"The Soul's Progress" Revisited

Some might think that Arthur Symons's "The Soul's Progress" (which appeared in my previous post) presents a too-bleak view of our time on earth.  To wit:  "Blindly it treads dim ways that wind and twist" and so on. But, like most everything else (I'm afraid), it all depends on how you look at it.

For instance, Japanese poets have been writing about Existence for centuries, and they share Symons's view that we enter this world from a mist and depart into a mist.  But, the way they go about it, what sounds like a catalogue of horrors in an English sonnet sounds like a lovely walk in the park in a Japanese poem (filtered through Buddhism, with Taoism in the background).

Gilbert Spencer, "The Cottage Window"

     To what
Shall I compare the world?
     It is like the wake
Vanishing behind a boat
     that has rowed away at dawn.

Sami Manzei (8th century) (translated by Edward Cranston), A Waka Anthology, Volume 1: The Gem-Glistening Cup (Stanford University Press 1993).

Like dew that vanishes,
like a phantom that disappears,
or the light cast
     by a flash of lightning --
so should one think of oneself.

Ikkyu (1394-1481) (translated by Steven Carter), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991).

     A temporary lodging
on this side of the road all
     must go, in the end.

To recover the time he rested,
The traveller hastens on.

Shinkei (1406-1475) (translated by Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen), Heart's Flower: The Life and Poetry of Shinkei (Stanford University Press 1994).

Bertha Ridley Bell

"Interior of a Cottage at Brockhampton" (c. 1950)

"Like the wake vanishing behind a boat that has rowed away at dawn." "Like dew that vanishes . . . or the light cast by a flash of lightning."  "The traveller hastens on."  A far cry from a soul that "staggers out into eternity," isn't it?

For the Japanese poets, this is simply the way that it is, and there is no need to bemoan that fact.  Thus, even as they describe the evanescence and the transience of our life, they do so in words that show their acute awareness of, and appreciation for, the beauty that surrounds us.  I recently quoted this line from Wallace Stevens, and it once again seems apt:  "Death is the mother of beauty, mystical."

Charles Ginner

"Through a Cottage Window, Shipley, Sussex"

"The Wake Vanishing Behind A Boat That Has Rowed Away At Dawn"

Although this is my favorite season, my recent spate of posts containing bitter-sweet autumn poems is starting to get to me.  Despite the fact that we have made barely a dent in the cornucopia (sorry, I couldn't resist) of autumnal verse, a brief respite is in order.  I feel a need for perspective.

Alas, the "perspective" that I have hit upon has a bitter-sweet air of its own. To wit:  the whole of Life (the World, Nature, Existence, "everything that is the case," et cetera) is, after all, a matter of "here today, gone tomorrow," isn't it?  Yet, if one presents that truism in a beautiful fashion, it is (for me at least) comforting.  (And, oh yes, bitter-sweet.)

                       Eliot Hodgkin, "Dead Leaves and Birds' Eggs" (1963)

   To what
Shall I compare the world?
   It is like the wake
Vanishing behind a boat
That has rowed away at dawn.

Sami Manzei (8th century) (translated by Edwin Cranston), A Waka Anthology, Volume 1: The Gem-Glistening Cup (Stanford University Press 1993).

                      Eliot Hodgkin, "Feathers and Hyacinth Heads" (1962)

Like dew that vanishes,
like a phantom that disappears,
or the light cast
   by a flash of lightning --
so should one think of oneself.

Ikkyu (1394-1481) (translated by Steven Carter), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991).

                                    Eliot Hodgkin "Eight Feathers" (1957)

Our life in this world --
to what shall I compare it?
It's like an echo
   resounding through the mountains
      and off into the empty sky.

Ryokan (1758-1831) (translated by Steven Carter), Ibid.

                                 Eliot Hodgkin, "Two Large Flints" (1963)