7 posts tagged “poetry”

I was struck the other day by this thought. It began with me remembering in my pocket-notebook that I have no control over anything outside my mind, which is a bit of a misleading thought since nothing is outside my mind, but in the dualistic Western sense of reality it is very important to remember, all the same. What happens to me, whether by specific people or circumstance, is beyond my control. This lead to some other interesting thoughts and a hasty ditty, and I finally got around to typing them out of my pocket-notebook:

I must remember
I have no control over what happens to me, or what actions others take upon me, except to control my own actions. I can only control what happens within my mind - which is everything.
Be the person you would have all other people be, and your aura will inspire emulation.
How could we think the outer world is anything but smoke when all that exists beyond the body, speech, and mind is free of our influence, as well as our experience - in fact it will never be a part of our reality at all yet we postulate and use the imagination to construct elaborate delusions about the surrounding expanse of space and the activity it contains - while really all of experience significant to us is happening right there in our mind, our skull.
No! A second thought.
The mind is completely free from the body - it exists elsewhere entirely - but it is aware of the body. It is stuck to it with karmic tar and deluded into thinking it belongs to the body and its transient world, somehow. It is synced with the body to preserve experience and reality - scared to be free - tied to Samsara/body by negative karmas, habits, and attachments (karmic tar).

Be free
Be free
Freedom is not law-bound
Freedom is not suffering
Freedom is not harming
Be free
Be free
When we are free we will grow
wings of compassion
and fly to the aid of our fellow sentient beings

    I really enjoyed reading Robert Browning this week, especially Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister. Our introduction explains that Browning helped popularize the dramatic monologue and his style helped pave the road "of twentieth-century poetry" (1248). This particular clever soliloquy is about what one can assume is a cloister boy. This character is complaining about the Abbot of the Spanish cloister, Brother Lawrence, who he seems to hate with inordinate passion. The poem even opens, and closes, with that guttural "gr-r-r" - you can almost imagine the boy clenching his teeth and focusing his pinpoint hatred-eyes on the greedy impious abbot. He introduces him as "my heart's abhorrence" (1253) and continues the hateful sentiment throughout.
    One cannot be sure whether this is a youth's hatred of authority, a genuine grievance over a corrupt abbot, or some sort of slow-growing resentment that has sprung up over long hours trapped by this man's side, as Browning hints at beginning in the second stanza where the narrator talks about dining with Laurence, and his habits. The narrator goes so far as to wish Brother Laurence damnation - but the only mildly incriminating thing we hear about the good brother is that he takes the most food at dinner, one melon to him and one divided among "all of us" (1254) - who I assume means us cloister boys. This is where Browning is particularly clever. His use of an unreliable narrator lends depth to the poem, and since the poem works as a brief window into the narrator's mind, we only briefly observe this strangely impassioned hatred and get no real sense of the person from which this hatred has sprung. The tale does, however, hint at the character of Laurence who is seen living comfortably in a rather impious, indulgent way.
    Browning ends the poem, in the last three stanzas, by talking about heresy and damnation specifically relating to the "works of the flesh" as our note tells us. Whether the abbot is truly guilty of some damning indulgence or the poem is merely a testament to the spark of youthful resentment is a decision left to personal interpretation. The genius of the poem lies in the fact that it is a real snapshot of a life - a true soliloquy beginning in medias res that implies previous and continuing action. This sort of poetic narrative, dramatic monologue if you will, a piece of one man's story, was relatively unprecedented when Robert Browning started writing in this style.
    My Last Duchess is another example of this sort or work. In that poem, an old favorite of mine and also incredibly clever, Browning uses a narrator who is conversing about various works of art in his home and discusses a painting of his 'last duchess'. Through his description of her and the painting, we get a sense of significant previous action, as well as a sense of the narrator's character and that of the duchess as well. "'Twas not / Her husband's presence only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchess' cheek" (1255). This, and many other lines said as if he could be talking about either the painting or the duchess, or the duchess through the painting. They tell a story without departing from another unreliable narrator as he describes a work of art. For these, and his other writings, Robert Browning is one of my favorite English poets.

Here's some insomniac ravings from 3:32. One of those questions that jars me out of my half-sleep to grab the laptop and write it down before it runs away.

How can one sleep when the world spins so violently past the capacity of eyelids?
I dream of sexy secluded spots and you visit sexy secluded spots and I wake up forgetting every orgasm.
I died eyes peeled, foot down, lurching forward on the ever-symbolic rolling cement.
My epitaph read memento mori and carpe diem and I'll take that to go.
I died afraid of sunsets, unconsciousness - acute sleep deprivation leading to my hands falling from the wheel.
I read somewhere once that Sofie didn't suffer in the accident. I wonder if she died dreaming.

The end is near
At twenty-eight
A life half-slept
Apocalypse
Matrimony
A quick phone call
Desperate plans
A long night ride
And that embrace
The broken hug
The killer arms
The setting sun
The end of time

(the result of boredom in class)

Wordsworth's note on the poem reads that, "No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of 4 or 5 days with my sister" (258).

Our note tells us that "Wordsworth had visited Tintern Abby [...] while on a solitary walking tour in August 1793, when he was twenty-three years old" (258).

The poem is a sort-of meditation on life, in which Wordsworth places his narrator at a moment in time and looks back to the past, and then ahead to the future through his sister. It begins with a reflection on the lovely pastoral setting, and the effects its memory has had upon Wordsworth throughout his life. He says:

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: - feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love (259).

The idea that nature can have a lasting and profound "influence on that best portion of a good man's life, his [...] acts of kindness and of love" is an excellent example of the ideas of English romanticism. Romanticism was "a reaction against the rationalization of nature [...] In art and literature it stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature" (Wikipedia).

When Wordsworth was a child he was given free-run of the countryside in the sparsely populated area near Esthwaite Lake, and here, according to our introduction, developed his love for the pastoral as well as for poetry. In the poem he reflects upon his passionate childhood communion with nature.

The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm (260).

By describing his youthful experience as "an appetite" Wordsworth sets up the contrast between his youth with a pure, unnamed appreciation of nature, and the mature, studied appreciation of adulthood.

I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue (260).

This "still, sad music of humanity", what you could almost call the equivalent of William Blake's concept of 'experience', subdues the wild fancies of youth and forces Wordsworth to view nature from a matured perspective. It is nature in the context of larger society and human concerns. 

The "sister" in the poem is Dorothy, who in 1795 settled with Will in Dorsetshire and became his, quote: "confidant, inspirer, and secretary". Within the context of the poem she inspires the narrator to reflect upon his youth.

Thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! (261)

Though time, age and experience have changed him, Wordsworth still remembers the "language of [his] former heart" - and sees in his sister's eyes the wild passion that has stayed with him and influenced him so greatly over the years. Through his sister he feels he can better appreciate and understand the inclinations of his youth by vicariously experiencing her "pure" communion with nature. He closes the poem saying,

After many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! (261-2).

Tintern Abbey was written in blank verse, in the form of a reflective monologue.

Living in the now is vitally important because when you look back with regret, or forward with anticipation – you are suffering, or planting the seeds of suffering, and this distracts from Dharma. What is more important than living every moment in the best way you are able, and with your mind's full attention?

This is a philosophy I try to live by, but it is sometimes hard to forget unchangeable regrets, or shrug off anxiety about the unpredictable unpreventable future. All day (day 41) unpleasant things have been weighing on my mind. I should stop brooding now and get to bed. Do the sane ones sleep or keep awake?

Memory of a Rose

I stopped to smell the sweetest rose in all the world;
The aroma crept silk across skin and filled my lungs,
Driving all the fragrant memories from my mind.
Transfixed, I watched it fade away - rotten in my hands,
and was forever ruined on roses.

Justin Dewey

Professor John Larkin

English Literature: 18^th Century to Present

26 January 2006

Created to Fall: A Look at The Book of Thel

The poem “The Book of Thel” by William Blake begins with a description of Thel addressing the river of Adona, perhaps ever speaking to her reflection in the water – pondering aloud, and she is overheard by the Lilly. Thel is contemplating her mortality as she observes the transience of the world around her.

O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water,
Why fade these children of the spring, born but to smile & fall?
Ah! Thel is like a wat'ry bow, & like a parting cloud;
Like a reflection in a glass; like shadows in the water;
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face;
Like the dove's voice; like transient day; like music in the air. (98)

Thel is alike to Eve bereaved of Eden. She has lost her innocence and become a mortal - but not in the same way. Thel's fall is an awakening. She becomes aware of her mortality and it begins to weigh on her. “Thel is like” these things. Thel is part of this “transient” world. She will fade like the lotus, and her greatest fear is that she was “born but to smile & fall”. Thel is searching for meaning in her impermanent stay on the mortal coil, in the turn on the wheel, as all rational beings would upon realizing their fragile state.

The Lilly, who responds to this queery, would have Thel put her faith in God, who made all things with purpose, and put all things in their proper place – telling her story of “the gardener” who 'planted' the Lilly there and provided for it through its time. He tells the flower to “Rejoice” because it “shalt be enclosed in light, and fed with morning mana, / Till summer's heat melts [it] beside the fountains and the springs / To flourish in eternal vales” (98). In other words, the Lilly will be nourished with sunlight and dew in the morning, until it dies and becomes a Lilly in heaven. The Lilly doesn't have any proof that this is true – that it has its place in the world and a place in the afterlife, it only has the word of the Gardener and its innocent faith. The Lilly doesn't question, and so it cannot appreciate Thel's dilema. “Then why should Thel complain” (99) it asks, completely missing the point. Thel can appreciate the Lilly, but she cannot find meaning for herself. “Thel is like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun: / I vanish from my pearly throne, and who shall find my place?” (99)

Thel is not convinced, and so the Lilly directs her to the Cloud. Again Thel asks “Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away” (100). She wants to know what makes life worth living; what brings contentment with the bell tolling for thee? The Cloud replies with a similar sentiment to the Lilly, that it has no fear because when it passes away it will “to tenfold life, to love, to peace, and raptures holy” (100). The Cloud also speaks of his purpose, but gives no reasons for its confidence of place and continuence in the afterlife. It also maintains innocent faith, and also can't offer Thel any real help.

Dost thou, O little Cloud? I fear that I am not like thee,

For I walk thro' the vales of Har, & smell the sweetest flowers,

But I feed not the little flowers; I hear the warbling birds,

But I feed not the warbling birds; they fly & seek their food:

But Thel delights in these no more, because I fade away;

And all shall say, 'Without a use this shining woman liv'd,

Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms?' (100)

She can appreciate the Cloud as she could the Lilly, but she is not like them. She believes that, unlike the Cloud who provides for the flowers and birds, she is “without a use” except perhaps as the “food of worms”. Thel, again unconvinced, is sent by the cloud to the Worm which Thel professed to feed, and seek her answer. The Worm, interestingly, only weeps, and in Thel's eyes seems to represent helplessness and vulnerability. It is then the Clod of Clay comes in to nurture the Worm. It explains to Thel that “we live not for ourselves”. The Clod offers Thel more than any of the others could with this wisdom, the idea of altruism and virtuous life, but even if Thel sees purpose she cannot help but fall short of its perfection. Though the Clay speaks wisdom, it still belongs to the innocent world of the Lilly and Cloud. “How this is, sweet maid, I know not and I cannot know; / I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love” (101).

The Clog, of course, comes from the Earth, or as Blake calls it “the matron Clay”. Earth is a land of mortality, and inevitably where Thel must go. It is also the world of the fallen – and therefore stripped of the innocence that Thel has been rejecting in her world, her Eden. The matron Clay speaks to Thel: “Wilt thou, O Queen, enter my house? 'tis given thee to enter / And to return” (101). Thel enters, and gains the boon of experience. She is forever changed. “Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown. / She saw the couches of the dead, and where the fibrous roots / Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists: / A land of sorrows and of tears where never smile was seen” (101). To Blake the Earth is the land of the dead – a brief pause before eternal death. It is also a world of suffering. Thel is immersed in this “land of sorrows” and finally comes face to face with her own death, and must face her greatest fear. She sits beside her own open grave and from the “hollow pit” a “voice of sorrow” breathes the great question of the poem, the most important question. It is the question Blake feels man must ask, who is made different than the rest of creation: why are we created with the terrible burdens of reason and intelligence?

Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?

Or the glist'ning Eye to the poison of a smile?

Why are Eyelids stor'd with arrows ready drawn,

Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?

Or an Eye of gifts and graces show'ring fruits and coined gold?

Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?

Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?

Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling, and affright?

Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?

Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire? (101-2)

Thel's lot, like that of humanity, is to comprehend her mortality and be unsatisfied. Because she is uncontent, she is doomed to sin. Sin is a product of her creation. The senses of the body, which Blake uses in several of his poems to represent the sensory world, conjure desire, greed, gluttony, envy, fear, and more sufferings. Thel discovers to her horror that because of how man is designed, he cannot help but fall into sin. Her reaction is clear – “The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek / Fled back unhindered” (102) – she chooses innocence over humanity and experience, but because of her nature she will always fall.

Works Cited:

Greenblatt, Stephen et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume Two, Eigth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.

(this essay may not be used or reproduced without the expressed consent of the author)