After his return from the HMS Beagle in 1836, it took Darwin two years to hit upon the theory of Natural Selection. He did not begin the book until 1842, and within two years he completed his first draft. He did not publish it until 1859, because he wanted to ensure he had the maximum possible evidence to back up his theory. All told, it took twenty-three years after his return for Darwin to accept the conclusions of his trip. Twenty-three years of careful observation, recording, deduction, reading research publications, and tracking down rare books. Twenty-three years during which he was a celebrity for the enormous collection of rare specimens he brought back and associated at parties with the intellectual creme-de-la-creme of Victorian society - known not primarily as a scientist or even a writer but as a type of imperial adventurer. Twenty-three years of terrible health and terrible anxiety over the coming firestorm which he knew such a publication would reap. And most importantly, twenty-three years during which Darwin and his beloved wife Emma had to endure the death of three children. By any standard, Emma and Charles had a wonderful marriage, but Charles worried that Emma’s Christian faith was all that could sustain her in the face of such losses. If Charles proved to her that his theory was correct, Emma could be destroyed.
In every way, the capacity and fortitude for concentrated work which he exhibited so purposefully on The Beagle was still more important after his return. Particularly because in Darwin’s own mind, his results were in no small part a failure. Like Marx, Darwin’s 500 page On the Origin of Species was a mere abstract of the great 2000 page work he meant to write which would refute every possible objection from the theory’s acceptance and shield him from the criticism which he knew such a controversial theory could accord him. Famously, he told friends that “A better man would have written a better book.” And for all Darwin’s skill with writing, On the Origin of Species is still a tremendously difficult book to read. Darwin’s greatest champion in the British press, T. H. Huxley (grandfather of Aldous), nevertheless said that the book was “one of the hardest books to understand thoroughly that I know of. For exposition was not Darwin’s forte and his English is sometimes wonderful.” By wonderful, Huxley meant not ‘excellent’ but full of confusion. The anxiety of it all resulted in a near-complete nervous breakdown during its year of publication, during which he finally had to take a rest to recharge himself from this herculean effort expended over nearly three decades.
Darwin knew precisely how controversial and sensational the book might be. One of his grandfather’s closest friends was the great chemist, Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen. Priestley was a free thinker, and in part because of his daring scientific theories (some of which, admittedly, were laughably wrong), he was suspected of sedition. During the Birmingham riots of 1791, he had to flee his house, which was burned to the ground by anti-French militants. Due to the suspicion he engendered, he had to spend his remaining decade in America.
True to the sensation Darwin knew his book would cause, the publication sold out on its first day of release. Contrary to today’s common misnomer, what was controversial about the book was not its theory of evolution, a theory that long predated Darwin and was accepted by many scientists as verifiable.
III.
It is important at this moment to understand how the theory of evolution came to be. And in order to understand, we have to go back roughly 130 years to the city of Naples and a figure named Giambattista Vico. Vico is a thinker not much thought of today, nor was he in his own day. But it is through Vico that the modern conception of history was invented through his most famous book, The New Science. Vico’s contribution to human thought was due to Newton’s. Thanks to Isaac Newton, the idea of historical progress was formed. We were finally, definitively, out of the Dark Ages, and the post-Newton world was clearly so superior to the World of Yesteryear, that people began to be interested in how such progress was made. Thus was the study of history born, and with it, the idea that time and progress must be viewed through long, long spans. When Homer wrote about Odysseus or the Yahwist about Moses, they might as well have been describing events which occurred when the reader’s (or listener’s) grandparents were children. And to the vast majority of his audience, Shakespeare’s plays might as well have been the same. Except perhaps to the Ancient Egyptians and early Hindi, the conception of the past as something to be measured precisely is an extremely recent phenomenon in human thought.
But Vico’s primary idea is, in many ways, the beginning of historical thought as we think of it today. His idea, known as the "verum factum", is that the truth is not something observed, as Descartes believed, but something that must be created. As he wrote: “The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.”
This idea that the truth can only be created, not observed, may seem preposterous at first glance. But think a bit deeper about it: a truth is not simply discovered, it must be made before it's discovered. There must be something to form it. Even if there is an eternal creator to form it, every event, even the creation of an eternal creator, needs something that caused it to happen. Thanks to Vico, the world was no longer a place of eternal truths. The world is now a dynamic place of constantly shifting paradigms, perceptions, and progress.
History is the study of tracing back all those causes as far as it can go, and evolution is impossible to understand without seeing its roots in the historical thought of its day. Once Vico demonstrated as beneficial the idea that we ought to determine the origins of things as best we can, thinkers were then free to explore the past as far back as it went. Montesquieu tried to determine why civilizations rise and fall and how climate formed the particular laws and customs of various civilizations. Condorcet could trace mankind’s intellectual evolution. In the seventeenth century, Newton and Descartes posited their truths as static and eternal, but in the eighteenth century, Lamarck and Buffon could present the world as a place in a state of eternal change. All of which of course made Hegel’s later Theory of History possible. As did it Saint-Simon’s theory of the progress of humanity, and - most importantly for evolution - Auguste Comte’s Positivism, in which all human endeavor evolves forward from theology - a god or demon causing an event, to metaphysics - an hidden, unseen power is behind all events, to science - which will eventually explain all forces through unconvering the laws of nature.
It was the Comte de Buffon, director of King’s Garden’s in Paris, compiler of Buffon’s Natural History, General and Particular, and the least known thinker on this brief list, who first presented a theory of biological evolution. Within his famous book, he speculated that when one saw the physiological similarities between a pig and an ass, one might suspect them of having a common ancestor. His book, as popular as any Malcolm Gladwell book in its day, contains many such ironic speculations about the common origins of species which, sadly due to the power of the Church, he could not speculate sincerely.
Sincere and systematic speculation had to wait until the early Nineteenth Century for Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. As with all truly new ideas, his was met with scorn and derision - but Lamarck received the ultimate derision - he was ignored, and died in penury. He was ignored partially because, until fairly recently, Lamarck’s conception was plainly ridiculous. According to Lamarck’s most famous example, a giraffe’s neck was not always long, it grew long over time because of successive generations of giraffe’s efforts to reach upward towards the leaves of trees. In light of the fact that genetic research now shows that our genes can morph over time with special regard to the experiences of our lives, this conception is not quite as absurd now as it was for the majority of the last two hundred years. But it is, nevertheless, fundamentally untrue.
And yet, it seems absurd because it is only one degree removed from the truth. Environment does determine a species’s evolution, but it does not do so on an individual-by-individual basis. No individual is a blank slate which can simply mould itself to its environment like putty. And even so, Lamarck’s theory is not completely untrue. A giraffe, like nearly every animal, must grow to its full height, and in order to do so, it must exhibit an elemental will to live. It was simply Montesquieu’s study of climate forming history applied to the history of biology, and like Montesquieu, a significant step closer to the truth. Or put differently, Lamarck’s theory is simply Schopenhauer’s theory of the Will to Life, applied to organic biology.
In time, his theory was not completely ignored. During his publication in the first decade of the 19th Century, Lamarck’s only significant review was from the famous anatomist, Cuvier, who believed Lamarck to be completely insane. But a few others began to notice, including Goethe - the pre-eminent name among all German writers and intellectuals for all time - who used Lamarck’s theory as a departure point for a botanical theory he called ‘The Metamorphosis of Plants.’
Across the Channel, another thinker was positing the theory of evolution a few years earlier: Dr. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather to Charles. As we said before, Dr. Darwin was a great polymath - he even anticipated the use of steam cars and flying machines. Unfortunately, Dr. Darwin had a habit of putting his scientific ideas forward in poetry, which made them seem rather more ridiculous than they were: “The hand, first gift of Heaven! to man belongs;
Untipt with claws the circling fingers close,
With rival points the bending thumbs oppose
. . . .
Whence the fine organs of the touch impart
Ideal figure, source of every art.
But the chief trigger for the widespread discussion of evolution pre-Darwin was a book published in 1844 - the year Darwin substantially completed On the Origin of Species. It was called The Vestiges of Creation, and its writer, Robert Chambers, insisted on publishing it anonymously for fear of controversy. The book surveyed the entire history of evolutionary thought until that point. Unfortunately, while Chambers had no truck with Lyell’s explanation for how evolution works, he failed to make a hypothesis of his own. His book was derided, particularly by a novelist and back-bench politician named Benjamin Disraeli, for its assumption that some invisible hand inevitably guides existence to a more perfect state. Thanks to Chambers, Victorian England’s knowledge of evolutionary theory was so widespread that even Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Victorian Poet Laureate, puts forward a concept of evolution in his extraordinary long 1850 poem “In Memoriam”, in which concepts are put forward of man’s kinship with the ape, and a vast chain of beings. "I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones. That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things. .... So then were nothing lost to man; So that still garden of the souls In many a figured leaf enrolls The total world since life began. That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroy'd, Or cast as rubbish to the void When God hath made the pile complete; That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain.
My first experience of Eugene Onegin was nearly ten years ago. As a college student, I sneakily bought tickets to Tchaikovsky’s operatic version it for me to go with a slightly older opera singer with whom I was head-over-heals in love - or so I thought. Knowing that 100 other nerdy men were competing for her at any given time, I wisely absented myself from any competition and simply contented myself with her company - for I had enough problems in that area to give myself any more.
I knew the basic outline of the opera, or at least well enough that I should have known better than to take her to it - or perhaps I unconsciously bought the tickets knowing that basically our situation was almost a mirror image of the opera - with her as the older, world-weary Onegin and I as the puppy-love-stricken Tatiana. I have no idea if she squirmed in her seat, but I certainly did for virtually the whole of the first two acts - watching Tatyana’s heartache mirror my own so closely. At the time, it was truly awful, and felt like my heart was being rent in two-times-two, both by the obvious parallels of our situation and by the fact that they were playing out right in front of us. It was horrible. Ten years later,... it’s pretty funny.
Ten years later, I’m finally within striking distance of finishing Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin in an online translation that’s truly excellent (reading-wise, I have no idea as to its accuracy). As I draw near its completion, I can’t help but wonder if this is not the greatest poem I’ve ever read of any length, any nationality, or any era. The tone of it is so perfect - conversational, light-hearted, and funny, until it suddenly comes upon a passage so unbelievably heartrending that the shock of it stabs you like a knife. This novel in verse may become one of my favorite things in the world.
The Tchaikovsky operais extraordinary - an opera which clearly owes everything to Schumann. It is one of the most beautiful, profoundly moving pieces of music you’ll ever hear. There are so many passages within it that I can barely get through without tears forming in my eyes. But it’s also a deeply flawed opera, switching from painful beauty to musical freneticness without warning in ways that seem rather tacked on. The sense of elegiac misery can seem almost oppressive - much closer to Chekhov than Pushkin but almost completely without Chekhov’s comedy to offset it. There’s only a little bit of tragic in the book, but beneath all the bubbliness it is one of the most profoundly sad books you’ll ever read - friendships souring into enmity, love’s opportunities missed, and the creeping realization that life is little but a series of disappointments. There is little of real suffering here - certainly not on the level of Dostoevsky or Chekhov, but the suffering of a sheltered existence is still suffering, even if it’s the suffering of mere misery instead of horror.
But there is also that sense that only one thing exists to combat the suffering we all must undergo - and that is the extreme fundamental unseriousness of our lives. The tragedies in Onegin are funny when seen from a certain angle, as they must sometimes be in life if we’re to get out of bed every morning. Everything in life depends on how seriously you take it, and if you’re blessed with the ability to view life unseriously, then even the saddest or most horrific events can be funny. We laugh so that we may not cry, and the funnier life seems, the more capable we are of bearing it.
Personally, I have no use for consuming things that don’t radiate that tragicomic serious non-seriousness. If comedy is not sad, bleak, brutal, it just isn’t funny to me. If tragedy doesn’t have that lightness of character that warns us it doesn’t matter at all, it’s either unintentionally hilarious or just unpleasant. My worldview involves equal parts compassion and contempt - a view which pities us our foibles, but never excuses us for them. Chekhov and Kafka are tragicomic, Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann are not. Mozart and Schubert are tragicomic, Wagner and Schoenberg are not. The Simpsons and The Sopranos are tragicomic, 24 and Game of Thrones are not. Jean Renoir and Hitchcock are tragicomic, Kurosawa and Kubrick are not. The Beatles and Randy Newman are tragicomic, Bob Dylan and The Doors are not. The Orioles and the Red Sox are tragicomic, the Ravens and the Yankees are not. Judaism is tragicomic, Christianity is not. Value pluralism is tragicomic, heroic materialism is not. Tragicomedy shows us the ultimate lesson: life matters, but not too much.
(Note from 2025: Wow did I misunderstand Mann and Kurosawa... and Hitchcock in the other direction...)
July 4th is important in America for many reasons, not the least of which is that it’s the anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass’s first edition in 1855. It is the ‘inauguration date’ of American poetry, and to some it doubtless marks the publication of the greatest, most influential, and most significant of all American books. Oh how I wish I was still one of them.
As an eighteen year old boarding school student who covered up insecurity with insufferable intellectual pretensions (how little life changes...), I suppose it was a given that I’d take to American poetry like a fish to water. At the Hyde school, we were surrounded by the lovely dark and deep green coniferous trees of rural Connecticut, a landscape that seemed to radiate the folksy severity that’s defined New England life since the Puritans. No doubt, many if not most of the kids at Hyde used those woods at some point to smoke pot, but when I walked through them, I could convince myself that I was breathing the same air as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Longfellow, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Frost, Stevens, Cummings, and Elizabeth Bishop.
Whether or not that love was real, I certainly believed it was. I felt as though I loved poetry, and I think I even understood some of it. But whether I did or I didn’t, I couldn’t get enough of it. I wrote at least 300 poems of my own, and I held ‘poetry readings’ at the school where I would try to get other Hyde students who exhibited even a glimmer of intellectual energy to get their thoughts down on paper.
I’m 30 years old now, I’ve long since lost touch with virtually everybody from Hyde and can’t say I particularly miss too many people from that period. Those poems of mine currently exist somewhere in an accordion folder, no doubt boxed up somewhere in my parents’ attic. Most of the poetry I once loved seems to me a colossal waste of hormones - an exalting of an inner life and that doesn’t really exist and an escape from dealing with the actual complexities of living. But I miss feeling that way about poetry.
The whole idea that art can bring us into a special world - an inner world of ecstasy and mysticism in which art and philosophy can feed the ‘spirit’ and the ‘soul’ - now seems like the dumb musings of upper class twits who know too little of what life really is to ever reach it. Art is no better than religion at soul-feeding, and all we have to do is look at the sophisticated aesthetic tastes of atheist mass murderers to see that art can be just as dangerous: Hitler was a Wagner-loving painter, Saddam wrote novels in his spare time, Stalin and Mao were both poets in their younger years. If we look to art as a substitute for our baser instincts and fanaticism, we may do no better than we did with religion. Art, like religion, is hopefully a way to pacify our baser tendencies, but there’s no guarantee that either does. In some, art inspires greater humanity and humility. In some, art inspires less. If music or poetry inspires you to listen to other people more attentively, to be more considerate in what you think, to be more skeptical toward the beliefs with which you agree and more charitable to those with which you disagree, then culture can truly be said to have a beneficial impact on people. But is there any truly quantifiable way to measure that? And if we do, what happens if we find out that art affects people’s ability to become better people not at all, or makes people worse?
There is lots of poetry I still love, but most of it is much less grand in intent - small-scale poems by Philip Larkin or Billy Collins meant to make us laugh or cry, without abiding ambition to capture any greater meaning than the emotions we feel every day. The ecstasy of poetry, the feeling that you were reaching some higher level of inward consciousness and aesthetic bliss, no longer seems real to me. The days when Whitman or Dante or Milton or Goethe could bowl me over have likely passed on forever.
Furthermore, I’m not even sure anymore why people should or would read it. Twelve years ago, I certainly thought of myself as a dyed-in-the-wool leftist, but even then I used to bristle at the idea of resenting Dead White Males for writing better poetry than everybody else. To my 17-year-old brain, puffed up in many cases on the Harold Bloom filter rather than the texts of the books themselves, the thought that we’d ditch Milton for Maya Angelou was an abomination. But as I started to carry my own version of precisely that same resentment: the Dead White Goy. Even until today, the whole concept of the “Dead White Male” never made any sense to me as an aesthetic concern. It makes very little sense for students to read a book by a particular writer because of the ethnic group he or she is from. Supposedly, the best art is created for all of us to appreciate; and if we want our students to be well-educated, then we must have them read the best books - regardless of who wrote them. And unfortunately, for most of human history, White Males were the only people in the world with the time and money to cultivate a highly developed aesthetic sense. Practice makes perfect, and the fact that there’s no equivalent to Tolstoy among Zulus is not a question of racial prejudice, it simply has to do with the unfortunate dumb luck that the vast majority (though hardly all) of people born through history with enough privilege to practice their art were White Males. Most other civilizations lived through far too much hardship to worry themselves about any art that wasn’t expediently made to serve a utilitarian purpose.
But the Dead White Goy is a very simple concept for me - and it was years before I realized that this complaint of mine is precisely identical to the Dead White Male for other minorities (I certainly didn't call it the 'Dead White Goy' until I saw the similarity). I'm a conservative Jew born and raised among other Jews in Northwest Baltimore. What matters is not whether the books I read correspond to reality, but whether the books I read correspond to my reality - the only reality I know. How could a kid raised in my milleu ever hope to understand what makes The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost, or The Brothers Karamazov a transcendent experience? I like to think I know more about Christian history and doctrines than many Christians, but my experience of Christianity is almost completely abstract: I know relatively few believing Christians, and I can probably count the times I've been to a Christian service on my hands. How am I supposed to understand why these beliefs mean so much to certain people? Furthermore, how could a person with a childhood like mine appreciate works that are shrouded in Pagan Mythology? How could Faust, or Ode to a Grecian Urn, or the Lady of Shallott, with their classical allusions and/or Norse/Celtic mythological references mean anything to me?
Christianity vs. Paganism is not my fight. Whether Christian or Pagan, all those reams of allegedly great literature which harps on the worlds of the spirit mean very little to a kid raised to believe that within a year of their death, every person gets into Heaven; a place so boring that the only thing to do for all eternity is to study the Torah. The idea itself of the spirit world is an extremely goyisher concept, almost completely at odds with any Jewish mindset I know (Isaac Bashevis Singer being an extraordinary exception to this rule). Judaism, a religion I was steeped in from the earliest age and whose outlook permeates every aspect of my life - whether I like it or not - is a religion of laws, ethics and customs. It is a supremely practical religion, concerned hardly at all with questions of the afterlife and only with how we conduct ourselves in our own world.
But if I, a shy bookish kid who had very little he loved more than to read, could not relate to this literature, how much less relateable is Tennyson or Dostoevsky to the existence of inner city kids from the projects who are barely exposed at all to the written word? If we want to make as many of them into readers as possible, then they need literature that speaks to them as much as Franz Kafka or Saul Bellow speak to me. It's a trial and error process, and we may not like the books which they love.
So why do we hesitate in allowing for these differences of mindset? To my mind, that can only be explicable by the 'Halo' effect - not the video game, but the pretentious cathedral-like reverence that surrounds certain works of art that makes us feel that we should appreciate them even if we don’t. It’s the hush of Milton and Wagner, Bob Dylan and Stanley Kubrick (we kid ourselves if we think such sentiments don’t exist in popular culture as much as aristocratic), in which the self-conscious loftiness of their work dupes insecure people into thinking that dreary loftiness of aim is the same thing as intelligence. a.k.a. This is boring and grandiose, therefore it must be amazing.
This is the hush of the high school English class, in which we read precisely the same books our grandparents read in their English classes (...except for Death of a Salesman), and 16 year old versions of us are expected to appreciate precisely how the work of a 19th century transcendentalist describing the flora and fauna of the New England springtime applies to our everyday life. How is a sixteen year old kid supposed to have enough life experience to relate to Song of Myself? Or The Scarlett Letter? Or Moby Dick? I’m now thirty, and I still don’t relate to them.
And yet I can’t deny that there is something comforting in the very unrelateableness of that literature. The fact that it speaks of a world about which I knew/know nothing was part of its very appeal to my adolescent self. I went to a school I hated with lots of kids I couldn’t stand and no hope of getting out of there before graduation, and here was a world completely unencumbered by reality - a world which tells you that a completely separate reality is but a page away. Today, I don’t think much of the idea that books exist to take you out of yourself - that seems all too much like an excuse to act like an ass in your real life. But I can’t deny that, occasionally, perhaps that’s a necessary sentiment. And perhaps I’ll see more reason for it again as the years go on.
I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
Even Indians wear underwear
Even Cubans
wear underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind
You have seen the underwear ads for men and women
so alike but so different
Women’s underwear holds things up
Men’s underwear holds things down
Underwear is one thing
men and women do have in common
Underwear is all we have between us
You have seen the three-color pictures
with crotches encircled
to show the areas of extra strength
with three-way stretch
promising full freedom of action
Don’t be deceived
It’s all based on the two-party system
which doesn’t allow much freedom of choice
the way things are set up
America in its Underwear
struggles thru the night
Underwear controls everything in the end
Take foundation garments for instance
They are really fascist forms
of underground government
making people believe
something but the truth
telling you what you can of can’t do
Did you ever try to get around a girdle
Perhaps Non-Violent Action
is the only answer
Did Gandhi wear a girdle?
Did Lady Macbeth wear a girdle?
Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep?
And the spot she was always rubbing -
Was it really her underwear?
Modern anglosaxon ladies
must have huge guilt complexes
always washing and washing and washing
Out damned spot
Underwear with spots very suspicious
Underwear with bulges very shocking
Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom
Someone has escaped his Underwear
May be naked somewhere
Help!
But don’t worry
Everybody’s still hung up in it
There won’t be no real revolution
And poetry still the underwear of the soul
And underwear still covering
a multitude of faults
in the geological sense -
strange sedimentary stones, inscrutable cracks!
If I were you I’d keep aside
an oversize pair of winter underwear
Do not go naked into that good night
And in the meantime
keep calm and warm and dry
No use stirring ourselves up prematurely
‘over Nothing’
Move forward with dignity
hand in vest
Don’t get emotional
And death shall have no dominion
There’s plenty of time my darling
Are we not still young and easy?
Don’t shout.
Always driven, always in the bite of
the blast --
Was the burden of life ever bitterer
on earth?
Has harsher yoke pressed on calloused
shoulders,
The plough of dark Destiny cut deeper
furrows?
Were death and dread ever quite so
near?
And yet we are here!
And yet we lifted our foreheads over
and over,
And yet our songs of thanks, our
prayers and paeans mounted,
When air and light stole through a rift
of the mouldy dungeon,
They found us bowed on the book, at
God's work, the workers!
Our hearts did not break though our
lot was austere,
And yet we are here!
Terrible Fate, you bring weeping and
the lust to kill,
All day you crouch in corners, threaten
and leer,
All night you gnash your teeth and
lurk by our pallet.
When we sobbed, swore, implored, it
was you who spoke.
Only Hatred replied with savage jeer
And yet we are here!
Yes, yet we are here, and must remain,
Sucking at pain as at honeycombs.
The others go -- are allowed to! Our
hour
Once shall bloom from a fertile wound.
Then we shall know why He suffered
our tears.
Then, when the trumpet's holy Yes
rings clear,
We shall be here!
Some people fleeing some other people.
In some country under the sun
and some clouds.
They leave behind some of their everything,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now sees itself reflected.
On their backs are pitchers and bundles,
the emptier, the heavier from one day to the next.
Taking place stealthily is somebody's stopping,
and in the commotion, somebody's bread somebody's snatching
and a dead child somebody's shaking.
In front of them some still not the right way,
nor the bridge that should be
over a river strangely rosy.
Around them, some gunfire, at times closer, at times farther off,
and, above, a plane circling somewhat.
Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or even better, non-being
for a little or a long while.
Something else is yet to happen, only where and what?
Someone will head toward them, only when and who,
in how many shapes and with what intentions?
Given a choice,
maybe he will choose not to be the enemy and
leave them with some kind of life.
Today's Nobel Prize winner talking in English and reading his poem Schubertiana. Bad sound but absolutely beautiful.
“Schubertiana”
by Tomas Transtromer. (Trans. Kalle Raisanen)
I.
In the evening-dark of a place outside New York, a look-out point
where one glance can encompass eight million people’s homes.
The giant city over there is a long, flickering snow-drift, a spiral
galaxy on its side.
Inside the galaxy, coffee cups are slid over the counter, store-fronts
beg with passers-by, a crowd of shoes that leave no traces.
The climbing fire-escapes, the elevator doors gliding shut, behind
locked doors a constant swell of voices.
Sunken bodies half-sleep in the subway cars, the rushing cata-
combs.
I know, also — statistics aside — that right now Schubert is
being played in some room over there and that to someone
those sounds are more important than all those other things.
I I.
The human brain’s endless expanse crumpled into the size of a
fist.
In April, the swallow returns to its last-year’s-nest under the roof
of that very barn in that very parish.
She flies from the Transvaal, passes the equator, flies for six weeks
over two continents, steers toward this dissappearing point in
the land-mass.
And the man who captures the signals of a whole life in some
fairly ordinary chords by five strings
the man who makes a river run through the eye of a needle
is a fat young man from Vienna, called “Little Mushroom” by his
friends, who slept with his glasses on
and got punctually behind his writing desk each morning.
At which the wonderful centipedes of music were set in motion.
1
“Schubertiana” Tomas Transtr¨omer. (Trans. Kalle R¨ais¨anen)
I I I.
The five strings play. I walk home through tepid forests with the
ground springing under me
crawl up like an unborn, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future,
suddenly feel that the plants have thoughts.
IV.
So much we have to trust, simply to live through our daily day
without sinking through the earth!
Trust the snow clinging to the mountain slope over the village.
Trust the promises of silence and smiles of understanding,
trust that the accident telegram isn’t for us and that the sudden
axe-blow from within won’t come.
Trust the wheel-axles that carry us on the highway in the middle
of the three-hundred-times magnified bee swarm of steel.
But none of that is really worth our confidence.
The five strings say we can trust something else.
Trust what? Something else, and they follow us part of the way
there.
As when the lights turn off in the stair-well and the hand follows
— with confidence — the blind handrail that finds its way in
the dark.
V.
We crowd in front of the piano and play four-handed in F-minor,
two coachmen on the same carriage, it looks slightly ridicu-
lous.
Our hands seem to move clanging weights back and forth, as if
we were touching the counter-weights
in attempt at disturbing the terrible balance of the great scales:
joy and suffering weigh exactly the same.
Annie said, “This music is so heroic,” and it’s true.
But those who glance enviously at the men of action, those who
secretely despise themselves for not being murderers
they don’t recognise themselves here.
And those many who buy and sell people and think that everyone
can be bought, they don’t recognise themselves here.
2
Not their music. The long melody that remains itself through all
changes, sometimes glittering and weak, sometimes rough and
strong, snail-trails and steel wire.
The insistant humming that follows us right now
up the
depths.
2. Warren Zevon: Roland the Headless Thomson Gunner
3. Bob Dylan: The Times They Are a’Changin (graphic imagery in video)
4. Leonard Cohen: Who By Fire (with Sonny Rollins)
5. Mavis Staples: Eyes on the Prize (graphic imagery)
6. Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA
7. U2: One
8. Blind Willie Johnson: Dark Was The Night
9. Johnny Cash: Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down
(Optional # 10: A Child of our Time by Michael Tippett)
1. September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
2. Sonnet 30: by William Shakespeare
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
3. Requiem: by Anna Akhmatova
Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected -
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961]
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]
DEDICATION
Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?
What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard?
What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon?
I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.
[March 1940]
INTRODUCTION
[PRELUDE]
It happened like this when only the dead
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its prisons
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang
Short songs of farewell
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.
I
You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather
To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)
Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]
II
Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.
III
It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.
IV
Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2)
If only you could have foreseen
What life would do with you -
That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in
line,
Burning the new year's ice
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways
With not a sound - how many innocent
Blameless lives are being taken away. . .
[1938]
V
For seventeen months I have been screaming,
Calling you home.
I've thrown myself at the feet of butchers
For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever -
I can no longer distinguish
Who is an animal, who a person, and how long
The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers,
The chinking of the thurible,
Tracks from somewhere into nowhere
And, staring me in the face
And threatening me with swift annihilation,
An enormous star.
[1939]
VI
Weeks fly lightly by. Even so,
I cannot understand what has arisen,
How, my son, into your prison
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the talk
Is again of death.
[1939. Spring]
VII
THE VERDICT
The word landed with a stony thud
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.
I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again. . .
But how. The hot summer rustles
Like a carnival outside my window;
I have long had this premonition
Of a bright day and a deserted house.
[22 June 1939. Summer. Fontannyi Dom (4)]
VIII
TO DEATH
You will come anyway - so why not now?
I wait for you; things have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the door
For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish. Burst in
Like a shell of noxious gas. Creep up on me
Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation,
Or, with a simple tale prepared by you
(And known by all to the point of nausea), take me
Before the commander of the blue caps and let me
glimpse
The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore. The river Yenisey
Swirls on. The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes
Close over and cover the final horror.
[19 August 1939. Fontannyi Dom]
IX
Madness with its wings
Has covered half my soul
It feeds me fiery wine
And lures me into the abyss.
That's when I understood
While listening to my alien delirium
That I must hand the victory
To it.
However much I nag
However much I beg
It will not let me take
One single thing away:
Not my son's frightening eyes -
A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting hours
Or days that end in storms
Nor the sweet coolness of a hand
The anxious shade of lime trees
Nor the light distant sound
Of final comforting words.
[14 May 1940. Fontannyi Dom]
X
CRUCIFIXION
Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.
1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour,
The heavens melted into flames.
To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!'
But to his mother, 'Weep not for me. . .'
[1940. Fontannyi Dom]
2.
Magdalena smote herself and wept,
The favourite disciple turned to stone,
But there, where the mother stood silent,
Not one person dared to look.
[1943. Tashkent]
EPILOGUE
1.
I have learned how faces fall,
How terror can escape from lowered eyes,
How suffering can etch cruel pages
Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks.
I know how dark or ash-blond strands of hair
Can suddenly turn white. I've learned to recognise
The fading smiles upon submissive lips,
The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh.
That's why I pray not for myself
But all of you who stood there with me
Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.
2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you:
The one who resisted the long drag to the open window;
The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar
soil beneath her feet;
The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied,
'I arrive here as if I've come home!'
I'd like to name you all by name, but the list
Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So,
I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble
words
I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always,
I will never forget one single thing. Even in new
grief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth
Through which one hundred million people scream;
That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman
Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like tears
From my immovable bronze eyelids
And let the prison dove coo in the distance
While ships sail quietly along the river.
[March 1940. Fontannyi Dom
4. Holy Sonnet X by John Donne
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.
5. Death Fugue: by Paul Celan
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Marguerite
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling
he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he orders us strike up and play for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margeurite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margeurite
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then in smoke to the sky
you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams
der Tod is ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith
6. Ecclesiastes 8
8:1
Who is as the wise man? and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? a man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed.
8:2
I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God.
8:3
Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him.
8:4
Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou?
8:5
Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment.
8:6
Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.
8:7
For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be?
8:8
There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it.
8:9
All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt.
8:10
And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this is also vanity.
8:11
Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
8:12
Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him:
8:13
But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.
8:14
There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity.
8:15
Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.
8:16
When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes:)
8:17
Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea farther; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.
7. The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats (a cliched contribution)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
8. Dance of the Dead: by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
HE warder he gazes o' the night
On the graveyards under him lying,
The moon into clearness throws all by her light,
The night with the daylight is vying.
There's a stir in the graves, and forth from their tombs
The form of a man, then a woman next looms
In garments long trailing and snowy.
They stretch themselves out, and with eager delight
Join the bones for the revel and dancing --
Young and old, rich and poor, the lady and the knight,
Their trains are a hindrance to dancing.
And since here by shame they no longer are bound,
They shuffle them off, and lo, strewn lie around
Their garments on each little hillock.
Here rises a shank, and a leg wobbles there
With lewd diabolical gesture;
And clatter and rattle of bones you might hear,
As of one beating sticks to a measure.
This seems to the warder a laughable game:
Then the tempter, low whispering, up to him came:
"In one of their shrouds go and wrap thee."
'Twas done soon as said; then he gained in wild flight
Concealment behind the church portal,
The moon all the while throws her bright beams of light
On the dance where they revel and sport all.
First one, then another, dispersed all are they,
And donning their shrouds steal the spectres away,
And under the graves all is quiet.
But one of them stumbles and fumbles along,
'Midst the tombstones groping intently;
But none of his comrades have done him this wrong,
His shroud in the breeze 'gins to scent he.
He rattles the door of the tower, but can find
No entrance -- good luck to the warder behind! --
'Tis barred with blest crosses of metal.
His shroud must he have, or rest can he ne'er;
And so, without further preambles,
The old Gothic carving he grips then and there,
From turret to pinnacle scrambles.
Alas for the warder! all's over, I fear;
From buttress to buttress in dev'lish career
He climbs like a long-legged spider.
The warder he trembles, and pale doth he look,
That shroud he would gladly be giving,
When piercing transfixed it a sharp-pointed hook!
He thought his last hour he was living.
Clouds cover already the vanishing moon,
With thunderous clang beats the clock a loud One --
Below lies the skeleton, shattered.
9. I Want To Die In My Own Bed: by Yehuda Amichai
All night the army came up from Gilgal
To get to the killing field, and that's all.
In the ground, warf and woof, lay the dead.
I want to die in My own bed.
Like slits in a tank, their eyes were uncanny,
I'm always the few and they are the many.
I must answer. They can interrogate My head.
But I want to die in My own bed.
The sun stood still in Gibeon. Forever so, it's willing
to illuminate those waging battle and killing.
I may not see My wife when her blood is shed,
But I want to die in My own bed.
Samson, his strength in his long black hair,
My hair they sheared when they made me a hero
Perforce, and taught me to charge ahead.
I want to die in My own bed.
I saw you could live and furnish with grace
Even a lion's den, if you've no other place.
I don't even mind to die alone, to be dead,
But I want to die in My own bed.
10. Dante’s Inferno: Canto XXVI
Rejoice, Florence, for you are so great that you fan
Your wings over sea and land, and your fame
Spreads through Hell's depth and span!
4 Among the thieves—to my great shame –
I found five of your citizens, who do
Eternal damage to the honor of your name.
7 But if dreams near dawn are true,
Then before much longer you'll surely
Feel what Prato and others crave for you.
10 And if this happened now, it wouldn't be too early;
Indeed, since it must come, let it come today,
For as I age, it will just grieve me more severely.
13 We now struggled back on our solitary way,
Up the same stone stairs we'd used on our recent
Climb down; the sharp, jagged rock which lay
16 Along our path forced our hands to supplement
Our feet, and my guide, dragging me behind,
Set a steady pace upward. Now must I curb my talent
19 More than usual, while I direct my mind
Toward those sad things I saw which grieve me still;
Otherwise my genius might run a course not designed
22 Or ruled by virtue; for if my gift be the will
Of some lucky star, or even of something
Higher, I must take care never to use it for ill.
25 Imagine a peasant who is resting
On a hillside, in the season when he
Who lights the world is most revealing
28 Of his face, at the hour when one can barely see
The firefly but the mosquito is on the rise.
Picture how many fireflies there might be
31 Glimmering in that valley beneath his eyes,
Where perhaps he gathers grapes, or tills the land.
The eighth chasm had just as many flames as these flies,
34 As I perceived once I could command
A view of its gleaming depths. Just as he who
Was avenged by bears witnessed Elijah's chariot and
37 Its rearing horses on their departure to
Heaven, yet saw only a flame—like a cloud afloat –
Once they were too far off to get a clear view,
40 So each flame streaked through that ditch's throat,
None revealing its theft, but each surreptitiously
Carrying off a sinner under its fiery coat.
43 I stood on the bridge and leaned out cautiously,
Observing, and if my grip hadn't been so tight
About a rock I would have fallen disastrously.
46 My guide, seeing how taken I was with the sight,
Informed me: "A soul resides within each fire,
Swathed in the scorching punishment that's right
49 For it." "Master," I replied, "your words inspire
Confidence in me, for I'd already suspected
This was the case and meant to inquire:
52 Who inhabits that flame whose top is so bisected
That it might well rise from the pyre containing
Eteocles and his brother?" "Eternally connected
55 In punishment, as once in wrath," he began explaining,
"Ulysses and Diomed are together tortured.
Within their flame, groaning and complaining,
58 They lament the ambush of the horse which punctured
The wall so that the noble Roman seed fled;
Within their flame they mourn the guile which procured
61 Deidama's grief for Achilles, even when she's dead;
And within it, for the Palladium, they're made to pay."
"If they can speak inside those flames," I said,
64 "Then let me pray you, master, and then repray –
So that the value of my single prayer is the same
As a thousand—that you don't forbid me to stay
67 Here until the approach of the two–horned flame;
For you see how I lean toward it with desire."
"Your request," he replied, "has a worthy aim,
70 And deserves much praise; we'll wait for the fire,
Just as you wish, but be sure to restrain
Your tongue—that's the only thing I require.
73 Let me do the talking, for I know the train
Of your thought; since in life this pair
Was Greek, they might treat your words with disdain."
76 When the time was right, and the flame was where
My guide felt sufficiently near it,
He addressed the sinners with particular care:
79 "Oh you who mix more than one spirit
In a single flame, if I had merit for you when
I was alive, if on earth I had any merit,
82 Great or small, when there flowed from my pen
The noble verses, don't leave now, stay a moment.
Let one of you describe how he went astray and then
85 Met his death." The larger horn of that ancient
Flame began to quiver, murmuring like a fire
Battling the wind; then, as if generated by the movement
88 Of the tip to and fro—so that the entire
Horn seemed like one great tongue—a voice said:
"Circe held me near Gaëta, against my desire,
91 Beguiling me for more than a year until I fled,
(Before Aeneas called the place by this name).
Neither reverence for my father, then nearly dead,
94 Nor fondness for my son, nor the well–earned claim
Which Penelope had upon my love and affection,
(With which I might have made her happy), could tame
97 My ardor for experience and exploration,
That burning need to touch and feel and see
The world of human virtue and human degradation.
100 Thus I set out on the deep and open sea
With a single ship and that small core
Of companions who'd never deserted me.
103 I saw as far as Spain on the northern shore
And Morocco on the southern, having passed by
Sardinia and other sea–bathed isles long before.
106 When we reached the straits my companions and I
Were old and slow; towering on either
Side were the pillars Hercules had placed on high *
109 To warn men against venturing any farther;
We sailed by Seville on the right hand,
While Ceuta we'd already passed on the other.
112 'Brothers,' I said, 'you who through a hundred thousand
Perils have reached the west, do not deny
To the brief vigil of your senses this final errand:
115 Before the time remaining to you goes by,
Seek out the uninhabited world beyond the sun;
Make it your last experience before you die.
118 Think of your origins: you're not just anyone –
You weren't born to live like brutes;
To pursue knowledge and virtue is your mission!'
121 Reminding my companions of their Greek roots,
This brief speech made them as keen to begin
The journey as young, fired up recruits,
124 So that I couldn't possibly have reined them in.
Turning our stern to morning, we made of each oar
A wing for our mad flight; the slow spin
127 Of southern stars filled the night sky as we bore
Down more heavily on the left and submerged
Our own pole deep beneath the ocean floor.
130 Five times the light of the moon had surged
And then diminished since we'd entered by
That narrow pass; before us there emerged
133 A great mountain, dim in the distance, and so high
That among all those I'd seen it seemed the tallest.
My companions and I were elated, but as if to deny
136 Our joy there rose a violent, swirling tempest
From the new land, battering the bow
Of our boat while in despair we witnessed
139 Our doom at Another's pleasure. Three times now *
Our vessel was whirled around in a watery spin;
And the fourth time the stern lurched up, the prow
142 Plunged down, and above us the sea closed in."
11. Home Burial: by Robert Frost
He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.
She took a doubtful step and then undid it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
Advancing toward her: 'What is it you see
From up there always--for I want to know.'
She turned and sank upon her skirts at that,
And her face changed from terrified to dull.
He said to gain time: 'What is it you see,'
Mounting until she cowered under him.
'I will find out now--you must tell me, dear.'
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and awhile he didn't see.
But at last he murmured, 'Oh,' and again, 'Oh.'
'What is it--what?' she said.
'Just that I see.'
'You don't,' she challenged. 'Tell me what it is.'
'The wonder is I didn't see at once.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must be wonted to it--that's the reason.
The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
There are three stones of slate and one of marble,
Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight
On the sidehill. We haven't to mind those.
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child's mound--'
'Don't, don't, don't, don't,' she cried.
She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm
That rested on the bannister, and slid downstairs;
And turned on him with such a daunting look,
He said twice over before he knew himself:
'Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?'
'Not you! Oh, where's my hat? Oh, I don't need it!
I must get out of here. I must get air.
I don't know rightly whether any man can.'
'Amy! Don't go to someone else this time.
Listen to me. I won't come down the stairs.'
He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
'There's something I should like to ask you, dear.'
'You don't know how to ask it.'
'Help me, then.'
Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.
'My words are nearly always an offense.
I don't know how to speak of anything
So as to please you. But I might be taught
I should suppose. I can't say I see how.
A man must partly give up being a man
With women-folk. We could have some arrangement
By which I'd bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you're a-mind to name.
Though I don't like such things 'twixt those that love.
Two that don't love can't live together without them.
But two that do can't live together with them.'
She moved the latch a little. 'Don't--don't go.
Don't carry it to someone else this time.
Tell me about it if it's something human.
Let me into your grief. I'm not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
What was it brought you up to think it the thing
To take your mother--loss of a first child
So inconsolably--in the face of love.
You'd think his memory might be satisfied--'
'There you go sneering now!'
'I'm not, I'm not!
You make me angry. I'll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it's come to this,
A man can't speak of his own child that's dead.'
'You can't because you don't know how to speak.
If you had any feelings, you that dug
With your own hand--how could you?--his little grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you.
And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave
And talk about your everyday concerns.
You had stood the spade up against the wall
Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.'
'I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.
I'm cursed. God, if I don't believe I'm cursed.'
'I can repeat the very words you were saying.
"Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can build."
Think of it, talk like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened parlor.
You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world's evil. I won't have grief so
If I can change it. Oh, I won't, I won't!'
'There, you have said it all and you feel better.
You won't go now. You're crying. Close the door.
The heart's gone out of it: why keep it up.
Amy! There's someone coming down the road!'
'You--oh, you think the talk is all. I must go--
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you--'
'If--you--do!' She was opening the door wider.
'Where do you mean to go? First tell me that.
I'll follow and bring you back by force. I will!--'
