Awake

For most of the past week the foghorns of the ships out on Puget Sound have been blowing day and night.  Not on account of any fog banks, but in order to make their way safely through the wildfire smoke enveloping sky and water and earth.  Centuries ago, an event such as this might have called for a sacrifice to the gods in order to avert an impending apocalypse.  Or prompted a hurried journey to the oracle at Delphi for a quick consultation.  We moderns, emptied of enchantment, politicize events of this sort.  Oh, how I long for the gods and the oracles.

It is enough to drive one into the arms of Giacomo Leopardi for relief: "What is life?  The journey of a crippled and sick man walking with a heavy load on his back up steep mountains and through wild, rugged, arduous places, in snow, ice, rain, wind, burning sun, for many days without ever resting night and day to end at a precipice or ditch, in which inevitably he falls."  (Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone, pages 4162-4163 (January 17, 1826) (edited by Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2013), page 1809.)

Or, alternatively, one can pay a visit to Leopardi's soulmate, the always antic Arthur Schopenhauer:  "Awakened to life out of the night of unconsciousness, the will finds itself as an individual in an endless and boundless world, among innumerable individuals, all striving, suffering, and erring; and, as if through a troubled dream, it hurries back to the old unconsciousness."  (Arthur Schopenhauer, "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life," in The World as Will and Representation, Volume II (1844) (translated by E. F. J. Payne) (The Falcon's Wing Press 1958), page 573.)  Schopenhauer wrote of Leopardi:  "[E]verywhere his theme is the mockery and wretchedness of this existence.  He presents it on every page of his works, yet in such a multiplicity of forms and applications, with such a wealth of imagery, that he never wearies us, but, on the contrary, has a diverting and stimulating effect."  (Ibid, page 588.)  Two peas in a pod.

But I'm afraid Leopardi and Schopenhauer simply won't do.  As entertaining as they are (their harrowing doom shot through with truth, and so unremittingly dire that one cannot help but smile), I have continued to spend most of my time with Walter de la Mare and the Japanese poets.  Calmness and equanimity.  A few days ago, I read this:

                  The Last Chapter

I am living more alone now than I did;

This life tends inward, as the body ages;

And what is left of its strange book to read 

Quickens in interest with the last few pages.

Problems abound.  Its authorship?  A sequel?

Its hero-villain, whose ways so little mend?

The plot? still dark.  The style? a shade unequal.

And what of the dénouement?  And, the end?

No, no, have done!  Lay the thumbed thing aside;

Forget its horrors, folly, incitements, lies;

In silence and in solitude abide,

And con what yet may bless your inward eyes.

Pace, still, for pace with you, companion goes,

Though now, through dulled and inattentive ear,

No more -- as when a child's -- your sick heart knows

His infinite energy and beauty near.

His, too, a World, though viewless save in glimpse;

He, too, a book of imagery bears;

And, as your halting foot beside him limps,

Mark you whose badge and livery he wears.

Walter de la Mare, Memory and Other Poems (Constable 1938).

Harry Epworth Allen (1894-1958)

"A Derbyshire Farmstead" (c. 1933-1934)

Who, then, is this "companion" keeping pace with de la Mare?  His poetry is full of such secret sharers:  shadows, strangers, wayfarers, wraiths, ghosts.  I am content to leave the question unanswered, but I have inklings.

                         Things to Come

The shadow of a fat man in the moonlight

     Precedes me on the road down which I go;

And should I turn and run, he would pursue me:

     This is the man whom I must get to know.

James Reeves, The Questioning Tiger (Heinemann 1964).

"The man whom I must get to know."  This brings to mind the purported death-bed poem of the Emperor Hadrian, which begins: animula vagula blandula.  The poem has been translated many times.  Here is Matthew Prior's version:

Poor little, pretty, flutt'ring thing,

     Must we no longer live together?

And dost thou prune thy trembling wing,

     To take thy flight thou know'st not whither?

Thy humorous vein, thy pleasing folly

     Lies all neglected, all forgot:

And pensive, wav'ring, melancholy,

     Thou dread'st and hop'st thou know'st not what.

Matthew Prior, Poems on Several Occasions (1709).

Finally, I cannot forbear bringing in Marcus Aurelius: "You are a little soul, carrying around a corpse, as Epictetus used to say." Marcus Aurelius (translated by W. A. Oldfather), Meditations, Book IV, Section 41.  

These are things we each must puzzle out in our own solitude. Hence, dear readers, please feel free to ignore my meanderings.  I am willing to leave de la Mare's "companion" a mystery.  Which is what the World is, what our life is, as de la Mare so often reminds us in his poems.  Which is what we are to ourselves?

Harry Epworth Allen, "Summer" (1940)

"The Last Chapter" was published when de la Mare was 65 years old. Yet, despite its self-elegiac subject matter and tone, he lived another eighteen years, and never lost his love for the beautiful particulars of the World.  In the year prior to his death, he said to a visitor: "My days are getting shorter.  But there is more and more magic.  More than in all poetry.  Everything is increasingly wonderful and beautiful."  (Theresa Whistler, Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare (Duckworth 1993), page 443.)  The plea to us to love the World while we can is a constant refrain in his poetry.  It appears in what are perhaps his best-known lines: "Look thy last on all things lovely,/Every hour." 

He reminds us once more in his final volume of poems, published when he was in his eightieth year:

               Now

The longed-for summer goes;

Dwindles away

To its last rose,

Its narrowest day.

No heaven-sweet air but must die;

Softlier float,

Breathe lingeringly

Its final note.

Oh, what dull truths to tell!

Now is the all-sufficing all

Wherein to love the lovely well,

Whate'er befall.

Walter de la Mare, O Lovely England and Other Poems (Faber and Faber 1953).

Perhaps de la Mare sold himself short in the lines from "The Last Chapter" about his "companion": "No more -- as when a child's -- your sick heart knows/His infinite energy and beauty near."  The poetry he wrote before and after these lines belies this thought: I find no waning of energy or beauty in de la Mare from beginning to end. Thoughts such as those in "The Last Chapter" inevitably come and go as one ages.  But I do not think de la Mare ever lost his passion for the World.  He gently but firmly reminds us again and again to love, to pay attention to, and to be grateful for what is before us Now.

Harry Epworth Allen, "The Road to the Hills"

How To Live, Part Twenty-Nine: Some Things Never Change

I am easy to please.  Each summer, I take delight in watching the tree tunnels I love further deepen, further interlace, as the boughs extend themselves outwards and upwards.  I notice the empty spaces that remain high up in the green and restless canopy, the sky that remains open, and I wonder how many years will pass before new bridges of leaves arch overhead.  Will I be here to see it happen?  Perhaps not. After all, I am merely an onlooker, passing through.  This is neither a lament nor a complaint.  To be aware that one is part of an ever-changing yet timeless World is a source of serenity.

                      The Truisms

His father gave him a box of truisms

Shaped like a coffin, then his father died;

The truisms remained on the mantelpiece

As wooden as the playbox they had been packed in

Or that other his father skulked inside.

Then he left home, left the truisms behind him

Still on the mantelpiece, met love, met war,

Sordor, disappointment, defeat, betrayal,

Till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house

He could not remember seeing before.

And he walked straight in; it was where he had come from

And something told him the way to behave.

He raised his hand and blessed his home;

The truisms flew and perched on his shoulders

And a tall tree sprouted from his father's grave.

Louis MacNeice, Solstices (Faber and Faber 1961).

As is often the case with MacNeice, there is an undertone of ironic knowingness present in "The Truisms," but I am willing to take the poem at face value.  As I have noted here before, I am quite content to live my life in accordance with certain truisms because, well, they are true.

Joshua Anderson Hague (1850-1916), "Landscape in North Wales"

Given the clamor of catastrophe and crisis we human beings are so fond of (2020 is no different than any other year in the history of humanity in this regard), an awareness of the World's continuity is not a bad thing.  It's not as if the World hasn't seen it all before.  Each of us has seen it all before as well, unless we haven't been awake.  

"Whoever lives two or three generations feels like the spectator who, during the fair, sees the performances of all kinds of jugglers and, if he remains seated in the booth, sees them repeated two or three times.  As the tricks were meant only for one performance, they no longer make any impression after the illusion and novelty have vanished."

Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by E. F. J. Payne), "Additional Remarks on the Doctrine of the Suffering of the World," in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, Volume 2 (1851; Oxford University Press 1974), page 299.

            Crofter

Last thing at night

he steps outside to breathe

the smell of winter.

The stars, so shy in summer,

glare down

from a huge emptiness.

In a huge silence he listens

for small sounds.  His eyes

are filled with friendliness.

What's history to him?

He's an emblem of it

in its pure state.

And proves it.  He goes inside.

The door closes and the light

dies in the window.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2005).

Joshua Anderson Hague, "Late Autumn"

In January of 2019, I wrote here about the falling of a nearby big-leaf maple in a winter storm.  Yesterday afternoon, I walked past the space it once occupied.  I still feel the loss.  But its companions remain, and I know that in time the emptiness of the air will be filled.

                 Thoughts on T'ien-chin Bridge

The countless great lords and statesmen of past regimes --

later ages know them merely as a list of names.

Only the water under T'ien-chin Bridge

goes on year after year,  making the same sound.

Shao Yung (1011-1077) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (Columbia University Press 1984), page 336.

Joshua Anderson Hague, "Haymaking"

Adrift

A few posts ago, I considered Matthew Arnold's use of the "Sea of Life" metaphor in his poetry.  Recently, however, my thoughts have turned to a more homely image of life:  a boat adrift on calm waters.  I have in mind a wooden rowboat.  Or perhaps, even though I am not a sailor, a small wooden sailboat.

Our life in this world --
to what shall I compare it?
It is like a boat
     rowing out at break of day,
leaving not a trace behind.

Sami Mansei (8th century) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991).

I prefer this image to that of a three-masted Ship of Life, under full sail, cleaving the stormy waves of Time, et cetera.  We all know the inevitable end of such a journey:  "As a rule, everyone ultimately reaches port with masts and rigging gone."  (Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by E. F. J. Payne), "Additional Remarks on the Doctrine of the Vanity of Existence," Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 2 (Oxford University Press 1974; originally published in 1851), page 284.)  An oceanic circumnavigation is far too dramatic.  I fancy this instead:  "a boat amid the ripples, drifting, rocking."  (Christina Rossetti, "Pastime.")

Frank Jowett (1879-1943), "In Mevagissey Harbour, Cornwall"

Sami Mansei's boat is "rowing out at break of day," bound for a preordained end.  But it is in no hurry, and the scene is suffused with tranquility.  There is a great deal to be said for idle drifting, with a bit of occasional rowing. We will arrive when we arrive.

"These men you wander around with -- none will give you any good advice. All they have are petty words, the kind that poison a man.  No one understands, no one comprehends -- so who can give any help to anyone else?  The clever man wears himself out, the wise man worries.  But the man of no ability has nothing he seeks.  He eats his fill and wanders idly about.  Drifting like an unmoored boat, emptily and idly he wanders along."

Chuang Tzu (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (Columbia University Press 1968), page 354.

Be assured:  Chuang Tzu is advising us that "the man of no ability" who "emptily and idly . . . wanders along" -- "drifting like an unmoored boat" -- deserves our approbation, not our condemnation.  "The clever man" and "the wise man" have both got it all wrong.

                                     July

Naught moves but clouds, and in the glassy lake
Their doubles and the shadow of my boat.
The boat itself stirs only when I break
This drowse of heat and solitude afloat
To prove if what I see be bird or mote,
Or learn if yet the shore woods be awake.

Long hours since dawn grew, -- spread, -- and passed on high
And deep below, -- I have watched the cool reeds hung
Over images more cool in imaged sky:
Nothing there was worth thinking of so long;
All that the ring-doves say, far leaves among,
Brims my mind with content thus still to lie.

Edward Thomas, in Edna Longley (editor), Edward Thomas: The Annotated Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2008).  Thomas wrote the poem in May of 1915.  Ibid, page 235.

China in the 4th century B. C., England in 1915, or now:  there is no difference.

Walter Goodin, "Bridlington Harbour, East Riding of Yorkshire" (1951)

Chuang Tzu is correct:  why aspire to be clever or wise?  (Besides, who in their right mind would, or could, claim to be clever or wise?)  If it is serenity and contentment that we seek (I see no reason to grasp after "happiness," whatever that may be), idle drifting seems to be the proper course of action. But one mustn't equate idleness with sloth, disinterest, or ennui:  it is an active state of being that requires attention, patience, receptivity, and humility.  One never knows when a message may arrive.

"Lessons from the world around us:  certain localities, certain moments 'incline' us towards them; there seems to be the pressure of a hand, an invisible hand, urging a change of direction (of the footsteps, the gaze, or the thoughts); the hand could also be a breath, like the breath behind leaves, clouds, sailing boats.  An insinuation, in an undertone like someone whispering 'look,' 'listen,' or merely 'wait'.  But is there still the time, the patience to wait?  And is 'waiting' really the right word?"

Philippe Jaccottet (translated by Mark Treharne), Cherry Tree (Le Cerisier) (The Delos Press 1991), pages 13-14.

Stanhope Forbes, "The Inner Harbour: Abbey Slip" (1921)

Given the distractions of the modern world, Jaccottet asks a valid question: "But is there still the time, the patience to wait?"  Popular culture, the media, and technology all urge us to pursue ephemeral chimeras at ever-increasing speeds.  But each of us has it in us to step into a drifting boat at any moment and to say good-bye to all that (to borrow from Robert Graves). In my experience, this becomes easier as one ages.

                              Evening

When little lights in little ports come out,
Quivering down through water with the stars,
And all the fishing fleet of slender spars
Range at their moorings, veer with tide about;

When race of wind is stilled and sails are furled,
And underneath our single riding-light
The curve of black-ribbed deck gleams palely white,
And slumbrous waters pool a slumbrous world;

-- Then, and then only, have I thought how sweet
Old age might sink upon a windy youth,
Quiet beneath the riding-light of truth,
Weathered through storms, and gracious in retreat.

Vita Sackville-West, Orchard and Vineyard (John Lane 1921).

"Quiet beneath the riding-light of truth."  Well, I doubt that "old age" in itself leads us to the discovery of "the riding-light of truth" (intimations or glimpses of Truth perhaps -- if we pay attention and are lucky).  But, as for "gracious in retreat":  that is a laudable goal, and one that may be attainable as long as we keep our wits about us.

Frank Jowett, "A Sunlight Harbour"

As one who has no wisdom, and who knows nothing, my musings on being able to idly drift on calm waters are purely aspirational.  There may be moments (mere instants) when such a life seems within reach.  They immediately vanish.

Yet, we wouldn't wish it otherwise, would we?

                 Old Crofter

The gate he built last year
hangs by its elbow from the wall.
The oar he shaped this summer
goes through the water with a swirl, a swivel.

The hammer in his great hand
pecks like fowl in the grain.
His haycocks are lopsided.
His lamp stands on the dresser, unlit.

One day the rope he has tied
will slither down the rock
and the boat drift off idly
dwindling away into the Atlantic.

Norman MacCaig, in Ewen McCaig (editor), The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2009).

Henry Moore, "Catspaws Off the Land" (1885)

A Leaf

Spring has peaked.  Summer is near.  Yet earlier this week I found myself pondering the falling of the leaves.  My out-of-season thoughts were prompted by having come across this:

                    Imitation

Far from your own little bough,
Poor little frail little leaf,
Where are you going? -- The wind
Has plucked me from the beech where I was born.
It rises once more, and bears me
In the air from the wood to the fields,
And from the valley up into the hills.
I am a wanderer
For ever:  that is all that I can say.
I go where everything goes,
I go where by nature's law
Wanders the leaf of the rose,
Wanders the leaf of the bay.

Giacomo Leopardi (translated by J. G. Nichols), in Giacomo Leopardi, The Canti, With a Selection of His Prose (Carcanet 1994).  The poem is titled "Imitation" because it is a translation by Leopardi from a poem in French ("La Feuille": "The Leaf") by Antoine-Vincent Arnault (1766-1834).

I consider Leopardi to be the King of Pessimism.  To wit:

"What is life?  The journey of a crippled and sick man walking with a heavy load on his back up steep mountains and through wild, rugged, arduous places, in snow, ice, rain, wind, burning sun, for many days without ever resting night and day to end at a precipice or ditch, in which inevitably he falls."

Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone (edited by Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino), 4162-4163 (January 17, 1826) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2013), page 1809.

Yes, I know:  Whew!  And, mind you, this is the proverbial tip of the iceberg.  Leopardi, like Schopenhauer (who, not surprisingly, greatly admired him), ultimately came to the conclusion that, given our fate, we would be better off if we had never been born.  Again:  Whew!  

In light of all this, the life of the ever-wandering leaf in "Imitation" seems like a carefree stroll in the park, doesn't it?

David Bates, "A Beech Wood, Malvern, Worcestershire" (1889)

Leopardi's poem brought to mind one of my favorite poems by Derek Mahon (or by anybody, for that matter), which has appeared here before (in autumn).

                    Leaves

The prisoners of infinite choice
Have built their house
In a field below the wood
And are at peace.

It is autumn, and dead leaves
On their way to the river
Scratch like birds at the windows
Or tick on the road.

Somewhere there is an afterlife
Of dead leaves,
A stadium filled with an infinite
Rustling and sighing.

Somewhere in the heaven
Of lost futures
The lives we might have led
Have found their own fulfilment.

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

As I have suggested in the past, one thing leads to another when it comes to poetry.  Perhaps it was Leopardi's line "I go where everything goes" that led me on to "Leaves," with its "dead leaves/On their way to the river."  In any case, I was now sunk deep in autumn, while outside all was green and blue and bright.

John Gardiner Crawford

"Little Burn, Bonskeid" (1980)

Six poems later in Leopardi's The Canti, I found this autumnal reverie:

     Fragment: From the Greek of Simonides

All human things last only a short time;
The old blind man of Chios
Spoke but the simple truth:
As are the lives of leaves,
So are the lives of men.
But few there are who take
Those words to heart; while everyone receives
Unruly hope, the child
Of youth, to live with him.
As long as our first age
Is fresh and blooming still,
The vacant headstrong soul
Will nourish many pleasant dreams, all vain,
Careless of death and age; the healthy man
Has no regard for illness or disease.
But he must be a fool
Who cannot see how rapidly youth flies,
How close the cradle lies
To the funereal fire.
So you who are about
To step into the land
Where Pluto holds his court,
Enjoy, since life is short,
The pleasures hard at hand.

Giacomo Leopardi (translated by J. G. Nichols), in Giacomo Leopardi, The Canti, With a Selection of His Prose.

Coincidentally, I posted a different translation of Simonides's poem last October.  As I noted at the time, the "man of Chios" (line 2) refers to Homer, who was traditionally thought to have been born on Chios, an island in the Aegean Sea in the region known as Ionia.  The lines "As are the lives of leaves/So are the lives of men" echo a passage in Book VI of The Iliad.  The passage was rendered by Alexander Pope as follows:

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now with'ring on the ground:
Another race the foll'wing spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise;
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish these, when those are passed away.

Here is a modern translation by Robert Fagles:

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again.  And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.

Alec Dixon, "Autumn, High Beach, Essex" (1988)

As long-time (and much-appreciated!) readers may have noticed, I am wont to present a coda to the topic at hand by presenting a brief Chinese or Japanese poem that seems to get to the heart of the matter.  Thus, the following haiku brings our autumnal idyll to a close.

     People are few;
A leaf falls here,
     Falls there.

Issa (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 364.

What Issa has to say does not supplant what Leopardi or Mahon or Simonides or Homer have to say.  But he provides a lovely distillation that puts everything into perspective.

Come to think of it, here is a final thought by Leopardi:

"His amusement was to count the stars as he walked."

Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone, 280 (October 16, 1820), page 185.

Further perspective.

John Inchbold, "A Study, in March" (1855)

Enough

I once visited a Buddhist temple in Thailand that had a carp pond on its grounds.  The temple's monks sold small paper bags containing pellets of fish food.  I dutifully purchased a bag and walked on to a footbridge that crossed the pond, which was circular, and about 80 feet in diameter.  At the midpoint of the bridge, I leaned on its ledge and looked down into the dark water ten feet or so below, where I could see shadowy movements beneath the surface.  I threw a handful of pellets into the water.

What happened next viscerally shocked me.  Hundreds of black and silver carp instantaneously emerged out of the water in a proverbial feeding frenzy, climbing over each other in competition for the pellets.  The pond surged and roiled and bubbled.

Call me overly sensitive, but I was physically and emotionally stunned by the spectacle.  My immediate thought (I have no idea where it came from) was:  This is us.

I sometimes wonder whether this fish-feeding exercise was planned by the monks to teach us spiritual amateurs the Buddhist concept of trishna (literally, "thirst," but also desire, craving, grasping, clinging), which is thought to be the primary cause of dukkha, the suffering which is our lot as human beings.  In any event, the exercise was successful in my case:  it is the closest I have ever come to an experience of "enlightenment."

Roger Fry, "Market in a Disused Church in France" (1928)

Let me be clear:  I make no claim to possessing any extraordinary powers of awareness or perception.  Until that day at the carp pond I was a sleepwalker.  It was a well-deserved (and much-needed) slap in the face. (Of course, I am still mostly a sleepwalker.)

As I noted in a recent post, I believe that, in our heart of hearts, each of us knows these Eternal Verities.  Poets throughout the world and throughout the ages have known them.  We ought to listen.

                         A Gentle Wind

A gentle wind fans the calm night;
A bright moon shines on the high tower.
A voice whispers, but no one answers when I call;
A shadow stirs, but no one comes when I beckon.
The kitchen-man brings in a dish of bean-leaves;
Wine is there, but I do not fill my cup.
Contentment with poverty is Fortune's best gift;
Riches and Honour are the handmaids of Disaster.
Though gold and gems by the world are sought and prized,
To me they seem no more than weeds or chaff.

Fu Hsuan (217-278) (translated by Arthur Waley), in Arthur Waley, One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (Constable 1918).

At this point, a pause is required.  In fact, I have considered abandoning this post altogether.  I am an American, and this blog has an international readership (for which I am profoundly grateful).  Coming from the country that I do (by accident of birth), I fear that it is perhaps extremely insensitive and obtuse of me to venture into the subject of the role that material wealth plays in our lives.  Isn't this what the younger generation mockingly calls "a First World problem"?  I have never known want (a circumstance of fate which I try to be mindful of, and thankful for, on a daily basis), so who am I to engage in mental contortions about the role of wealth in our life, or to post a poem which contains the line "contentment with poverty is Fortune's best gift"?  It's a problem.

I shall leave it at this:  I am aware of my position, and it troubles me.  That being said, I do believe that this is an issue that is a fundamental human issue, not solely a matter of economics or of politics.  To wit (at the risk of sounding glib):  trishna and dukkha.  The fact that poets wrote about the subject in China in the 3rd century, in the remnants of the Roman Empire in the 6th century (see below), and in England in the 17th century (see below) tells us that this is a matter of how the soul makes its way through life.

Roger Fry, "The Cloister" (1924)

The following three poems appear in sequence in Robert Herrick's Hesperides.

                 Poverty and Riches

Give Want her welcome if she comes; we find
Riches to be but burthens to the mind.

                         Again

Who with a little cannot be content,
Endures an everlasting punishment.

               The Covetous Still Captives

Let's live with that small pittance that we have;
Who covets more, is evermore a slave.

Robert Herrick, Poems 605, 606, and 607, Hesperides (1648).

Herrick italicizes the second line of "The Covetous Still Captives" in order to signal that it has a classical source (this is his usual practice in Hesperides).  The source is Book I, Epistle 10, lines 39-41, of Horace's Epistles:  "the base man who forgoes his freedom . . . through fear of poverty, bears a master and is a slave forever, because he does not know how to make much of little."  Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (editors), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, Volume II (Oxford University Press 2013), pages 685-686.

Roger Fry, "Lilies" (1917)

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480-524) wrote The Consolation of Philosophy while imprisoned for alleged treason against Theodoric, the Ostrogoth king who ruled over what was left of the Roman Empire.  As a practical matter, he was then living under a sentence of death (which would eventually be carried out).  The work consists of a dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy.  The following poem appears in Book II, in which Philosophy counsels Boethius on the fickleness of Fortune, and on the ingratitude of humans for the blessings, however transitory, that are bestowed upon them by Fortune's ever-turning wheel.

Should Plenty ever pour out riches
     abundant as sands on a beach
that the waves pile up, or the stars in the clear
     night sky, without stinting,
men would not cease their endless complaining
     and pleading always for more.
If God were prodigal, showering gold
     in answer to every prayer,
and heaping honors on every head,
     they would not be content,
never mind grateful.  They'd take it for granted.
     Greed opens new maws.
There are no limits, no satiation,
     even in those who choke
on their wealth and good fortune.  Their thirsts yet
     burn with poverty's need.

Boethius (translated by David Slavitt), The Consolation of Philosophy (Harvard University Press 2008), pages 33-34.

In addition to being lovable and always good for a laugh, Arthur Schopenhauer is an astute judge of human nature.  In the following aphorism he provides us with a clue as to why "poverty's need" is never quenched in some of us, and why "greed opens new maws," no matter how much some of us acquire:

"Money is human happiness in abstracto; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in concreto, sets his whole heart on money."

Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by E. F. J. Payne), "Psychological Remarks," Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume II (1851).

Roger Fry, "La Salle des Caryatides in the Louvre"

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)

Trees And Epitaphs

This afternoon I walked down a green tunnel of trees.  Is there anything lovelier than to stand beneath a tree in summer looking up through the interlaced leaves into a blue sky?  Especially if the leaves are rustling in a breeze?  I can think of no better way to spend Eternity.

Which leads me to Thomas Hardy.  Although I don't know why.

John Constable, "Malvern Hall, Warwickshire" (1809)

     A Necessitarian's Epitaph

A world I did not wish to enter
Took me and poised me on my centre,
Made me grimace, and foot, and prance,
As cats on hot bricks have to dance
Strange jigs to keep them from the floor,
Till they sink down and feel no more.

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).

J. M. W. Turner

"Buttermere Lake, with Part of Cromackwater, Cumberland" (c. 1798)

        Epitaph on a Pessimist

I'm Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd,
     I've lived without a dame
From youth-time on; and would to God
     My dad had done the same.

Thomas Hardy, Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925).

Hardy includes this note to the poem: "From the French and Greek."  Hardy owned a copy of J. W. Mackail's Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (1906), which contains the following translation of a Greek epitaph:  "I Dionysius of Tarsus lie here at sixty, having never married; and I would that my father had not."  J. O. Bailey, The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: A Handbook and Commentary (1970), page 557.  "Dionysius of Tarsus" becomes "Smith of Stoke" in order to bring us up-to-date.

Hardy's sympathetic reading of Schopenhauer is perhaps reflected in "Epitaph on a Pessimist."  Schopenhauer opined that, when all is said and done, not having been born may have been the best option for us.  Giacomo Leopardi, who Schopenhauer admired, came to the same conclusion.  Yes, it sounds harrowing, doesn't it?  But, when you read Schopenhauer and Leopardi, they are two extremely jolly fellows, and are quite entertaining about the whole business.

          Cynic's Epitaph

A race with the sun as he downed
          I ran at evetide,
Intent who should first gain the ground
          And there hide.

He beat me by some minutes then,
          But I triumphed anon,
For when he'd to rise up again
          I stayed on.

Thomas Hardy, Ibid.

"Epitaph on a Pessimist" and "Cynic's Epitaph" were published together in the September, 1925, issue of The London Mercury, when Hardy was 85.

George Lambert, 

"View of Copped Hall in Essex, from Across the Lake" (1746)

Hardy wrote all of these epitaphs when he was in his eighties.  Thus, he would seem to be trying them on for himself.  But we are all cynics and pessimists and necessitarians at some point in our lives, aren't we?  For all of Hardy's supposed pessimism, his compassion for, and his empathy with, his fellow human beings never wavered.  The epitaphs are for him and for each of us.

     A Placid Man's Epitaph

As for my life, I've led it
With fair content and credit:
It said: 'Take this.'  I took it.
Said: 'Leave.'  And I forsook it.
If I had done without it
None would have cared about it,
Or said: 'One has refused it
Who might have meetly used it.'

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words In Various Moods and Metres (1928).

Francis Towne, "Haldon Hall, near Exeter" (1780)

                         Epitaph

I never cared for Life: Life cared for me,
And hence I owed it some fidelity.
It now says, 'Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind
Sufficient toll for an unwilling mind,
And I dismiss thee -- not without regard
That thou didst ask no ill-advised reward,
Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find.'

Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics and Earlier, with Many Other Verses (1922). "Toll" (line 4) is "a proportion of the grain or flour taken by the miller in payment for grinding."  OED.

I think that the final two epitaphs best describe Hardy himself.

John Glover, "Thirlmere" (c. 1820)

Winter Into Spring, Part Four: "Winter In Spring"

As I have mentioned before, I am fond of the poets of the 1890s.  When it comes to describing the natural world, they tend to insert themselves -- and their dream-laden, death-haunted melancholy -- into that world.  Which is fine with me.  A little bit of dream-laden, death-haunted melancholy is good for the soul from time to time.

James McIntosh Patrick, "Winter in Angus" (1935)

                  Winter in Spring

Winter is over, and the ache of the year
Quieted into rest;
The torn boughs heal, and the time of the leaf is near,
And the time of the nest.

The poor man shivers less by his little hearth,
He will warm his hands in the sun;
He thinks there may be friendliness in the earth
Now the winter is done.

Winter is over, I see the gentle and strange
And irresistible spring:
Where is it I carry winter, that I feel no change
In anything?

Arthur Symons, The Fool of the World and Other Poems (1906).

James McIntosh Patrick, "Arbirlot Mill, near Arbroath"

"Where is it I carry winter, that I feel no change/In anything?"  Well, perhaps a clue lies here:

                   The Soul's Progress

It enters life it knows not whence; there lies
A mist behind it and a mist before.
It stands between a closed and open door.
It follows hope, yet feeds on memories.
The years are with it, and the years are wise;
It learns the mournful lesson of their lore.
It hears strange voices from an unknown shore,
Voices that will not answer to its cries.

Blindly it treads dim ways that wind and twist;
It sows for knowledge, and it gathers pain;
Stakes all on love, and loses utterly.
Then, going down into the darker mist,
Naked, and blind, and blown with wind and rain,
It staggers out into eternity.

Arthur Symons, Days and Nights (1889).

Yes, I know: Whew!  But I wouldn't say that Symons's vision is uniquely bleak.  For instance, Arthur Schopenhauer and Thomas Hardy came to similar conclusions, so he is in good company.  Bear in mind:  such a vision doesn't render the World and our existence any less wondrous.  In fact, it may heighten our appreciation for what we have stumbled into . . . until we disappear back into the mist.

James McIntosh Patrick, "The Ettrick Shepherd" (1936)

Life Explained, Part Thirty: "The Human Condition"

Howard Nemerov's "The End of the Opera," which appeared in my previous post, may prompt one to think about the relationship between Life and Art, between the real and the imagined.  (Warning to self:  this is sounding too highfalutin' already, isn't it?)  But that's just a thought.  One should be wary of dragging philosophical musings into the reading of a poem.  It is better to approach these things obliquely via another poem.

                           Rene Magritte, "La Condition Humaine" (1933)

           The Human Condition

In this motel where I was told to wait,
The television screen is stood before
The picture window.  Nothing could be more
Use to a man than knowing where he's at,
And I don't know, but pace the day in doubt
Between my looking in and looking out.

Through snow, along the snowy road, cars pass
Going both ways, and pass behind the screen
Where heads of heroes sometimes can be seen
And sometimes cars, that speed across the glass.
Once I saw world and thought exactly meet,
But only in a picture by Magritte.

A picture of a picture, by Magritte,
Wherein a landscape on an easel stands
Before a window opening on a land-
scape, and the pair of them a perfect fit,
Silent and mad.  You know right off, the room
Before that scene was always an empty room.

And that is now the room in which I stand
Waiting, or walk, and sometimes try to sleep.
The day falls into darkness while I keep
The TV going; headlights blaze behind
Its legendary traffic, love and hate,
In this motel where I was told to wait.

Howard Nemerov, The Blue Swallows (1967).

                  Adam Bruce Thomson, "Still Life at a Window" (c. 1944)

Now, having just warned myself about (1) being too highfalutin' and (2) the dangers of bringing philosophy to bear in the reading of a poem, I would like to offer a few thoughts from the ever-lovable (and, alas, usually accurate) Arthur Schopenhauer:

"[T]he same external events and circumstances affect each of us quite differently; and indeed with the same environment each lives in a world of his own.  For a man is directly concerned only with his own conceptions, feelings, and voluntary movements; things outside influence him only in so far as they give rise to these.  The world in which each lives depends first on his interpretation thereof and therefore proves to be different to different men.  Accordingly, it will result in being poor, shallow, and superficial, or rich, interesting, and full of meaning."

Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by E. F. J. Payne) , Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 1 (1851), page 316.

Having dug myself into this hole, I'm afraid that I'm going to dig deeper by letting Ludwig Wittgenstein have the final word:

"The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man."

Ludwig Wittgenstein (translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, from Proposition 6.43 (1921).

                                    William Bernard Adeney (1878-1966)
                                                      "The Window"

Herodotus And William Cowper: On Certain Customs Of Thrace

Herodotus relates the following anecdote about the Trausi, who were one of the tribes of Thrace:

"The Trausi in all else resemble the other Thracians, but have customs at births and deaths which I will now describe.  When a child is born all its kindred sit round about it in a circle and weep for the woes it will have to undergo now that it is come into the world, making mention of every ill that falls to the lot of human kind; when, on the other hand, a man has died, they bury him with laughter and rejoicings, and say that now he is free from a host of sufferings, and enjoys the completest happiness."

Herodotus, The Histories, Book V, Chapter 4 (translated by George Rawlinson) (1859).  When I came across this passage, I realized that the Trausi may have anticipated the gloomy conclusion arrived at centuries later by Arthur Schopenhauer and Giacomo Leopardi:  that humans would be better off if they had never been born.  (As I said, gloomy.)

                                               Caspar David Friedrich
                                        "Graveyard under Snow" (1826)

I had not thought about the passage for a while, but recently I came across a poem titled "The Thracian." The poem is a translation by William Cowper of the Latin original, which was written by Vincent Bourne.  Bourne (1695-1747) was an Englishman who wrote poetry in Latin.  Cowper was a pupil of Bourne's at Westminster School.  Later in his life, Cowper translated a number of Bourne's poems.

               The Thracian

Thracian parents, at his birth,
   Mourn their babe with many a tear,
But with undissembled mirth
   Place him breathless on his bier.

Greece and Rome with equal scorn,
   "O the savages!" exclaim,
"Whether they rejoice or mourn,
   "Well entitled to the name!"

But the cause of this concern,
   And this pleasure, would they trace,
Even they might somewhat learn
   From the savages of Thrace.

                                                  Frans Francken
                   "Death Invites the Old Man for a Last Dance" (1635)

Life Explained, Part Four: "Who Then To Frail Mortality Shall Trust But Limns On Water, Or But Writes In Dust"

The Elizabethan age is a fertile source of poems that provide succinct Explanations of Life.  I am not competent to say why this is so.  Perhaps it was a particularly perilous time in which to live -- wars, plagues, dangerous court intrigues, etcetera -- and poets (both known and unknown) felt a need to sum up this state of affairs in a few pithy lines.  The poems do not often make for sunny reading, I am afraid.

Even Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) -- a Renaissance man if ever there was one, but a man whose life was not without difficulties -- wrote a poem cataloguing Life's woes.  (An aside:  as is often the case with Elizabethan poems, there is a lengthy history concerning the authorship of this poem.  Bacon is now generally recognized to be its author.)

The world's a bubble, and the life of man
     Less than a span;
In his conception wretched, from the womb,
     So to the tomb;
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
     With cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust
But limns on water, or but writes in dust.

Yet, whilst with sorrow here we live oppressed,
     What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools,
     To dandle fools;
The rural part is turned into a den
     Of savage men;
And where's a city from foul vice so free
But may be termed the worst of all the three?

Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,
     Or pains his head:
Those that live single take it for a curse,
     Or do things worse:
These would have children; those that have them moan,
     Or wish them gone,
What is it, then, to have or have no wife,
But single thraldom or a double strife?

Our own affections still at home to please
     Is a disease;
To cross the seas to any foreign soil,
     Peril and toil;
Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease,
     We're worse in peace:
What then remains, but that we still should cry
For being born, and, being born, to die?

As I said, these Elizabethan summaries of Life do not make for sunny reading.  Bacon comes dangerously close to reaching the conclusion later arrived at by Arthur Schopenhauer and Giacomo Leopardi:  that we would be better off having never been born.  Welladay!

             Pieter Claesz, "Still Life with Skull and Writing Quill" (1628)

"I Listen To Money Singing": Philip Larkin And Arthur Schopenhauer

Philip Larkin's "Money" begins with a sardonic (surprise!) reflection by Larkin about how money could allegedly make him happy, if only he could bring himself to spend it on the things that allegedly make us happy.  But the poem ends -- and this is why I love Larkin -- with a breathtaking final stanza:

I listen to money singing.  It's like looking down
   From long french windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
   In the evening sun.  It is intensely sad.

High Windows (1974).  (An aside that has nothing to do with money: when it comes to final stanzas (or final lines), I humbly suggest that Larkin cannot be surpassed.  Consider, for example, "Mr Bleaney," "Continuing to Live," "High Windows," "Dockery and Son," "An Arundel Tomb," "Afternoons," "The Whitsun Weddings," "The Building" -- after reading the closing lines of those poems a few times, you may find that you have memorized them without intending to do so.  "On that green evening when our death begins . . .")

But, back to the topic at hand.  For some reason, I have the urge to pair Larkin's "Money" with a bit of wisdom  from Arthur Schopenhauer: 

"Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete, devotes his heart entirely to money."

                         William Hogarth, "The Rake in Bedlam" (1735)

Schopenhauer: Dogs Are Preferable To Humans

Arthur Schopenhauer is my favorite pessimist.  (Although Giacomo Leopardi and Philip Larkin are definitely in the running.)  I say this subject to the proviso (as I have noted before) that one person's "pessimism" is another person's "realism."  However, I do not intend to urge Schopenhauer's view of the world upon the rest of you.

But, for those of you who may shy away from pessimism, please bear in mind that Schopenhauer's pessimism (and his accompanying misanthropy) sometimes reach such heights (or is it depths?) that you can only break out in laughter at his antics.  Thus, I give you Arthur's following piece of wisdom about dogs.

First comes the not uncommon apostrophe upon the deficiencies of the average human being:  "There are few who have even a small surplus of intellectual powers. . . .with the others, it is better not to enter into any relations . . . what they have to say will not be worth listening to.  What we say to them will seldom be properly grasped and understood."  Arthur then comes to this conclusion (in the form of a bit of advice):

"To anyone who needs lively entertainment for the purpose of banishing the dreariness of solitude, I recommend a dog, in whose moral and intellectual qualities he will almost always experience delight and satisfaction."

"Ideas Concerning the Intellect Generally and In All Respects," in Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume II (translated by E. F. J. Payne), page 82.

Appallingly misanthropic?  Yes.  Arrogant and supercilious?  Yes, of course.  Entertaining?  Yes.  (At least for some of us.)  But don't you get the feeling that Arthur is perhaps pulling our leg -- having a bit of fun with us?  (I have always suspected that Philip Larkin was wont to do the same thing, particularly when he sat down for interviews.)

A final note:  in connection with Arthur's advice, one should be aware that he was devoted to his beloved poodles, who lived with him in his rooms, and accompanied him on his daily walks among the burghers of Frankfurt-am-Main.

Leopardi: Life As A Voyage (But Not A Pleasant One)

A preliminary point:  one person's "pessimism" is another person's "realism."  (Or, put differently:  one person's "pessimism" is another person's "truth.")  With that, I will dispense with the scare quotes around  pessimism.  On to Leopardi. 

When it comes to pessimism (or, realism and truth, if you will), you cannot beat Leopardi. Compared to him, Arthur Schopenhauer (often thought of as the king of pessimism) is a rank amateur.  (It comes as no surprise that Schopenhauer greatly admired Leopardi.)  

We have all heard the old saw that "life is a journey, not a destination."  Well, here is what Leopardi has to say about that journey:

"What is life?  The voyage of a crippled, sick man who, with a very heavy burden on his back, walks over steep mountains and extremely harsh, fatiguing, difficult places through snow, ice, rain, wind, under the burning sun, without rest day and night for many days in order to reach a precipice or ditch into which he must inevitably fall."

(Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone, entry written in Bologna on January 17, 1826.) 

                                               Leopardi's Death Mask