Tag: writing

thinking about W. H. Auden’s Herman Melville

On By MaryIn melville, poetryLeave a comment

Here are the last few lines of the poem Herman Melville, by W.H. Auden. As I read and reread those line, I keep coming back to “evil is unspectacular and always human” which reminds me of Hannah Arendt’s description of evil as often banal. I find it so much easier to characterizing evil as grandiose and monstrous, like war. Evil can be that. Evil can be cataclysmic. But it can also be little and pernicious, stuff that we tolerate because it is just not worth bothering about, given everything else going on in our lives. But all those little things mount up, the effects add up and take their toll. The little things pave the way to the monstrous. It reminds me to pay attention to slippery slopes

I also like this fragment of Auden’s poem because it juxtaposes goodness and evil, and gets me even more to thinking about paying attention. It is a eloquent call to me to be awake and aware of what is right in front of me, even in my very own drawing-room (well, if I had a drawing-room).

Read on, my friends, read on.

“Herman Melville”

by

W.H. Auden

. . .

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table,
And we are introduced to Goodness every day,
Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults;
He has a name like Billy and is almost perfect,
But wears a stammer like a decoration:

And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;
It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover
And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,
And both are openly destroyed before our eyes.

For now he was awake and knew
No one is ever spared except in dreams;
But there was something else the nightmare had distorted–
Even the punishment was human and a form of love:
The howling storm had been his father’s presence
And all the time he had been carried on his father’s breast.

Who now had set him gently down and left him.
He stood upon the narrow balcony and listened:
And all the stars above him sang as in his childhood
“All, all is vanity,” but it was not the same;
For now the words descended like the calm of mountains–
–Nathaniel had been shy because his love was selfish–
Reborn, he cried in exultation and surrender
“The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.”

And sat down at his desk and wrote a story.

Go To The Limits Of Your Longing

On By MaryIn poetry, random thoughtsLeave a comment

Go To The Limits Of Your Longing

Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Joanna Macy + Anita Barrows

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Book of Hours, I 59

I kind of love this poem. Every time I read it, a different line resonates with me. Sometimes it’s the title: “go to the limits of your longing.” And I find myself thinking about, wondering about, what is my longing? Not just my longing of the moment (that’s usually pizza or a hot fudge sunday.) But what is my real longing, the longing of my heart, of my soul? That’s a whole other order of longing. And what am I willing to do to move one step closer to fulfilling that longing?

Other times, like today, it’s the lines: “flare up like a flame, and make big shadows I can move in.” Really, both of those lines raise the same kinds of questions. How might I flare up like a flame? Where/what is my passion?

It used to be social justice. Then it was human rights (similar, but a step more practical). For a moment, I was taken with practicing random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. That came to feel a bit shallow. Important, but not enough, maybe.

More to the moment, if I had to say, I would say love. But love as an active verb, as doing. Love in relationship with others, with our world in an ecologically responsible kind of way of being. I remember a course I took with Father Jim Finnegan. I taught us that love means to see the goodness in someone, and to will and act to enable that goodness to grow, for their sake. That kind of love is what I would go to the limits of my longing for. That kind of love flare up like a flame for.  … what about you? What would you go to the limits of your longing for? What lines from the poem most resonate with you?

A Myth-Smithed version of the Huron Earth Diver Story

On By MaryIn cosmogony, cosmology, Earth Diver, persistenceLeave a comment

(Smith: to work with something by heating, hammering, and forging. Myth-Smith: to work with myths by combining, revising, and reshaping.)

Once, before the world as we know it, there was water, wide, deep and vast. The water was populated with fish that swam in its depths, and foul birds that danced on its surface. While the fish swam and the birds flew about and danced on the water, a woman fell through a rift in the sky, tumbling down from the upper world.

As two loons were flying over the waters, they happened to look up and noticed her falling. The loons decided that they could not let her drown, and so they flew beneath her and linked their wings together to form a cushion for her to rest on. While they held her, the loons yodeled and hooted, calling the other animals to aid in their rescue of the woman. All the sea creatures gathered together in response, but it was the great tortoise who consented to relieve the loons of their burden. The loons gently deposited the woman on the back of the tortoise, and the tortoise pledged to care for the woman.

A council of all the sea creatures was called to decide how best to care for the woman, and they decided that she should have earth to live on. The beaver was the first to dive to the bottom of the sea to bring up some earth, but he failed. Musk-rats were the next to dive, but stayed under water so long that when they rose to the surface of the water, they were dead. Each time the tortoise searched their mouths for bits of earth, but she could find none. Many other animals tried to gather a bit of earth for the woman to live on, but all to no avail. Finally, a toad went down to the bottom of the sea. The toad dove so deeply that when she rose, she was nearly dead. But on searching her mouth, the tortoise found a few grains of earth. She gave those to the woman, who took them and placed them carefully around the edge of the tortoise’s shell, and that became the beginning of dry land. The woman then walked from the center of the tortoise’s shell to the east and as she walked, the earth stretched in front of her. She walked to the west, and the earth stretched in front of her. She walked to the north and to the south, and as she walked the earth grew and extended, forming a vast land rich in vegetation and all forms of life. All of this was sustained by the tortoise, who still supports the earth.

This version of the earth diver creation story highlights primordial waters as the source of creation and life—life, which is protected and nurtured through the collaborative and cooperative community. It is also worth noting that not all attempts at finding grains of earth, the substance necessary for sustenance, are successful. Indeed, unsuccessful efforts result in death. This reminds me of the Jewish saying, “You are not required to finish the work, but neither are you permitted to desist from it.” Effort and responsibility are the cost of membership in an interdependent community. And, like planting the seeds of trees, the fruits of our efforts take time to grow and ripen.