (at least in sources I have seen) is a similar sentiment: "Life is what happens while you're busy making plans."
The mice-and-men lines are from the poem, "To a Mouse," which recounts an episode whereby Burns (or someone he knew) was ploughing a field and disrupted, to say the least, the nest of the mouse. In the poem, the persona (we'll call him Burns) speaks directly to the mouse. Burns is sorry about running over and through the nest, and he tells the mouse not to run. The poem is really not as sentimental as one may think. Burns empathizes with the mouse, creature to creature. He understands that, instinctively at least, the mouse saw December coming and built his nest. The ploughman, apparently, saw December coming and decided--what? To plough under dead crops, presumably.
[A detour: the poem has always made me think fondly of the field mice in the Sierra Nevada, where it's so cold in winter that the mice like to appropriate human space--a shed, a garage--use human materials, and build magnificent nests. In our garage, my father had stored an elaborate old-fashioned wood-stove, with a fire-box, a full-sized oven, and two heating-ovens, among other compartments. The mice turned this into one of the biggest mice-condominiums in history, using stuffing from cushions stored in the garage, and eating hard dogfood stored there. They were like the Rockefellers of Sierra Nevad mice. The condominium was discovered only when my father decided to bring the stove into the house and use it as our main source of heat.]
Additionally, Burns empathizes with the work the mouse put into building the nest: "That wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble/Has cost thee mony a weary nibble." Ever seen a mouse, or a pet rat, building a nest? Tremendous work is involved, and not a little craft and improvisation. So Burns is speaking worker to worker here.
Everyone (I exaggerate) remembers the (translated) famous line(s) of this poem--lines from what is actually the penultimate stanza. The last stanza makes the poem even more interesting, however, at least in my opinion:
Still though art blest compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e
On prospects drear!
An' forward though I canna see,
I guess an' fear.
So, the deal is that, for mice and humans, the best-laid plans often go wrong and what one thought of as an avenue to joy turns out to be one of pain. But for the human, things are even worse, according to Burns, because the human can look back and regret mistakes or look back and think, "I did not get off to a good start." The human can also look ahead, and although he or she cannot see clearly, can only guess, he or she can certainly fear, whereas the mouse lives in the present, the way a Zen master would like us to do. I suppose the mouse thinks, "Some creature and thing that are quite large have just come through my world, so I think I'll run," and then the mouse, if it returns to the broken nest, thinks, "Better get to building again." No regrets, no fear of the future, though probably a glance around to see where the man and plough may have gone.
"To A Mouse" was written in 1785.
Good luck with any nest-building and or ploughing (or plowing) that may be in your present or your future. As for the past, . . .: Oh, well.
The mice-and-men lines are from the poem, "To a Mouse," which recounts an episode whereby Burns (or someone he knew) was ploughing a field and disrupted, to say the least, the nest of the mouse. In the poem, the persona (we'll call him Burns) speaks directly to the mouse. Burns is sorry about running over and through the nest, and he tells the mouse not to run. The poem is really not as sentimental as one may think. Burns empathizes with the mouse, creature to creature. He understands that, instinctively at least, the mouse saw December coming and built his nest. The ploughman, apparently, saw December coming and decided--what? To plough under dead crops, presumably.
[A detour: the poem has always made me think fondly of the field mice in the Sierra Nevada, where it's so cold in winter that the mice like to appropriate human space--a shed, a garage--use human materials, and build magnificent nests. In our garage, my father had stored an elaborate old-fashioned wood-stove, with a fire-box, a full-sized oven, and two heating-ovens, among other compartments. The mice turned this into one of the biggest mice-condominiums in history, using stuffing from cushions stored in the garage, and eating hard dogfood stored there. They were like the Rockefellers of Sierra Nevad mice. The condominium was discovered only when my father decided to bring the stove into the house and use it as our main source of heat.]
Additionally, Burns empathizes with the work the mouse put into building the nest: "That wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble/Has cost thee mony a weary nibble." Ever seen a mouse, or a pet rat, building a nest? Tremendous work is involved, and not a little craft and improvisation. So Burns is speaking worker to worker here.
Everyone (I exaggerate) remembers the (translated) famous line(s) of this poem--lines from what is actually the penultimate stanza. The last stanza makes the poem even more interesting, however, at least in my opinion:
Still though art blest compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e
On prospects drear!
An' forward though I canna see,
I guess an' fear.
So, the deal is that, for mice and humans, the best-laid plans often go wrong and what one thought of as an avenue to joy turns out to be one of pain. But for the human, things are even worse, according to Burns, because the human can look back and regret mistakes or look back and think, "I did not get off to a good start." The human can also look ahead, and although he or she cannot see clearly, can only guess, he or she can certainly fear, whereas the mouse lives in the present, the way a Zen master would like us to do. I suppose the mouse thinks, "Some creature and thing that are quite large have just come through my world, so I think I'll run," and then the mouse, if it returns to the broken nest, thinks, "Better get to building again." No regrets, no fear of the future, though probably a glance around to see where the man and plough may have gone.
"To A Mouse" was written in 1785.
Good luck with any nest-building and or ploughing (or plowing) that may be in your present or your future. As for the past, . . .: Oh, well.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, "Infallibility, " Iraq
There is a street in Berlin named now after the scholar Hannah Arendt, who is perhaps best known for her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, subtitled A Study in the Banality of Evil. The street is very close to where remnants of Hitler's bunker lie, under a parking lot.
As an American colleague in Berlin noted, Arendt was an old-fashioned philologist, a lover of knowledge, and the breadth of her learning, depth of her studies, and refinement of her synthesis are almost not believable, especially in The Origins of Totalitarianism, which I've begun to read after being in Berlin, looking at the street sign, and considering other things. She is one of those scholars who seems to have read--and mastered--everything.
In the book, she writes, "Totalitarian movements use socialism and racism by emptying them of their utilitarian content, the interests of class or nation. The form of infallible prediction in which these concepts were presented has become more important than their content. The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error. The assumption of infallibility, moreover, is based not so much on superior intelligence as on the correct interpretation of the essentially reliable forces in history or nature, forces which neither defeat nor ruin nor prove wrong because they are bound to assert themselves in the long run" (p. 348-349 of the HBJ new paperback edition, 1973).
The passage was meant, of course, to apply directly to Hitler, for example. But I think it also pertains to Bush and Cheney insofar as they have taken a stand of infallibility. When, in the 2004 campaign, Bush was asked about mistakes he made, he said he couldn't think of any, and he wasn't trying to be funny, even though he may have giggled nervously, as he tends to do. The invasion of Iraq and its consequences, a debacle, are still framed (by Bush, et al.) as an infallible strategy that has some tactical problems, even as soldiers on the ground in Iraq write openly about the failed strategy, not failed tactics. Bush also has positioned himself as the correct interpreter of historical forces. Thus we have, not a war on a particular nation (that's what war really is, as Gore Vidal notes), but a war on an abstract noun, "terrorism," and thus the war in Iraq is open-ended (as far as Bush is concerned) because although Iraq was conquered in conventional military terms, "terrorism" is a constant, requiring constant war, meaning the occupation of Iraq must, by definition, be indefinite. That appears to be the underlying logic, as exposed by innumerable critics of the war (conservatives included), and with some help from Arendt and Vidal. It's important to note that Bush's "authority" is based not on "superior intelligence" (Arendt's term) but on a kind of gut-level reading of historical forces. And if the evidence doesn't support the reading of historical forces, then you send Colin Powell to the U.N. with fake evidence. The gut-level reading seemed extremely appealing to Americans right after 9-11. Now, perhaps, not so much--if the polls are reliable. And of course they're not. I actually expect Jeb Bush to be the next president. As Chuck Berry once sang, "C'est la vie, say the old folk, it goes to show you never can tell."
It was interesting to watch John Stewart interview Cheney's approved biographer on The Daily Show. Stewart ran the video of Cheney saying, in 1994, that to invade Iraq would be disastrous because the nation would fall to pieces and indeed, "pieces would fly off." Stewart asked the biographer a) what changed since 1994, b) why didn't Cheney repeat this wisdom right before the invasion, and c) why don't Cheney and Bush admit they made a mistake, and d) why do Bush, Cheney, and Rove always paint critics as traitorous or soft on terror? The basic answer was, "Everything changed after 9-11." "But Iraq didn't change," Stewart countered, meaning its composition (Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd, influence of Iran, perceptions of the U.S., how Iraq was invented by the Brits in the first place) made invasion a stupid idea before and after 9-11. "Yeah, but after 9-11, everything changed," the guy repeated, "and Cheney still thinks the invasion is a good idea" (I am paraphrasing, but not mis-representing).
Vague "historical forces" ("everything changed"); infallibility. The answer to "d" (why to they demonize critics?), of course, is that demonizing critics has worked so far for Bush, Cheney, and the recently retired Rove, so why would they change strategies? It didn't quite work in the 2006 election, but so what? Bush wasn't up for re-election, and the Democratic Congress is completely intimidated, so intimidated that they approved warrantless wire-tapping. The Democrats cower, dogs whipped by propaganda.
I think elements of the Patriot Act, the warrantless wire-tapping, and the exquisitely refined propaganda of Rove, et al., have totalitarian qualities. Watching FOX News, Bush's PR arm, is like watching something inspired by 1984, constant self-parody that is taken seriously (non-parody parody), whereas watching CNN or NBC is merely to watch fluff, lazy reporting, trivialization--with some exceptions. FOX abets the propaganda. CNN and NBC mostly nap while the propaganda goes to work. Sleepy time with Wolf Blitzer, whom Cheney makes quake.
There seem to be more totalitarian elements in Bush's presidency than in any presidency I've known in my lifetime, though certainly every presidency has had some of those elements (Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court; we know what Nixon did when he couldn't resist his own worst instincts; and Reagan was a masterful mass-leader--and note that even when forced to speak on TV about Iran-Contra, he remained "infallible" in the sense that he claimed he didn't remember things the way the evidence suggested things happened; he may actually have been telling the truth, given the condition of his brain at the time, early stage of Alzheimer's).
But really the thesis of this particular blog-miscellany is simply this: I highly recommend Arendt's book on totalitarianism, regardless of whether you're inclined to see the degree to which the book might apply to the current executive branch of the United States' government. Arendt is wise.
As an American colleague in Berlin noted, Arendt was an old-fashioned philologist, a lover of knowledge, and the breadth of her learning, depth of her studies, and refinement of her synthesis are almost not believable, especially in The Origins of Totalitarianism, which I've begun to read after being in Berlin, looking at the street sign, and considering other things. She is one of those scholars who seems to have read--and mastered--everything.
In the book, she writes, "Totalitarian movements use socialism and racism by emptying them of their utilitarian content, the interests of class or nation. The form of infallible prediction in which these concepts were presented has become more important than their content. The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error. The assumption of infallibility, moreover, is based not so much on superior intelligence as on the correct interpretation of the essentially reliable forces in history or nature, forces which neither defeat nor ruin nor prove wrong because they are bound to assert themselves in the long run" (p. 348-349 of the HBJ new paperback edition, 1973).
The passage was meant, of course, to apply directly to Hitler, for example. But I think it also pertains to Bush and Cheney insofar as they have taken a stand of infallibility. When, in the 2004 campaign, Bush was asked about mistakes he made, he said he couldn't think of any, and he wasn't trying to be funny, even though he may have giggled nervously, as he tends to do. The invasion of Iraq and its consequences, a debacle, are still framed (by Bush, et al.) as an infallible strategy that has some tactical problems, even as soldiers on the ground in Iraq write openly about the failed strategy, not failed tactics. Bush also has positioned himself as the correct interpreter of historical forces. Thus we have, not a war on a particular nation (that's what war really is, as Gore Vidal notes), but a war on an abstract noun, "terrorism," and thus the war in Iraq is open-ended (as far as Bush is concerned) because although Iraq was conquered in conventional military terms, "terrorism" is a constant, requiring constant war, meaning the occupation of Iraq must, by definition, be indefinite. That appears to be the underlying logic, as exposed by innumerable critics of the war (conservatives included), and with some help from Arendt and Vidal. It's important to note that Bush's "authority" is based not on "superior intelligence" (Arendt's term) but on a kind of gut-level reading of historical forces. And if the evidence doesn't support the reading of historical forces, then you send Colin Powell to the U.N. with fake evidence. The gut-level reading seemed extremely appealing to Americans right after 9-11. Now, perhaps, not so much--if the polls are reliable. And of course they're not. I actually expect Jeb Bush to be the next president. As Chuck Berry once sang, "C'est la vie, say the old folk, it goes to show you never can tell."
It was interesting to watch John Stewart interview Cheney's approved biographer on The Daily Show. Stewart ran the video of Cheney saying, in 1994, that to invade Iraq would be disastrous because the nation would fall to pieces and indeed, "pieces would fly off." Stewart asked the biographer a) what changed since 1994, b) why didn't Cheney repeat this wisdom right before the invasion, and c) why don't Cheney and Bush admit they made a mistake, and d) why do Bush, Cheney, and Rove always paint critics as traitorous or soft on terror? The basic answer was, "Everything changed after 9-11." "But Iraq didn't change," Stewart countered, meaning its composition (Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd, influence of Iran, perceptions of the U.S., how Iraq was invented by the Brits in the first place) made invasion a stupid idea before and after 9-11. "Yeah, but after 9-11, everything changed," the guy repeated, "and Cheney still thinks the invasion is a good idea" (I am paraphrasing, but not mis-representing).
Vague "historical forces" ("everything changed"); infallibility. The answer to "d" (why to they demonize critics?), of course, is that demonizing critics has worked so far for Bush, Cheney, and the recently retired Rove, so why would they change strategies? It didn't quite work in the 2006 election, but so what? Bush wasn't up for re-election, and the Democratic Congress is completely intimidated, so intimidated that they approved warrantless wire-tapping. The Democrats cower, dogs whipped by propaganda.
I think elements of the Patriot Act, the warrantless wire-tapping, and the exquisitely refined propaganda of Rove, et al., have totalitarian qualities. Watching FOX News, Bush's PR arm, is like watching something inspired by 1984, constant self-parody that is taken seriously (non-parody parody), whereas watching CNN or NBC is merely to watch fluff, lazy reporting, trivialization--with some exceptions. FOX abets the propaganda. CNN and NBC mostly nap while the propaganda goes to work. Sleepy time with Wolf Blitzer, whom Cheney makes quake.
There seem to be more totalitarian elements in Bush's presidency than in any presidency I've known in my lifetime, though certainly every presidency has had some of those elements (Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court; we know what Nixon did when he couldn't resist his own worst instincts; and Reagan was a masterful mass-leader--and note that even when forced to speak on TV about Iran-Contra, he remained "infallible" in the sense that he claimed he didn't remember things the way the evidence suggested things happened; he may actually have been telling the truth, given the condition of his brain at the time, early stage of Alzheimer's).
But really the thesis of this particular blog-miscellany is simply this: I highly recommend Arendt's book on totalitarianism, regardless of whether you're inclined to see the degree to which the book might apply to the current executive branch of the United States' government. Arendt is wise.
Bear and Ipod
My family just gave me an Ipod, which is a little wafer that stores songs, etc. As technology gets smaller and smaller, I and my hands seem to get larger. Microsoft and Apple are Lilliput, and I feel like Gulliver. Actually I feel more like a bear who's been handed a little wafer with earphones attached to it. The bear knows the thing's not edible, so he (in this case) proceeds to try to make the thing work. Maybe some meditation-music, he thinks, for the hibernation. If only, he thinks, my paw weren't so large and the wafer so small. And the earphones! Were they built for a mouse?
Today a colleague mentioned Delmore Schwartz's poem about the bear, a poem I love. I "identify" with it, as we used to say. I also like the way it flips anthropomorphism around, so that a human is framed in terms of an animal, but in a very clever way. Here is the poem (again, by Delmore Schwartz, born in 1913, as was Karl Shapiro, but Schwartz died much too early, in 1966):
Copyright reserved.
Today a colleague mentioned Delmore Schwartz's poem about the bear, a poem I love. I "identify" with it, as we used to say. I also like the way it flips anthropomorphism around, so that a human is framed in terms of an animal, but in a very clever way. Here is the poem (again, by Delmore Schwartz, born in 1913, as was Karl Shapiro, but Schwartz died much too early, in 1966):
|
"the withness of the body" --Whitehead |
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Berlin
Here is a highly poetic prose-excerpt from Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, the second part of his book, The Berlin Stories, which I read again during a visit to Berlin last week:
"From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades, dirty paster frontages embossed with scrollwork and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle-class." (Copyright 1935 by Isherwood, published in 1945 by New Directions, and still in print; p. 1 of Part Two).
Berlin has become an ultra-post-Modern city, not in the way Tokyo is, but in an historical sense, for history seems to coalesce excessively and surrealistically in Berlin. It is a monumental city, a "crammed monumental safe," with massive public art, domes, cathedrals, and churches, but also with the enormous Nazi-era buildings, and now with the gleaming new 21st century towers of global capitalism, especially in the Potzdamer Platz. Chiefly rubble in 1945, Berlin has been painstakingly reconstructed--the pieces of cathedrals and other famous buildings glued back together, with relentless German determination and unyielding expertise. The building that used to house the East German parliament is at this moment being dismantled, its steel skeleton exposed. It had erased a palace. Now it will be erased, and the palace will be reconstructed. History is a contact-sport in Berlin. The horses on top of the Brandenburg Gate were recast from the old mold, discovered in a basement somewhere. A parody of capitalism, an old-fashioned Coca Cola sign sits atop a building in the former East Berlin, and of course there are several chain-hotels (Hilton, Ritz-Carlton), MacDonalds, and Starbucks.
The large statue of Marx and Lenin remains in the Alexanderplatz, as does the goofy fountain--and the radio tower, which, like the Space Needle in Seattle, is so ridiculous that it is appealing. And at Humboldt University, the unabashed university-motto is taken from Marx--the quotation about philosophers needing not just to interpret the world but to remake it. If Berlin could speak, it might say, "Enough, already, of the remaking. I need a breather."
As in Isherwood's paragraph, bankruptcy remains a problem. Berlin is 62 billion euros in debt. It is in more debt than the state of California.
But as always, Berlin stubbornly seems to belong to Berlin, to those who inhabit it at the moment. Astoundingly, Hitler and the Nazis, the American air force, Russian tanks and troops, and the Cold War couldn't obliterate it. Its perpetual decadence does not lead to decay but seems to provide resilience, life. Everyone, it seems, has had designs on Berlin, and so it is awfully designed but charmingly awkward and ugly. Isherwood captures this. Everything and nothing seems to have changed since he was writing, over 70 years ago.
The first part of The Berlin Stories, The Last of Mr. Norris, is (in my trivial opinion), one of the great short novels in English, on a par with Heart of Darkness. It is irresistibly readable.
My wife and I visited the Nollendorfplatz, near where Isherwood lived and set part of his narratives. It remains a so-called "gay and lesbian district," and it still seems somewhat small, shabby, and endearing, as it seems to have been in Isherwood's time. Chiefly we just wanted to go there, but we were also looking for a place to eat. However, it's dominated by cafes and bars that are long on coffee and booze but short on food (even good cafe food), so we chose to backtrack a few U-bahn stops to the Potzdamerplatz.
On a separate trip to the Potzdamerplatz, on Altepotsdam Strasse, we found a wine shop, drank some Rheingau wine, and had a platter of cheese. German wine is a little bit of heaven, and here's a ceremonial toast to Isherwood, and here's wishing good luck to Berlin and its 21st century inhabitants.
"From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades, dirty paster frontages embossed with scrollwork and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle-class." (Copyright 1935 by Isherwood, published in 1945 by New Directions, and still in print; p. 1 of Part Two).
Berlin has become an ultra-post-Modern city, not in the way Tokyo is, but in an historical sense, for history seems to coalesce excessively and surrealistically in Berlin. It is a monumental city, a "crammed monumental safe," with massive public art, domes, cathedrals, and churches, but also with the enormous Nazi-era buildings, and now with the gleaming new 21st century towers of global capitalism, especially in the Potzdamer Platz. Chiefly rubble in 1945, Berlin has been painstakingly reconstructed--the pieces of cathedrals and other famous buildings glued back together, with relentless German determination and unyielding expertise. The building that used to house the East German parliament is at this moment being dismantled, its steel skeleton exposed. It had erased a palace. Now it will be erased, and the palace will be reconstructed. History is a contact-sport in Berlin. The horses on top of the Brandenburg Gate were recast from the old mold, discovered in a basement somewhere. A parody of capitalism, an old-fashioned Coca Cola sign sits atop a building in the former East Berlin, and of course there are several chain-hotels (Hilton, Ritz-Carlton), MacDonalds, and Starbucks.
The large statue of Marx and Lenin remains in the Alexanderplatz, as does the goofy fountain--and the radio tower, which, like the Space Needle in Seattle, is so ridiculous that it is appealing. And at Humboldt University, the unabashed university-motto is taken from Marx--the quotation about philosophers needing not just to interpret the world but to remake it. If Berlin could speak, it might say, "Enough, already, of the remaking. I need a breather."
As in Isherwood's paragraph, bankruptcy remains a problem. Berlin is 62 billion euros in debt. It is in more debt than the state of California.
But as always, Berlin stubbornly seems to belong to Berlin, to those who inhabit it at the moment. Astoundingly, Hitler and the Nazis, the American air force, Russian tanks and troops, and the Cold War couldn't obliterate it. Its perpetual decadence does not lead to decay but seems to provide resilience, life. Everyone, it seems, has had designs on Berlin, and so it is awfully designed but charmingly awkward and ugly. Isherwood captures this. Everything and nothing seems to have changed since he was writing, over 70 years ago.
The first part of The Berlin Stories, The Last of Mr. Norris, is (in my trivial opinion), one of the great short novels in English, on a par with Heart of Darkness. It is irresistibly readable.
My wife and I visited the Nollendorfplatz, near where Isherwood lived and set part of his narratives. It remains a so-called "gay and lesbian district," and it still seems somewhat small, shabby, and endearing, as it seems to have been in Isherwood's time. Chiefly we just wanted to go there, but we were also looking for a place to eat. However, it's dominated by cafes and bars that are long on coffee and booze but short on food (even good cafe food), so we chose to backtrack a few U-bahn stops to the Potzdamerplatz.
On a separate trip to the Potzdamerplatz, on Altepotsdam Strasse, we found a wine shop, drank some Rheingau wine, and had a platter of cheese. German wine is a little bit of heaven, and here's a ceremonial toast to Isherwood, and here's wishing good luck to Berlin and its 21st century inhabitants.
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