The Dark Night of the Soul

German Poetry

Aberystwyth has a wonderful independent book shop -  Ystwyth Books (http://www.ystwythbooks.co.uk/) with the most fantastic range of books. It shamefully panders to the intellect with academic and literary books but it has all the other stuff – crime, thrillers, romance etc. (For some reason, and I have never discovered why - clergy men/persons love a good who done it!) I have not been in such a good book shop for years. The owner Martin Ashby and I remembered the renowned book dealer Alan Hancox of Cheltenham, everyone who dealt in secondhand and antiquarian books knew him. At some point in his life, before becoming a book dealer, Alan had worked in   Cowley Oxford making cars. Someone owes Alan a wikipedia page!

In Ystwyth Books I bought an anthology of German verse which I had been looking for at extremely reasonable price- the version edited by Leonard Forster. There were two poems that I wanted to read in particular, one was Abendphantasie by Holderlin and the other Mignon by Goethe.

 Abendphantasie was reputedly Nietzsche’s favorite poem and influenced his early thought. The poem is a reflection at evening about the nature of life. A ploughman sits down in front of his house and considers his lot. It is almost biblical in that man must earn his living and pay his way by the sweat of his brow. The ploughman thinks that on the whole he has quite a good life - but there is always that ‘thorn’ that goads him – the thought that there might be something better. It is the night and sleep that will now bring him release and joy. Night is also eventually death here.

Abendphantasie

 Vor seiner Hütte ruhig im Schatten sitzt

 Der Pflüger, dem Genügsamen raucht sein Herd.

 Gastfreundlich tönt dem Wanderer im

 Friedlichen Dorfe die Abendglocke.

Wohl kehren itzt die Schiffer zum Hafen auch,

 In fernen Städten, fröhlich verrauscht des Markts

 Geschäftger Lärm; in stiller Laube

 Glänzt das gesellige Mahl den Freunden.

 Wohin denn ich? Es leben die Sterblichen

 Von Lohn und Arbeit; wechselnd in Müh' und Ruh

 Ist alles freudig; warum schläft denn

 Nimmer nur mir in der Brust der Stachel?

 Am Abendhimmel blühet ein Frühling auf;

 Unzählig blühn die Rosen und ruhig scheint

 Die goldne Welt; o dorthin nimmt mich,

 Purpurne Wolken! und möge droben

 In Licht und Luft zerrinnen mir Lieb' und Leid! -

 Doch, wie verscheucht von töriger Bitte, flieht

 Der Zauber; dunkel wirds und einsam

Unter dem Himmel, wie immer, bin ich –

Komm du nun, sanfter Schlummer! zu viel begehrt

Das Herz; doch endlich, Jugend! verglühst du ja,

Du ruhelose, träumerische!

Friedlich und heiter ist dann das Alter

This poem also inspired Edgar Rietz to write the German TV series Heimat. The narrative of the poem is the story of Paul a young man who grows up in a small village in the Hunsruck working with his father- earning his way – keeping his wife and child. But one day the ‘thorn’ goads him and he literally walks away from everything in search of a new life – before the night takes him.

I found seven other poets in this collection with poems about the night as a place to start a journey or find solace – an escape form the world.

Opitz

Lied

Itzund kommt die Nacht herbei

Vieh und Menschen warden frei

Goethe

Willkommen und Abschied

Der Abend wieghte schion die Erde

Und an den Bergen hing die Nacht

Schiller

Der Abend

Senke, strahlender Gott

Holderlin

Sonnenuntergang

Wo bist du? trunken dammert die Seele mir

Novalis 304

Hymnen an die Nacht

Hinhuber wall ich

Unde jede Pein

Wird einst ein Stachel

Der Wollust sein

Brentano

Abendstandchen

Hor, es klagt die Flote wieder

Eichendorff

Der Abend

Schweight der Menshen laute Lust

Mondnacht

Es war, als hatt der Himmel

Die Erde still gekusst

Storm

Zur Nacht

Vorbei der Tag! Nun lass mich unverstellt

Intimacy - Michèle Roberts

Michèle Roberts is a one of the countries most underrated and under read writers. Her books are absorbing explorations of the human condition. Her stature and ability as a writer is comparable to that of Graham Greene and valid for several reasons. Her ‘entertainments’ as Greene dismissively referred to his books, are extremely well written. She has experimented both in form and content over the years and has been original in both. She has been a passionate writer and a crusader of social and political causes, controversial and confrontational. And like Greene, her Catholic education and upbringing informs a lot of her work. She is a writer who seems to have been side-lined in an age of ‘chick lit’ and trendy gender posturing.  

Some years ago she conducted a literary experiment in one of her books which was a direct attack on the reader’s senses. The unforeseen and unexpected sexual assault of a young woman is the catalyst for this experiment. She wanted the reader to experience a ‘rupture’ in the narrative and in the act of reading itself. She also wanted the reader to be shocked into a new and more meaningful relationship with her theme – here, intimacy.  

For thousands of years philosophers and poets have endeavored to express the nature of intimacy. The problem is that intimacy sits astride the psyche and soma and is fully found in both. Aristotle explored intimacy as a pleasurable, useful, virtuous relationship. While accepting this, Sartre would go further and write that it was much more a romantic, passionate and sexual attachment. His philosophy gives precedence to the pleasure of the real and existential sexual act, leaving little or nothing of emotional value post coitus. Joyce, a lapsed Catholic, explored intimacy in stream of consciousness and in his characters intimate personal actions, defecating or masturbating. Unlike Sartre, Joyce frequently returns to themes of transcendence, he acknowledges and explores the abstract metaphysical world. Joyce is willing to consider the notion of intimacy beyond the grave, beyond the real. There are many examples of this in Ulysses and in particular Hamlet’s overriding obsession to revenge his father.

In her literary experiment Michèle Roberts uses the existential definition of intimacy, she uses the sexual act. The sexual act can be the moment of greatest pleasure but it is also the moment when the individual is most exposed and vulnerable to ridicule, rejection, or pain, it is the convergence of the psyche and soma, and it is where intimacy is so often thought to be at its profoundest. When her character is violated by a sexual act the reader is shocked - there is an epistemological crisis for both. The reader is shocked into a reappraisal of intimacy, but only some aspects of it, the existential.

Central to a Catholic way of life is the intimacy of prayer. Greene, a convert to Catholicism, conveys something of this intimacy in The End of the Affaire – when a promise is made in prayer to God for the safe deliverance of a lover. Prayer is also a moment of profound intimacy, intimacy with a deity.  This relationship of course requires a level of faith and an understanding of the given deity. There are many problems here as it is possible for an individual to project emotions of an ‘intimate’ type on to another individual, pet, or inanimate object, in effect, one way or illusory ‘intimacy’. Those Christians that believe that God is not a concept, but a real and living God feel that through prayer they are having an intimate relationship. The theology required here depends on the claims made for the deity. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God, is all powerful, all knowing and everywhere. So is there free will if God is all knowing? Why is there evil if God is all powerful? The problems here are numerous and complex.

It is perhaps unfair to expect an author to explore both existential and metaphysical aspects of a theme like intimacy from one dramatic event. Michèle Roberts’ literary experiment was indeed arresting and thought provoking; metaphorically it was a dramatic shout rather than a stage whisper. But for all that, her work was worth reading, a valuable, cliché free exploration of the rich nature of intimacy. It is lamentable that a diet of sensationalist TV soaps and ‘chick lit’ have debased an understanding of intimacy. Instant gratification in the immediate, existential sexual act seems now to equate to intimacy.

Artists Materials

between

paint

brushes

rags and oil

light

sea

and in the rocks

the water curls

her tongue

whispers

names

you thought you knew

but never heard

and as she sucks

teases

pebbles turn

tones

phon-emes

what was said

heard

but not known

Ray Bradbury

‘Hey, Ray Bradbury... you left somethin' behind…'

‘Hey, Ray Bradbury... you left somethin' behind…’  This is how Giles Diggle starts his tribute to Ray Bradbury. This is a call from the heart - and it could only come from deep within Bradbury country - where ‘The sound of tennis shoes on gravel remain…’

*

 I have found my few words in praise of Ray Bradbury so difficult to write because he did have such a profound effect upon my life.

 In 1973 during Mr. Heath’s three-day week Jack Eve taught me how to paint. Jack and I worked for Rio Tinto Zinc which paid us a five day week because they got us to paint everything in the factory the other two days of the week. At 18 I was a sheet metal cut-up machine operator, and at 64, Jack was my assistant! He told me stories of his child-hood and about his time as a solider in Berlin after the war. He marveled at just how stupid I was and helped me with the crossword. He was a genuinely good man and a pleasure to work with. He witnessed me reading the books and never belittled my attempts to read.

I cycled 6 or 7 miles to work every day - in boiler suit and donkey jacket – and stopped on the way to buy cigarettes and a paper - the then socialist leaning Daily Mirror - with a reading age of 5. In the political turmoil of the time it was inevitable that the papers would go on strike and so one morning I found myself trying to find a substitute for the crossword.  There was a book stand next to where the papers should have been and on it was a book with a purple cover and a golden image in the middle which caught my eye. I picked it up, flicked through the pages found it had illustrations, and not a lot of text. The publishers blurb said it was science fiction.

 It took me over a week to read this book - mouthing the words and moving my finger along the pages – I was not a natural reader. Having left school with no qualifications I became an unskilled labourer with little future. (On one night shift I discovered that I was the only one in the tea room that had not been in prison.) With one single book Ray Bradbury changed my life. He caught me in his world, caught my imagination. It was like I had made a new friend, one who told me things in a simple way, one who showed me his humanity, integrity and honesty. The book was The Golden Apples of the Sun. It would be many years before I knew that the title of the book came from a Yeats’ poem The Song of Wandering Aengus

The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

I was an intimidating presence in the local book shop one pay day, in boots and work clothes. They were as uncomfortable with me as I was with them. I had never bought books before. I wanted Ray Bradbury books. They checked the publisher’s catalogue and were a little surprised when I ordered everything they could get and paid for it on the spot. The following week I collected eight or nine books which took me months to read - it was a real labour of love. It was here that my obsession with literature and books began. It is an enduring love. I knew there were libraries that books could be borrowed from but they were alien to me. I could not put it into words – there was so much that I could not articulate – but I wanted to keep my books, posses them- they had become like friends in themselves.  I had some new strange relationship with - books. I loved the whole object, the feel, the smell, the size, the colour, the cover.

I stopped going to the pub and clubs, I stayed at home with my new friend and read every word he had ever written and he educated me. He introduced me to Melville, Faulkner, Poe, Twain, Yeats, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky and many more. I made lists of the authors and their books, and over the years I read them. Bradbury took me into many new worlds but most importantly he started me on the bewildering journey of self-awareness and articulacy. I started to understand my emotions and thoughts, started to talk to myself.

It would be my Open University lecturer Clive Thomas who would finally open the door to traditional academia for me.

It would be plain ignorance and insulting to Bradbury’s memory to consider him as merely a writer of science fiction. In many ways he was anything but a writer of science fiction. His stories and poems were so easy to read that they gave the impression that writing was easy. Many people claim that Bradbury inspired them to write - as he did me. For all the fluency and ease of style Bradbury took writing seriously and he is said to have burned more than a million words because he thought were just not good enough. His writing is genuinely worthy of the title prose-poetry. His poetic, lyrical style brought a poignancy and wistfulness to a wide range of themes. He wrote about childhood, death, fear, small town America, human aspiration. He advised NASA and Disney, he wrote about holograms, 3D TVs, theme parks - the ‘Marionette Company’ that produced ‘puppets’ that were indistinguishable from human beings - long before Asimov. He wrote about ignorance, prejudice, totalitarian régimes and politics. He wrote about the absurdity of racism and the treatment of back American people. He wrote about all the human qualities that are required for new civilizations- either on other planets or on our own in the future. In short, he wrote about the human condition.

He was a kind noble friend and teacher.

I have been fortunate to correspond with or meet writers whom I have admired over the years and I can’t understand why I never contacted Ray Bradbury to tell him how he changed my life. I regret this now. I did wonder if it would be possible to meet him when I was in America…..

Giles went on to write

 ‘Ray Bradbury was an influence and still is. In that sense he is there in my Timeline…’

Me too.

I owe him my life.  I should live it as a testimony to him.

http://gilesdiggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/hey-ray-bradbury-you-left-somethin.html?spref=tw

L’ ∞

L’ ∞

mirror mirror

that is the sea

where i reflect

where i find me

mirror mirror

that is the sky

where i reflect

where i ask why

mirror mirror

that is infinity

where is the horizon

that i might be

mirror mirror

what is born

when dusk

meets dawn