A Proper Place, Part Five: "My Room Is A Musty Attic, But Its Little Window Lets In The Stars"

I don't believe that living in a garret leads to wisdom or contentment.  That being said, I do harbor a daydream of living in a monk's cell in San Marco in Florence during the quattrocento.  This daydream is, however, subject to one condition:  I must be assigned to one of the cells which contains a fresco painted by Fra Angelico.  But I'm not picky.

On the other hand, as I have suggested in my "No Escape" series of posts, we are well advised to abandon the notion that an ideal place awaits us somewhere -- a place in which everything will sort itself out.  Alas, I suppose that that applies to my daydream cell in San Marco, doesn't it?

Where does that leave us?  I'm afraid we are fated to dwell in our head and in our heart -- and in the evanescent and indeterminate space which encompasses them both.  What might that space be?  The soul.  Animula. Or, animula vagula blandula.

The soul can find contentment in a small space.  Say an attic room.  With stars.

David Tindle, "Door Slightly Open" (1978)

          My Room

10 by 12
And a low roof,
If I stand by the side wall
My head feels the reproof.

Five holy pictures
Hang on the walls --
The Virgin and Child,
St Anthony of Padua,
St Patrick our own,
Leo XIII
And the Little Flower.

My bed in the centre,
So many things to me --
A dining table,
A writing desk,
A couch,
And a slumber palace.

My room is a musty attic,
But its little window
Lets in the stars.

Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems (edited by Antoinette Quinn) (Penguin 2004).  The poem was first published in The Dublin Magazine in 1933.

David Tindle, "Mural Panel" (1978)

               The Attic

Under the night window
     A dockyard fluorescence,
Muse-light on the city --
     A world of heightened sense.

At work in your attic
     Up here under the roof --
Listen, can you hear me
     Turning over a new leaf?

Silent by ticking lamplight
     I stare at the blank spaces,
Reflecting the composure
     Of patient surfaces --

I who know nothing
     Scribbling on the off-chance,
Darkening the white page,
     Cultivating my ignorance.

Derek Mahon, Poems 1962-1978 (Oxford University Press 1979).

David Tindle, "Back Room" (1987)

Finally, a poem that has appeared here before, but which is worth revisiting in this context.

          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).

David Tindle, "Balloon Race, Clipston" (1980)

A Proper Place, Part Four: "The Whole Of You Has Been Transformed Into Feeling"

I am easily pleased.  For instance, I am always delighted when, having read something that gave me pause, I thereafter stumble upon something else in the same vein.  A couple of weeks ago, I read this:

                       In the Same Space

The setting of houses, cafes, the neighborhood
that I've seen and walked through years on end:

I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,
with so many incidents, so many details.

And, for me, the whole of you has been transformed into feeling.

C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) (Princeton University Press 1975).

Charles Holmes, "A Warehouse" (1921)

Last week I was browsing through the just-published English translation of Giacomo Leopardi's Zibaldone, and I came across this:

"Often changing my place of abode, where I stayed for longer or shorter periods, either months or years, I saw that I was never content, I never felt centered, I never settled into any place, however excellent it was, until I had memories that I could attach to that certain place, to the rooms in which I lived, to the streets, to the houses that I visited.  Such memories consisted of nothing other than being able to say:  here I was a certain time ago; here, a certain number of months ago, I did, I saw, I heard, that certain thing; a thing which would otherwise have been of no importance at all.

But the recollection, the possibility of my recalling it, made it important and sweet to me.  And it is clear that only as time passed could I have this ability and abundance of recollections connected with places where I lived, and over time it would never fail me.  Therefore I was always sad in any place for the first months, and as time passed I found myself increasingly content and affectionate toward whatever place.  Through recollection, it became almost like my place of birth."

Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone (July 23, 1827; Florence) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2013), page 1,911.

A side-note:  up until last month, only fragments of Zibaldone (which is usually translated as "hodge-podge" or "hotch-potch") had been translated into English.  Now, as a result of the efforts of the Leopardi Centre of the University of Birmingham, all 4,526 pages of Leopardi's journal are available in English.  Although Leopardi is not everyone's cup of tea (a hint: Schopenhauer greatly admired him), I highly recommend Zibaldone.

Charles Holmes, "The Yellow Wall, Blackburn" (1932)

                            Strange Service

Little did I dream, England, that you bore me
Under the Cotswold hills beside the water meadows,
To do you dreadful service, here, beyond your borders
And your enfolding seas.

I was a dreamer ever, and bound to your dear service,
Meditating deep, I thought on your secret beauty,
As through a child's face one may see the clear spirit
Miraculously shining.

Your hills not only hills, but friends of mine and kindly,
Your tiny knolls and orchards hidden beside the river
Muddy and strongly-flowing, with shy and tiny streamlets
Safe in its bosom.

Now these are memories only, and your skies and rushy sky-pools
Fragile mirrors easily broken by moving airs . . .
In my deep heart for ever goes on your daily being,
And uses consecrate.

Think on me too, O Mother, who wrest my soul to serve you
In strange and fearful ways beyond your encircling waters;
None but you can know my heart, its tears and sacrifice;
None, but you, repay.

Ivor Gurney, Severn & Somme (1917).

Charles Holmes, "Bude Canal" (1915)

A Proper Place, Part Three: "Discontents In Devon"

Robert Herrick, a Londoner by birth, began serving as vicar of Dean Prior in Devon in 1629.  Herrick was wont to complain about this rural location. However, one wonders whether Herrick, who had a playful temperament, did not have his tongue at least partly in cheek when he bemoaned his life in Devon.

     To His Household Gods

Rise, household gods, and let us go;
But whither I myself not know.
First, let us dwell on rudest seas;
Next, with severest savages;
Last, let us make our best abode
Where human foot as yet ne'er trod:
Search worlds of ice, and rather there
Dwell than in loathed Devonshire.

Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648).

                                David Chatterton, "Devon Scene" (1942)

In 1647, Herrick was removed from his post in Dean Prior due to his alleged royalist sympathies.  One would think that he was well rid of the place.  However, after the Restoration, Herrick petitioned King Charles II to be reappointed to his vicarage.  The petition was granted, and Herrick returned to Dean Prior in 1660.  He died there fourteen years later.

Perhaps Devon was Herrick's Proper Place after all.  Before he was removed from his post in 1647, he wrote the following poem.

     Discontents in Devon

More discontents I never had
   Since I was born, than here;
Where I have been, and still am sad,
   In this dull Devonshire;
Yet justly too I must confess,
   I ne'er invented such
Ennobled numbers for the press
   Than where I loathed so much.

Ibid.  "Ennobled numbers" is an allusion to Noble Numbers, Herrick's collection of religious poems that was published, together with Hesperides, in 1648.

                               Robert Bevan, "Burford Farm, Devon" (1918)

The following poem may best reflect Herrick's feelings about Dean Prior and Devon, even though they are not mentioned in the poem.

          The Coming of Good Luck

So good luck came, and on my roof did light,
Like noiseless snow, or as the dew of night:
Not all at once, but gently, as the trees
Are by the sunbeams tickled by degrees.

Ibid.

              Arthur Henry Andrews (1906-1966), "A Farmhouse in Devon"

A Proper Place, Part Two: "On One Who Lived And Died Where He Was Born"

One's Proper Place may be where one is right now.  And where one is right now may be where one has been for ever.  Although it may be hard to imagine in today's world, there was a time in which one lived and died where one was born.  And this is still the case in many parts of the world. Perhaps this was not (and is not) such a bad thing.

                      Christopher Wood, "Lemons in a Blue Basket" (1922)

   On One Who Lived and Died
           Where He Was Born

When a night in November
     Blew forth its bleared airs
An infant descended
     His birth-chamber stairs
     For the very first time,
     At the still, midnight chime;
All unapprehended
     His mission, his aim. --
Thus, first, one November,
An infant descended
        The stairs.

On a night in November
     Of weariful cares,
A frail aged figure
     Ascended those stairs
     For the very last time:
     All gone his life's prime,
All vanished his vigour,
     And fine, forceful frame:
Thus, last, one November
Ascended that figure
        Upstairs.

On those nights in November --
     Apart eighty years --
The babe and the bent one
     Who traversed those stairs
     From the early first time
     To the last feeble climb --
That fresh and that spent one --
     Were even the same:
Yea, who passed in November
As infant, as bent one,
        Those stairs.

Wise child of November!
     From birth to blanched hairs
Descending, ascending,
     Wealth-wantless, those stairs;
     Who saw quick in time
     As a vain pantomime
Life's tending, its ending,
     The worth of its fame.
Wise child of November,
Descending, ascending
        Those stairs!

Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics and Earlier, with Many Other Verses (1922).

Not surprisingly, the world-view of the "wise child of November" sounds a great deal like Hardy's own.  This world-view is distilled in "He Never Expected Much" (written by Hardy when he was eighty-six), which begins:

Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
           Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
           Much as you said you were.

                  Christopher Wood, "Angelfish, London Aquarium" (1930)

A Proper Place, Part One: "I Like It As It Is"

In a series of posts titled "No Escape" I have looked at the well-known phenomenon of "wherever you go, there you are."  To wit:  we imagine that everything in our life will fall magically into place if we can simply find the Ideal Place that, until now, has eluded us.  It comes as no surprise that this is a delusion, a delusion that has been remarked upon by Montaigne, Johnson, and a host of others.

However, although the Ideal Place may be a chimera, a case may be made that a Proper Place can be found.  I realize that this may seem like a distinction without a difference.  But I see the distinction (somewhat fuzzily) as this:  finding one's Proper Place does not guarantee "happiness" (whatever that is) or provide Big Answers (to allude to Elizabeth Jennings's poem "Answers"); however, a Proper Place may provide equanimity and content ("content" as in A. E. Housman's "that is the land of lost content/I see it shining plain").

The following poem by Neil Powell provides an example of what I am (inadequately) trying to articulate.

                             Charles Ginner, "Flask Walk, Skyline" (1934)

                           Covehithe

In my dream they said:  "You must go to Covehithe."
I crossed over the causeway between two blue lakes
And I found myself on a long forest path
With a few wooden shacks and a glimpse of the sea.
I thought after all it was a place that might suit me.
But they said:  "You must learn from your mistakes."

So, I have come to Covehithe.  Low winter sun
Scans fields of pigs, dead skeletal trees,
Collapsing cliffs.  There are ships on the horizon.
The great church, wrecked by civil war, not storm,
Now shields a smaller church from further harm.
And they were wrong:  I like it as it is.

Neil Powell, The Times Literary Supplement, February 7, 2003.

             Charles Ginner, "Lancaster from Castle Hill Terrace" (c. 1947)