The mystical reveries of saints

"There were no more wise men; there were no more heroes… Amory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listened eagerly to people who pretended to know, who knew nothing. The mystical reveries of saints that had once filled him with awe in the still hours of night, now vaguely repelled him."        from Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise”

I must begin by arguing with the question. The writing prompt asks us to respond by citing an author who agrees and an author who disagrees with Amory. The Fitzgerald quote describes a singular point in the development of any thinking person - the point, usually in adolescence, at which certainty is lost. No writer worth reading has not had this experience. Doubt is an integral component of reasoned thought. Whether an author rejects traditional values and faith or not can only be determined by what follows after the point of doubt.

"The Waste Land” is often cited as Eliot’s crisis of Faith, “Ash Wednesday” as his statement of Faith.  Eliott admitted that he wrote “The Waste Land” while in “a very bad mood,” not so much as result of the War or the condition of civilization, but because in 1914 he had married a woman that he discovered he disliked.  A woman who eighteen years later he would abandon to a mental hospital until she died in 1948. He never visited her there.

He did like cats, apparently more than Jews, several of his poems contain anti-semitic remarks or references without apology. Not a call for genocide, just the sort of thing that an upper class Londoner would say with a “those people” attitude.  I can forgive Shakespeare for Shylock, a fully drawn human being, and the play was written several centuries ago. Eliot, however, lived at a time when genocide was happening just across the channel. Casual bigotry says a lot about the essence of a man.

The direction of his latter work is a return to traditional English Faith and values. He became a deacon of the High Church. I read Ash Wednesday as a nightmare of Faith. The staircase section invites reference to Freud, and Hitchcock - big staircases make Eliot scared and dizzy; but are they signifiers of Faith? The last section refers to The Cult of Mary, which has brought much to Western Civilization. Yet, Eliot can’t quite find a solid Hope or Certainty within the symbol of Mary. Something dark and Freudian is going on in Ash Wednesday. I honestly try not to, but when I finish the poem I parse the last lines as, “Mommy, please protect me!” 

Some of my brother English majors connect the poem to Milton, or Dante, but I think both would find Eliot’s version of Faith of little worth as a support for living a meaningful life.  If Ash Wednesday is Eliot’s response to Amory’s point of doubt, his expression of Faith, then we seem to be stuck in the Waste Land with a Faith that doesn’t help much. Faith that leaves you just a little too cruel and just a little too bigoted.

James Joyce was a contemporary of Fitzgerald and Eliot. While they struggled with Faith, Joyce moved on, rejecting Faith in the Church and its values for a more complete affirmation of life.  His work is a joyous, wild affirmation of civilization, of the city, of being human. Joyce came from a traditional Irish Catholic family and received a strict Jesuit education, his moment of rejection of Faith has a powerful finality.  In his autobiographical “Portrait of an Artist…” Stephen Dedalus (Joyce) has lost his faith and cannot comfort his mother on her deathbed when she requests that he pray for her. The refusal haunts him throughout “Ulysses.” It is the point at which like Amory, he recognizes the reality of doubt and must move on.

Amory’s character rejects a thousand books. Eliot’s work reflects a writer who was well read, but rejected much, and valued only what affirmed his beliefs. Joyce seems to have read absolutely everything and affirms it all - for Joyce what is human, what humans do, is what is good. The answer to all the questions is “Yes.”

Amory rejects the mystical reveries of saints. Joyce sings to us the song of sons throughout all time who carry the guilt of betraying their mother’s pure love. Sons who bare with shame of the terrible sin of lust all around a Dublin that will be full of lust every June 16th for the rest of eternity, as we all lie inverted in our beds.

Eliot’s Church and faith didn’t protect him from bigotry. Joyce became a Jew wandering Dublin and a wandering Greek warrior whose son searched the city for his father.

Joyce’s world had been devastated by war and another war was rising, but he moved on from Amory’s point of doubt to a Dublin where every man and woman carried with them all the joys and all the sorrows that ever were and are, and all the words that had ever been spoken and all the books that had ever been written.

T. S. Eliot

Ash Wednesday is the most difficult poem I've ever read. It's technically brilliant. Beginning humbly, but quickly spiraling into darkness, it is often cited as support that T. S. Eliot was a man of Faith. It is logical to assume that he wrote "The Waste Land" because he had a kind of crisis of Faith, which is somehow resolved in Ash Wednesday, but later in life he admitted that at the time of its composition he was in a very bad mood, not as result of the War or the condition of civilization, but more because in 1914 he had married a woman that he didn't like; a woman who eighteen years later he would finally separate from completely, abandoning her to a mental hospital until she died in 1948. He never visited her.

I've had to deal with Eliot's work for fifty years. You can't be a committed English major and avoid him. Most of his work certainly seems to be written by someone in a permanent bad mood, even with those cheery last lines of the Waste Land: "Datta... Shantith."  Several of his poems contain anti-semitic remarks or images without apology. Not a call for genocide, just the sort of stuff that an upperclass Londoner would say with a "those people" attitude.  I can forgive Shakespeare for Shylock, the character is a fully drawn human being and the play was written several centuries ago. Eliot, however, lived at a time when genocide was just around the corner across the channel. Casual bigotry says a lot about the essence of a man.

That brings me back to Eliot's Faith and Ash Wednesday. Eliot has some serious problems with staircases. I would reference Freud here, but Hitchcock got it right - big staircases make you dizzy. Is dizziness a signifier of Faith? The Cult of Mary brought much to Western Civilization. Yet, after more than a thousand years T.S.Eliot just can't quite find Hope. I honestly  try not to, but when I finish the poem I parse the last lines as, "Mommy please don't leave me!"  There something definitely Freud-like going on in Ash Wednesday, but again I'm not going to explore it.

I've read many studies of the poem. Some English majors find it fun to compare the poem to Milton, and many more find connections to Dante. I think both Milton and Dante would find Eliot's version of Faith of little worth as a support for living a meaningful life.

After listening to Eliot read it over an over, he seems to me to be stuck, suffering forever in Dante's Inferno.  I'm convinced that maybe this is an expression of some kind of Faith, but it's the kind of Faith that doesn't help much. Faith that  leaves you just a little too cruel and just a little too bigoted. So much talent, so much reading, such a command of language - yet so much a waste.

Thoreau states that he sang as he built his cabin.

In the Economy chapter of Walden, Thoreau states that he sang as he built his cabin.
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So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself,— 

Men say they know many things; 

But lo! they have taken wings—

The arts and sciences, 

And a thousand appliances; 

The wind that blows Is all that any body knows.

--Thoreau, Henry David (2012-05-16). Walden (p. 29).  Kindle Edition

When I despair of my fellow Americans, I remember that Henry David Thoreau is also my countryman.

I could argue for hours that almost every sentence that Thoreau wrote is poetry and that includes the two million or so words in his journals. 

We mere mortals search for the exact word, the sentence that will speak to the heart, the image that will teach the eye of the reader. All those things simply flow from Thoreau's pen. Magic ink. Magic pencil (high quality that he made himself).

I dare you to read Thoreau aloud for two hours, and then take a familiar walk. 
Likely, you will hear and see what you didn't see before. 
You may even stop and argue sweetly with a neighbor,"Don't waste your time here, live simply, seek justice, and pay attention!

Sing while you work!

John Dewey

Henry David Thoreau

Blue Jays in the garden

Listening again.
Four Blue Jays arguing in the garden.
What can be so important as to cause such a lengthy ruckus?  

On Reading the Odyssey

Stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end have a temporal framework. The story of the Odyssey is built on a timeline of forty days, but the framework expands to include the ten years of Odysseus’ wanderings, the twenty years of the Trojan war, and also contracts into a hundred smaller stories - tales of the war, Odysseus’ travels and  other characters lives, and also lies - products of Odysseus’ imagination and strategy.  As Professor Struck noted, a story may begin with an object such as the scar or a bow, digress into another narrative and then cycle back through time to the main narrative thread. Time contracts and expands in Homer just as it contracts and expands within our consciousness. 

Professor Struck comments that the Odyssey is a story that doesn’t want to end. In many ways it expands endlessly, circling back on itself. The arc of the story is always toward home and peace. Birth, suffering, struggle, and cessation of struggle - the cycle of human life. Odysseus’ peaceful life, a successful ruler, loving husband and father is interrupted by war, by conflicts among the gods and men, yet from the beginning the reader knows that Odysseus -”the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course” will return home, will live to a peaceful old age - will complete the human cycle successfully. Odysseus is the most human of heroes. We need Odysseus to be okay in the end, because his struggle is so much like our own.

Within the forty days of the Odyssey’s timeline Homer retells the cycle repeatedly. Sometimes in years as in Eumaeus’s tale. Sometimes within the arc of a single day in Book 22, the slaughter of the suitors, or within the span of an hour in Book 23 in Penelope’s final recognition.  Or in just a few brief lines, when all of the epic story is compressed into the details of the life of Odysseus’ dog Argos. In Homer time often shrinks into the details and then explodes into the eternal.

Does Homer’s temporal framework have significance for the making of myth? Yes, in that it affirms the universals of human experience. But there is more to consider. The Odyssey is - by common agreement, over a vast period history - one of the greatest works of the human imagination. It is impossible to fit it into  Burkert and Struck’s definition of  myth as a traditional tale told with secondary partial reference to something of collective importance and “told by someone for some reason.” Homer burst through those boundaries. The Odyssey is simply so much more than just a myth. So much more than a “secondary partial reference to something of collective importance.”

In the six lines below, as Odysseus and Eumaeus settle in for the night, Homer tells us everything I believe we will ever actually know about why people tell each other stories:

We two will keep to shelter here, eat and drink

and take some joy in each other’s heartbreaking sorrows,

sharing each other’s memories. Over the years, you know,

a man finds solace even in old sorrows, true, a man

who’s weathered many blows and wandered many miles.

My own story? This will answer all your questions …

Book 17 Eumaeus Lines 447 - 452