Poem for Today

Selected Poetry

by Emily Dickinson

This poem seems an appropriate, if simple, reminder for our current times.  Would we not be better if we only stray from the Truth in a "slant", so it's "dazzle" doesn't blind us to that which is truly important?

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightening to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind--

- Emily Dickinson

Mythic Expectations

The Last Station:

A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year 

by Jay Parini

“It is not an easy thing to alter the trajectory of your life. People have expectations on your behalf. You come to believe them yourself.”   ― Jay Parini, The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year










This is a wonderful evocation of Tolstoy's last days, the people surrounding him and the aura created by the event. He was considered not only Russia's greatest living writer, but a powerful religious figure---more revered and beloved than the Tsar. Disciples sought him out on almost a daily basis, yet Tolstoy himself was torn between his aspirations to religious asceticism and his enormous wealth.

Parini captures all the excitement and intrigue of the last days for this literary icon wealthy man who, ironically, had no interest in the very wealth that he had amassed. The story tells of a battle for control of his soul, heart, and money. A battle between his wife and chief adviser, Chertkov. Each chapter in the book is written as if in the first person by six different voices, including Tolstoy himself, Sophia, Vladmir Chertkov (Tolstoy’s companion and promoter of his work) and Tolstoy’s secretary, Valentin Bulgakov. His wife, Sophia, is portrayed showing signs of hysteria and paranoia as she tried to protect her families inheritance from the group of Tolstoyans formed around Vladmir Chertkov, who felt that the great man’s legacy belonged to the world.

The story is based on the real diary of Tolstoy's secretary, Bulgakov, and it reads like a thriller with a denouement when Tolstoy flees toward the Caucasus to, hopefully, die alone. He only gets as far as a stationmaster's house in the small town of Astapovo. There the public gawkers and the press wait for him to die. While it helps to have some familiarity with Tolstoy's earlier years this is still a great read for those who do not. Just as Tolstoy was larger than life as a writer, he becomes, in death, a mythic figure.

A Commonplace Entry

Natural Man

  
   Man, bone by bone, flint by flint, has been traced backward into the night of time more successfully than even Darwin dreamed. He has been traced to a creature with an almost gorilloid head on the light, fast body of a still completely upright, plains-dwelling creature. In the end he partakes both of Darwinian toughness, resilience, and something else, a humanity---if this story is true---that runs well nigh as deep as time itself.

   Man has, in scientific terms, become natural, but the nature of his "naturalness" escapes him. Perhaps his human freedom has left him the difficult choice of determining what it is in his nature to be. Perhaps the two sides of the dark question Darwin speculated upon were only an evolutionary version of man's ancient warfare with himself---a drama as great in its hidden fashion as the story of the Garden and the Fall. (pp 113-114, The Firmament of Time)

The Firmament of Time by Loren Eiseley. Atheneum, 1969 (1960)

Poet of Conscience

Selected Poems 

by Marina Tsvetaeva

"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold I know no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry." - Maria Tsvetaeva




Weariness and beauty permeate the poetry of Maria Tsvetaeva. She struggled with life and love over the course of her short existence, but endured, supported in part by fellow artists, most notably Mandelstam, Rilke and Pasternak. The poetry in this selection is arrayed in chronological order and ranges from the "starry nights, in the apple orchards of Paradise"(p 5) to the "muffled blow" of Epitaph (p 106). 

Inspiration from fellow poets Mayakovsky, Blok and Akhmatova impress upon the reader her poetic muse and mystery. I like the poetry infused with literary references, Shakespeare and others, as this is a type that I share with her - in my own humble way. She has a way of making the simplest image seem to embody meaning beyond the possibilities of a finite world. She suggests this and more in lines like:

"a manifestly yellow, decidedly
rusty leaf--has been left behind on the tree." (p 120)

Her poetry exhibits an aesthetic beauty that transcends my ability to describe the feelings it embodies.  Along with Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva stands as one of the four great Russian poets of the Twentieth Century and is one of the most important Women writers in the Western Canon.

Here is an example:

Little World 

Children - are staring of eyes so frightful, 
Mischievous legs on a wooden floor, 
Children - is sun in the gloomy motives, 
Hypotheses' of happy sciences world. 

Eternal disorder in the ring's gold, 
Tender word's whispers in semi-sleep, 
On the wall in a cozy child's room, the dreaming 
Peaceful pictures of birds and sheep. 

Children - is evening, evening on the couch, 
In the fog, through the window, glimmer street lamps, 
A measured voice of the tale of King Saltan, 
Mermaid-sisters of seas from tales. 

Children - is rest, brief moment of respite, 
A trembling vow before God's eyes, 
Children - are the world's tender riddles, 

Where in the riddle the answer hides!

Enigmatic Portrait

A Lost Lady 

by Willa Cather

“He came to be very glad that he had known her, and that she had had a hand in breaking him in to life. He has known pretty women and clever ones since then,-- but never one like her, as she was in her best days. Her eyes, when they laughed for a moment into one`s own, seemed to promise a wild delight that he has not found in life. "I know where it is," they seemed to say, "I could show you!”   ― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady



This novella is barely more than a character sketch. The brilliance of Cather’s prose is demonstrated in her portrayal of Marian Forrester, the high-spirited wife of one of the great pioneers and railroad builders. There are also historical implications of Cather’s fable. These are enhanced by the enigmatic and ambiguous elements in Mrs. Forrester’s portrait. On the surface, Marian Forrester belongs to Cather’s long line of restless, magnetic, intelligent women, like Alexandra Bergson, who grows wealthy farming the virgin land in O Pioneers! (1913), Thea Kronborg, the Swedish girl who becomes a famous opera singer in The Song of the Lark (1915), and Ãntonia Shimerda, the heroine of My Ãntonia (1918), who survives tragedy and abandonment to become the mother of many children, “a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.”

One may view A Lost Lady as a brilliant epilogue to Cather’s famous pioneer novels; however, it has a different tone, not heroic and optimistic like the Whitmanesque O Pioneers! but bittersweet and retrospective like Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence. As one who loves Cather's beautiful writing style I found this a touching taste from her pen.

Life of Integrity

Stoner 

by John Williams

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."
William Shakespeare




John Williams's Stoner is that rare novel which is almost perfect in every way, from its plain prose style to its subtle portrayal of themes and evocative descriptions of events that are common enough for all adults to have experienced them - in ways that make the narration a pleasure - and which makes you stop and reflect in wonder at the marvels around you, past and present. 

I found the story often took my breath away as I intently pondered the beautiful telling of a story of love and loss. The pain and pleasure were so pronounced that the reality of the images created by the author had an effect that few books ever do. I found the prose style reminiscent of Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, but with more hope present even as Stoner deals unsuccessfully with the vicissitudes of life.

This is a Midwestern book, set on the plains, about a young man who is schooled in the hardships of farm life but who flowers in an academic setting - up to a point. His taciturn being and stoicism both help him survive and contribute to his downfall in love and learning. In each he fails, even though he does experience small moments of triumph; yet even in failure his determination shines through the pages of the novel and makes this drama somehow less tragic than it might have been otherwise. The difficulty which Stoner has in communicating his feelings is palpable throughout compounding the inevitability of defeat for our hero. 

This novel in all its detailing of the life of William Stoner captures some of the passion and loss that is suggested by Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 (quoted above) that plays a pivotal role in Stoner's education. This is a story of integrity and persistence in living through adversity and loss.

Return to Goethe's Faust

Faust, Part I

A drama by 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Whatever is the lot of humankind
I want to taste within my deepest self.
I want to seize the highest and the lowest,
to load its woe and bliss upon my breast,
and thus expand my single self titanically
and in the end go down with all the rest.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I






Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust begins with a prologue set in Heaven. The scene is modeled on the opening of the Book of Job in the Old Testament.  While the angels Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael praise the Lord, Mephistopheles mocks human beings as failed creations because reason makes them worse than brutes.  God tells Mephistopheles that he will illuminate his servant Faust. Mephistopheles wagers with god that he can corrupt Faust instead. With the assent of god Mephistopheles goes into action.

In the next scene, Faust appears in acute despair because his intellectual studies have left him ignorant and without worldly gain and fame. In order to discover the inner secrets and creative powers of nature, he turns to black magic. Thus, he conjures up the Earth Spirit, the embodiment of the forces of nature. However, the Earth Spirit mocks Faust’s futile attempts to understand him.  As he despairs of understanding nature, he prepares to poison himself. 
At that moment, church bells and choral songs announcing that “Christ is arisen” distract Faust from killing himself. Celestial music charms Faust out of his dark and gloomy study for a walk in the countryside on a beautiful spring day in companionship with his fellow human beings. Observing the springtime renewal of life in nature, Faust experiences ecstasy. At this moment, Faust yearns for his soul to soar into celestial spheres.

This Easter walk foreshadows Faust’s ultimate spiritual resurrection. However, he must first undergo a pilgrimage through the vicissitudes and depths of human life.  In a famous moment he proclaims that "two souls are dwelling in my breast".  It is in this battle within himself that he becomes emblematic of modern man.  As he battles Mephistopheles offers him a wager for his everlasting soul that will provide him a fleeting moment of satisfaction in this world. Mephistopheles commands a witch to restore Faust’s youth so that he is vulnerable to sensuous temptations. When Faust sees the beautiful young girl Margaret, he falls into lust and commands Mephistopheles to procure her. Mephistopheles devises a deadly scheme for seduction. Faust convinces Margaret, who is only fourteen years old, to give her mother a sleeping potion, prepared by Mephistopheles, so that they can make love. Mephistopheles makes poison instead; the mother never awakens.

Unwittingly, Margaret has murdered her mother. Furthermore, she is pregnant by Faust and alone. When Faust comes to visit Margaret, he finds her brother, Valentine, ready to kill him for violating his sister. Mephistopheles performs trickery so that Faust is able to stab Valentine in a duel. Dying, Valentine curses Margaret before the entire village as a harlot. Even at church, Margaret suffers extreme anguish as an evil spirit pursues her.

In contrast, Faust escapes to a witches’ sabbath on Walpurgis Night. He indulges in orgiastic revelry and debauchery with satanic creatures and a beautiful witch until an apparition of Margaret haunts him. Faust goes looking for Margaret and finds her, in a dungeon, insane and babbling. At this moment, Faust realizes that he has sinned against innocence and love for a mere moment of sensual pleasure. Even though it is the very morning of her execution, Margaret refuses to escape with Faust and Mephistopheles. Instead, she throws herself into the hands of God. As Faust flees with Mephistopheles, a voice from above proclaims, “She is saved!”

Goethe will continue his drama with a second part, but the narrative from this first section has become one of the markers for the beginning of the modern era of human culture. I have previously written about some of the ideas in this drama in my discussion of "Active vs. Reactive Man".  Translated by many over the two centuries since its original publication it has become a touchstone for the study of the development of the human spirit.  It has also inspired other artists to create operas and novels based on the characters from Goethe's drama.