An epitaph

Son of man, tell me,

Hast thou at any time lain in thick darkness,

Gazing up into a lightless silence,

A dark void vacancy,

Like the woe of the sea

In the unvisited places of the ocean?

And nothing but thine own frail sentience 

To prove thee living?

Lost in this affliction of the spirit,

Did'st thou then call upon God 

Of his infinite mercy to reveal to thee

Proof of his presence -

His presence and love for thee, exquisite creature

    of his creation?

To show thee but some small devisal 

Of his infinite compassion and pity even

    though it were as fleeting

As the light of a falling star in a dewdrop?

Hast thou? O, if thou hast not,

Do it now; do it now; do it now!

Lest that night come which is sans sense,

    thought, tongue, stir, time, being,

And the moment is for ever denied thee,

Since thou art thyself as I am.

 

Walter de la Mare,  ‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ (1936)

Tenebrae exteriores

‘. . . that we mortals should dread the tomb—that’s only natural. And it’s when we are nearing the end that what may be called the real takes on another colour, sir. You look at those about you and can’t any more so surely rely on what they are, if you take me. As you once could. There is so thin a crust, sir, in a manner of speaking, between being awake and asleep—very fast asleep indeed. A sip of a doctor’s drug, and not only the lantern goes out but everything it shone on. I had that experience myself not more than a month or two since—only a decayed tooth, sir: outer darkness, and then the awakening. If that comes. It is like as if we were treading a flat fall of untrodden snow and suddenly it is thin ice—cat ice, as we used to call it when we were boys—and we are gone. Not, mind you, that the waters of death, however cold they may be, are not—well, the waters of life. Faith is faith. . . .’

 

Walter de la Mare,  ‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ (1936)

The mind of Nature

© Alistair Ian Blyth

"Language is the means of human communication. In human awareness, it is language that limns the outer and the inner world to an equal extent. It is with the help of language that I talk to people. Outside of human communication language loses its meaning, it becomes dispensable.

 

"I am a human being, a part of the world, a product thereof. I am the mind of Nature, its understanding. I am a part of human society, a unit thereof. With my help both Nature and Humanity transform themselves, perfect themselves, improve themselves. But just as the understanding has not yet grasped all the secrets of the microcosm, in the domain of the macrocosm it is still only a talented child embarking on its first marvellous discoveries.

 

"I, the poet, live in a world of enchanting mysteries. They everywhere surround me. Plants in all their multiformity—grass, flowers, trees—the mighty realm of primitive life, the foundation of all living things, my brothers, feeding me with both their flesh and their air—all of them live alongside me. How can I reject kinship with them? The variability of the vegetal landscape, the combination of leaf and branch, the play of the sun on the fruits of the earth—all these are a smile on the face of a friend bound to me by ties of blood kinship."

Nikolai Zabolotsky, 1957

 

Слово есть средство человеческого общения. Слово рисует в чело­веческом сознании мир внешний и мир внутренний в одинаковой степени. С помощью слова я обращаюсь к людям. Слово вне челове­ческого общения теряет свой смысл, оно делается необязательным.

 

Я — человек, часть мира, его произведение. Я — мысль при­роды и ее разум. Я — часть человеческого общества, его едини­ца. С моей помощью и природа и человечество преобразуют самих себя, совершенствуются, улучшаются. Но так же, как разум еще не постиг всех тайн микрокосма, он и в области макрокосма еще толь­ ко талантливое дитя, делающее свои первые удивительные от­ крытия. 

 

Я, поэт, живу в мире очаровательных тайн. Они окружают меня всюду. Растения во всем их многообразии — эта трава, эти цветы, эти деревья — могущественное царство первобытной жизни, основа всего живущего, мои братья, питающие меня и плотью своей, и воз­духом, — все они живут рядом со мной. Разве я могу отказаться от родства с ними? Изменчивость растительного пейзажа, сочетание листвы и ветвей, игра солнца на плодах земли — это улыбка на ли­це моего друга, связанного со мной узами кровного родства. 

 

Н. А. Заболоцкий.  «Почему я не сторонник абстрактной поэзии» Метаморфозы / Николай Заболоцкий; сост., подгот. текста, вступ. статья и коммент. И. Е. Лощилова. — М.: ОГИ, 2014. С. 606

 

 

Lodeinikov

 

В краю чудес, в краю живых растений,

Несовершенной мудростью дыша,

Зачем ты просишь новых впечатлений

И новых бурь, пытливая душа?

Не обольщайся призраком покоя:

Бывает жизнь обманчива на вид.

Настанет час, и утро роковое

Твои мечты, сверкая, ослепит. 

(...)

И в этот миг жук в дудку задудил.

(...)

И постепенно превращалось в пенье

Шуршанье трав и тишины.

Природа пела. Лес, подняв лицо,

Пел вместе с лугом. Речка чистым телом

Звенела вся, как звонкое кольцо.

(...)

Николай Заболоцкий, Лодейников, 1932-1947

 

 

In the land of wonders, land of living plants,

Exhaling a wisdom as yet imperfect,

Why do you seek fresh impressions

And fresh tempests, inquisitive soul?

Be not deluded by the phantom of peace;

Life is outwardly deceptive betimes. 

The hour will come, and the fateful morn

Will blaze out, blinding your dreams.

(...)

 And just then the beetle blew his pipe.

(...)

And the rustling of grasses and silence

Little by little were transformed into song.

Nature sang. The forest, lifting her face,

Sang with the meadow. The pure-bodied river

Chimed forth like a ringing bell. 

(...) 

Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958), Lodeinikov, 1932-1947

 

 

 

   

 

 

Hiddenness

The hiddenness of perfect things; a shrinking delicacy and mysticism of sentiment (...) the fatality which seems to haunt any signal beauty, whether moral or physical, as if it were in itself something illicit and isolating; the suspicion and hatred it so often excites in the vulgar--these were some of the impressions, forming as they do, a constant tradition of somewhat cynical pagan sentiment, from Medusa and Helen downwards, which the old story [the Metamorphoses of Apuleius] enforced on him. A book, like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way, and often by some happy accident ranks with us for something more than its independent value.

Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean (1885)

Die Selbstsprache

Gerade das Eigentümliche der Sprache, daß sie sich bloß um sich selbst bekümmert, weiß keiner. (...) Wenn man den Leuten nur begreiflich machen könnte, daß es mit der Sprache wie mit den mathematischen Formeln sei – Sie machen eine Welt für sich aus – Sie spielen nur mit sich selbst, drücken nichts als ihre wunderbare Natur aus, und eben darum sind sie so ausdrucksvoll – eben darum spiegelt sich in ihnen das seltsame Verhältnisspiel der Dinge. Nur durch ihre Freiheit sind sie Glieder der Natur, und nur in ihren freien Bewegungen äußert sich die Weltseele und macht sie zu einem zarten Maßstab und Grundriß der Dinge. 

Novalis, Monolog, 1798

Precisely what is peculiar to language, the fact of its being concerned only with itself, is known to no one. (...) If only one could be made to understand that with language it is the same as with mathematical formulae – they make up a world of their own – they play only with themselves, express nothing but their own wondrous nature, and this is why they are so expressive – this is why the strange interplay of things is mirrored in them. It is only through their freedom that they are elements of Nature, and only in their free movements does the World-soul manifest itself and make them a delicate measure and outline of things. 

After rain

Lars Gustafsson

(1936-2016)

After rain

Summer rain's sky like an X-ray film

where light and shadows mingling show through.

Silent forest and not a single bird.

Your own eye like a droplet spilled under clouds,

reflecting the world: light and vague shadows.

And suddenly you know who you are:

a baffled stranger between soul and clouds,

only by the thin membrane of an image

are the world's depth and the eye's darkness kept separate.

 

Suis-je celui qui rêve?

Chaque créature à son tour se trouve, tôt ou tard, avec plus ou moins de clarté, de continuité et surtout d’urgence, devant cette insistante question : suis-je celui qui rêve? Question aux aspects infinis, qui touche à nos raisons de vivre, aux choix que nous devons faire entre nos possibilités intérieures, au problème de la connaissance comme à celui de la poésie. (...) Est-ce moi qui rêve la nuit? Ou bien suis-je devenu le théâtre où quelqu’un, quelque chose, déroule ses spectacles tantôt dérisoires, tantôt pleins d’une inexplicable sagesse? Lorsque je perds le gouvernement de ses images dont se tisse la trame la plus secrète, la moins communicable, de ma vie, leur assemblage imprévu a-t-il quelque rapport significatif avec mon destin, ou avec d'autres événements qui me dépassent? Ou faut-il croire que j’assiste simplement à la danse incohérente, honteuse, misérablement simiesque, des atomes de ma pensée, livrés à leur absurde caprice?

Albert Béguin, L’Âme romantique et le rêve. Essai sur le romantisme allemand et la poesie française, Libraire José Corti, Paris, 1939

 

Every being in turn finds itself, sooner or later, with greater or lesser lucidity, continuity and, above all, urgency, faced with the pressing question: Am I the one who dreams? A question of endless facets, which touches on our very reasons for living, on the choices that we have to make between our inner potentialities, on the problem of knowledge and that of poetry alike. (...) Is it I who dreams at night? Or have I simply become the theatre where somebody or something stages performances that are now ridiculous, now filled with inexplicable wisdom? When I lose control of its images, from which is woven my life’s most secret, least communicable fabric, does their unexpected assembly have any significant relationship to my fate, or else other events that are beyond me? Or am I to believe that I merely witness the incoherent, shameful, wretchedly ape-like dance of my mind’s atoms, given over to absurd whim?

The way inwards (2)

På natten

 

Ett öga rullar över golvet, jag vrider mig inåt.

    Dörren är stängda läppar, lövet är tungt att bära.

Sakta växer hår och naglar in i tystnaden.

    Dörrens läppar är stängda för omvända värden.

Ingen blixt är hemma under drömmens ögonlock,

    Men nattens åska går i det fördolda.

 

Gunnar Ekelöf, Dedikation, 1934

At Night

An eye rolls over the floor, I turn inwards.

    The doors are closed lips, the leaf is heavy to bear.

Into the silence slowly grow hair and fingernails.

    The doors' lips are closed to obverse values.

No flash of lightning finds a home under the dream's eyelids,

    But night's thunder rolls in the hiddenness.

    

Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (5)

 

I had now the whole south of France, from the banks of the Rhône to those of the Garonne to traverse upon my mule at my own leisure——at my own leisure——for I had left Death, the lord knows——and He only——how far behind me——“I have followed many a man thro’ France, quoth he—but never at this mettlesome rate”——Still he followed,——and still I fled him——but I fled him chearfully——still he pursued——but like one who pursued his prey without hope——as he lag’d, every step he lost, softened his looks——why should I fly him at this rate?

 

Vol. VII, Chap. XLII

 

——Bon jour!——good morrow!——so you have got your cloak on betimes!——but ’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly——’tis better to be well mounted, than go o’foot——and obstructions in the glands are dangerous——And how goes it with thy concubine——they wife——and thy little ones o’both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady—your sister, aunt, uncle and cousins——I hope they have got better of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore-eyes.——What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give such a vile purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—glister—blister?——And why so many grains of calomel? and such a dose of opium! periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——By my great aunt Dinah’s old black velvet mask! I think there was no occasion for it.

Vol. VIII, Chap. III

 

—— “And drink nothing ?—nothing but water?”

——Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain,——see how they give way!——

In swims Curiosity [zvědavost], beckoning to her damsels to follow——they dive into the centre of the current——

 Fancy [obraznost] sits musing upon the bank [břeh], and, with her eyes following the stream [řeka], turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bowsprits.——And Desire [touha], with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her, with the other——

O ye water-drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain that ye have so often governed and turned this world about like a mill-wheel,——grinding the faces of the impotent,—bepowdering their ribs—be-peppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature——

Vol. VIII, Chap. V  

 

——No; I shall never have a finger in the pie (so here I break my metaphor)——

Crust [kůrka] and crumb [střída]
Inside [dužina] and out [slupka]

Top and bottom——I detest it, I hate it, I repudiate it——I'm sick at the sight of it——

’Tis all pepper,

        garlic,
        staragen,
        salt, and  

        devil’s dung——by the great arch-cook of cooks, who does nothing, I think, from morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and invent inflammatory dishes for us,I would not touch it for the world——

Vol. VIII, Chap. XI

In love !——said the Corporal,—your Honour was very well the day before yesterday, when I was telling your Honour the story of the King of Bohemia—Bohemia! said my uncle Toby - - - - musing a long time - - - What became of that story, Trim ?

We lost it, an’ please your Honour, somehow betwixt us—but your Honour was as free from love then as I am——’Twas just whilst thou went'st off with the wheel-barrow—with Mrs. Wadman, quoth my uncle Toby——She has left a ball here—added my uncle Toby, pointing to his breast——

Vol. VIII, Chap. XXVIII

Though the Corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle Toby's great Ramallies wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to produce any great effects from it: it had lain many years squeezed up in the corner of his old campaign trunk; and as bad forms are not so easy to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have wished. The Corporal, with cheery eye and both arms extended, had fallen back perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if possible, with a better air——had Spleen given a look at it, ’twould have cost her ladyship a smile——it curl’d every where but where the Corporal would have it; and where a buckle or two, in his opinion, would have done it honour, he could as soon have raised the dead. 

Vol. IX, Chap. II

Privy matters (2)

Cette distinction est trop obscure, nostre chouse vaut mieux, & puis j’ay mis dehors tous ceux qui n’aiment point raillerie,(*) soyez les bien ventrus,(†) la panse (‡) fait l’homme : je vous prie ça en liberté, y a-il personne de vous qui ait le ventre tendu, qui veuille aller en Purgatoire ? (§) tout est libre & bon en son temps, lieu & endroit ; ce fut un Moyne de S. Denys, disciple de Genebrard,(‖) qui m’aprit à nommer ainsi le privé, pource qu’on s’y purge.

[Béroalde de Verville], Le Moyen de parvenir. Oevure contenant la raison de tout ce qui a esté, est, & sera. Avec demonstrations certaines & necessaires, selon la rencontre des effets de VERTU. Et adviendra que ceux qui auront nez à porter Lunettes s’en serviront, ainsi qu’il est escrit au dictionnaire à dormir en toutes langues, S. Recensuit Sapiens ab A, ad Z. Imprimé cette année [1616] 

* ceux qui n’aiment point raillerie — i.e., the agelasts, whose inability to laugh is a mark of their inhumanity. In the Letter to Lord Odet, Cardinal de Châtillon, Rabelais names the agelasts alongside the cannibals and misanthropes as men that are desraisonnés, devoid of reason, like irrational beasts—solus homo ridet.

† ventrus — portmanteau of ventre and the past participle venu. The ventre/γαστήρ, or material corporeal substratum (материально-телесный низ — Bakhtin), which breaks down food in order for the body to put on new flesh, in an endless cycle of digestion and regeneration, particularly lends itself to jesting, to puns and word play, themselves a process of breaking down language to generate new meanings.

‡ la panse — the gut, bowels, paunch, from the Latin pantex, which was a vulgar term for venter (whence the French ventre), meaning both belly and womb, and, in the plural (pantices), tripe, sausages. The pantex/venter is the seat of the appetite, the material corporeal substratum, which defines and generates man's material nature: la panse fait l'homme.

§ Purgatoire — in Middle French the word could equally refer to spiritual and to physical purgation.

‖ Genebrard — Gilbert Génebrard (1535-1597). Benedictine theologian, Archbishop of Aix, ardent supporter of the anti-Huguenot Holy League in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598).

This distinction is too subtle, our plan is the better, and I have heedfully expelled all who loathe laughter. I give you all a gut (good) welcome, ’tis the paunch that makes the man; here all is free. If any have tight bellies let them go to purgatory; there is a time for everything and a place too. (It was a monk of St. Denis, a disciple of Genebrard's, who taught me to call the privy purgatory, because it is there that a man purges him.)

Fantastic Tales or the Way to Attain—A Book Full of Pantagruelism Now for the First Time Done into English, trans. Arthur Machen. Privately Printed, Carbonnek, 1923

 

la panse fait l'homme

 

The Big Lie

Unwahrheit hat von einem höhern Gesichtspunkte noch eine viel schlimmere Seite als die gewöhnliche. Sie ist der Grund einer falschen Welt, Grund einer unaufloslichen Kette von Verirrungen und Verwicklungen. Unwahrheit ist die Quelle alles Bösen und Üblen. (Absolutes Setzen des Falschen. Ewiger Irrtum.) Eine Unwahrheit gebiert unzählige. Eine absolut gesetzte Unwahrheit ist so unendlich schwer auszurotten. 

 

Novalis, Fragmente

From a higher point of view, Untruth has a far worse side than it would ordinarily. It is the foundation of a false world, the foundation of an inextricable chain of aberrations and confusions. Untruth is the fount of all wickedness and evil. (Absolute positing of falsehood. Eternal error.) One untruth gives birth to countless others. An absolutely posited untruth is thus infinitely difficult to eradicate.

A dingy dream book

Once, indeed, now long ago, I found myself reading the first pages of a dingy and dumpy little book, a visionary book, murkily printed, and bound in what appeared to be shagreen, black shagreen. All that I can recall of its contents is a series of diagrams which appeared on pages 1 and 2. Against the first of these, a blank circle, was printed the word 'Reality'. Against the next, a blackened circle, was the word 'Unconsciousness'. The next circle showed a minute segment of white cut out of its black. This was labelled 'The Consciousness of an Ant'. The next, minus a rather larger segment, 'The Consciousness of Man'. From this I deduced--whether in the dream or on awakening I cannot say--that when, owing to the progress of the Superman, we arrive at Nirvana, all the black will have become white; that Reality and Consciousness will be coincident. 'I Am That I Am.' The infinite is All in All. This little revelation, as I say, was the subject matter of the first two pages of my dingy dream book. What, I wonder, were its last pages concerned with; and in what celestial library does it now repose?

Walter de la Mare, 'Dream and Imagination', Behold, This Dreamer! Of Reverie, Night, Sleep, Dream, Love-Dreams, Nightmare, Death, the Unconscious, the Imagination, Divination, the Artist, and Kindred Subjects, 1939

Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (4)

The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his under jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus.

Vol. V, Chap. XXXVIII

koule - sphere; krychle - cube

 

Tristam, said, he, shall be made to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the same way;——every word, Yorick, by this means, you see, is converted into a thesis [téze] or an hypothesis [hypotéza];——every thesis and hypothesis have an offspring of propositions;—and each proposition [propozice] has its own consequences [důsledek] and conclusions [záver]; every one of which leads the mind on again, into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings [pochybnosti].

Vol. VI, Chap. II

in no one moment of my existence, that I remember, have ye once deserted me, or tinged the objects which came in my way, either with sable, or with a sickly green; in dangers ye gilded my horizons with hope, and when DEATH himself knocked at my door—ye bad him come again; and in so gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye do it, that he doubted of his commission——

“—There must certainly be some mistake in this matter,” quoth he.

Vol. VII, Chap. I 

 

A Theory concerning Dreams Expressed Algebraically

    ‘I remember,’ said he, wrinkling his lids, ‘I remember a dream frequently dreamed when I was about six or seven years old; I used to wake wet and shaking. It was a simple dream of an interminable path between walls of white smooth stone. By that way one might walk to eternity, or space, or infinity. You understand?’ 

    I nodded my head. 

    ‘Remember, my boy, I find it hard work to prose – I would sooner be watching. The dream never came back to me after I was twelve years old, but since then I have had other dreams, as false to the Ten Commandments. I have seen things which Nature would spit out of her mouth. Yet each one has been threaded, each has been one of an interminable sequence. There’s a theory written under the letter D in a little book I used to keep when I first entered the bank, “A Theory concerning Dreams Expressed Algebraically”—the result of mental flatulency. So far are you clear?’ 

    ‘Yes,’ said I.

 

 Walter Ramel (Walter de la Mare), ‘A Mote’, Cornhill Magazine, August 1896; Short Stories. 1895-1926, ed. Giles de la Mare, Giles de la Mare Publishers Limited, London, 1996, p. 415