Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Saturday, July 26, 2003 Sphagnum Moss on Granite (by J.)
This afternoon, a little stir-crazy, we took a drive out along the river and through some of the small towns, ending up at a roadside family diner where we probably eat once a summer. It’s a vintage place, with window-service by a local teenager, falling out of her lowcut tank top behind the sliding fly-screen, and hand-painted signs: “clam roll, $4.50”, “chicken basket, 6.95”. The picnic tables are patrolled by the resident scavenging chipmunk, and the outdoor bathrooms with their swinging white-and-green painted plywood doors smell faintly of mildew. The family lives in an adjoining house, and there’s nothing else on this curving, narrow stretch of road but tall overgrown maples on the right, and thick white-pine-and maple forest stretching darkly up the hill on the left.
When you place your order you’re given a small handwritten number on a little white slip of cardboard, and even though there are only two or three cars in the parking lot, a loudspeaker announces: “Number twenty-three, your order is ready for pick-up! Number five, please come to the window!” We sat and ate our sandwiches and fries at one of the picnic tables. “This place is right out of the 1950s,” I said. “Same vintage as drive-in movies.”
“No,” J. said, “a little later, if it were 50s there would be one of those heavy grey metal swing sets.”
“Look behind you,” I said. “There it is.”
On the way back we stopped at a used-book store in a small town, where the elderly proprietor sat eating a plate of dark maroon cherries with her daughter and listening to public radio. J. looked at the regional history section, while I rummaged through the poetry shelves. I found a small first-edition of Galway Kinnell’s second book of poetry, Flower Herding on Mt. Monadnock, published in 1964. It’s hard to recognize the now thickset and tweedy Kinnell in the Kennedy-esque, white-shirt-thin-black-tie photograph on the endflap. The book cost $4.00, a dollar more than the original price on the dust jacket.
I heard Kinnell read (very well) earlier this year, at a ceremony at the Vermont State House for the installation of Grace Paley as State Poet. Most of the former laureates of Vermont, including Kinnell, were there… except for Frost.
The title poem of Flower Herding on Mt. Monadnock is in ten parts; here is the ninth section, describing in a few words the ascent up an eastern mountain: dripping water, moss, and big granite rocks.
From a rock A waterfall A single trickle like a strand of wire Breaks into beads halfway down.
I know The birds fly off But the hug of the earth wraps With moss their graves and the giant boulders.
Some Kinnell links on the web: poems here and here, an interview, and a bio with more links and a recent photograph.
I found myself at The Moscow Times today, following a link from LanguageHat about the "small muttered words" Russians use to express various emotions. In case it isn't already obvious, I'm fascinated by these differences between cultures, so I loved learning, for example, that "tsk tsk" in Russian is a wag of the head and the syllables "ai-ai-ai".
From The Moscow Times I went to The St. Petersburg Times, and discovered an avant-garde exhibition of video and audio installations exploring "the dividing line between history and memory" at the Anna Akhmatova Museum:
The aspiration towards catching and depicting the shadows of the past is natural to the museum - the main organizer of both projects - as true and false scents of the past are among the chief motifs of Akhmatova's poetry.
Every monument is already linked to a particular location, with most of them being on Vasilievsky Island. The choice was inspired by the famous line: "I will come to die on Vasilievsky Island," from one of Brodsky's untitled verses. The idea has been widely criticized for its banality and for telling nothing about Brodsky's personality, but no convincing alternative has been proposed, with the exception of Preobrazhenskaya Square, very near to Brodsky's former apartment on Ulitsa Pestelya...
Several members of the jury didn't give their support to any of the projects that reached the final round, on the grounds that they all lacked original ideas. "I was disappointed," said jury member and art critic Arkady Ippolitov. "The poet doesn't deserve to return to St. Petersburg in the shape of an iron-cast doll reminiscent of a turn-of the century policeman. When I look at these works, I want to ask if the authors wanted to create a monument or to win the contest."
One has to wonder what Akhmatova and Brodsky would have thought.
After the previous post on this topic, Chris left a thoughtful comment about Adorno’s challenge about whether there can be poetry after Auschwitz:
“I understand that he meant by "poetry" a certain kind of disconnected, apolitical verse, but even so. I spoke a long time ago with a survivor of one of the camps, who told me that her will to live was sustained by a small bird she'd see on the other side of the wire. Even if a poem isn't some grand angry statement of opposition to evil... who's to say which verse will be someone's bird?”
All witnesses and survivors of horrors have to decide what that bird is for them – what it mean to be alive in the aftermath -- and of course some never recover. As Stalinism began to strangle free expression, artists in particular faced Faustian bargains: keep writing, but write for the State; keep writing, but write banal or traditional poems as if nothing has changed; if you can, go into exile so you can write freely, at the potential price of forfeiting your mother tongue and your home; write, invent, create, but for the drawer, or at risk of censorship, imprisonment, torture, and death.
Rozewicz was not a writer who decided to go head-to-head with the authorities, and so far as I’ve been able to determine, he was not overtly political after the war. He certainly did not give up on poetry, but he decried those who sold out, and he also decried those who wrote as if nothing had happened, calling this “Ham acting. The illness of literature,” and commenting that some poets “perform their ‘poetry dance’ resolutely to the end without reference to the state of humanity, their country, or even their own condition.”
“The dance of poetry came to an end during the Second World War in concentration camps created by totalitarian systems. The departure in such Grenzsituationen from such special ‘poetic’ language has produced poems which I call stripped of masks and costumes…it is precisely the poems written in Grensituationen, in ultimate situations, ‘prosaicized’ works, which created the conditions for poetry’s subsistence and even survival. In the works of every writer, even the greatest, such poems are very rare…”
Writing about another poet, Leopold Staff, Rozewicz admired a poem that he said was “not a poem, but rather a description of a situation the poet had found himself in…a piece of information passed by the poet to other people…which one might also call a poem.”
Rozewicz’s own poetry is reductionist, or perhaps more accurately, it proceeds from a kind of via negativa: what is left after nothing?
After the end of the world after death I found myself in the midst of life creating myself building life people animals landscape
this is a table I said this is a table there is bread and a knife on the table knife serves to cut bread people are nourished by bread…
When the nearly-drowned man comes to the surface, what is the scrap to which he can cling? In Rozewicz’s case, especially in these early poems, the answer is “not much”. But out of that nearly-nothing: an egg, a grain of salt, an old woman – he creates poems not out of adjective-encrusted rooms, but rather from what one critic calls “a rather desperate humanism” that refuses to pretend anything.
The Door
Builders had left a vertical opening in the wall I sometimes think my home is too conventional all sorts of people can easily get in
had the builders not left that opening in the wall I would have become a hermit
alas
I waste my time coming in and going out a revolving door has lately been installed through it enter the affairs of the world
but neither a blossoming apple-tree nor a little moist-eyed pony neither a star nor a golden hive neither a stream teeming with fish nor buttercups have ever appeared in it
and yet I shan’t wall up this door maybe a good man will appear in it and tell me who I am
(From Tadeusz Rozewicz, “They Came to See a Poet”, transl. Adam Czerniawski, Anvil Press Poetry , 1991)
My 94-year-old father-in-law has always loved to eat, until the past year or so. “I’ve lost my sense of taste,” he says, shaking his head mournfully, every time we sit down to eat. “Nothing tastes good. Even those little Moroccan olives you brought me – I love them! – but no taste!” Some of this seems to be physiological, but I also think it’s a way of saying he misses his wife’s Middle Eastern cooking. Nothing made by me or my sister-in-law quite measures up. Something strong-tasting, I thought. Maybe pickles?
Over the weekend I made two jars of torshi left – pickled turnips. These are a great Middle Eastern delicacy, along with many other kinds of torshi, but I had never made them before, since my husband has historically made one of those scrunched-up, “I’ll throw up first” faces whenever I mention turnips. In Montreal we ate at a restaurant where a plate of these pickles, crisp, pungent, and pink with beet juice, came to the table with some small delicious olives as an appetizer. Crunching one of the pickles and making pleased sounds, J. asked, “What are these, anyway?”
“Turnips,” I said, deadpan.
Up go the eyebrows. “No kidding! Can we make some?”
I used Claudia Roden’s recipe; it was very easy. Her New Book of Middle Eastern Food (Penguin) is an even greater treasure than the original, and it includes some lovely drawings and stories about the foods she’s describing.
Squatting on the pavements of busy streets, vendors sell home-made pickled turnips swimming in a pink solution, or aubergines looking fiercely black and shiny in enormous jars. passers-by dip their hands in the liquor, searching for the tastiest and largest pieces, and savour them with Arab bread provided by the vendor, soaking it in the pink salt and vinegar solution or seasoned with oil.
I haven't been playing the piano much lately. Actually, I stopped taking lessons a few years ago and it's been harder, without the pressure (some might say, "terror") of a regular lesson to really make myself practice. And somehow, after September 11th and the subsequent months of politics and war, it's been difficult to play. Music has always been a way for me to deal with my emotions. I've always been able to find some composer whose works seemed to express what I was feeling or thinking, and even with the limitations of my technique I could find satisfaction and release through playing. But it's interesting - these past couple of years I haven't been able to figure out what to play. Even Bach, the reliable fall-back when all else fails, hasn't done it for me. I'd turn to something for a few days, and then stop, still hungry, dissatisfied, frustrated.
But in the past week I've felt a renewal of interest, and even though my playing has really suffered through neglect and the piano is out of tune in the summer heat and humidity, I've been putting in some time at the keyboard. Last night I sat down, quite late, while thunder rumbled outside and rain began to fall in a steady rhythm. The window to the street was open, and I took the second volume of Mozaret sonatas off the shelf, turned to one at random, and began to play.
45 minutes or an hour later, I don't know, I stopped. I went out onto the porch and stood there in the dark. The air was dense, thick, and in the darkness the streetlights spread on the wet pavement. It was 10:00 pm. The phone rang. It was our neighbor, who's here for a few years from Iceland while his wife does some medical training. He was a pianist himself at one point in his life.
"Thank you for the music," he said.
"Oh my God, you could hear me?" I said. Our houses are close together. They've just had a baby, and yesterday evening I heard her crying, but I also heard the air conditioner in their bedroom, and thought it probably drowned out all sounds from the neighborhood. "My playing is so bad, I'm really out of practice."
"I couldn't hear that, I couldn't even tell what it was...we had drifted off to sleep with the baby, and then we woke up to the thunder and rain, and these faint sounds of piano music. And it was so wonderful. What were you playing?"
"Mozart."
"Ah," he said. "You know, I haven't felt like playing for years. But since our daughter was born, I've felt an urge to perhaps play again. Just - what do you say - not seriously -?"
"We call it 'noodling around'."
"Ok! Noodling around. Yes. It's funny, when I used to play I was very involved in technique, in playing fast - it was almost a geeky thing, I felt sort of the way I do when I go out and ride my bike hard. But it's odd - the music that has stayed with me and that I find myself thinking about now is more romantic - Chopin nocturnes, things like that. I just wanted to tell you that it was so nice to wake up in the dark and hear this - faint notes - and the thunder, and the rain."
Poetry in Poland, as in Russia, is given the status of national voice. Ordinary people read and memorize poetry, and poets, once they are accorded the laurel wreath of national recognition, are greatly respected and viewed with high expectations. In his overview of the last 20 years in Polish poetry, Jaroslaw Klejnocki mentions a joke that he says isn’t far from the truth: “The difference between French and Polish literature is that 300 novels and 30 books of poetry are published in France each year, and the reverse is true in Poland.” He goes on to say that, to use a simplification, Poles “have almost always preferred poetry to prose as in poems they looked for explanations and, more importantly, for emotions.”
Mid-to-late twentieth-century poetry in Poland has been dominated by four great writers: the Nobel winners Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, and their fellow poets Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rozewicz. Except for Herbert, who died in 1998, all are still writing. Adam Zagajewski, born in 1945, has more recently gained international stature. The so-called “brulion generation”, (named after a late 1990’s Cracow and Warsaw literary magazine) are even younger writers who, Klejnocki says, are still considered too young to be taken really seriously. I hope I can get to them eventually.
I wanted to start with Rozewicz because I think he’s the least known, certainly to me, and because I’ve been stunned by his poems. He was born in Radomsko in 1921, studied art history, and is a poet, playwright and novelist. He’s lived in Wroclaw (formerly Breslau), in Lower Silesia (SW Poland) for the past thirty years.
His first book of poems, Niepokoj (Anxiety), came out in 1947, and his second Czerwona rekawiczka (The Red Glove) in 1948. The poems I’ve read from this period have a matter-of-fact, observational quality that reflects a person who has lifted his body from the rubble and looks around clearly, alertly, intelligently. Even this early in his career, the poems seem masterful in the way they convey both the poet’s mind and emotions with control, economy, and great integrity. Rosewicz is already making deliberate choices. Speaking about that period of his life, he wrote about studying art history “in order to reconstruct man bit by bit”, and continued:
“I was full of reverential wonder at works of art (the aesthetic experience replaced religious experience) but simultaneously I felt a growing contempt for all ‘aesthetic’ values. I felt that something had come to an end for ever for me and for humanity…so I tried to rebuild what seemed most important for life and for the life of poetry: ethics.”
Here are two poems, the first from Anxiety and the second from The Red Glove:
THE SURVIVOR
I am twenty-four led to slaughter I survived.
The following are empty synonyms: man and beast love and hate friend and foe darkness and light.
The way of killing men and beasts is the same I’ve seen it: truckloads of chopped-up men who will not be saved.
Ideas are mere words: virtue and crime truth and lies beauty and ugliness courage and cowardice.
Virtue and crime weigh the same I’ve seen it: in a man who was both criminal and virtuous.
I seek a teacher and a master may he restore my sight hearing and speech may he again name objects and ideas may he separate darkness from light.
I am twenty-four led to slaughter I survived.
CHESTNUT
Saddest of all is leaving home on an autumn morning when there is no hope of an early return
The chestnut father planted in front of the house grows in our eyes
mother is tiny you could carry her in your arms
On the shelf jars of preserves like sweet-lipped goddesses have retained the flavour of eternal youth
soldiers at the back of the drawer will stay leaden till the end of the world
while God almighty who mixed in bitterness with the sweetness hangs on the wall helpless and badly painted
childhood is like the worn face on a golden coin that rings true.
(From Tadeusz Rozewicz, “They Came to See a Poet”, transl. Adam Czerniawski, Anvil Press Poetry , 1991)
More in a few days; something different (and shorter!) tomorrow.
A Blog for Everyone: a front page BBC story today, spurred by AOL's decision to bundle blogging software with AOL9 - but they'll be called "journals" because "too many people find the term 'blog' confusing."
Afghans flout fur ban: Snow leopard coats? Sounds too horrible for words, but apparently there is a growing trade in illegal furs in war-ravaged Afghanistan. The main market: international peacekeeping troops.
Sunday, July 20, 2003
If anyone were to ask us what we struggle toward the most in human life, I am guessing the most common and most general answer would be “happiness” (with “love” as its subset?) I decided a while ago that “happiness” is a very relative term, and that basing my life on trying to find it, seize it, and keep it is not unlike trying to grasp handfuls of water. The more we allow our eyes to be open, the less (in my opinion) we are able to hold onto a naive sort of happiness, especially if we see it as something we somehow “deserve”: the inequities in our world are far too apparent. Happiness in our culture seems to be commensurate with “having”, and is therefore a moving target: we are a society of little Midases, tallying up our hoard far more often than we might like to admit, and addicted to comparing ourselves with anyone who jostles our elbow. But if we look up from our storeroom, we may notice the paradox that people who have far less than most of us in the West often seem to have greater equanimity.
One of the most common and deserved charges leveled against Americans, not only by Third World residents but by Europeans, is that we are so naïve, living with an immature outlook on life because of our country’s prolonged, privileged, largely unscathed adolescence and myopic ability to distance ourselves from suffering elsewhere, even when we are deeply implicated or the direct cause of it.
I’ve been wondering if this is partly due to how we define “happiness”: isn’t our goal often quite far from “self-knowledge” or “wisdom” or “truth”, or even “the capacity to give and receive love”, but closer to, if we’re honest, “getting what I think I want when I want it”? or even, more psychologically revealing perhaps, “feeling safe from anxiety?” If that’s the case, then it’s no wonder so many marriages end in divorce, or that our health care system is out of control. No wonder we went crazy when Sept 11th happened, and went to war in Iraq so that we could keep filling our oil tanks and tilting at imaginary nuclear windmills.
What I seem to be particularly interested in is how people find beauty, serenity, equanimity, and purpose even in the midst of suffering, war, violence, destruction, anxiety and loss, because that is a far better description of how our world actually is than the fairyland we often pretend it is from this side of the moat – ignoring, of course, the kind of life led by millions of unprivileged Americans. That’s what drew me a few years ago, I think, to reading a lot of Russian literature and poetry written before and during the Revolution and Stalin years, and more recently to reading post-war Polish poetry, all of it haunted by a Polish* critic’s challenge, “Can there be poetry after Auschwitz?”
I’m going to try to write here, off and on, about some of that in next weeks, hoping to share with you the grit and transcendence and inspiration I’m finding in some of this work.
To whet your appetite (I hope!) here is a quote from the Polish poet Tadeauz Rozewicz, who was born in 1921, participated in the Resistance, survived the war, entered Krakow University and in 1947 published his first book of poems:
It was no accident that I chose to study history of art. I did it in order to rebuild the Gothic temple, to raise inside myself that church brick by brick, in order to reconstruct man bit by bit…
