Category Archives: Literature

William Carlos Williams, “The Farmer”

25 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Genesis, Literature, Uncategorized

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29432557064_0f6e39ae2a_6k

(Photo by Ian Livesey)

The farmer deep in thought

is pacing through the rain

among his black fields, with

hands in pockets,

in his head

the harvest already planted.

A cold wind ruffles the water

among the browned weeds.

On all sides

the world rolls coldly away:

black orchards

darkened by the March clouds-

leaving room for thought.

Down past the brushwood

bristling by

the rainsluiced wagonroad

looms the artist figure of

the farmer – composing

antagonist

 

 

There are so many things wonderful about this poem. In no systematic form are some observations:

The portrait: The portrait is remarkably well-drawn. Notice the farmer is shown in silhouette: we see his posture, but we have no description of his personal features. We don’t know the color of his clothes, his eyes, his hair, et cetera.

But the world has colors: browned weeds, black orchards, darkened.

We see the world around the farmer in fine details the wind ruffles the water, there are March clouds, the road is “rainsluiced”. But there are other aspects which are missing from the description.

The parties: The poem ends with the word “antagonist”. The farmer is plotting his attack upon this deranged world by putting it in order and planting his harvest. The farmer is also an artist, who has a vision of beauty which he is going to wrought in the world.

The world is cold, forbidding and filled with death: even the orchards are “black”. The world is one of chaos, and the farmer is going to overcome the chaos and make a thing of use and order.

There is an interesting aside, “the world rolls by … leaving room for thought”. To the farmer, the chaos is an opportunity for order. He sees his harvest and nothing has yet been planted.

The combination of artist and antagonist may be an echo of Genesis 1. The world having come into existence is still without order, “The world was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” But God overcome the disorder as both antagonist and artist. The farmer here does the same thing.

In fact, God plants a garden and places the first human beings in that garden. The farmer here is planning on planting a garden and obtaining a harvest himself.

I cannot say that Williams is explicitly thinking of Genesis here. There are no unambiguous allusions to the English text of Genesis. But the form is here.

So the question: is it proper to make a connection or consider the comparison where the author has not necessarily forced the connection between the two?  Yes.

Here are some reasons: First, a comparison between any two things has the potential for providing information about both. A comparison may lead one to realize a connection which was not previously apparent. Whenever come to some-thing or some-one, we are making comparisons with other similar things or ones we already know. We understand the thing we are looking at by comparing it to our previous knowledge.

Thus, making a purposeful comparison may help us to see something which was already there but not previously noticed.

Second, there are certain forms of thought which seem to be inherent in human beings. The Golden Bough is an mountain of cultural comparisons of forms from many cultures and times. There are certain ideas which just seem to make sense to us people.

That store of common forms is even greater within a culture. The ideas of Genesis would likely be familiar to Williams merely by living in his world at that time. Biblical references would be commonplace. For example, in Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain makes a memorable joke based upon Tom’s lack of Biblical knowledge, but Twain’s counting on the reader knowing the facts immediately and without explanation.

There are myriad of details about the poem which deserves consider, such as three prepositional phrases built around “in” at the beginning of the poem: the farmer is in thought, his hands are in his pocket, his harvest is in his head.

Compare that to his pacing in his black fields – where he is thinking and the black orchards leave room for thought.

The structure of the poem is a marvel.

A final observation: Williams is an artist who is composing a portrait of the farmer. The farmer is an artist who is composing a portrait of a harvest.  Williams takes all of the unorganized, but very present details of the scene (there is a man walking on a blustery March day) and turns this into ordered art.

The Subalterns

11 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Literature, Thomas Hardy

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I

“Poor wanderer,” said the leaden sky,
“I fain would lighten thee,
But there be laws in force on high
Which say it must not be.”


II

– “I would not freeze thee, shorn one,” cried
The North, “knew I but how
To warm my breath, to slack my stride;
But I am ruled as thou.”


III

– “To-morrow I attack thee, wight,”
Said Sickness. “Yet I swear
I bear thy little ark no spite,
But am bid enter there.“


IV


V

– “Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say;
“I did not will a grave
Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
But I, too, am a slave!”

VI

We smiled upon each other then,
And life to me wore less
That fell contour it wore ere when
They owned their passiveness.

Thomas Hardy

This poem is a compliment to Hap, the poem which sorrows for the meaninglessness of pain in a world without even a spiteful god.

Here there is a rule, but no meaning. Death and pain are built into the fabric of things; the come by compulsion.

He even seems to make a friend of pain and death, “We smiled on each other then”. What a curious line. I believe that line makes the poem neither cynical nor cute. There is something Stoic about a smile upon death (because death cannot help it). But unlike the Stoics I don’t know that Hardy held to any universal Reason.

What then is the rule or force from “on high”? The crushing nature of the world is unavoidable but not meaningful.

A matter which might make for a n interesting comparison in this point Hardy and the younger American H.P. Lovecraft saw a terror in the world which sprang from something ancient.

One made the terror more superhuman and pre-human in source. The other lodged pain in bones of civilization.

But neither could make sense of the horror of this world. Yet, they could sketch its contour with rare skill.

The Right Way to Shake Off a Viper.6 How We May Profit by Another’s Slander

25 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Cotton Mather, Plutarch, Uncategorized

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For I may not put you in mind that by being brought thus to flee the Divine Righteousness, you come to a most experimental sight of the Divine Faithfulness in what has befallen you.

One that had been very defamed could say. Gen. 50.20 God meant it unto good.[1] If you get so much good by your defamations as to discern the righteousness of God in them and obtain, what is ill in you to be forgiven and amended, it is plain that God has meant it for good. You may go on with praises and wonders and say, Lord, In faithfulness thou has afflicted me.[2]

It will most certainly be so, if you now set yourselves to improve in piety by means of defamations which are the by the impious hurled at you. O Man of God, you may be awakened unto the doing of much good by being evil spoken of. We say very truly, Malice is a good informer tho’ it be a bad judge.[3] You may by malicious defamations be informed of those points in your conduct which may need a better guard upon them. You may by being reproached be advised of those things which out to be reformed.[4]

It contributed mightily to the advancement of temperance in the blessed Monica that one reproachfully called her a “wine-bibber”.[5] It would be wisely done of you under defamations to search and try your ways. Particularly whether, tho’ what you enemies have said of you be false, yet the eyes of Holy God have not seen in you some faults akin to that which has been charged upon you. If find it so, Oh! Mourn for it and turn to God.

This is the language of heaven, in the bad language of the evil tongue in the fire spit at you by a tongue set on fire by hell.[6] At least you may find this, that you should grow more eminent in those graces and in those duties which are most contrary to the charges of your enemies upon you. They, ‘tis true, abuse you and yet at the same time they exhort you, they excite you.

God by them calls upon you: My child, you are not yet come to a due eminency in those good things which are just contrary, most contrary to the ill things that are spoke of you. Oh! Be quickened unto an eminency in all goodness by the evil spoken of you.

A great man of Macedonia professed himself much obliged unto the chief men of Athens that by their abuses they taught him how to speak and how to live better than he should have done without such monitors.

Perhaps you may have enemies who being sensible that you have some friends who think well of you are so uneasy at it and so resolved upon rendering you unserviceable, that they will make venomous insinuations of your being a hypocrite; that your all your profession, all your appearance, all the flame of your zeal to do good is but hypocrisy. A wondrous venom! Yet you have heard of the patience of Job.[7] I am verily persuaded the end of the Lord [the purpose of the Lord} is to awaken you to a more thorough trial of your own sincerity; and unto a more hearty doing of those things which will be infallible demonstrations of your own sincerity.

I have read or heard of one who never arrived unto the joyful assurance of his own uprightness until an abusive neighbor had called him a hypocrite. The faithfulness of the Lord our Healer makes the sickly doses of doses of defamation (tho’ they may seem sometimes unto us pretty churlish ones and a little strong of the metal[8]) operate thus towards the healing of our distempers. Hereby our iniquity is pursed and all the fruit is to take away our sins. The tongue that is a sharp sword serves only as in the well-known story to open up and relieve an ulcer of dangerous corruption within us.

Workers of iniquity[9] may for a while prevail against you; must injustice and injury may be done [to] you in many defamations uttered by workers of iniquity. But if unrighteous men prevail in their unrighteous works and words against you ’tis that your transgressions may be more purged away. See this, and say, O Lord, Great is thy Faithfulness!

Footnotes:

[1] The quotation comes from the words of Joseph, who had been kidnapped by his brother and then sold as a slave. Joseph ended up in Egypt, where through a series of remarkable circumstances, became the second-in-command overseeing famine relief. In position, Joseph not only saved the Egyptian people from starvation, but he ended up rescuing his own family. After Joseph reveals himself to his family, he brings them to live with him. Following the death of their father, his brothers fear that Joseph will take revenge upon them:

Genesis 50:15–20 (ESV)

 15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” 16 So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: 17 ‘Say to Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.” ’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18 His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” 19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? 20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

[2] Psalm 119:75 (AV)

75 I know, O LORD, that thy judgments are right,

and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.

[3]  Malice notices all of the faults in an enemy. As Plutarch explains of the enemy:

As much as possibly he can, he enquires what we have done, and labors to dive into the most hidden counsels of our minds. Nay, our friends do often escape our notice, either when they die or are sick, because we are careless and neglect them; but we are apt to examine and pry curiously almost into the very dreams of our enemies.

Now our enemy (to gratify his ill-will towards us) doth acquaint himself with the infirmities both of our bodies and mind, with the debts we have contracted, and with all the differences that arise in our families, all which he knows as well, if not better, than ourselves. He sticks fast to our faults, and chiefly makes his invidious remarks upon them.

….So our enemies catch at our failings, and then they spread them abroad by uncharitable and ill-natured reports.

Plutarch, Plutarch’s Morals., ed. Goodwin, vol. 1, “How a man may receive profit and reward from his enemies” (Medford, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874), 283–284. However, the enemy’s watchfulness does not prove the enemies wisdom. In fact the enemy is like to completely misjudge all things for the worse.

[4]

Hence we are taught this useful lesson for the direction and management of our conversations in the world, that we be circumspect and wary in every thing we speak or do, as if our enemy always stood at our elbow and overlooked every action. Hence we learn to lead blameless and inoffensive lives. This will beget in us vehement desires and earnest endeavors of restraining disorderly passions. This will fill our minds with good thoughts and meditations, and with strong resolutions to proceed in a virtuous and harmless course of life.

Plutarch, Plutarch’s Morals., ed. Goodwin, vol. 1 (Medford, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1874), 284.

[5] Monica was Augustine’s mother.

[6] James 3:6 (AV)

6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

[7] James 5:11 (AV)

11 Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.

[8] Too strong for our taste.

[9] Job 31:3 (AV)

Is not destruction to the wicked? and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity?

Some Notes What a Narrative “Means” (with Help From Euripides)

15 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Hermeneutics, Literature, Uncategorized

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Hecuba and Polyxena by Merry-Joseph Blondell

We can understand what a work of nonfiction “means”: the words in the text refer to some objective (typically) event in the physical world. A book on President Grant refers back to the life of President Grant.

When it comes to non-fiction, the question of “meaning” because more difficult: A play or poem or story does not express “meaning” in the same manner. Sometimes the “meaning” of a text is merely the entertainment the text provides.

Another type of “meaning” comes from a text which seeks to bring the reader to a new understanding of the world. There are always exceptions, but typically “bad” writing tells the reader plainly what to think. Most writers who attempt this work may try to “show and not tell” the reader what to think will handle it poorly.

But when a towering master performs this work it is a thing of beauty.  The effectiveness of the meaning comes from its ability to speak and persuade. Here is an example of brilliance in Euripides’ play Hecuba.

It would be easy to get lost in the names, so I’ll do my best to be clear.

The first thing you must know, is that the original audience for Euripides play were Greeks. The play itself concern the exploits of the great heroes and the great war of Greek of imagination: In the dim past the Greeks came to war against City of Troy as revenge for taking Helen from a Greek king. (How and why this took place is another story.)

You need to know that this story would be the equivalent of the Revolution and the Civil War and the World Wars all rolled into one. The men in this story are more than just George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; they are heroes, mythic figures, nearly divine.

The story Hecuba begins after the Greeks have sacked Troy. The king of Troy had sent his son to another kingdom with a treasure to keep him safe should Troy fall. Yet when the king of Thrace heard that Troy fell, he murdered his friend’s son to take the gold and treasure. The play beings with the ghost of the son telling what had happened to him, washed up on the shore, unburied (a horror to the Greeks).

Hecuba was the queen of Troy, now reduced to slavery is the moral and emotional center of the story. The audience hears from her what it is to be reduced and enslaved and in fear for her family. The natural sympathy of the story is thus skillfully built-up throw the eyes of the enemy in the greatest war in Greek history.

The tension increases when the ghost of Achilles appears above his tomb and demands the sacrifice of Hebuca’s daughter, the princess of Troy, Polyxena. It would be hard to overstate the greatness of Achilles in Greek imagination: Alexandra the Great thought himself in some way the second Achilles.

Thus, their greatest hero demanded the murder of an enslaved princess.

The message that Polyxena would be killed was brought to Hecuba by Odysseus. Again the space for Odysseus is difficult to explain. He is the hero of the second-half of the Greek “Bible” (if you will), the Odyssey. He is an arch-type of all Western Culture.

The tension is raised here, because Hecuba had spared Odysseus’s life during the time of the war. He is depicted as a groveling, dishonest, manipulative man who said anything just to stay alive. As he puts it, “Word-words full many I  found to escape death.”

It is this groveling, ungrateful wretch who is the hero of the Greeks seeking the murder of a young woman to appease the ghost of an even greater hero.

As we hear this scene, it comes to us through the perspective of Hecuba: the woman who home has been destroyed by an invading army, who family has been destroyed now sees a liar come to drag her daughter off to murder.

At this point, Euripides has made the enemies of Greek imagination sympathetic, and the heroes of Greek thought wretched and vicious.

The punch-line of this scene comes when Odysseus calls Hecuba a “Barbarian” (the height of Greek insults), because she is unwilling to pay homage to the dead.

Upon this insult, the Chorus, who are the moral conscience of the play respond, “Woe What a curse is thralldom’s nature.” Hecuba and Polyxena are “enduring wrong” and are “overborne” by the “strong constraint” of their captors.

Euripides didn’t say in blunt terms, destroying kingdoms, stealing women and sacrificing captives to barbaric.

Rather, by giving voice to the pain and fear of the “enemy” and showing the callous barbarism of the “heroes” he more effectively overturns a cheap chauvinism in his audience.

The “meaning” of the text is not some bare proposition (killing other human beings is generally bad).  Rather, the meaning is reversal of expectation the shock of heroes failing, the sorrow for the enemy. The meaning of the story is the transformation of perspective. 

One could repeat a proposition and even understand it’s cognitive content without being transformed. But cry for the enemy and feel shock for the hero is different than the bare proposition.  One can know and not be changed; but that would not be the “meaning” of this play. The meaning is the movement of the human heart.

 

Schopenhauer on Happiness 3b (Mutability, Poem by Shelley)

21 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Happiness, Literature, Philosophy, Uncategorized

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Contemporary with Schopenhauer is the English Romantic Poet Percy Shelley.

I.

The flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow dies;

All that we wish to stay

Tempts and then flies.

What is this world’s delight?

Lightning that mocks the night,

Brief even as bright.

 

This first stanza comes closet to Schopenhauer’s pessimism. The flower “dies”. Those things we desire “tempt” and then they “fly”. He speaks of the world as purposefully causing this pain. Delight in this world “mocks” and has as much permanence as lightning at night.

 

But there is a hint here of something else: The flower “smiles”. That temptation is of a “delight”. Lightning may mock, but it is bright.

 

The final line “brief even as bright”.

 

II.

Virtue, how frail it is!

Friendship how rare!

Love, how it sells poor bliss

For proud despair!

But we, though soon they fall,

Survive their joy, and all

Which ours we call.

 

He moves from the physical to the moral world. Virtue is “frail”. Friendship is “rare”. Love turns to “despair”. Again, there is another side to these things: Virtue and friendship are good things, hence, the trouble of their loss. Love entails “bliss”. And these things all pertain to “joy”. They are lost, but they are good.

 

III.

Whilst skies are blue and bright,

Whilst flowers are gay,

Whilst eyes that change ere night

Make glad the day;

Whilst yet the calm hours creep,

Dream thou—and from thy sleep

Then wake to weep.

 

At this point, Shelley offers a very different take than Schopenhauer. The philosopher will caution against any joy or good; he will seek no bliss, no delight. He will protect himself from loss by cutting off the elation and thus avoiding the loss.

 

Shelley offers a different solution: to enjoy these things now. He marks the time in a series of three lines “whilst”:

 

Whilst skies are blue and bright,

Whilst flowers are gay,

Whilst eyes that change ere night

 

While these good things last, do not reject them like (as Schopenhauer counsels), rather:

 

Make glad the day;

 

This is an interesting line, because until now the joys have been received. But here he gives counsel: you actively make the day glad, you drink in this joy.

 

He then turns to a resolution:

 

Whilst yet the calm hours creep,

Dream thou

 

Drink in this joy, but know that this is a “dream”. It is a joy which will not last. But even that passion is not to be lost:

 

and from thy sleep

Then wake to weep.

 

This in the Romantic vein of drinking in all passion. In the Prelude, Wordsworth refers to the poet

 

Crazed

By love and feeling, and internal though

Protracted among endless solitudes (V, 145-147)

 

Both Shelley and Shakespeare have looked directly into change and loss. But they provide a model of using the loss as the basis for passionately holding onto what will last.

Arthur Schopenhauer on happiness.2

16 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Happiness, Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, Uncategorized

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Schopenhauer explains the heart of his philosophy is to “disown” life and this renunciation is the ultimate basis for his instruction on happiness:

He who has taken to heart the teaching of my philosophy–who knows, therefore, that our whole existence is something which had better not have been, and that to disown and disclaim it is the highest wisdom–he will have no great expectations from anything or any condition in life: he will spend passion upon nothing in the world, nor lament over-much if he fails in any of his undertakings.

There are various ways to understand Schopenhauer at this point. He admittedly derived a great deal of this his thinking on this point from Eastern religion, particularly Buddhism.  I wish to be careful here, because my knowledge of Buddhism and Hinduism is limited. However, a few citations may help explicate some of the background on his instruction in happiness at this point. For those who would like to take a dive into his relationship to Buddhism, here is an essay from  Peter Abelsen, Philosophy East&West Volume 43, Number 2, April 1993.  255-278, entitled, “Schopenhauer and Buddhism” http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Articles/Schopenhauer%20and%20Buddhism_PEW_Abelsen_1993.pdf

Here are some quick citations which provide a quick background to the topic:

With the self unattached to the external contacts he discovers happiness in the Self; with the self engaged in the meditation of Brahman he attains to the endless happiness. Bhagavad-Gita 5.21

Kesava Kasmiri’s Commentary on this verse states:

If a person is inclined to attachment to sensual pleasures they will never have the opportunity to experience the transcendental bliss of the realisation of the  Brahman or the spiritual substratum pervading all existence. But a question may be raised what happiness can a person derive from life if they have introverted their senses and are averted to sense objects. Lord Krishna states the compound words  sukham-aksayam meaning unlimited happiness is what such persons attains for with disconnection to the senses and objects of the senses a natural detachment arises which frees one from worldly desires allowing one to focus within on the eternal atma or eternal soul where one tastes boundless joy and experiences unlimited bliss. In the moksadharma section of the Mahabharata it states that: The pleasures of the senses in this world and the joys of heavenly pleasures cannot be compared to even 1/16th part of the pleasure one derives from renouncing the desire for material sense gratification. This is the essential component that paves the way for perceiving the Brahman or spiritual substratum pervading all existence, atma tattva or realisation of the soul and moksa or liberation from the material existence and cognition of the ultimate truth of the Supreme Being.

The concept of renunciation is central to Buddhism. Schopenhauer’s connection between happiness and renunciation is articulated within Buddhism as for instance in this essay, “Renunciation and Happiness”:

When we understand this, we can start to glimpse that renunciation is not a matter of doing something or having to create something, or getting rid of some­thing or exterminating something in life. Rather it is moving towards non-conten­tion, a sense of rest and relaxation—not having constantly to try and manipulate and control and evade and maneuver any more. We are able to open in a fear­less way and relax into the experience of the moment, whatever its quality may be. In opening to receive life, we still engage in the conventional level of reality—the social level of moral values, indentities, mother and father, livelihood and mort­gages. If we grasp these things and ex­pect complete fulfillment from them, we will always be disappointed. But if we see our life as an opportunity to under­stand Dhamma—the way things are—that is renunciation. This letting go is very freeing. Whatever comes to us is Dhamma, and there is a joy in being in contact with Truth, whatever its particu­lar flavor.

Renunciation can sound like passiv­ity, a “door mat” philosophy, but actu­ally it is the opposite. True response-abil­ity—the ability to respond wisely and compassionately to life—naturally arises in the non-attached mind. There can be both activity and letting go.

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/renunciation-the-high-happiness/ I would be curious to know whether the precise concept of “happiness” was connected to the concept of renunciation prior to extensive Western contacts. Schopenhauer obviously is drawing a connection between renunciation and happiness. What I do not know is whether Schopenhauer is first in tying the two concepts together. Certainly there is a connection between tranquility and renunciation which pre-exists Western interaction; but whether this tranquility and “happiness” was drawn I simply do not know.

John Keats, Analysis, When I Have Fear that I may Cease to be

23 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in Literature, Uncategorized

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WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

Before high piled books, in charact’ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,         5

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

That I shall never look upon thee more,               10

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

 

This is a Shakespearian sonnet of three quatrains and a couplet. It follows the typical development, of three major propositions and a conclusion based upon the whole. The overall theme is a meditation on death: First, he thinks of the work and fame which he will not obtain by his early death. Then he considers the greater loss, which is the loss of his love (Fanny Brawne). He in fact died at age 25 in 1821.

 

He concludes with the realization that neither art nor love will be sufficient to stop the loss of all. In the end, there will be only “nothingness.”

 

First Stanza:

 

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,

Before high piled books, in charact’ry,

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;

 

The first line introduces the theme: When I contemplate my death and what will be lost. Being an ambitious young man with prodigious talent, his first thought comes to his poetry. He uses the imagery of farming and harvest: His pen “gleans” from his brain. Books of his work are like barns filled with grain. There is a harvest of his imagination to be had.

 

There is an interesting meta-view of the whole: he is busy “gleaning” by writing this poem on gleaning. And so his fear of loss creates the gain.

 

Second Stanza:

 

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,         5

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

 

In this stanza he makes use of the Romantic epistemology: the world is both objective and subjective: the meaning of that world is produced in my imagination working on the raw materials of the creation. As Shelley has in Mont Blanc:

 

My own, my human mind, which passively 

Now renders and receives fast influencings, 

Holding an unremitting interchange 

With the clear universe of things around; 

One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 

Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 

Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, 

In the still cave of the witch Poesy, 

Seeking among the shadows that pass by 

Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, 

Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast 

From which they fled recalls them, thou art there

 

The sky and clouds are filled with potential tales. But these things will never be revealed if he, the poet, does not live to

 

live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance

 

 

Third Stanza:

 

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

That I shall never look upon thee more,               10

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore

 

He then looks upon his love. She also transient: “fair creature of an hour!” And he will never more have the joy of looking upon her.

 

But there is something different here. In his work of creating, he is making something from world about him. And, if he does not make it, it will not come to be. But this which comes from her is not some creation of his imagination. She radiates “the faery power/Of unreflecting love!”

 

A “faery power” would be something profound, preternatural. It is the sort of power that he seeks to lay hold of in his imaginative work, “cloudy symbols of a high romance.” His work only reaches toward those things. But, in this woman before him who loves, that which would seek to achieve is given to him.

 

This love given to him is more than the goal of all that he would desire.

 

Couplet

 

The couplet is interesting, because Keats does not make a clean break from the third stanza. It is as if the contemplation of the one he loves has not merely superseded his art, it has derailed his poem.

 

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think   

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

 

And then he ends with the conclusion of vanity. Neither his art nor even her love are sufficient to stand before death. The only fitting reference here is Ecclesiastes. Keats would have known the Bible merely by normal exposure in his age (and from references in his work). Thus, a concept from Ecclesiastes being behind his work would not be a stretch:

 

Ecclesiastes 1:1–8 (AV)

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. 3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. 5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. 6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. 7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. 8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

Aside

Trees, William Carlos William

20 Wednesday Nov 2019

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Crooked, black tree

on your little grey-black hillock,

ridiculously raised one step toward

the infinite summits of the night:

even you the few grey stars

draw upward into a vague melody

of harsh threads.

 

Bent as you are from straining

against the bitter horizontals of

a north wind – there below you

how easily the long yellow notes

of poplars flow upward in a descending

scale, each note secure in its own

posture – singularly woven.

 

all voices are blent willing

against the heaving contra-bass

of the dark but you alone

warp yourself passionately to one side

in your eagerness.

At one level this poem is silly: there is no music actually playing. The trees and flowers and stars are playing no melody. There is no blending of voices. A tree is certainly never passionate nor eager.

There is certainly something striking and picturesque about a tree bent against the wind. It is a common symbol of resolution before contrary forces.

Then what is the point of such a poem? What does Williams do with these words – if anything?

First, the poem permits us to see something of the world. We are so busy with our lives, that we easily fail to take notice or thought of what is before us. We live with pre-digested entertainment, carefully constructed to make sure we know exactly how we are supposed to feel.  We use things for what they can do for us. We become the center of our world.

But this poem does nothing for us: it will not make anyone richer. There is no secret embedded within. But also it is not particularly easy. It is not digested for us: it makes some demands up the reader with his observations.

The poem re-presents a moment of observation: He saw a tree on a hill bent against the wind and standing beneath the stars. The moment must have been lovely.

The measure and harmony between the earth and sky is striking.

In fact, as he looked from the poplars below to the crooked black tree on the hill and up to the stars, he sees a harmony and proportion between the trees and stars and the darkness. All of it comes together into a whole.

Hence, there is a music between the parts. It is not just that the scene is aesthetically pleasing; it is that the scene is harmonious: there is a sympathy from the trees to the stars.

Look at how he notes the trees reach to the sky:

 

ridiculously raised one step toward

the infinite summits of the night

 

The phrase “ridiculously raised” is the key: Yes, there is an infinite space from the tree to the stars. The tree cannot possibly hope to reach the stars; it is “ridiculous,” and yet the tree reaches.

 

The tree on its hill has been shaped from the conflict here on earth:

 

Bent as you are from straining

against the bitter horizontals of

a north wind

 

The tree becomes even more comic and endearing. It reaches to the sky while it strains against its own conflict. And then below, there is a place of peace: the yellow poplars. How we know the poplars are yellow in the dark and starlight is not explained. In fact, it is the music, not the trees which are yellow: long yellow notes.

 

The tree now occupies a place between heaven and earth: the earth comes to the tree; the tree reaches to the sky.

 

The objects are all singing a counter melody to the darkness; those things that are hang against what is not:

 

all voices are blent willing

against the heaving contra-bass

of the dark

 

But the tree occupies a unique space:

 

            but you alone

warp yourself passionately to one side

in your eagerness.

 

The tree again is comic: it is passionate and eager; it even warps itself in its straining so.

 

And so the poem brings us in a moment of Willams’ revery.  We can see a moment through his eyes from 100 years ago and look at this tree.

 

But is there is something more than just a quirky thought of a long dead physician? There is a way of seeing the world in harmony and sympathy. There is a pattern which runs through creation and engenders an affection for even a crooked black tree.

 

I remember being in college and trying to gain some important proposition out of a poem. But I now I understand something about poems like this which I did not understand then. Looking at the world as Williams did so long ago; imaging that moment of an evening by the trees, beneath the sky; has its own effect.

 

We often wonder and worry what effect this or that photograph or word or scene or videogame or movie or what not will do to someone. The world is stuffed full of wickedness and corruption and truly hateful things. And all such things have a corrosive effect upon us all.

 

But moments of beauty, the delight in the common grace which God has bestowed upon us all from his unending wealth and lavish care, have their own effect. I think we are better for such observations.

 

C.S. Lewis speaks of his salvation coming in through the idea of joy: why is there joy in a brutal meaningless world? Why is there beauty? How is that explained? Why is there harmony and sympathy through the creation?

 

 

More dangerous than anything you will ever meet

12 Saturday Oct 2019

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Fear, Literature

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The Two Towers, Chapter 5

Tolkien here draws together two ideas which Gimili naively thinks to be exclusive of one-another. This is similar to Lewis’ comment that the lion is good and dangerous. The lion is certainly not safe.

The source of this idea is God himself. God is good, perfectly good. God is love. Who has ever been more kind than Christ? And yet God is very dangerous; more dangerous than anything we could imagine: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matt10.28

It is a simplistic concept to think that danger and good are separate.

This helps a bit understand the tension in Christianity that we are to love God, trust God, put our hope in God – fear God.

Joseph Conrad, The Lagoon Notes.2

02 Wednesday Oct 2019

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     A plaintive murmur rose in the night; a murmur saddening and startling, as if the great solitudes of surrounding woods had tried to whisper into his ear the wisdom of their immense and lofty indifference. Sounds hesitating and vague floated in the air round him, shaped themselves slowly into words; and at last flowed on gently in a murmuring stream of soft and monotonous sentences. He stirred like a man waking up and changed his position slightly. Arsat, motionless and shadowy, sitting with bowed head under the stars, was speaking in a low and dreamy tone. 

 The rhythm and sound of these sentences are remarkable. This really must be read out loud:

A plaintive murmur rose in the night;

a murmur saddening and startling,

as if the great solitudes of surrounding woods

had tried to whisper into his ear the wisdom

of their immense and lofty indifference.

Sounds hesitating and vague

floated in the air round him,

shaped themselves slowly into words;

and at last flowed on gently

in a murmuring stream of soft and monotonous sentences.

He stirred like a man waking up

and changed his position slightly.

Arsat, motionless and shadowy,

sitting with bowed head under the stars,

was speaking in a low and dreamy tone.

There is a deliberate repetition of s’s and m’s which imitate the “plaintive murmur” of the night. There is thrice used “murmur”. Arsat is both “motionless and shadowy”, gathering up the preceding sounds of the “murmuring stream of soft and monotonous sentences.” There is a contrasted “woods and wisdom”.

The sounds of the words are quite remarkable. The deliberate nature of the selection is seen in the use of the word “woods” to describe the jungle: it is not wrong, it is just not common. The sounds are “monotonous sentences.”

In following along with the perilous realm, Arsat is not merely motionless, he is a shadow himself. Indeed, he will be described as less than a whole man, below. He is under the stars and is in a dream world.

     ‘… for where can we lay down the heaviness of our trouble but in a friend’s heart? A man must speak of war and of love. You, Tuan, know what war is, and you have seen me in time of danger seek death as other men seek life! A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!’ 

     ‘I remember,’ said the white man quietly. Arsat went on with mournful composure. 

     ‘Therefore I shall speak to you of love. Speak in the night. Speak before both night and love are gone – and the eye of day looks upon my sorrow and my shame; upon my blackened face; upon my burnt-up heart.’ 

 When Arsat begins to speak, his first words are of “heaviness”. Notice that this comes immediately after he is said to be motions, have a “bowed head”, his voice is “low”. The scene is of a man sinking.

The line, “A man must speak of war and of love” is marvelous. It is one of those majestic mottos that a contemporary writer could not voice without sounding hackneyed; but Conrad has carefully crafted a Byronic Hero: a man who struggles with some overwhelming, vaguely supernatural fate which has bowed him down. Since Arsat is already heroic, he can speak like this and not sound ironic.

The words “I remember” are the words of grace and friendship: he will enter Arsat’s world. But the white man has only shared in Arsat’s life of war. Now, Arsat is going to bring the white man into Arsat’s experience of love.

Notice that the story which he intends to tell is a story which must be told at night: It is a story which belongs to the dream world. When the sun comes and insists upon judgment, Arsat will have shame and a burnt up heart. The next section begins the story.

Conrad is one of the few writers who uses the second person narrative well. Done right, the technique creates a Shakespearean play-within-a-play dynamic. We are reading a story about hearing a story; there are levels of reality created by the story. I first enter into one world, created by Conrad for me. Then I enter into a second world created by a character created by Conrad.