Paracelsus in Excelsis

Posted on April 11, 2012 by

Being no longer human, why should I
Pretend humanity or don the frail attire?
Men have I known and men, but never one
Was grown so free an essence, or become
So simply element as what I am.
The mist goes from the mirror and I see.
Behold ! The world of forms is swept beneath —
Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace —
And we that are grown formless, rise above
Fluids intangible that have been men.
We seem as statues round whose high-risen base
Some overflowing river is run mad,
In us alone the element of calm.    

Comment:  This is one of the clearest and most convincing poems about the mystical experience. We have the basic characteristics of religious ecstasy : 1 the sensation of being bodiless − an ‘essence’, ‘intangible fluid’ −  and yet nonetheless ‘something’; 2 the sensation oflooking down from above (“the world of forms is swept beneath”) ; 3 the feeling of being completely removed from, though not entirely unaware of, ordinary existence; 4 the sensation of ultimate calm compared to the turbulence of ’living’; 5 the impression of being immersed in a deeper reality  which normal sense perception  deforms and masks (“the mist goes from the  mirror and I see“).
The style is a curious but effective mixture of simple, matter of fact speaking and mannered, faintly archaic diction —  ‘Behold!’, ‘Men have I known and men’ . The odd colloquial, or semi-colloquial, word such as ‘mad’ in “Some overflowing rive is run mad” for some reason comes off − compare this with the possible alternatives, the contrived  “Some overflowing river has become demented”  or bathotic “…..has gone berserk”.
Curiously, the author of the poem was not in the least religious nor, as far as I know, did he (or she) ever have a mystical experience of this or any other type. Perhaps this is why (s)he handled the theme better than most convinced mystics who tend to be verbose and vague in their writings.
It is also puzzling that Paracelsus should have been chosen as the subject.   Paracelsus was not a mystic but a Renaissance doctor whose thinking was a weird medley of outmoded medieval notions and new-fangled semi-scientific ones. He made some attempt to place medical practice on an observational and experimental footing though his importance in this respect has been greatly exaggerated.   S.H. 
  

 

   

 

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Jacket chosen by Sebastian Hayes

Posted on February 15, 2012 by

I bought it only yesterday
But already it stares at me.
It lounges in a chair,
arms crossed behind its collar
which (fake fur) wears an insolence…Why didn’t I notice it before?

As if it hums a tune
under its breath, just out of hearing,
a backwoods song crammed with refrains
of fidelity and urgent betrayal.
The jacket has sat on other shoulders
and remembers them. It doesn’t think much of mine.

Already I realise we’ll be opponents
yet it looks good on me. You could almost claim
that (when it condescends to) it suits me.
This is a jacket for adventure;
see its martial buttons, martial cuffs? Now it speaks,
it agrees — for a while — to possess me.

Commentary : A delightful little poem based on an experience which we have probably all had at one time or another but which has never yet been recorded to my knowledge in a poem (or in prose other than horror stories). The development is well handled : the author resists the temptation to sensationalise the event or give it a specific esoteric meaning. A less thoughtful person would have ascribed the ‘power’ of the garment to its (unknown) previous owner whose vibes the jacket has retained. But it is much more striking — and perhaps more plausible —  to view the ‘power’, such as it is, as inherent in the jacket itself. The poem moves nicely to a tranquil close which has just the right hint of menace in the parentheis “for a while”.
The theme is more serious than one might at first think. I have myself been so overcome with an irrational repulsion regarding a fur-lined winter jacket, and a good one, given to me in all good faith, that I wouldn’t have it in the room I slept in for a single night and relegated it to a cupboard on the landing before donating it to a Charity Shop at the first opportunity. Certain ‘objects’ undoubtedly do have a kind of personality, a ‘half-life’ I call it : some people, such as Kevin Kelly, the author of the interesting book Out of Control, seriously think that there is some sort of symbiotic relationship currently developing between man-made objects and human beings, though Kelly is more thinking of computers and complicated machines. It is not clear whether this development, if it persists, will be beneficial (as Kelly thinks) or disastrous. In the early SF novel, The Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon, written in the Twenties, super-computers take control of life on Earth and force human beings to obey them. They have no emotions except an all-devouring curiosity and human beings spend their lives amassing data for these creatures. We are maybe not so far from this already.     S.F.

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Melvin

Posted on December 16, 2011 by

Small boy following small girl home, kicking leaves
Heaped red and brown and crackling in the gutters,
I remember you well, I remember your name, Melvin.

And in the autumn sunlight, somewhere in a midwest city,
Is there another like you in the burnt-out afternoon,
Small boy following small girl home, kicking leaves ?

Where is the small girl whose name I have forgotten
Or mislaid somewhere? She has gone irretrievably, but
I remember you well, I remember your name, Melvin.

You whom I have never seen again across many years
Are transfixed in my mind, trapped in time’s terrible lava,
Small boy following small girl home, kicking leaves.

It is as if you had never lived anywhere else
But that sunlit city, that sunlit year, full of the smells of home.
I remember you well, I remember your name, Melvin.

And as I look back down the long track from there to here
I cannot see you behind me, but I know you are there,
Small boy following small girl home, kicking leaves
I remember you well, I remember your name, Melvin.

Commentary:  As is the case for all good poems, this piece is equally memorable for the style and the theme, and is  ‘thirdly memorable’ because the style fits the theme perfectly.
Melvin is a modern ‘free-verse villanelle’. A villanelle, so Frances Stillman’s  The Poet’s Manual and Rhyming Dictionary informs me “was originally a round song sung by farm labourers” and is one of the most interesting and attractive of the many poetic forms developed during the latter Middle Ages. The rhyme scheme is (A1)b(A2)  ab(A1)  ab(A2)  ab(A1)  ab(A1)(A2)
This ‘modern’ villanelle dispenses with rhyme but retains the repetitive scheme – and this seems absolutely ‘right’. The modern world has dislocated traditional values, poetic or otherwise, and, unless one is very careful, rhymed stanzas appear quaint, distinctly un-modern. Repetition minus rhyme is one way of achieving unity without prettiness and it is absolutely appropriate here since the memory haunts the writer, i.e. keeps coming back again and again in exactly the same form like the refrain.
The treatment and theme are strikingly original because it is not the child that the poet remembers or singles out but the moment in time, the ‘scene’. ‘Melvin’ does not really exist outside the framework of this particular time and place, he does not grow into an adult who pursues such and such a profession, marries such and such a person, indeed is perhaps by now long dead and gone. But this does not matter in the least because ’Melvin’ is fixed for ever in this scene  like a fly in amber. Interestingly, the ‘little girl’, though part of the scene, does not have equal status with ‘Melvin’, she has “gone irretrievably“.
A psychologist might theorise as to why the poet recalls this particular scene rather than others but most likely there was no particular reason : the mind arbitrarily recalls certain moments in life while ruthlessly discarding others.  Certain scenes, of no special significance in our lives as far as we can judge, have very powerful reverberations, almost on the level of a religious experience : the author has spotted this curious quirk of the mind and highlighted it very effectively.   S.H.         

 

 

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Rite of Suttee

Posted on November 28, 2011 by

From the worn temple, chromatic bells sift sounds
on the air like purified cinders while the young bride
makes suttee, dismissing love that exists no more;
he who lies dead beneath her hears none of her prayers,
though it’s his high name she invokes as she prays.
She straddles his wrapped, saffron-strewn chest
that no longer heaves with passion’s breath,
though in other times she believed he called her to him,
whether speaking her real name or not.
Smoking sandalwood forces fire to her living heart,
and to his dead one, once muscled with insatiable desire.

But she’s an astute girl, not asking on this ritual pyre
if her faithful body excuses his premature flight—
such a dark question for which there’s no time
to string petals of answers, if even they’d form
from living flowers shrouding the dead.
His scorching bones kindle final flames for her
as she claims and receives her supposed sanctuary;
it’s enough for her to burn with him in his ascent,
burning in her own fragrant, innocent intent.
Chromatic bells ring in sequence from cold stones:
she hears but won’t contradict them, not now—
she can no longer judge her offering in this holy heat.

Commentary: This poem is strikingly original in its treatment of the grisly theme and convincing in its style and diction. Whereas the basic metric pattern for English verse is the virile iambic pentameter, the equivalent in French verse is the sinuous, extended alexandrine (12 syllables) which lends itself better to muted and sonorous effects. (One might with some exagerration say that the iambic pentameter is the metre of life, the alexandrine the metre if not of death at least of dying, Shakespeare vs. Racine.) It is thus entirely appropriate that the underlying pattern of the above poem (perhaps unconsciously) is the alexandrine though with many subtle variations. The diction is somewhat formal, ever so faintly stylized, which entirely suits the solemnity of the occasion and the poem ends with an emphatic last line which has the effect of a coda concluding a Beethoven symphony.
The poet shows audacity in even taking the Hindu rite as a theme for a poem, and even more audacity in the slant he gives to it. A Victorian poet would have sentimentalized the situation by making the widow’s offering the culmination of a lifetime of devotion, a contemporary poet would have viewed the theme as an opportunity to castigate patriarchal society. But the widow — who is  described as ‘young’ — does not ask for our sympathy, nor need it. She is not motivated by love, “dismissing love that exists no more“ though it seems that passion did exist once, at least on her husband’s side (“heaves with passion’s breath”, “muscled with insatiable desire”.)  As for piety and duty, not a word : this is a chosen death not one imposed by society.  The young widow achieves a kind of greatness in her voluntary sacrifice just because it is unnecessary : she rises above the dictates of custom and society, likewise the equally exacting requirements of the nineteenth-century Western cult of ‘romantic love’.
Why in fact , does she kill herself? The only explanation seems to be that the rite of suttee is an occasion for her to relinquish the ‘will to live’.  Schopenhauer, had he been alive today, would have quoted this poem with approval for he singles out for especial  praise those few individuals in history, or in drama, who “are placed in circumstances in which all their qualities unfold, where the depths of the human heart are revealed and become visible in extraordinary and very significant actions” (World as Will and Idea, Book Three, section 51). At such moments “freed from the Will, we surrender to pure will-less knowing, we pass into a world from which everything that influences our will and agitates us so violently has passed away“.
The widow performing suttee is indeed ‘beyond the here and now’, even beyond the wish to transcend human life, supposing this to have been her original motive. It is far from certain that she will attain a state of beatitude in another world which alone would justify self-sacrifice — the poem speaks of  a ‘supposed sanctuary’ not an actual one. The action is sufficient in and to itself, needs no justification or sequel :
“it’s enough for her to burn with him in his ascent,
burning in her own fragrant, innocent intent.”

S.H.

Posted in Accessibility, Definitiveness, General, Memorability, Musicality, Profundity or Pithyness, Schopenhauer | Leave a comment

Nirvana

Posted on November 14, 2011 by

“You lie in a world before silence,
where there’s no meaning to harm you,
no day beyond to which you belong.
Hands grasping only themselves
you have no occasions, but lie in this
world — before silence disentangles itself
into needs, into  breathing.

You lie in a world without limits.
You lie in a world before meaning.

Sleeping.”

Commentary : This poem is remarkable in its conciseness, also because of its pleasing shape with the penultimate line recalling the second by the phrase “no meaning” while the last line has an impressive finality because it consists of a single word.
The original title of the poem from which these lines come is not Nirvana and the author almost certainly did not realize the connection with Buddhism. But nirvana, the only true reality for Buddhists, is precisely a state in which there is neither meaning nor search for meaning. Although the Buddha emphasizes more the unhappiness caused by possessiveness and trishna (grasping), he also considered the ‘search for meaning’ to be both pointless and inevitably distressing — though he spoke from the standpoint of a person who had spent long years in this precise search before attaining enlightenment. (It is interesting that the word ‘grasping’ actually occurs in line 4 : it is precisely reaching out and trying to grasp what is outside ourselves that is the cause of all suffering.)
Nirvana is not only a ‘world without meaning’ but also a ‘world without limits’ (line 8). Indeed, the deeply pessimistic Buddhist religion regards ‘life’, i.e. being born into the world at all, as a catastrophe : better not to be and sleep for ever in peace like the unborn child. [ The Sanskrit term 'nirvãna' literally means 'extinguished' :  “Nirvãna’ is the quiescence of phenomenal existence, and the attainment of the highest good” (Candrakiriti)]
Certain schools of modern psychology (e.g. that of Grof) claim that the original trauma plaguing contemporary adults is not some real or imagined event in childhood but rather the process of being born at all — being excluded violently from the warm, protected womb and thrust, defenceless, into an unforgiving, hostile environment.    S.H.

Posted in Accessibility, Buddhist Nirvana, Definitiveness, Memorability, Profundity or Pithyness, Sense, Uncategorized, Universality | Leave a comment

A Dream Within a Dream

Posted on October 3, 2011 by

Take this kiss upon thy brow !
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is  but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few ! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep !
O God ! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God ! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream ?

Commentary :  This poem is memorable for its musicality and the powerful way it communicates the poet’s mood. Such an effect would be impossible in free verse, and the repetition of the key two lines “Is all that we see or seem/But a dream within a dream?”  strengthens the hypnotic effect. (Interestingly, this couplet is not repeated identically : the first time round it is a statement, the second time round a question. There is thus the faint hope that something in all this passing fantasmagoria we call life actually is real.)
Conceptually, there are two very different ideas/feelings being advanced, firstly, the sentment that everything is transient, and  secondly, that everything is unreal (illusory). The two feelings are related inasmuch as in both cases they make the poet feel that he is not holding anything substantial and enduring : in the first place, because as soon as he grasps it, the moment is gone, in the second place, because nothing is real anyway. These two sensations contain the kernel of Buddhist philosophy, since Buddhism at once maintains that everything is transient, is composed of evanescent point-instants (dharma), and that everything is  illusion (maya).  (As a generalization, one might say that the earlier Hinayana Buddhism emphasizes the transience and the latter Mahayana Buddhism the illusoriness of existence.)
The poet ponders in the first verse whether the illusoriness of existence makes transience more supportable – “Is it therefore the less gone?”. In theory, to give up hoping is liberating : one takes what comes, good or bad. But the poet does not feel this to be true : someone or something (Hope) to which we were once attached — and despite ourselves still are — has departed. And in the second verse, the poet attempts to save something from the all-embracing illusoriness that is drowning everything like the sea : he desperately tries to tighten his grasp on the fleeting moment. To no avail. The underlying metaphysic is thus exactly the opposite of Buddhism which is supposed to be a cure for all ills : perception of the ephemeral nature of reality stops one from getting attached to any particular ‘thing’ and the perception that those things to which we have been attached are illusory completes our liberation. This is win-win. But the poet here is locked into a lose-lose mind-set : perception of the essential illusoriness of reality makes its transience all the more intolerable and vice-versa. This is suffering indeed.

Posted in Musicality, Profundity or Pithyness | 2 Comments

Accusation chosen by Sebastian Hayes

Posted on September 17, 2011 by

Dead friends
accuse you
you have outlived them

You weep for them
and already are laughing
again with other friends

Your flowers
on their graves
do not appease them

You mourn their death
and write poems
to life

Commentary:  This poem is remarkable for its conciseness , precision and honesty. We do indeed sometimes feel vaguely guilty for enjoying life when others cannot, even though we know that being miserable does not help anyone. Who is to blame? The living person for not sufficiently honouring the dead, or the dead for being unreasonable ? Noone. It is life itself which traps people in this predicament since it always drives towards self-perpetuation, and self-perpetuation necessarily means ’forgetting’. Festivals of the Dead often include pathetic attempts to rid the community of this vague guilty feeling which has deep roots in the human psyche : the Chinese actually print paper money to offer to ancestors on the ‘Day of the Dead’, literally ‘buying them off’, or attempting to. But neither the dead nor the living are fooled.  S.H.

 


 

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