Given the situation in which the world now finds itself, I had thought to descant upon the folly and evil of self-appointed emperors and their imaginary, ultimately chimerical empires. I had intended to begin with this:
The Fort of Rathangan
The fort over against the oak-wood,
Once it was Bruidge's, it was Cathal's,
It was Aed's, it was Ailill's,
It was Conaing's, it was Cuilíne's,
And it was Maeldúin's:
The fort remains after each in his turn --
And the kings asleep in the ground.
Anonymous (translated by Kuno Meyer), in Kuno Meyer (editor), Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry (Constable 1913). I first discovered the poem in Walter de la Mare's anthology Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems for the Young of All Ages (Constable 1923).
I planned to eventually arrive at this:
In Yüeh Viewing the Past
Kou-chien, king of Yüeh, came back from the broken land of Wu;
his brave men returned to their homes, all in robes of brocade.
Ladies in waiting like flowers filled his spring palace
where now only the partridges fly.
Li Po (701-762) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (Columbia University Press 1984).
But I soon realized, dear readers, that I would only be telling you something you already know. Moreover, of what value is historical "perspective" (or the "perspective" of immutable human nature) when singular and irreplaceable lives are being lost, or forever damaged, at this moment? I no longer had any heart for the project. "Perspective" is an inappropriate indulgence for someone who is out of harm's way, living in a place that is not at war.
James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "A Castle in Scotland"
Around the same time, for reasons unknown, I remembered this:
Animula
No one knows, no one cares --
An old soul
In a narrow cottage,
A parlour,
A kitchen,
And upstairs
A narrow bedroom,
A narrow bed --
A particle of immemorial life.
James Reeves, Poems and Paraphrases (Heinemann 1972). "Animula" is usually translated into English as "little soul."
Reeves' poem prompted me to return to a poem purportedly written by the Emperor Hadrian (ah, an emperor) on his deathbed. The poem begins: "animula vagula blandula." It has been translated into English dozens of times over the centuries. My favorite version is that of Henry Vaughan:
My soul, my pleasant soul and witty,
The guest and consort of my body,
Into what place now all alone
Naked and sad wilt thou be gone?
No mirth, no wit, as heretofore,
Nor jests wilt thou afford me more.
Henry Vaughan, "Man in Darkness, or, A Discourse of Death," in The Mount of Olives: or, Solitary Devotions (1652), in Donald Dickson, Alan Rudrum, and Robert Wilcher (editors), The Works of Henry Vaughan, Volume I: Introduction and Texts, 1646-1652 (Oxford University Press 2018), page 318.
As a preface to his translation of the poem, Vaughan writes:
"You may believe, he was royally accommodated, and wanted nothing which this world could afford; but how far he was from receiving any comfort in his death from that pompous and fruitless abundance, you shall learn from his own mouth, consider (I pray) what he speaks, for they are the words of a dying man, and spoken by him to his departing soul."
Ibid, page 318.
Finally, Hadrian and Vaughan led me to T. S. Eliot's "Animula," and, in particular, these lines:
'Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul'
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea.
* * * * *
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.
T. S. Eliot, "Animula," lines 1-10 and 24-31, in Collected Poems 1909-1935 (Harcourt, Brace and Company 1936).
James McIntosh Patrick, "Springtime in Eskdale" (1935)
There is yet another way of considering this matter: "You are a little soul, carrying around a corpse, as Epictetus used to say." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV, Section 41 (translated by W. A. Oldfather).
Marcus Aurelius' quotation from Epictetus may be read in light of the section of the Meditations which immediately precedes it, and which is quite wonderful:
"Cease not to think of the Universe as one living Being, possessed of a single Substance and a single Soul; and how all things trace back to its single sentience; and how it does all things by a single impulse; and how all existing things are joint causes of all things that come into existence; and how intertwined in the fabric is the thread and how closely woven the web."
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV, Section 40 (translated by C. R. Haines).
Empires. Animula. And yesterday afternoon I walked through Spring, which persists in being here, despite everything. "How intertwined in the fabric is the thread and how closely woven the web."
A man of the Way comes rapping at my brushwood gate,
wants to discuss the essentials of Zen experience.
Don't take it wrong if this mountain monk's too lazy to open his
mouth:
late spring warblers singing their heart out, a village of drifting
petals.
Jakushitsu Genkō (1290-1367) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, "Poems by Jakushitsu Genkō," The Rainbow World: Japan in Essays and Translations (Broken Moon Press 1990), page 127.
What are we to do? "It's a sad and beautiful world." (Mark Linkous (performing as Sparklehorse), "Sad and Beautiful World.")
To a mountain village
at nightfall on a spring day
I came and saw this:
blossoms scattering on echoes
from the vespers bell.
Nōin (988-1050) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter (editor), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991), page 134.
James McIntosh Patrick, "A City Garden" (1940)
6 comments:
Thank you for refraining to cite Shelley's "Ozymandias", not because it isn't both great and appropriate, but because many of us have surely been running it through our heads more or less nonstop for the past few weeks. Whenever I think of the insolent evil that would so blight and destroy the lives of ordinary people in the way that we are witnessing now, I think of this from that half-mad genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes:
Bury him deep. So damned a work should lie
Nearer the Devil than man. Make him a bed
In some lock-jawed hell, that never yawns
With earthquake or eruption; and so deep
That he may hear the Devil and his wife
In bed, talking secrets.
It is so easy to give way to depression and despair in times like these. History is a juggernaut that everyone feels helpless against. But it may help to remember that we are not specially blighted, or specially blessed; all times are dark...and not only dark.
I have been thinking much of Tolkien recently. Having seen history first hand in the trenches of the First World War, he said this about it:
"I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory."
I have been finding hope in the great legend that Tolkien himself created. In it he painted an enduring picture of the long defeat and the final victory, face to face at the tipping point. For him, to acknowledge the reality of the long defeat was not to give way to hopelessness; paradoxically, he saw it as the only foundation upon which we can plant our feet firmly enough to take a stand and dare to hope for that final triumph:
In rode the Lord of the Nazgul. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.
All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dinen.
“You cannot enter here,” said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. “Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!”
The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! He had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.
“Old fool!” he said. “Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!” And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.
Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.
And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.
Speaking of blossoms and petals, it is that week here in Tokyo. If you see a whole cherry blossom on the ground before the individual petals have fallen, you know it was the work of the brown-eared bulbuls, who love to pick the flowers, drink the nectar, and then drop them to the ground. As you will recall, once the trees have come into full bloom, the slightest breeze will bring down a delightful shower of individual petals. That is my favorite day of the year, when the air, the ground, the ponds, and the rivers are pink with Genko’s “drifting petals.”
I have only sakura to offer today...sakura and tears. Thank you for your post. It said so much.
Dear Stephen
Thank you for this patch of light in dark times.
The Aurelius quotation calls to mind the end of Attar’s Conference of the Birds (I prefer Fitzgerald’s translation)
It’s sad when we face others who seem determined to ignore the lessons of history.
Thank you again for your thoughtful insights and the well-chosen pictures.
Steve
Mr. Parker: Thank you very much for the perspective you provide from various fine sources, and for tying them together with your thoughts. Ah, yes, "Oyzmandias" has returned to me as well over the past month, and it was one of the candidates for an appearance in my abandoned post. The lines from Beddoes are perfect. You have tempted me to visit his poetry. However, given recent events, I'm not sure I'm in a proper frame of mind to return to, say, Death's Jest-Book. The passage from Tolkien about history being a "long defeat" is wonderful (and sad).
I agree with your thought: "all times are dark . . . and not only dark." Thank you for the reminders of the possibility of light.
As always, it's good to hear from you. Thank you for stopping by again.
Esther: Thank you very much for the kind words about the post. And thank you as well for the report from Tokyo: a beautiful time of year. I remember being taken aback by my first experience of cherry blossom viewing in a crowded public park: quite an event.
Yes, the showers of petals are indeed wonderful. At this time of year, I always think of the waka by Ariwara no Narihira (which I'm sure you know):
Ah, if in this world
there were only no such thing
as cherry blossoms --
then perhaps in the springtime
our hearts could be at peace. (Translated by Steven Carter.)
I hope you enjoy the remaining time beneath, and amidst, the blossoms. Take care.
Steve: I appreciate your kind words. Thank you very much. Thank you also for the reference to Conference of the Birds, which is new to me. I found FitzGerald's translation on the internet, and I can see the parallels between the closing passage and the thoughts from Marcus Aurelius.
Thank you very much for visiting, and for sharing your thoughts.
Post a Comment