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.
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