When I was a young man during the late 1960s, I had great admiration for my German professor, Israel Solomon Stamm. I was just beginning to write poetry, and had a deep thirst for things aesthetic which found no slaking in my lower working-class environment. I had recently been moved to tears by listening to a recording of Mozart's Magic Flute, which, by chance, I borrowed from the library. (After listening to it non-stop for a week, I, as one would expect, had it memorized.) I had discovered a new world that was so profound and yet totally uncommunicable to anyone I knew. I felt deeply connected to everything while I listened--I forgot of course that I was even there--yet, once it was over, I felt like a Martian in comparison to others who were at home with their workaday world.
Although I was far too shy to do anything but listen, Professor Stamm became an inner mentor. He was deeply religious; so was I. He loved music; so did I. He loved literature; so did I. Philosophy, too--and especially poetry, just like me. (He was one of the few non-poets I ever knew who could pick out the weakest line of a poem; my inner poet knew he was almost always right.)
He was especially fond of Shakespeare. One day he was discussing whether the arts help to ennoble and lead one to a better, life. He had his doubts. He said that some men who beat their wives might be moved to the quick by Shakespeare--and then go on to beat them again and again. Another professor of German, who taught me several years later, was deeply shocked by what his countrymen did in the Second World War. He told us about horrible Nazis who could play Chopin movingly. He seemed not merely to think that music was an emotional sphere completely divorced from morality, but that it diminished one's moral sense and could actually lead to the commitment of atrocities. If you listened to him, Richard Strauss was almost as evil as Goebbels.
The arts were in the process of saving my difficult life--or at the very least increasing the quality of that life; I was skeptical about this harsh judgment. I countered that Hitler often made a fuss over babies; this does not mean that fondness for children leads to fascism. Some people are just plain pathological, I reasoned; Chopin's music which ennobles many, will have no effect on those for whom pathological desires are the driving force of their lives. But I also realized that the arts are morally ambiguous. I do think that aesthetics at its best tends to make one kinder and gentler, but this is not always the case. At the very least, it deepens one's inner life tremendously. I at least believe that this inner nobility fosters outer nobility. What have some great poets thought about the ability of beauty to ennoble? That is the subject of this essay; we will examine poems by three poets, Rilke, Menashe and Michelangelo.
1. ARCHAISHER TORSO APOLLOS
Wir kannten nicht sein unerhoertes Haupt
darin die Augenaepfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glueht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
indem sein Schauen, nur zurueckgeschraubt,
sich haelt und glaenzt. Sonst koennte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden koennte nicht ein Laecheln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.
Sonst stuende dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie ein Raubtierfelle
und braechte nicht aus allen seinen Raendern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle
die dich nicht sieht. Du musst dein Leben aendern.
Prose Tranlation:
We did not know his extraordinary head
in which the eyes' apples matured. But
his torso still glows like a candlelabrum,
in which the gaze, merely rotated back,
maintains itself glowingly. Otherwise the curve
of his breast wouldn't blind you, nor would
the slight turn of his loins pass along a smile
to the middle, where the genitals once were.
Without that hidden gaze the stone would be disfigured
and come up short in apparent collapse beneath the shoulders,
and would not gleam like the fell of a great predator;
it would be thus unable to shine like a star, bright
at every edge: for here there is nothing at all
that doesn't see you. You must change your life.
This is one of Rilke's most famous poems, and deservedly so. It is part of the second volume of his "New Poems," written in 1907. They are dedicated "a (son) ami, Auguste Rodin," which is significant. Rilke became August Rodin's secretary shortly after the former moved to Paris in 1902. Rodin had a profound influence on him, encouraging him to look closely at things, and to let them speak for themselves in poetry that avoids abstract language. As in Japanese poetry, the rejuvenated Rilke decided to let a poem's metaphoric aspects--of which Rilke is an undoubted master--be contained in concrete images. This type of poetry reveals and suggests to the reader profundities instead of merely disclosing the author's commentary. Rilke called this type of poetry "Dinggedichte," (Thing Poems), the ideas behind which are
somehwhat similar to the Imagistic Manifesto that swept poetry in English in 1912. Rilke would continue writing in this vein until The Duino Elegies; the "thing poems" written in what I call Rilke's middle period, were a vast improvement over what came earlier.
Rilke was unable to let the image completely speak for itself as in Japanese poetry, since the poems he wrote are much longer than haikus; images without at least some guidance from the poet are difficult, if not impossible, to sustain in a longer poem. I call this technique of Rilke's "interpretive imaging" since the poet guides the reader in the direction he wants her to take. (As a physician, I was tempted to call this purpose-driven technique "Diagnostic Imaging," but the poet in me refused to permit it.)
This poem presents a good example of a "thing poem." Rilke not only presents the image of Apollo's torso, but guides the reader in its interpretion. It is a beautiful example of what I discussed in a previous essay about poems the subject of which is music: great art addresses us personally. We become aware, as it were, of a Face behind it. (Bennet is his book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," presents the theory that prmitive man first "imagined"--invented--God as a voice behind thunder. That might be, but nowadays thunder speaks the language of science; art, however, can still speak to us as a hidden, inexplicable "voice" that convinces us, under the spell of great art, that scientific reductionism, on one pan of the great scale of life, is outweighed by a "hand" pressing sublimely down upon the other.
How perfectly Rilke expresses this! The beautiful statue lacks a face just as we are unable to see a face behind our beautiful world. And yet, without eyes, the statue--and by implication, the world--is looking deeply into our very souls! Just as higher energy sends an electron into a different orbit, we are brought onto a higher level of existence through great art. Our workaday world is transformed into "a peak in Darien" at the base of which we stare up in amazement. At its best, it is both a moral and aesthetic transformation, as the full meaning of the splendid last line implies: You must change your life.
This is one of the best last lines in all poetry. In fact, the poem can be divided into two parts: the last line and everything that came before it. The last line, as all good last lines do, summarizes the poem and take it into a new direction. It is masterly both in its profundity and in its understatement. Yes, Rilke is a poet's poet; even better, his poetry is accessible to all who are awed by the mysterious depths and heights of humanity as reflected in the mysterious depths and heights of this "faceless" world.
2. Samuel Menashe
O Many Named Beloved
Listen to my praise
Various as the seasons
Different as the days
All my treasons cease
When I see your face
Samuel Menashe, an old friend, received--very deservedly so--the Neglected Poets Award from Poetry Magazine in 2006. He is a poet's poet, and certainly has been no stranger to poetry's cognoscenti over four decades. His poems, mostly short, are little gems of music and meaning. More expansive poets, which almost always means more prosaic poets, can learn a lot from him.
I first met Samuel in the early 1970s. I was serving as the physician of the house at Lincoln Center; I had two tickets for an evening perfomance on a date my wife could not accompany me. Samuel was standing in front of the New York City opera. Beverly Sills was singing one of the Donizetti queen roles, and Samuel looked like he was desperate for a ticket. I went up and said I had one. He was astonished that I gave it to him for free. I hadn't heard of him, although he was certainly an established, though relatively unknown poet at the time. He told me that he was a poet and never had the delight before of getting a free ticket to such a coveted performance--around us were a flock of scalpers. I told him that I was a poet, too. That explains it, he said; we became friends instantly.
About a year later, I was listening to Samuel being interviewed on WQXR, a New York radio station that deals with music and the arts. The poem quoted here was being discussed. The interviewer said that this poem was an outstanding example of the ennobling ability of spiritual experience. I agreed with the interviewer then, as I agree with him now, hence the inclusion of the poem in this essay.
The poem is simple and direct and needs little commentary. Note the delightful rhymes of "praise, days, cease and face." How less musical this poem would be if the rhymes had been exact. The Bible teaches us that anyone who observes God's face perishes; the sepharim (the burning ones) hid His face from the prophets. The Many Named Beloved is much more approachable here--as we will soon see in the poem by Michelangelo. The last two lines form a perfect corroboration of Rilke's famous poem, "The Archaic Torso of Apollo" discussed earlier. Those who are musically and spiritually sensitive must find Samuel's poem exhilarating. It is so simple, too--I had it memorized after my first reading of it, and haven't forgotten it for nearly forty years.
3. Michelangelo
Veggio nel tuo bel viso, signor mio,
quel che narrar mal puossi in questa vita:
l’anima, della carne ancor vestita,
con esso è già più volte ascesa a Dio.
E se ’l vulgo malvagio, isciocco e rio,
di quel che sente, altrui segna e addita,
non è l’intensa voglia men gradita,
l’amor, la fede e l’onesto desio.
A quel pietoso fonte, onde siàn tutti,
s’assembra ogni beltà che qua si vede
più c’altra cosa alle persone accorte;
né altro saggio abbiàn né altri frutti
del cielo in terra; e chi v’ama con fede
trascende a Dio e fa dolce la morte.
My Lord, I see in your handsome face
that which in this life cannot be said.
With it spirit has ascended to God
while still clothed in flesh. And if the base,
foolish, vulgar pack can't comprehend,
mocking and chiding, what others sense,
this doesn't mean devotion is less great,
as well as love, faith, and honest desire.
Beauty that is seen here best recalls
our holy source. Nothing else on earth
comes closer to that fount than beauty;
no other proof, no other fruit falls
from heaven--And who loves you with faith
ascends to God and makes death sweet.
--translated by Thomas Dorsett
first appeared in Tampa Review, Number 19
Many who admire Michelangelo's Pieta, or my favorite, the Radanini Pieta, are not aware that Michelangeo was also a prominent poet. I once asked an Italian writer what he thought of the great artist's poetry. He said it was very good, but fell short of his achievements in sculpture and painting. I commented that this still leaves room for Michelangelo to be a very notable poet. He agreed. The sonnet included here is considered by many critics to be his finest.
This poem illustrates the truth of Simone Weil's saying, namely that beauty and suffering destroy our superficialities and can lead us to something higher. This is a deeply felt poem that arose from the depths of a great man who knew both beauty and suffering well. It is said that Michelangelo carved out of cold stone the sublime depths of suffering humanity. The trouble with the transcendent is that it is difficult to return to the superficial; one can deduce from the poem Michelango's genuine experience of the transcendent--but only a hint of such. One ascends to heaven; one returns to one's cell.
Some have thought the "My Lord" of this poem to be Christ; I very much disagree. It is undoubteldy the face of a male model whom Michelangelo was depicting in his art. For this artist beauty was an ideal not only of form but of sprit--One recalls Rilke's torso of Apollo, the beauty and spirituality of which address the onlooker from every point. That the spirit ascends to God during an experience of sublimity recalls the "You must change your life," and "All my treasons cease" from the first two poems.
Bach was amazed that many fellow church members of his were unable, even uninterested, in experiencing the ecstasy that wells up from the depths of life. Michelangelo seconds this and goes further: though the vulgar pack denies their validity, this doesn't negate the value of the best things in life: devotion, love, faith and honest desire.
Michelangelo presents an idealist version of the cosmos. As in the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus, what is supremely beautiful exists beyond us, we can only catch a glimpse. This view is also spendidly illustrated by the Kabballah: En Sof, the completely transcendent safirah about which we can know nothing, "trickles down," as it were, into the lesser safirot until our world is reached. Many today assert that this idealist philosophy in no longer tenebale. Science seems to indicate that quantum uncertainty and impersonal forces are the source from which all flows, not from "our holy source." That may be when things are viewed from the outside, but, from the inside, if one can't sense a hierarchy of beauty and of spirit one is a very deficient human being. Hitler and Mozart are not equal.
The ending of the poem is especially lovely. Notice that the poet writes "who loves you with faith"--he is indicating, of course, much more than senual desire. The poem has a beautiful, understated ending, which sounds so much better in Italian. Death--and if we include, as we must, E.E. Cummings's combination of upper-case Death with lower case death, the negativities of life, there are reasons to be peridodically terrified and anxious. That these troubles, as Schopenhauer explained, can at least be temporarily overcome by beauty and spirituality is a great boon. But for Michaelango, this is not escape from reality but the most profound experience of reality possible.
What a beautiful poem!
Summary
We have discussed three examples of transcendent beauty. The first deals with art at its best; the second deals with transcendent aspects of spirituality and of religion at its best; the third deals with the transcendence of human beauty at its best. All of these poems derive from deep personal experience of the authors. It may not be easy to get the news from these poems, but we can assert with William Carlos Williams that many are dying every day from lack of what is found there. And if you have a mind that deeply thinks and a heart that deeply feels, you, albeit with considerable effort, will find what we are all seeking. If you are confused, these poems provide a little guide for the perplexed and can point you in the right direction. The road is indeed as difficult as it is ultimately rewarding. May these great poems encourage you to turn off the TV and to walk on your path like the beautiful, transcendent human being that you (potentially) are.
This essay is the last of the Osher essays for this year.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
THREE POEMS ABOUT MUSIC: RILKE, HOPKINS, DORSETT
Music has been called the Queen of the Arts since it is the most abstract and the most direct of all art forms. These qualities, it has been also said, are what all the others strive for. I, for one, have been deeply affected by music, and agree with this assessment. Well, which art form is King? Poetry, of course, even though most people today think the King (Emperor) has no clothes. Or worse: many poets these days have been dressing him in rags. But the King is still King: a unique combination of intense language, meaning and, not least--actually foremost--music. Music can and should be subordinated to meaning in prose; whenever that is the case in poetry, the King's realm is a banana republic.
As a poet and (amateur) musician, I am interested in other poets' relationship to music. It is not always what I expect. Thomas Mann was passionate about music, but was certainly no poet. And my mentor in poetry, the late, great Jose Garcia Villa, whose poems are quite musical, had little appreciation for music per se. (I remember that he once told me, with some disdain, that at a party he attended, 'Leonard Bernstein sat down at the piano and played some fluff'--as if the latter were a six-year-old at her first group piano recital.) Nevertheless, some poets, especially the most musical among them, have had a profound relationship to music. I intend to discuss in this essay two poems about music by two very musical kings of poetry: Rilke and Hopkins--followed by a little poem by one of the most minor musical poets of all.
1. RILKE; AN DIE MUSIK (TO MUSIC)
AN DIE MUSIK
Musik; Atem der Stauen. Vielleicht:
Stille der Bilder. Du Sprache wo Sprachen
enden. Du Zeit,
die senkrecht steht auf der Richtung vergehender Herzen.
Gefuehle zu wem? O du der Gefuehle
Wandlung in was?--: Du uns entwachsener
Herzraum. Innigstes unser,
das, uns uebersteigend, hinausdraengt,--
heiliger Abschied:
da uns das Innree umsteht
als geuebteste Ferne, als andre
Seite der Luft:
rein,
riesig,
nicht mehr bewohnbar.
Translation:
Music: statues' breath. Perhaps:
images' rest. You language where languages
end. You time,
vertically above the direction of hearts that pass away.
Feelings to whom? O you our feelings'
transformation into what?--: O you
heart space grown out of us. Most inner element,
which, transcending us, swiftly drives on,--
Holy departure:
since the Inner surrounds us
as most accomplished Distance, as the other
side of the air,
pure,
enormous,
in which we can no longer dwell.
This poem says it all! It is astoundingly beautiful; perhaps the most profound poem ever written about music. It is also a watershed from a technical aspect; let's discuss that first. We know Rilke as a writer of formal poetry, sonnets especially, but also rhyming verse and formal elegies. Here we have a very rare example of free verse by Rilke, a very seminal example--It is a direct link to the poetry of Paul Celan, who wrote in this fashion. (Rilke has been considered the greatest European poet of the first half of the twentieth century, while Celan has been considered to be the greatest European poet of the latter half of the twentieth century.) Most modern poets, especially since World War ll, compose poems in free verse, which are all too often unmusical; free verse for Rilke and Celan does not mean chopped-up prose. Their music, liberated from meter, does not trade in this freedom for less intense musicality; to the contrary.
I have always thought that writing good poetry is even more difficult than writing good music, since the poet has a double hurdle to leap over: all poems must be musical, but the best poems also have profound meanings. It's not easy balancing these two elements; music without meaning in poetry has been criticized as being merely "rhetorical," while meaning without music falls flat. Although Rilke's poem is quite musical, we will limit our discussion to what the meaning of the words conveys.
Music as the breath of statues and as the repose of painting--(Bild in German means either painting, picture or image--We suppose that Rilke means the repose of an image that represents an action in time, such as someone riding a horse.) This paradoxical action in inaction and inaction in action indicates not only that music is beyond the prosaic, but that the Queen of the Arts is also the essence of both sculpture and painting--and presumbably of the other arts as well. As spirit becomes more subtle it can only be expressed paradoxically; since music embodies this paradox, Rilke is indicating that it is the most subtle of all arts and is included in them all. This is a very important point, since Rilke was very much involved with sculpture and painting. He learned a good deal from Rodin while serving as his amanuensis in Paris; he lectured all across Europe as an art expert of Cezanne's oeuvre. He knew many painters, sculptors and writers--but very few musicians. Why is this? Rilke admitted that he kept away from music for the fear that it would overwhelm him. If he let the walls be breached, he worried that the beautiful artificial lake that he constructed out of words would be swept away by a tsunami of notes. Poetry and music are two different disciplines; he felt he had to limit his exposure to music, because it affected him so deeply and might interfere with the concentration needed to write poetry.
In the last line of the first stanza, notice that music stands above "mortal hearts that are passing through time"--the repose of the image, once again.
Rilke writes, "Feelings to whom"--not for whom. Music at its best seems to address someone beyond the phenomenal--someone whose name we don't know and inadequately call God. Rilke goes on to say that music is a great expanse of inner spirit that has grown out of us--it is an inner revelation, not an outer one. But, Rilke asserts, this inner element transcends us and leads into the beyond. It is a departure, since we cannot follow it to its endpoint, which is beyond us. We live with music that is in ourselves, but cannot dwell in that realm into which music extends--heaven, as it were. It is like a modern theory of gravity, which states that gravity is the only one of the four elemental forces which extends beyond our world into the next universe. (Specifically, gravity extends beyond our braneworld into the bulk.) Like gravity, music is part of our everyday world but not completely contained by it. Anyone who has experienced music profoundly is aware of the "fact" that what is so immediate is also transcendent--like God, fully and completely here and there at the same time.
I hope I have demonstrated the profound understanding of music evinced by this poem. The poem might sound a little abstract to some; one should remember that Rilke wrote for many years what he called "Dinggedichte" poems that deal with images and eschew abstract words. That this poem arose after so many years of "following the rules" is all the more remarkable. The poem is heartfelt, wise and musical; as stated earlier, it is perhaps the greatest poem about music ever written.
2. Henry Purcell by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.
Have fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear
To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell.
An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal
Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.
Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,
Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:
It is the forged feature finds me; it is the rehearsal
Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.
Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me! only I'll
Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to his pelted plumage under
Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked his while
The thunder-purple seabeach plumed purple-of-thunder,
If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a colossal smile
Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with wonder.
First a few words of technical analysis. I will do this for the first two lines; I invite the reader to proceed with the rest of the poem, keeping in mind what I have discussed regarding the first two lines. Hopkins is indeed a great master of verbal music. He is a genius of what my mentor in poetry, Villa, called "verbal correlation," the connection of the sounds of the words, independent of meaning, that fuse into a euphonious whole. Once the concept of verbal correlation is mastered, it is easy for the reader to tell when a poet is proceeding by meaning only--the music falls flat, since the conveyance of meaning is the realm of prose. Not that meaning is unimportant; Hopkins, especially in this poem, definitely has thoughts, profound thoughts, to convey. But the music comes first. Note how Hopkins accomplished this in the first two lines--the diphthong ai played against (or half-rhymed with) the diphthong ea (dear and heaves); the correlation of 'especial' and 'fallen'; the accented a of 'arch' played against the more gentle a's of the first line; the alliteration, extensive but not overdone; the accent of the first syllable of the composer's name, a delightful note which echoes the accent of 'arch'--all these factors--and much more--make the reading of these first two lines an utter musical delight.(It is interesting that both Whitman and Hopkins wanted to free poetry from strict meter--Hopkins called his system of doing this 'sprung rhythm'-- a liberation which both poets accomplished musically. Many of their followers freed themselves from meter prosaically.)
The meaning of the first stanza is another matter, something not 'musical' at all; it strikes most of us as a bit bizarre. Hopkins is at first hoping that Purcell has entered heaven, even though he is in a sense deserving damnation, since he was not a member of the sole true Church. He is thus "listed to a heresy, here," on earth; however, since Purcell is so "arch-especial," Hopkins does not doubt that the composer has been judged with mercy, "O fair, fair have fallen." Hopkins drops this theme with the first stanza, for which I, for one, am grateful.
The second stanza has something more essential to convey. Purcell is so great a composer that his individual expressivity, without ceasing to be individual, has become universal: we find the very nature of humanity in his music. It is pleasing to find my own views corroborated by such a genius as Hopkins, for I heartily agree with the poet's assessment. I have been moved to the very core by Purcell's Dido and Aeneas--there is nothing like it. In Purcell, the roiled waters of entertaining Baroque dance rhythms become periodically quieted; the water becomes clear and we get a glimpse of depths hitherto almost unheard of. An element of deep feeling entered the English Baroque with Purcell. And he often expresses deep emotion with such economic, simple means--a true mark of genius. You don't have to wait for the stunning Dido's Lament to be moved to the quick; just listen to the beginning of the overture--if you are sensitive to music, you will know what I mean.
How beautifully Hopkins expresses individuality that transcends itself: an exact correlation with Rilke's poem ("Most inner element, which, transcending us, swiftly drives on.") The music of Purcell thus becomes a perfect illustration of Rilke's poem--two musical geniuses in full agreement.
Hopkins was not totally pleased with the sestet of this sonnet; it is, in parts, a bit forced but beautiful nevertheless, musically and conceptually. The stormfowl, Purcell, soars above the earth but is still a creature of the earth. The wind (vicissitudes that help the composer reveal his true nature?) uncovers his unique markings which "scatter a colossal smile." This is an interesting phrase, and correlates sublimely with Rilke's "Feelings to whom" in the first poem. Something, somebody, seems to respond from the other side. Notice the extraordinary tenth line: "the thunder-purple seabeach plumed purple-of-thunder." The stormfowl's "plumed thunder-of-purple" which the wind has revealed, is the mirror image of "the thunder purple seabeach!" Do you know any better image that indicates art's glorious mirroring of outer nature by our inner nature? And the loveliness and profundity of the last phrase, "but meaning motion fans fresh or wits with wonder." Here we have the essence of poetry: meaning conveyed by motion (music.) Hopkins does not divide these two aspects, they are combined with a unity, "meaning motion." Extraordinary! And extraordinarily, divinely, and humanly, true.
3. AT THE CUSP OF OLD AGE BY THOMAS DORSETT
Please don't accuse me of hubris for including one of my poems; I am doing this for a different reason than to elicit a comparison between two great poems and one of mine. My purpose is to give an example of passion for something, whether that passion is for music, poetry, or for something else that is worthwhile. (In my poem, the objects of profound interest are poetry and music, an intense concern for which is in accord with the theme of this essay.) A friend of mine told me that she is content most of the time but is not passionately involved with anything. Though she is well-adjusted and mostly upbeat, I don't think this is the way to live, and that's what the poem implies. I find that my life, not without its miseries, has been transformed by my love for poetry and music into something that mirrors a higher reality--once again, it is a good feeling to have my views corroborated by two great artists. It is a sublime "up" that compensates for life's many "downs." I am including my poem as a sort of proof that you need not be a genius like Hopkins or Rilke to experience the view from the heights--provided that you spend much of your time climbing. As Joseph Campbell put it: follow your bliss! And, as a physcian, I am aware of increasing research that indicates that persons who are passionate about their work live longer--and, I would add, live better. It's an invitation to put more music, music in the broadest sense, into your life, if it does not have a prominent place there already.
You will not regret it.
AT THE CUSP OF OLD AGE
To transcend time before she calls the ambulance
I shall play music and write for many more years.
I imagine they'll come to get me
just after I've mastered the simplest Bach prelude
(the one on your cell phone in C)
--If I work hard that will take decades--
Some day--perhaps soon--some professional
stranger will tell her I'm sorry,
it's too late to help him
(This I've known for over sixty years)
Until then, it's Mozart, Shakespeare and
doing my best to make others happy;
Life's music, life's poetry. They're here!
Still writing? They'll just have to wait.
As a poet and (amateur) musician, I am interested in other poets' relationship to music. It is not always what I expect. Thomas Mann was passionate about music, but was certainly no poet. And my mentor in poetry, the late, great Jose Garcia Villa, whose poems are quite musical, had little appreciation for music per se. (I remember that he once told me, with some disdain, that at a party he attended, 'Leonard Bernstein sat down at the piano and played some fluff'--as if the latter were a six-year-old at her first group piano recital.) Nevertheless, some poets, especially the most musical among them, have had a profound relationship to music. I intend to discuss in this essay two poems about music by two very musical kings of poetry: Rilke and Hopkins--followed by a little poem by one of the most minor musical poets of all.
1. RILKE; AN DIE MUSIK (TO MUSIC)
AN DIE MUSIK
Musik; Atem der Stauen. Vielleicht:
Stille der Bilder. Du Sprache wo Sprachen
enden. Du Zeit,
die senkrecht steht auf der Richtung vergehender Herzen.
Gefuehle zu wem? O du der Gefuehle
Wandlung in was?--: Du uns entwachsener
Herzraum. Innigstes unser,
das, uns uebersteigend, hinausdraengt,--
heiliger Abschied:
da uns das Innree umsteht
als geuebteste Ferne, als andre
Seite der Luft:
rein,
riesig,
nicht mehr bewohnbar.
Translation:
Music: statues' breath. Perhaps:
images' rest. You language where languages
end. You time,
vertically above the direction of hearts that pass away.
Feelings to whom? O you our feelings'
transformation into what?--: O you
heart space grown out of us. Most inner element,
which, transcending us, swiftly drives on,--
Holy departure:
since the Inner surrounds us
as most accomplished Distance, as the other
side of the air,
pure,
enormous,
in which we can no longer dwell.
This poem says it all! It is astoundingly beautiful; perhaps the most profound poem ever written about music. It is also a watershed from a technical aspect; let's discuss that first. We know Rilke as a writer of formal poetry, sonnets especially, but also rhyming verse and formal elegies. Here we have a very rare example of free verse by Rilke, a very seminal example--It is a direct link to the poetry of Paul Celan, who wrote in this fashion. (Rilke has been considered the greatest European poet of the first half of the twentieth century, while Celan has been considered to be the greatest European poet of the latter half of the twentieth century.) Most modern poets, especially since World War ll, compose poems in free verse, which are all too often unmusical; free verse for Rilke and Celan does not mean chopped-up prose. Their music, liberated from meter, does not trade in this freedom for less intense musicality; to the contrary.
I have always thought that writing good poetry is even more difficult than writing good music, since the poet has a double hurdle to leap over: all poems must be musical, but the best poems also have profound meanings. It's not easy balancing these two elements; music without meaning in poetry has been criticized as being merely "rhetorical," while meaning without music falls flat. Although Rilke's poem is quite musical, we will limit our discussion to what the meaning of the words conveys.
Music as the breath of statues and as the repose of painting--(Bild in German means either painting, picture or image--We suppose that Rilke means the repose of an image that represents an action in time, such as someone riding a horse.) This paradoxical action in inaction and inaction in action indicates not only that music is beyond the prosaic, but that the Queen of the Arts is also the essence of both sculpture and painting--and presumbably of the other arts as well. As spirit becomes more subtle it can only be expressed paradoxically; since music embodies this paradox, Rilke is indicating that it is the most subtle of all arts and is included in them all. This is a very important point, since Rilke was very much involved with sculpture and painting. He learned a good deal from Rodin while serving as his amanuensis in Paris; he lectured all across Europe as an art expert of Cezanne's oeuvre. He knew many painters, sculptors and writers--but very few musicians. Why is this? Rilke admitted that he kept away from music for the fear that it would overwhelm him. If he let the walls be breached, he worried that the beautiful artificial lake that he constructed out of words would be swept away by a tsunami of notes. Poetry and music are two different disciplines; he felt he had to limit his exposure to music, because it affected him so deeply and might interfere with the concentration needed to write poetry.
In the last line of the first stanza, notice that music stands above "mortal hearts that are passing through time"--the repose of the image, once again.
Rilke writes, "Feelings to whom"--not for whom. Music at its best seems to address someone beyond the phenomenal--someone whose name we don't know and inadequately call God. Rilke goes on to say that music is a great expanse of inner spirit that has grown out of us--it is an inner revelation, not an outer one. But, Rilke asserts, this inner element transcends us and leads into the beyond. It is a departure, since we cannot follow it to its endpoint, which is beyond us. We live with music that is in ourselves, but cannot dwell in that realm into which music extends--heaven, as it were. It is like a modern theory of gravity, which states that gravity is the only one of the four elemental forces which extends beyond our world into the next universe. (Specifically, gravity extends beyond our braneworld into the bulk.) Like gravity, music is part of our everyday world but not completely contained by it. Anyone who has experienced music profoundly is aware of the "fact" that what is so immediate is also transcendent--like God, fully and completely here and there at the same time.
I hope I have demonstrated the profound understanding of music evinced by this poem. The poem might sound a little abstract to some; one should remember that Rilke wrote for many years what he called "Dinggedichte" poems that deal with images and eschew abstract words. That this poem arose after so many years of "following the rules" is all the more remarkable. The poem is heartfelt, wise and musical; as stated earlier, it is perhaps the greatest poem about music ever written.
2. Henry Purcell by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.
Have fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear
To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell.
An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal
Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.
Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,
Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:
It is the forged feature finds me; it is the rehearsal
Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.
Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me! only I'll
Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to his pelted plumage under
Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked his while
The thunder-purple seabeach plumed purple-of-thunder,
If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a colossal smile
Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with wonder.
First a few words of technical analysis. I will do this for the first two lines; I invite the reader to proceed with the rest of the poem, keeping in mind what I have discussed regarding the first two lines. Hopkins is indeed a great master of verbal music. He is a genius of what my mentor in poetry, Villa, called "verbal correlation," the connection of the sounds of the words, independent of meaning, that fuse into a euphonious whole. Once the concept of verbal correlation is mastered, it is easy for the reader to tell when a poet is proceeding by meaning only--the music falls flat, since the conveyance of meaning is the realm of prose. Not that meaning is unimportant; Hopkins, especially in this poem, definitely has thoughts, profound thoughts, to convey. But the music comes first. Note how Hopkins accomplished this in the first two lines--the diphthong ai played against (or half-rhymed with) the diphthong ea (dear and heaves); the correlation of 'especial' and 'fallen'; the accented a of 'arch' played against the more gentle a's of the first line; the alliteration, extensive but not overdone; the accent of the first syllable of the composer's name, a delightful note which echoes the accent of 'arch'--all these factors--and much more--make the reading of these first two lines an utter musical delight.(It is interesting that both Whitman and Hopkins wanted to free poetry from strict meter--Hopkins called his system of doing this 'sprung rhythm'-- a liberation which both poets accomplished musically. Many of their followers freed themselves from meter prosaically.)
The meaning of the first stanza is another matter, something not 'musical' at all; it strikes most of us as a bit bizarre. Hopkins is at first hoping that Purcell has entered heaven, even though he is in a sense deserving damnation, since he was not a member of the sole true Church. He is thus "listed to a heresy, here," on earth; however, since Purcell is so "arch-especial," Hopkins does not doubt that the composer has been judged with mercy, "O fair, fair have fallen." Hopkins drops this theme with the first stanza, for which I, for one, am grateful.
The second stanza has something more essential to convey. Purcell is so great a composer that his individual expressivity, without ceasing to be individual, has become universal: we find the very nature of humanity in his music. It is pleasing to find my own views corroborated by such a genius as Hopkins, for I heartily agree with the poet's assessment. I have been moved to the very core by Purcell's Dido and Aeneas--there is nothing like it. In Purcell, the roiled waters of entertaining Baroque dance rhythms become periodically quieted; the water becomes clear and we get a glimpse of depths hitherto almost unheard of. An element of deep feeling entered the English Baroque with Purcell. And he often expresses deep emotion with such economic, simple means--a true mark of genius. You don't have to wait for the stunning Dido's Lament to be moved to the quick; just listen to the beginning of the overture--if you are sensitive to music, you will know what I mean.
How beautifully Hopkins expresses individuality that transcends itself: an exact correlation with Rilke's poem ("Most inner element, which, transcending us, swiftly drives on.") The music of Purcell thus becomes a perfect illustration of Rilke's poem--two musical geniuses in full agreement.
Hopkins was not totally pleased with the sestet of this sonnet; it is, in parts, a bit forced but beautiful nevertheless, musically and conceptually. The stormfowl, Purcell, soars above the earth but is still a creature of the earth. The wind (vicissitudes that help the composer reveal his true nature?) uncovers his unique markings which "scatter a colossal smile." This is an interesting phrase, and correlates sublimely with Rilke's "Feelings to whom" in the first poem. Something, somebody, seems to respond from the other side. Notice the extraordinary tenth line: "the thunder-purple seabeach plumed purple-of-thunder." The stormfowl's "plumed thunder-of-purple" which the wind has revealed, is the mirror image of "the thunder purple seabeach!" Do you know any better image that indicates art's glorious mirroring of outer nature by our inner nature? And the loveliness and profundity of the last phrase, "but meaning motion fans fresh or wits with wonder." Here we have the essence of poetry: meaning conveyed by motion (music.) Hopkins does not divide these two aspects, they are combined with a unity, "meaning motion." Extraordinary! And extraordinarily, divinely, and humanly, true.
3. AT THE CUSP OF OLD AGE BY THOMAS DORSETT
Please don't accuse me of hubris for including one of my poems; I am doing this for a different reason than to elicit a comparison between two great poems and one of mine. My purpose is to give an example of passion for something, whether that passion is for music, poetry, or for something else that is worthwhile. (In my poem, the objects of profound interest are poetry and music, an intense concern for which is in accord with the theme of this essay.) A friend of mine told me that she is content most of the time but is not passionately involved with anything. Though she is well-adjusted and mostly upbeat, I don't think this is the way to live, and that's what the poem implies. I find that my life, not without its miseries, has been transformed by my love for poetry and music into something that mirrors a higher reality--once again, it is a good feeling to have my views corroborated by two great artists. It is a sublime "up" that compensates for life's many "downs." I am including my poem as a sort of proof that you need not be a genius like Hopkins or Rilke to experience the view from the heights--provided that you spend much of your time climbing. As Joseph Campbell put it: follow your bliss! And, as a physcian, I am aware of increasing research that indicates that persons who are passionate about their work live longer--and, I would add, live better. It's an invitation to put more music, music in the broadest sense, into your life, if it does not have a prominent place there already.
You will not regret it.
AT THE CUSP OF OLD AGE
To transcend time before she calls the ambulance
I shall play music and write for many more years.
I imagine they'll come to get me
just after I've mastered the simplest Bach prelude
(the one on your cell phone in C)
--If I work hard that will take decades--
Some day--perhaps soon--some professional
stranger will tell her I'm sorry,
it's too late to help him
(This I've known for over sixty years)
Until then, it's Mozart, Shakespeare and
doing my best to make others happy;
Life's music, life's poetry. They're here!
Still writing? They'll just have to wait.
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