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Herman Melville, Misgivings

21 Friday Feb 2020

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IMSO Westward Expansion FSP - Day 2
When ocean-clouds over inland hills
Sweep storming in late autumn brown,
And horror the sodden valley fills,
And the spire falls crashing in the town,
I muse upon my country’s ills—
The tempest bursting from the waste of Time
On the world’s fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime.
Nature’s dark side is heeded now—
(Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)—
A child may read the moody brow
Of yon black mountain lone.
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.
This poem is dated 1860, just prior to the Civil War.  He sees a great cloud overshadowing the land. He refers to is coming as producing a “horror” in the valleys. The Spire, the highest point in the village is now crashing down.
The trouble is the paradox in American society: On one had here is the “fairest hope” of the world, freedom, self-government. On the other hand the country permit “man’s foulest crime”, slavery.
The trouble before the country is so obvious, that even a child can see it coming. A storm is coming.
It did.

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

21 Tuesday Jan 2020

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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

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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.

Notes, Shakespeare Sonnet 12

04 Saturday Jan 2020

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1]         When I do count the clock that tells the time

[2]       And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,

[3]       When I behold the violet past prime

[4]       And sable curls  all silvered o’er with white;

[5]       When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

[6]       Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

[7]       And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves

[8]       Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

[9]       Then of thy beauty do I question make

[10]     That thou among the wastes of time must go,

[11]     Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

[12]     And die as fast as they see others grow;

[13]     And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defense

[14]     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

 

First Stanza

[1]       When I do count the clock that tells the time

[2]       And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,

[3]       When I behold the violet past prime

[4]       And sable curls all silvered o’er with white;

The matter of change, of mutability has been a theme of poets: although it is not a theme I see taken up much of late. The issue is one of change: how do we account for change? What does change mean? What can we do about change?

I don’t believe this theme has the same resonance of late, because we do not believe in any permanence. We are nominalist: there are no universals, no nature. Things are what they call them.

This has a cost: nothing can change, because nothing is something truly. This or that is only as much as I call it by name.

The matter of mutability is a question of why the particular fades from the essence, from the permanent form. That does not trouble us as it would have troubled a careful observer of Shakespeare’s time.

And so when he sees change: the clock face move, the night comes on, black hair turn white, he forces him to contemplate death (stanza three).

The phrase “hideous night” is a striking phrase: why hideous? It is only hideous as the best fades off to danger and death.

 

Second Stanza

[5]       When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

[6]       Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,

[7]       And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves

[8]       Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;

This is not quite a move to “nature”, but rather to living things. The first stanza concerns time, this concerns most particularly plants. It’s the end of Eden.

Trees become bare of leaves; and summer fields turn to a “white and bristly beard”.

It is an interesting image: summer is being borne out on a bier. This bearing summer out on a bier, no longer green by now with a “white and bristly beard” would have struck Shakespeare’s first readers more directly. The Golden Bough, by Frazer, provides numerous examples of folk festivals involving bringing in summer and taking out summer by means of some vegetation for the purpose of maintaining fertility.

These images become the basis for an encouragement of the object of the poem to himself be fertile.

Shakespeare takes the inherent purpose of the ancient rituals and uses them as a basis for encouraging the fertility of one.

 

Third Stanza

[9]       Then of thy beauty do I question make

[10]     That thou among the wastes of time must go,

[11]     Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

[12]     And die as fast as they see others grow;

Death comes around constantly in this world. There is no manner of surviving return of winter but some new fertility.

I know that you will not last the winter: nothing does. There is only one answer to the winter, spring.

You, my friend will “among the wastes of time [] go”. Everything which is sweet and beautiful will be lost: that which is beautiful today will “die”. There is only one solution, new life (since the current life will not persist).

Couplet

 

[13]     And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defense

[14]     Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

 

The only thing which survives the winter is a new birth in Spring. There is nothing which survives the death of a man except a child.

 

Time comes like the “scythe” of harvest in autumn, to be followed by winter. Only the spring crop will survive the harvest and winter.

Edward Taylor, When Thy Bright Beams.2

18 Wednesday Dec 2019

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He then ends with a praise to God’s great glory which shall be revealed on Judgment Day.  To understand the shift from a general statement of responding to God’s glory and a specific discussion of God’s judgment, it is necessary to consider the note that this poem is a meditation upon Philippians 2:9. To best understand that passage, we must first consider the sentence in context:

Philippians 2:5–11 (AV 1873)

5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8 and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Verse 9 looks to the exaltation of Christ upon the completion of his bearing sin; it is a verse which looks to the resurrection and ascension of Christ, and then forward to Judgment Day when Christ shall be publicly vindicated and all will acknowledge his position as “Lord”.

Therefore, the “bright beams” of the first line of the poem concern the glory of Christ to be exhibited on Judgment Day. This exaltation by God of Christ comes in response to contrary powers’ insult of Christ during his humiliation:

By proclaiming God’s gift of the name Lord to Jesus, the hymn gives assurance to the church that this ultimate vindication belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. In the midst of present suffering and persecution for her faith in Jesus Christ, the church sings this hymn about the vindication of her faith when every tongue will acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. In fact, “the church is the earthly center from which the full Lordship of Christ becomes visible.”289 When the church worships Jesus by bowing before him and proclaiming that he is Lord, she embodies the vision of the future submission of all creation to the Lord Jesus. The proclamation that Jesus is Lord announces his destiny: because he has been given the name Lord, he will rule over all creation. Jesus, crucified on a Roman cross, not Caesar seated on a Roman throne, is destined to receive universal acknowledgment that he alone is the sovereign Lord. “In the hymn the Church is caught up from earth to heaven, from the scene of conflict and duress into the presence of the all-conquering Lord, from the harsh realities of what is to the glorious prospect of what will be, because it is so already in God’s sight.”290

Walter Hansen, The Letter to the Philippians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 167–168.

The passage notes that all creation will give praise to Christ. Taylor picks up this strand when he notes that even birds and bees give praise.

This passage is also relevant to the themes of this poem, in that Paul uses the example of Christ to encourage humility in people of Philippi.

 

This shining sky will fly away apace,

When thy bright glory splits the same to make

Thy majesty a pass, whose fairest face

Too foul a path is for thy feet to take.

What glory then, shall tend thee through the sky

Draining the heaven much of angels dry?

This stanza draws upon various biblical texts concerning the coming of Christ in Judgment.

The sky will “fly away” and the will be “split”:

Revelation 6:14, “The sky departed as a scroll.” Hebrews 1:11, God will “fold … up” the heavens.

This stanza draws generally from the description of Revelation 19 concerning the return of Christ:

Revelation 19:11–16 (AV 1873)

 11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. 12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. 13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipt in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. 16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

Heaven is drained dry of angels, because they accompany Christ in his return.

Taylor puts an emphasis on “draining” by beginning the line with this word and putting the accent on the first syllable.

What light then flame will in thy Judgment Seat,

‘Fore which all men and angels shall appear?

How shall thy glorious righteousness treat

Rend’ring to each after his works done here?

Then saints with angels thou wilt glorify:

And burn lewd men and devils gloriously.

This stanza follows in order the logical consequence (return then judgment) and the text of Revelation, in that the judgment follows the return:

Revelation 19:11–16 (AV 1873)

 11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. 12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. 13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipt in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. 16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

The concept of fire with judgment is a natural combination. It is also used throughout the Scripture. In Leviticus 10:2, a fire judges the two dishonoring priests. In Revelation 1:15, the eyes of the risen Christ are said to “flame like a furnace.” Hebrews 10 refers to God’s judgment as “fiery indignation”

Hebrews 10:26–27 (AV 1873)

 26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.

The rendering each according to his works, whether blessing or judgment is rehearsed in Romans 2:

Romans 2:5–11 (AV 1873)

 5 But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; 6 who will render to every man according to his deeds: 7 to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: 8 but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, 9 tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; 10 but glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: 11 for there is no respect of persons with God.

 

One glimpse, my Lord, of thy bright Judgment Day

And glory piercing through, like fiery darts,

All devils, doth me make for grace to pray

For filling grace had I ten thousand hearts.

I’d through ten hells to see thy Judgment Day

Wouldst thou but guild my soul with thy bright ray.

Seeking to see Christ’s judgment day may seem to be a strange desire of the poet. But note that his concern does not fall on the judgment nor what happens to those who are judged (whether good or ill). His concern falls on the matter of Christ being glorified on the Judgment Day.

The picture is of a king being installed, having defeated his enemies and rewarded his friends.

The picture that Christ’s glory itself effectively renders judgment (glory piercing through, like fiery darts,/ All devils)comes from the scene of Philippians 2:9-11. Christ will be glorified such that even his enemies will become overcome with glory and acknowledge his lordship. It is not a devoted, willing confession but rather a confession which comes from sheer force of truth.

Edward Taylor, When Thy Bright Beams

18 Wednesday Dec 2019

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4505646830_41ba1cffa6_o

(2009 photo contest winner for the Nature / Landscapes category. Photo by Kurt Svendsgaard/USFWS)

When thy bright beams, my Lord, do strike mine eye,

Methinks I then could truly chide out-right

My hidebound soul that stands so niggardly

That scarce a thought gets glorified by’t.

My quaintest metaphors are ragged stuff,

Making the sun seem like a mullipuff.

 

When I am struck evidence of your glory, I see how little right effect that glory works into my soul. I chide myself that I show so little effect up me. The words which I produce are of so little value.

“chide out-right”: Scold, upbraid.

“My hidebound soul”: his soul is unresponsive.

“Niggardly”: selfish, tightfisted: It is as if his soul is a miser which will pay out no praise.

“scarce a thought get glorified”: The glory of God does not translate into transformed thinking.  In Romans 12:2 Paul calls up us to be “transformed by the renewal of your mind”

“quaintest metaphors”: my most clever metaphors. The style of writing exercised by Taylor gives great emphasis to the cleverness of metaphor. He here raises his most able talent and says that it means nothing: it is “ragged stuff”.

He ends the stanza with a comic comparison: rather than raise what I know in admiration by means of comparison, I turn the very sun into a fuzzball.

 

It’s my desire, thou shouldst be glorified:

But when thy glory shine before mine eye,

I pardon crave, lest my desire be pride,

Or bed thy glory in cloudy sky.

The sun grows wan; and angels palefac’d shrink

Before thy shine, which I besmear with ink.

 

It is my aim – my desire – that you, God, should be honored by my work. But I see your already existing glory, rather than thinking of some means of providing you greater honor; I feel myself ashamed. I ask that you should forgive me (I pardon crave).

 

Rather than my writing providing something honoring to, I fear that I will dishonor you with my words. Rather than adding a luster to God’s glory, Taylor’s words will have the effect of being a “cloudy sky” to the sun. His poem will merely “besmear with ink” the glory of God.

 

This realization that (1) his soul has not responded rightly to the realization of God’s glory and (2) his complete inability to glorify God, leads to a crisis: What will I do? That crisis is set forth in the third stanza:

 

But shall the bird sign forth thy praise and shall

The little bee present her thankful hum?

But I who see thy shining glory fall

Before mine eyes, stand blockish, dull, and dumb?

Whether I speak, or speechless stand, I spy,

I fail thy glory: therefor, pardon cry.

 

Even the most simple things give glory to God: birds singing, bees humming.  This matter that all nature praises God is a theme in Scripture. For instance, Psalm 149

 

Psalm 148:7–10 (AV 1873)

7          Praise the Lord from the earth,

Ye dragons, and all deeps:

8          Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour;

Stormy wind fulfilling his word:

9          Mountains, and all hills;

Fruitful trees, and all cedars:

10         Beasts, and all cattle;

Creeping things, and flying fowl:

 

I do like “dragons”, but the contemporary translations render as something like “great sea creatures”.  All of nature praises God, “All thy works shall praise thee”. Ps. 145.10.

 

So, if all of creation praises God, then certainly Taylor – who has better reason and better ability to praise God – must do something. It is particularly wrong for Taylor to stand agape and say nothing,

 

But I who see thy shining glory fall

Before mine eyes, stand blockish, dull, and dumb?

 

So Taylor has no escape: If he praises God or he fails to praise, both will be wrong:

 

Whether I speak, or speechless stand, I spy,

I fail thy glory: therefor, pardon cry.

 

What can he possibly do but seek mercy?

 

 

 

But this I find: my rhymes do better suit

Mine own dispraise than tune forth praise to thee.

Yet being chide, whether consonant, or mute,

I force my tongue to tattle, as you see.

That I thy glorious praise my trumpet right

Be thou my song, and make Lord, me thy pipe.

 

He acknowledges that his best ability in terms of poetry is to note his own deficiency rather than God’s glory:

But this I find: my rhymes do better suit

Mine own dispraise than tune forth praise to thee.

 

And God, you also see since I deserve no matter I do (“whether consonant or mute”), but you also see that I cannot help but speak and praise you.

 

So then, Taylor prays that God will work in Taylor’s praise to remedy his defect. In making this prayer, Taylor is seeming relying upon the promise of Romans 8:27 that when we pray the Holy Spirit will intercede for us – that He will effectively correct our defective prayers.

 

He then ends with a praise to God’s great glory which shall be revealed on Judgment Day.

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

23 Saturday Nov 2019

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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?

 

 

Notes Shakespeare Sonnet 11

28 Monday Oct 2019

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Sonnet 11:

[1]       As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st

[2]       In one of thine, from that which thou departest;

[3]       And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st

[4]       Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.

[5]       Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;

[6]       Without this, folly, age, and cold decay.

[7]       If all were minded so, the times should cease,

[8]       And threescore year would make the world away.

[9]       Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

[10]     Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish;

[11]     Look whom she best endowed she gave the more,

[12]     Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.

[13]     She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby

[14]     Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

Summary

Again, the poem contends for the object of the poem to marry and have children. The variant in this instance is that “nature” has given him something which has a duty to reproduce. It is a good to you and a proper response to what you have received. The poem works by means of balance and order.

First Stanza
[1]       As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st

[2]       In one of thine, from that which thou departest;

[3]       And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st

[4]       Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.

Even though Shakespeare writes well before Isaac Newton announcement of an “equal and opposite reaction”, he uses that idea of a balance in nature itself. The speed by which you should see to your reproduction is marked by the speed by which you are dying. You should be bringing a child into this world from which you are “departing.” Then as you are leaving youth, you can look back to your child who will be in youth while you are departing youth; he will then be in life, when you depart life. Thus this is a balance in speed and position.

Second Stanza:

[5]       Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;

[6]       Without this, folly, age, and cold decay.

[7]       If all were minded so, the times should cease,

[8]       And threescore year would make the world away.

This stanza is evenly balanced between two pairs of line. First is the distinction between wisdom and folly; between increase and decay: to bear a child is wisdom, beauty and increase. To refuse this is “cold decay”.  If you will think of where he lives and the quality of insulation and clothing, you can understand why cold is a serious negative for Shakespeare. He lived during the “Little Ice Age” (look it up).

Shakespeare then notes the result of such an idea: If everyone thought as you did, then a short number of years, there would be no people left. Anti-natalism and the idea that human beings were someone unnatural and a blight upon the earth was obviously not a thought of Shakespeare.

Third Stanza:

[9]       Let those whom nature hath not made for store,

[10]     Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish;

[11]     Look whom she best endowed she gave the more,

[12]     Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish.

Perhaps there are people whom it would be best if they did not reproduce: “harsh, featureless, rude” should not have children. We will meet these monsters in Shakespeare’s plays.

But as for you: Nature has given to you the best, which entails in you a duty to reproduce that gift. You have a duty to “cherish” that “bounty” which was given to you.

Couplet

[13]     She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby

[14]     Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

“She” is nature: the seal she carved is the beauty of the poem’s object. A seal was used to produce a print: think a seal pressed into wax. The wax reproduces the seal. He was given the seal to print copies of that seal, not to permit that copy to cease with him.

The duty of marrying and having a child is a duty to nature. When a woman is pregnant or when we see a couple pushing their baby in a stroller, there is a sort of affinity which is different than when we are one alone. I noticed it often in my wife’s pregnancy, the way people who speak, the people who wished to see the baby. There is something lovely and joyous in that. It is that affinity which Shakespeare is seeking to awaken in his friend.

 

 

 

Shakespeare Sonnet 10, Notes

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

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[1]       For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any,

[2]       Who for thyself art so unprovident.

[3]       Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,

[4]       But that thou none lov’st is most evident.

[5]       For thou art so possessed with murd’rous hate

[6]       That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,

[7]       Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

[8]       Which to repair should be thy chief desire.

[9]       O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind.

[10]     Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?

[11]     Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind,

[12]     Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove.

[13]     Make thee another self for love of me,

[14]     That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

 

Introduction:

This sonnet continues with the theme of the prior sonnets: a direct encouragement to marry and have children. As Benedick will say at the end of Much Ado About Nothing, “Prince, thou art sad. Get thee a wife, get thee a wife.”

The effect of these many sonnets seems to be the sort of work done by a composer who produces many “variations on a theme”. While it could be that Shakespeare really had some profound personal concern which drove these poems, they are much too clever. A series of poems working over a similar theme with both variety and continuity would be a bit of showing off by a young poet. I know others have their elaborate theories, but this theory at least runs true to life: young man wants to make a name for himself. That does not mean that there was no an actual recipient of the poems, only this extended theme looks like artistry. Other sonnets seem far more personal and autobiographical. But that is a question which cannot be answered.

Here the sonnet makes the argument in terms of love: You are loved by many; but you love none in return. In fact, you are filled with hate, both toward yourself and to others – because you don’t care what happens to yourself.

This really is not as much of a stretch as it might seem. A man who commits suicide when faced with financial ruin who leaves behind his wife and children acts in a way that does not care for his family. His self-directed concerns overweigh his duty and love to family. The way the event is experienced by others is as a kind of hate toward them: you don’t care what happens to us.

And so, Shakespeare pleads with the object of the poem: put aside your hatred for yourself and others; rather show love – at least toward me: marry and have a child.

First Stanza

[1]       For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any,

[2]       Who for thyself art so unprovident.

[3]       Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,

[4]       But that thou none lov’st is most evident.

“For shame”: Because of shame. Example. The Geneva Bible notes for Psalm 44:15 (“All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face”) read, “I dare not lift up mine head for shame.” Or Titus Adronicus, “Ah, now thou turn’st away thy face for shame.” But here it seems the tone seems more defiant, “I dare you to deny.” Shame, because you should love others.

The thought of lines 1-2, “You plainly don’t love others, because you are wasting yourself.” You are unprovident.

You are loved my many – you must admit that. But you don’t love anyone in return.

Most evident: beyond question. It’s obvious.

Second Stanza

[5]       For thou art so possessed with murd’rous hate

[6]       That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,

[7]       Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

[8]       Which to repair should be thy chief desire.

This is an interesting image: Your refusal to have an heir is “murd’rous hate”. It hate so extraordinary that is directed against yourself.

Thou stick’st not: you don’t hestitate

To conspire: with yourself to kill yourself.

You should be desiring to repair – reproduce – but you are bent on destroying: because death will destroy you. It is a “roof” perhaps because a family line is a “house”.

 

Third Stanza

[9]       O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind.

[10]     Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?

[11]     Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind,

[12]     Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove.

Line 9 is a very Shakespearean dual use of a single word: change. It is a clever line, but it is perhaps out of place in this stanza. The rest of the stanza takes a related but different emphasis: Your conduct in this respect should be as loving and gracious as it is otherwise.

“Fairer lodged”: better cared for as guest. Why do you provide more care for hatred than love?

And if you don’t care for others, at least care for yourself.

Couplet

[13]     Make thee another self for love of me,

[14]     That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

The poem ends with a final plea: If you can’t be persuaded to action for others; and if you don’t care what happens to yourself; at least you should act for me.

The last line also contains a misstep: That beauty still may live in thine: That is, that your beauty will continue in your progeny: “thine”, thy children. This concludes the argument of the poem.

But the final phrase “or thee” – needed for the rhyme — is contradicted by the thrust of the poem.  It is precisely because beauty will not live “in thee” that Shakespeare is pleading with him to marry.