.

Imagina, encendiendo una cerilla, aquella noche en la cueva:
utiliza para sentir el frío de las grietas del suelo;
para sentir el hambre, la vajilla apilada,
y el desierto… el desierto está en todas partes.
Imagina, encendiendo la cerilla, aquella medianoche en la cueva:
el fuego, las sombras de los animales o de las cosas,
e imagina, con tu cara confundida en los pliegues de la toalla,
a María, a José, y el hatillo con el niño.
Imagina a tres reyes, la procesión de sus caravanas
hacia el portal; o mejor, tres rayos que alcanzan
la estrella, el crujido de su carga, el sonido de las campanillas
(en el azul espeso, el Niño aún no cuenta
con el eco de una gran campana).
Imagina que el Señor en el Hijo del Hombre por vez primera
se reconoce a Sí mismo, a una distancia remota, en las tinieblas:
un vagabundo en otro vagabundo.

.

Joseph Brodsky

24 de diciembre de 1989

Alexander Kluge: Wieso ist Berlin unwirklich?
Heiner Müller: Es ist die Hauptstadt, die erklärte Hauptstadt …
Alexander Kluge: … der Unwirklichkeit.
Robert Mattheis: Was? Unwirklichkeit? Das ist doch nun wirklich …
Heiner Müller: … aber es ist keine wirkliche Hauptstadt. Sie hat noch keine Wirklichkeiten.
Robert Mattheis: … Quatsch!
Heiner Müller: Nicht nur weil die Regierung nicht da ist, aber das auch, das spielt natürlich auch eine Rolle. Aber es gibt auch ein Zögern immer noch davor, diese Hauptstadt als Hauptstadt zu empfinden, zu etablieren. Es gibt eine Angst davor, glaube ich.
Robert Mattheis: Ha! Ich, ich hab keine Angst!
Heiner Müller: Es gibt wahrscheinlich eine Angst auch vor dem Mythos Berlin. Berlin ist die Hauptstadt — die wirkliche Hauptstadt — gewesen immer im Zusammenhang mit Eroberungskriegen.
Alexander Kluge: ‘70 / ‘71, 1914 …
Heiner Müller: ‘70, ‘71, 1914, 1939 …
Robert Mattheis: Ja, haha — Unsinn! Echt! So ein …
Alexander Kluge: Die Hauptstadt der großen Niederlage?
Heiner Müller: Und dann die Hauptstadt der Katastrophe, also der Niederlage. Und da gibt’s eine Hemmung, glaube ich.
Alexander Kluge: … die Hauptstadt der DDR …
Heiner Müller: Ich fand interessant, der Joseph Brodsky, als er in Berlin war, ich glaube das erste Mal, vor ein paar Jahren, sagte er, das ist ihm ganz unheimlich, zu Fuß zu gehen in Berlin, da unten sind alle Toten, dieser Untergrund ist ganz unsicher und schwankend, hatte ein ganz unheimliches Gefühl, wenn er durch Berlin ging. Und Angst vor dem, was drunter ist, gerade in der Mitte, ja, ja.
Robert Mattheis: Der Brodsky, der ist doch sowieso überschätzt!
Alexander Kluge: Ja, wenn Sie kurz mal die Klappe halten könnten, Herr, ja?
Heiner Müller: Das wäre wirklich eine Wohltat!
Robert Mattheis: Ha! Wieder ein Beweis, wie korrupt der Kulturbetrieb ist! Abweichende Meinungen werden einfach nicht zur Kenntnis genommen, werden herausgeschnitten, retuschiert!

(Eine zensierte Version des Gesprächs finden Sie hier.)

.

Me sobrevivirás, viejo y buen cemento,
como yo he sobrevivido, parece, a algunos hombres
que me habían tomado, también, por una especie de calle,
citando el color de los ojos o semblante.

Así es que alabo tu apariencia inanimada, porosa
no por envidia, sino como tu pariente más
próximo –menos durable, plagado de junturas
sueltas, aunque todavía agradecido a los arquitectos.

Aplaudo tus humildes orígenes –para ser exacto,
sin sentido—, rugido y chillido de frenos,
completamente emparejado, sin embargo, por la meta
abstracta, más allá de mi alcance.

No es que nada engendre su clase,
sino que el futuro prefiere cortejar
una conquista que es resueltamente ciega
y envuelta en una larga y petrificada falda.

.
Joseph Brodsky
Oda al cemento
.

Istanbul was there, finally. (…)

From the bridge on the Bosphorus, showing itself at night, demure and beautiful, like a Casta Meretrix. The dual nature of this city is overwhelmingly evident. Divided between Europe and Asia both geographically and culturally. Orient and Occident inextricably entangled in the history and the mind of its people. The Russian poet Josif Brodski had bitter words for all this; he felt betrayed and forced to find his way back to the West, initially through Greece but ending up in England eventually.

Nowadays, it seems to me that the city is still looking for its own identity. Mosques sharing the same spaces as lounge bars where beer and spirits are copiously drunk. Many young women are wearing headscarves while other are dressed with miniskirts. In Pera it is normal to hear the voice of the muezzin calling people to prayer and seeing the slightly annoyed faces of students sipping a glass of wine.

Through the centuries populations, religions and empires have changed, each one leaving its own more or less evident mark. Two great Byzantine historians come to my mind: one is Procopius of Cesarea who was there at the apogee of Constantinople during the reign of Justinian and Theodora, while the other is Niketas Choniates with his chronicle of the Sack.

Procopius confirms my impression about the twofold nature of this city, in most of his books he wrote about the greatness of emperor Justinian, his wife Theodora, and his general Belisarius, but then in his Secret History he discredited them describing the emperor as a venial and incompetent man and his wife as a lustful and immoral courtesan. One might ask where the truth is… Again, even these ancient rulers seem to share the city same fate, where many veils cover the bare facts.

Niketas instead witnessed first hand the events that took place roughly seven hundred years later during the Sack of Constantinople. At that time the Venetians decided to conquer the city and when they succeeded the violation of Hagia Sophia was ruthless. Ironically they only prepared  the field for those who were to become their worst enemies, the Ottomans. With the excuse of saving Eastern Christianity the doge, Enrico Dandolo (in his more than metaphorical blindness) prepared the end of it in that part of the world.

Despite all of this Istanbul thrives, lively and charming; and Westerners love it. Nevermind the lunatic taxi drivers; we long for its past of mosques, mosaics and chthonic deities hidden underground in the bowels of the city; we experience the smell of spices in the bazaars; we listen to the sound of the boats on the Golden Horn and never forget them.

Like its Western counterpart Byzantium was built on seven hills, and like Rome it has a remarkable amount of cats. They seem almost to be looking after you as if they were the real enigmatic guardians of this ancient city.

Just siis, kui kaugeks jäänud armuneim,
kui külmast küürus keha ja ka vaim,
sa sumadanist püstol võta
ja pandimajja sellega siis tõtta.

Ja saadud raha eest siis grammofon sa osta,
pill pane mängima, et kukal kajaks vastu!
Ning tantsi, tantsi kas või ilma otsa, et
sääl saaksid oma grammofonil suudelda sa kätt.

Jah, kuulake nüüd Viiuldaja nõu:
kuis sihtida, kui rinnus kärgib kõu?
Te ärge laske pähe, vaid nii umbes õlga,
me elule nii röökides kui nuttes ei jää võlgu.

Ma liuakesel südame teil toon
Ja jätan maha kuskil tagahoovis.
Eh, sõbrad, püüdke mõista minu näost,
et süda lahkunud on minu rinnavaost,

mis avatult on lahti teie ees.
On kõikjal grammofonid minu sees,
on sõrmlaud siin, on õige pingul keel,
ja kõrist alla voolab vesi punane.

Tõlkinud Ott Arder
Leidis Yaroslava Shepel

In guten Buchhandlungen, schreibt der Nouvel Obs,  kann man sich die Nummer 962-963 der Zeitschrift “Europe” besorgen, die dem russischen Dichter Ossip Mandelstam (1891-1938) gewidmet ist. (Nun, in Greifswald gibt es dann keine – oder hat jemand L’Europe?). Mandelstam, schreiben sie, ist nicht in erster Linie das Opfer Stalins, sondern der außergewöhnliche Dichter. Viele russische Beiträge in dem Heft, so ein wunderbarer Text von Alexander Kuschner. Pavel Nerler untersucht minutiös die Spuren der Durchreise des jungen Mandelstam in Paris. Mandelstams Humor wird zum Thema, Jeanne Claude Lanne zeigt die Nähe zu Chlebnikow und wie Mandelstam eine sehr feine Lektüre des Saum-Dichters lieferte. Er besteht darauf, daß es absurd sei, die beiden unter den Namen Futurismus und Akmeismus zu trennen. Evguéni Toddes zeigt eine andere Nähe – zu den russischen Formalisten. Glänzend die explication du texte des großen Jossif Brodsky zu dem Gedicht “Au monde souverain” von 1931.

Hier das Inhaltsverzeichnis und die Einleitung von Marc Weinstein (frz.)
http://www.fabula.org/actualites/article32261.php
———————
Europe
Ossip Mandelstam
87e année, n°962-963, Juin-Juillet 2009
• 18,50 €

———————
Ossip Mandelstam – kostenloses Supplement zur Gesamtausgabe (pdf)
http://www.ralph-dutli.de/mandelstam/Mandelstam_Supplement_Gesamtausgabe.pdf
Zu
Ossip Mandelstam
Das Gesamtwerk in zehn Bänden
Aus dem Russischen übertragen und herausgegeben von Ralph Dutli.
Ammann Verlag, Zürich (2004)
———————
TRANSLATING MANDELSTAM.
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002618.php

“Boredom separates us from animals, which may be unstimulated, but never quite bored. We may be bored to death, but we also know instinctively that boredom is itself an intimation of mortality, a threatening shadow of the approaching nothingness.” Ben MacIntyre, The Times

An article full of interesting tidbits.  They don’t add up to much besides resignation that boredom is inevitable, so let’s just get it over with.  Includes a nice quote from a poet, Joseph Brodsky: “When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.”

The following is adapted from Kathleen Norris’ Acedia & Me, a chronicle of her battle with acedia. I’ve left most of that story out but have tried to focus on the literary and historical references in her work. That allows us to fill our own examples in. It’s a great book, though.

Evagrius Ponticus

The demon of acedia — also called the noonday demon — is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. He presses his attack upon the monk about the fourth hour and besieges the soul until the eighth hour. First of all he makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Then he constrains the monk to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth hour [or lunchtime], to look this way and now that to see if perhaps [one of the brethren appears from his cell]. Then too he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, a hatred for manual labor. He leads him to reflect that charity has departed from among the brethren, that there is no one to give encouragement. Should there be someone at this period who happens to offend him in some way or other, this too the demon uses to contribute further to his hatred. This demon drives him along to desire other sites where he can more easily procure life’s necessities more readily find work and make a real success of himself. He goes on to suggest that, after all, it is not the place that is the basis of pleasing the Lord. God is to be adored everywhere. He joins to these reflections the memory of his dear ones and of his former way of life. He depicts life stretching out for a long period of time and brings before the mind’s eye the toil of the ascetic struggle and as the saying has it, leaves no leaf unturned to induce the monk to forsake his cell and drop out of the fight. No other demon follows close upon the heels of this one (when he is defeated) but only a state of deep peace and inexpressible joy arise out of this struggle.
Evagrius Ponticus (345-399), The Praktikos

It Is Always Noon Somewhere
One of the best stories I know is found in The Institutes by John Cassian, a monk who was born in the fourth century. Cassian speaks of Abba Paul, who like many desert monks, wove baskets as he prayed, and subsisted on food from his garden and a few date palms. Unlike monks who lived closer to cities and could sell their baskets there, Paul,

“could not do any other work to support himself because his dwelling was separated from towns and from habitable land by a seven days’ journey through the desert . and transportation cost more than he could get for the work that he did. He used to collect palm fronds and always exact a day’s labor from himself just as if this were his means of support And when his cave was filled with a whole year’s work, he would burn up what he had so carefully over each year.”

Does Abba Paul epitomize the dutiful monk who recognizes that the prayers he recites during his labors are of more value than anything he can make? Or is he the patron saint of performance art, methodically destroying the baskets he has woven to demonstrate that the process of making them is more important than the product? Paul’s daily labors may have been designed to foster humility, but the annual burning had another, greater purpose. Cassian notes that it aided the monk in “purging his heart, firming his thoughts, persevering in his cell, and conquering and driving out acedia.

Acedia may be an unfamiliar term to those not well versed in monastic history or medieval literature. But that does not mean it has no relevance for contemporary readers. The word has a peculiar history, and as timelines on the Oxford English Dictionary website reveal, it has gone in and out of favor over the years. References to accyde cluster in the fourteenth century, then disappear until 1891; accidie appears in 1607, and then not again until 1922, in a citation from William R. Inge’s Outspoken Essays. Reflecting on the cultural shock that followed the Great War, particularly in Europe, he writes that “human nature has not been changed by civilization,” and discerns “acedia….at the bottom of the diseases from which we are suffering:’ In the 1933 OED, accidie was confidently declared obsolete, with references dating from 1520 and 1730. But by the mid-twentieth century, as “civilized” people were contending with the genocidal horror of two world wars, accidie was back in use. A four-volume supplement to the OED published between 1972 and 1986 instructs, “Delete Obs.,” and the current 1989 edition includes references from 1936 and 1950. Languages have a life and a wisdom of their own, and the reemergence of the word suggests to me that acedia is the lexicon’s version of a mole, working on us while hidden from view. It may even be that the word has a significance that stands in inverse proportion to its obscurity.

The scholar Andrew Crislip writes that “the very persistence of the term ‘acedia’ betrays the fact that none of the modern or medieval glosses adequately conveys the semantic range of the monastic term.” He cites a French monk, Placide Deseille, who describes the word as “so pregnant with meaning that it frustrates every attempt to translate it:’ I believe that such standard dictionary definitions of acedia as “apathy’ “boredom,” or “torpor” do not begin to cover it, and while we may find it convenient to regard it as a more primitive word for what we now term depression, the truth is much more complex. Having experienced both conditions, I think it likely that much of the restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that plagues us today is the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress. The boundaries between depression and acedia are notoriously fluid; at the risk of oversimplifying, I would suggest that while depression is an illness treatable by counseling and medication, acedia is a vice that is best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer. Christian teachings concerning acedia are a source of strength and encouragement to me, and I hope to explore its vocabulary in such a manner that benefits readers, whatever their religious faith or lack of it.

At its Greek root, the word acedia means the absence of care. The person afflicted by acedia refuses to care or is incapable of doing so. When life becomes too challenging and engagement with others too demanding, acedia offers a kind of spiritual morphine: you know the pain is there, yet can’t rouse yourself to give a damn. That it hurts to care is borne out in etymology, for care derives from an Indo-European word meaning “to cry out’ as in a lament. Caring is not passive, but an assertion that no matter how strained and messy our relationships can be, it is worth something to be present, with others, doing our small part. Care is also required for the daily routines that acedia would have us suppress or deny as meaningless repetition or too much bother.

When I first encountered the word acedia in The Praktikos, a book by the fourth-century Christian monk Evagrius Ponticus, it spoke to me across a distance of sixteen hundred years of the inner devastation caused by the demon of acedia when it “[made] it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Boredom tempts Evagrius “to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine [the lunch hour]? But he soon discovers that this seemingly innocuous activity has an alarming and ugly effect, for having stirred up a restlessness that he is unable to shake, the demon taunts him with the thought that his efforts at prayer and contemplation are futile. Life then looms like a prison sentence, day after day of nothingness.

As I read this I felt a weight lift from my soul, for I had just discovered an accurate description of something that had plagued me for years but that I had never been able to name. Many reader of fairy tales can tell you, not knowing the true name of your enemy; be it a troll, a demon, or an “issue,” puts you at a great disadvantage, and learning the name can help to set you free.

“He’s describing half my life,” I thought to myself: To discover an ancient monk’s account of acedia that so closely matched an experience I’d had at the age of fifteen did seem a fairy-tale moment. To find my deliverer not a knight in shining armor but a gnarled desert dweller, as stern as they come, only bolstered my conviction that God is a true comedian.

I did laugh then, and also later, when I encountered another passage from Evagrius, recognizing myself in the description of a listless monk who

when he reads, he yawns plenty and easily falls into sleep. He rubs his eyes and stretches his arms. His eyes wander from the book. He stares at the wall and then goes back to his reading for a little. He then wastes his time hanging on to the end of words, counts the pages, ascertains how the book is made, finds fault with the writing and the design. Finally he just shuts it and uses it as a pillow. Then he falls into a sleep not too deep, because hunger wakes his soul up and he begins to concern himself with that.

The desert monks termed acedia “the noonday demon” because the temptation usually struck during the heat of the day, when the monk was hungry and fatigued, and susceptible to the suggestion that his commitment to a life of prayer was not worth the effort. Acedia has long been considered a peculiarly monastic affliction, and for good reason. It is risky business to train oneself (“training” being a root meaning of asceticism) to embrace a daily routine that mirrors eternity in its changelessness, deliberately removing distractions from one’s life in order to enter into a deeper relationship with God. Under these circumstances acedia’s assault is not merely an occupational hazard — it is a given. It is also an interfaith phenomenon. When I asked two Zen Buddhist monks how they defined the boredom that is endemic to monastic life, one replied that as her community was founded by an Anglican, they call it acedia. The other was unfamiliar with the Greek term, but readily identified torpor as one of the Five Hindrances to Prayer.

We might well ask if these crazy monks don’t have it coming: if your goal is to “pray without ceasing” aren’t you asking for trouble? Is this a reasonable goal, or even a good one? Henri Nouwen tells us that “the literal translation of the words ‘pray always’ is ‘come to rest.’ The Greek word for rest,” he adds, “is ‘hesychia,’ and ‘hesychasm’ is a term which refers to the spirituality of the desert.” The “rest” that the monk is seeking is not an easy one, and as Nouwen writes, it “has little to do with the absence of conflict or pain. It is a rest in God in the midst of a very intense daily struggle.” Acedia is the monk’s temptation because, in a demanding life of prayer, it offers the ease of indifference. Yet I have come to believe that acedia can strike anyone whose work requires self-motivation and solitude, anyone who remains married “for better for worse,” anyone who is determined to stay true to a commitment that is sorely tested in everyday life. When I complained to a Benedictine friend that for me, acedia was no longer a noontime demon but seemed like a twenty-four-hour proposition, he replied, “Well, we are speaking of cosmic time. And it is always noon somewhere.”

Examining Acedia: Sin or Sickness
To examine acedia is to come face-to-face with a crucial question: Is acedia sin or sickness? It is an easy temptation to equate acedia and depression. The medical historian Bill Bynum, writing in The Lancet, notes that “there is an often repeated trajectory in medical history, from sin through crime and vice, ending in disease…By the late 19th century, psychiatrists defined acedia as a mental condition of sadness, mental confusion and apathy, bitterness of spirit, loss of liveliness, and utter despair. [Now] psychiatrists medicalize it, Catholic priests theologize it, and management consultants denigrate it to ‘laziness.’” All of this is true, insofar as it goes, but it is not the whole story.

In The Sin of Sloth, the scholar Siegfried Wenzel provides a useful survey of acedia’s history. He observes that for Evagrius, it was a thought, or a temptation, resulting from “a combination of an external agent and a disposition in human nature one of the eight bad thoughts that plagued a monk, while John Cassian discerned in acedia a stubborn sadness that could lead the monk into a far worse state of distress. In the sixth century, John Climacus equated tedium with despondency, and spoke of it as “a paralysis of soul.” Acedia’s omission from the list of the “eight bad thoughts.” which eventually became the seven deadly sins, began early in the fifth century, when the influential monk Cassian, even as he recognized acedia’s link with sadness, emphasized its physical aspects as laziness. By the next century, the theologian Gregory the Great had dropped acedia from the capital vices, fusing it with sadness; his list of the seven principal sins is still recognizable today. Cassian and Gregory had built on the desert tradition but altered it considerably, and acedia began to disappear from the common lexicon of spiritual life.

For the medieval scholastic theologians, notably Thomas Aquinas, acedia held what Wenzel terms an “intermediate position between body and spirit.” It may spring from physical weariness, but ultimately it is the spiritual phenomenon of “aversion of the appetite from its own good.” specifically an “aversion against God himself…. It is the opposite of the joy in the divine good that we should experience.” The person afflicted with acedia, even if she knows what is spiritually good for him, is tempted to deny that his inner beauty and spiritual strength are at his disposal, as gifts from God. “Give up long enough on trying to be spiritually lovely.” one contemporary philosopher explains, “and you will decide that no one could love anything as ugly as you — and then you have despair.” Such a person can seem so trapped within himself that others will say, “His only enemy is himself.” But the true enemy is the acedia that has set into motion the endless cycle of self-defeating thoughts.

Until the early thirteenth century, acedia was seen as exclusively a monastic vice, caused by the rigors of an ascetic life. As the concept was applied to laypeople it lost much of its religious import. It came to mean physical as well as spiritual laziness, and to combat it meant embracing what is now both extolled and disparaged as the Protestant work ethic. If we trace with Wenzel what he calls “the deterioration of acedia” in the late Middle Ages, we find the sin increasingly secularized, until in the Renaissance it is replaced with melancholy — where, to a large extent, it remains today. I suspect that many people now would answer the question “Is acedia depression?” with a reflexive and assured “Yes, of course,” depression having become a catchall for not only mental illness but also a wide range of emotions. Pharmaceutical companies advertise in newspapers and popular magazines with lists of symptoms — feeling down, anxious, fatigued, or discouraged — that would seem to cover most everyone at some time, as is no doubt the point. These advertisements can inspire people who need treatment to seek it, but they also serve the purposes of commerce and feed a disturbing tendency to medicalize all human experience.

This is nothing new: in the 1970s, Karl Menninger called “absurd” a statistic purporting that some sixty percent of Americans were afflicted with “chronic states of disorganization, formerly labeled ‘schizophrenic.’” Psychiatric counseling and prescription medication were seen as the solution to the problem. This avoids the question of whether despair can be a reasonable or even healthy response to suffering and evil. If we are to address this, it is essential, according to Menninger, that we “[relinquish] the sin of indifference,” the “Great Sin’ of acedia.” While acedia may appear in many guises, “no amount of sentimentalizing [it] as ‘contentedness,’ ‘minding one’s own business; and ‘living and letting live’ can cover up its devastating effects.” It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of our lives and the world, but we still must examine our response. If we shrug and turn inward, are we normal, ill, or somewhere in between? The very ubiquity of indifference should give us pause. “Inactivity and unresponsiveness in those upon whose cooperative efforts we depend always feels to us like sinful negligence;’ Menninger wrote. “The persistence of this taboo over the centuries testifies to the universality of the temptation to shirk.” As a psychiatrist, Menninger knew that “inactivity and idleness may (also) be an expression of fear, self-distrust, or self-misunderstanding. . . One can never be sure whether indifference is an aspect of sloth (acedia) or a perceptual intellectual deficiency — a certain blindness in human beings; as William James called it: ‘Whatever we call it, we might admit that given the condition of our world, “to transcend one’s own self-centeredness is not a virtue [but] a saving necessity.” We might also apply some common sense.

Discouragement is not necessarily a sign of illness, for people are often discouraged for good reason. Feeling off balance and ill-at-ease may be a sign of sanity, just the goad one needs to face a bad situation. A friend, a professor of philosophy, observes that many depressives accurately perceive that they are living under conditions in which any reasonable person might be despondent. But, she asks with her customary acuity, can the same be said of acedia? Can it ever be considered a rational response to the vagaries of life? From the perspective of Christian theology, the answer would be no, for acedia is understood as the rejection of a divine and entirely good gift. Because we are made in God’s image, in fleeing from a relationship with a loving God, we are also running from being our most authentic selves. Even from a secular point of view, we can see that acedia is intrinsically deadly, whereas depression may not be. When we face a grievous loss — of a loved one, a job, a marriage, or health — depression can be an inevitable and appropriate response, providing a time-out to allow for healing. But what if one responded to such a loss with a casual yawn, as if none of it had mattered in the first place? That is the horror of acedia, and its intractable isolation. The journey back from such a deadly solipsism would be extremely arduous, if one could find one’s way at all.

Is acedia depression? My answer is, No, not exactly, but I must struggle to articulate the difference with precision. My job is not made easier in the contemporary climate, when not to name acedia as depression can make one suspicious of being in denial, or worse, of judging people who are ill as being morally deficient. This is an area where only a fool would dare to tread, and thus I tread along, trying to keep in mind the useful distinction that Thomas Aquinas makes between acedia and despair. A contemporary scholar summarizes his insight:

“For despair, participation in the divine nature through grace is perceived as appealing, but impossible; for acedia, the prospect is possible, but unappealing.”

As Evagrius and Cassian do not merely predate modern psychology, but also prefigure it, I am willing to grant to their writings the same latitude I give to other ancient literature. Their perspective helps me confront my own bad thoughts, temptations, neuroses, and compulsions, and I also know that I am not alone. A young woman recently told me that reading Cassian on sadness and acedia helped her cope with depression in ways that complemented the medications she’d taken and the therapy she’d received. But if I am to appreciate fully the contribution of these early Christian writers, I need to let go of the comfortable assumption, still pervasive in literary and academic circles, that religion is of no use to us today. Grounded in the nineteenth-century belief in unceasing human advancement and in the writings of such innovators as Freud and Nietzsche, this prejudice takes myriad forms: the smug certainty that religion keeps people at an infantile stage of development that the worldly person must outgrow; that it is a weapon to make people feel guilty for things that are not their fault; that it is the cause of all violent conflict.

Joyce Carol Oates, in a review of Andrew Solomon’s masterly study of depression, The Noonday Demon, epitomizes a disdain for religion that is common among intellectuals, but she contributes something welcome and rare in acknowledging its profound value, even to Un-believers. She laments the Judeo-Christian origins of Solomon’s title, writing that “one might wince at the theological metaphor, with its suggestion of demonic possession — a primitive stage in our comprehension of mental illness we like to believe we’ve advanced beyond?’ Yet, she adds, “the poetic figure of speech is a powerful one that no amount of scientific terminology and matter-of-fact discussions of serotonin deficiency, neurotransmitter systems or tricyclics can match. Though we ‘know’ better, we tend to ‘feel’ symbolically.”

I appreciate how, in a deft phrase, Oates skewers what amounts to religious faith in science, technology, and medicine, which, in confronting the mysteries of our bodies, remains less a science than an art. Maybe we still need to “feel” symbolically because we’re human. Let’s look at an ancient poem, Psalm 91, from which the early monks coined the term “noonday demon”:

You will not fear the terror of the night
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the plague that prowls in the darkness
nor the scourge that lays waste at noon.

While we are all too familiar with nighttime terrors, we might well ask: What scourge that lays waste at noon? Andrew Solomon explains that he chose The Noonday Demon as the title for his book because he found the phrase describes so exactly what one experiences in depression…Most demons — most forms of anguish — rely on the cover of night; to see them clearly is to defeat them. Depression stands in the full glare of the sun, unchallenged by recognition. You can know all the whys and the wherefores and suffer just as much as if you were shrouded by ignorance. There is almost no other mental state of which the same can be said.

Reading fourth- and fifth-century monks such as Evagrius and Cassian, who provide much of the substance of early Christian thought about acedia, we find that, as much as any modern psychiatrist, they knew that awareness of one’s underlying problems was key, but by itself could not effect a healing. These monks had learned that it’s at noon, when the sun is unbearably hot, and one’s energy is drained, that all the knowledge in the world is of little use. Whatever peace and joy one found at prayer in the cool of the morning could all seem false by midday, and the view of “life stretching out for a long period of time” unendurable. “The toil of the ascetic struggle,” which had once seemed the very foundation of life, was now exposed as futile.

That Evagrius characterizes these thoughts as a “demon” (he does not speak of “possession”) matters far less than the exactitude of his description of how despair takes hold of a person. I know that when I am tempted to run from an onerous task in the present, I am likely to picture past times that I now imagine to be better than they were, or to project myself into future events of which I can, in fact, know nothing. I am unable to see the grace that is available to me now, in this place and time. Acedia can flatten any place into a stark desert landscape and make hope a mirage. Time itself becomes unbearable, and I am fifteen years old again, under assault by horrible thoughts that seem mine alone. I have no idea that others have experienced this and lived to tell of it.

A desert monk troubled by “bad thoughts” knew he was not alone. He was expected to seek out an elder and ask for “a word.” But the elder consulted was likely to be reluctant, and even suspicious. If he determined that he was being consulted for the wrong reasons, as a diversion from tedium or an excuse to socialize, he would admonish the seeker to stop looking outward for what he needed to look for within. Lengthy confession or conversation was deemed unnecessary, and the elder’s good word often consisted of Zen-like instruction: “Go, sit in your cell,” said Abba Moses, “and your cell will teach you everything.”

This was a common saying in the desert. Fighting acedia with a focused, intentional stability was considered so vital in maintaining a good relationship with God and one’s fellow monks that elders sometimes gave their disciples advice that contradicted the monastic norms. One counseled, “Go, eat, drink, sleep, do no work, only do not leave your cell.” Astonishingly, given how central prayer was to the monks, another elder advised, “Don’t pray at all, just stay in the cell?’ According to one scholar, this admonition concealed “a fearsome demand” and the elder knew full well “what courage, what heroic endurance was needed to tolerate the demon of acedia. . . the most oppressive of all, whose specialty it is to take a dislike to [staying] in one place.” Call It a Day

That sort of perseverance is still required of us in contending with acedia, and it can still be a discouraging endeavor. In a speech titled “In Praise of Boredom,” the twentieth-century writer Joseph Brodsky described facing ennui head-on, and allowing yourself to be crushed by boredom, for “the sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea.. is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.” Brodsky was addressing American college students, but his words would no doubt resonate with monks, who have long understood “hitting bottom” as recognizing that you are not going anywhere, because you are already there. Can’t we just call it a day, and give our overanxious and ironic selves a rest? Might we consider boredom as not only necessary for our life but also as one of its greatest blessings? A gift, pure and simple, a precious chance to be alone with our thoughts and alone with God?

In claiming boredom in this sense, we approach what monks term a “recollection of the self.” That sounds pleasant enough, but it is far from a narcissistic endeavor: in a pitched battle with acedia, we will come up against the best and the worst in ourselves. Only after this trial can we enjoy, in the words of Saint Bruno, the founder of the extremely ascetic Carthusian order, a newly dynamic solitude, in “leisure that is occupied and activity that is tranquil.” Yet it is always easier for us to busy ourselves than to merely exist. Even important and useful work can distract us from remembering who we are, and what our deeper purpose might be. Monastic wisdom insists that when we are most tempted to feel bored, apathetic, and despondent over the meaningless-ness of life we are on the verge of discovering our true self in relation to God. It is worth not giving up, because when we are willing to do nothing but “be” we meet the God who is the very ground of being, the great “I Am” whom Moses encountered at the burning bush.

One need not be a monk, or even a religious believer, to confront this mystery. In a notebook entry F. Scott Fitzgerald speaks of boredom as not “an end product” but an important and necessary “stage in life and art” acting like a filter that allows “the clear product to emerge.” The philosopher Bertrand Russell describes himself as an unhappy child who realized at the age of five that “if I should live to be seventy, I had only endured so far, a fourteenth part of my whole life, and I felt the long-spread-out boredom ahead of me to be almost unendurable.” What saved him from hating life enough to commit suicide was the “desire to know more mathematics.”

Speaking prophetically to future generations, including our own, he writes that “a generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men … unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, in whom every vital impulse withers.” If I was saved by poetry, and Russell by mathematics, the challenge we faced was the same, that of daring to become an individual. Even as I discovered my vocation as a writer, I had to struggle to maintain the boring work habits necessary for nourishing it. The syndrome that the ancient monks describe is one that I know well. It is just when the work seems most hopeless, and I am hard pressed to care whether I ever write another word or not, that the most valuable breakthroughs are likely to come. When I face trials in my life and work, I have found that the perspective of another — pastor, physician, counselor, editor — can bring me to my senses. But it’s the work I have learned to do on my own — the self-editing, if you will — that has proved the most valuable.

Where acedia is concerned, the desert abbas and ammas advocate plentiful self-editing, and they employ harsh imagery to convey acedia’s power to distract us from it. John Climacus compares the person led astray by acedia to a dumb beast: “Tedium reminds those at prayer of some job to be done, and . . searches out any plausible excuse to drag us from prayer, as though with some kind of baiter]’ Most anyone who has endeavored to maintain the habit of prayer, or making art, or regular exercise or athletic training, knows this syndrome well. When I sit down to pray or to write, a host of thoughts arise. I should call to find out how so-and-so is doing. I should dust and organize my desk, because I will get more work done in a neater space. While I’m at it, I might as well load and start the washing machine. I may truly desire to write, but as I am pulled to one task after another I lose the ability to concentrate on the work at hand. Any activity, even scrubbing the toilet, seems more compelling than sitting down to face the blank page.

My favorite story about this state of mind concerns a university professor who went on sabbatical to write a book, and resolved to keep to a strict work schedule. A colleague who drove by his house one day was surprised to see him in the yard, wearing coveralls and hauling a hose. “I started to work this morning,” the man explained, “and it suddenly occurred to me that I’ve lived here for over five years and have never washed the house.”

It is all a matter of perspective. There is the story of an abba who took a piece of dry wood and told his disciple, “Water this until it bears fruit.” How bizarre, perhaps cruel, an instruction that seems; yet in nurturing a marriage over a span of thirty years, and in keeping to the discipline of writing and revising for even longer, I have often found myself watering dead wood with tears, and with very little hope. I have also been astonished by how those tears have allowed life to emerge out of what had seemed dead.

“Warum sind Sie so ungeduldig?” fragte Tommy Schnell mit schlauem, betrübtem Lächeln, als ich von der Toilette zurückkehrte. Ich hatte ihn, wenige Minuten zuvor, etwas ungehalten auf die Notwendigkeit hingewiesen, langsam mal zur Sache zu kommen. “Sie mit ihren scheiß russischen Patronymen! Warum erzählen Sie mir nicht gleich etwas über das Verhältnis von Bobowskis Tante zu ihrer Schwägerin dritten Grades?” hatte ich geschrien, und dann war ich pissen gegangen. Das Dosenbier hatte mich in Rage versetzt, merkte ich, als ich mein seitenverkehrtes Ebenbild ins Auge zu fassen versuchte, das vor mir hin und her schwankte. Mein Double, hatte ich gedacht, mein rotwangiger Vertrauter, mein weißhalsiger Mitverschwörer, mein Bruder! Und ich hatte das kalte, schmierige Glas der Zugtoilette geküsst.

“Sie sind ungeduldig wie ein Internet-Junkie, Marvin.” Tommy Schnell schüttelte bedauernd den Kopf und ließ das Bier in seiner Dose melancholisch schwappen, wie das Wasser an den fondamenta degli incurabili. “Ich habe mich in Ihnen getäuscht. Sie haben die Geduld nicht, nicht die Substanz, die erforderlich wären, um dieser Sache in ihrer Tiefe …”
“Nein, nein”, unterbrach ich Schnell schnell — denn wenn er natürlich auch nicht ganz und gar im Unrecht war, so liebte ich es keineswegs, mir solche Wahrheiten über meinen Geisteszustand auftischen zu lassen! Ich bitte Sie, meine lieben Leser, natürlich war ich im Arsch! Natürlich war ich ein Pointenreiter, dessen Nervenenden entzündet und dessen Geduldsfäden abgewetzt waren von Jahren sinnloser Warterei. Ich war ein Träumer, ein Idealist, der auf windige Versprechen einer bevorstehenden Erlösung hereingefallen war! In dem Glauben, auf eine große Zeit zu warten, hatte ich meine Abende mit Fernsehserien und Feierabendbier gefüllt. Ich hatte über Cartoonfiguren gelacht und Tränen vergossen um die Geschicke fiktiver Gefährten. Ich hatte auf einem riesigen Stapel von Kisten gesessen, und jede einzelne war mit dem Wort “ZUKUNFT” beschriftet gewesen, in Versalien. Ich hatte es für mein Kapital gehalten, doch es war eine Zeitbombe gewesen — deren tückische Wirkung darin bestand, dass sie nicht explodierte, nie, ja dass sie nicht einmal Sprengstoff enthielt! Es waren nur leere Kisten, wie bei einem Kunstwerk von Andy Warhol, tote Augen unter meinem Arsch, die mit mir gemeinsam in den flimmernden Fernseher gestarrt hatten.

Was war passiert? Während Tommy Schnell mich für meine Ungeduld maßregelte, versuchte ich mir Klarheit darüber zu verschaffen, wieso ich aus diesem armen Säufer einen Grund herauszupressen versuchte, am Leben zu sein. Es war eine Geschichte, merkte ich irgendwann, wie Sie vielleicht auch Ihnen widerfahren ist: Jemand hatte mir einst erzählt, dass der Tag kommen werde, an dem es auf mich ankäme, und ich hatte ausgehalten, wie der Ritter in einer alten Legende, der nicht von seinem Posten weicht, weil sein Kaiser auf ihn zählt. Ich hatte gewartet und mein Herz an Visionen einer besseren, gerechteren Gesellschaft gewärmt. Und nun? Nun sagte Tommy Schnell unvermittelt zu mir:
“Woher kennen Sie eigentlich die Schwägerin dritten Grades von Bobowskis Tante?”

Still from "Notebook #4", 5-Channel Video/Sound Installation

Andrea Flamini
Blind Files

10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Review Studios Exhibition Space
1708 Campbell
Kansas City, MO
816.994.7134

Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, noon-4 p.m. Saturday
Runs through: June 12

Artist’s site: http://www.flamini.com
Gallery site: http://www.ereview.org

Walking out of the Review Studios Exhibition Space after seeing — and hearing — Andrea Flamini’s Blind Files is a bit like waking up from a dream of great import and even greater mystery.

How else to explain Joseph Brodsky’s half-heard poetry  … the flickering visuals, resolving and dissolving … the oddly erotic spectacle of bound wooden curves?

Flamini haunts at every turn and in every medium: video, black-and-white photography, painting and installation. Even the placement of two pieces — ROMA (cello) and The Act of Watching, #2 (Vivre sa vie) — is both strange and perfect. Neither is immediately visible upon entering the gallery. They’re worth the search.

Flamini’s descriptions of his pieces, under the heading of On subtracting, only add to the dreamlike feeling.

His note for Blind Files, a series of photographs taken from the book that gave this show its title:

On searching for the point of tension between an image and its breaking point. A space between the aesthetic image and a mental one. Between an idealized visual space of objects and events goverened by light, and a blind one governed by near-darkness. A darkened space where to anchor to better understand the visual, the mental and the physical space.

As with any particularly affecting dream, it would be best not to over-describe this one. To do so is to flirt with trivializing the experience, to focus on its improbable aspects (“There were these deer carcasses hanging … and this sort of Man Ray thing going on … and the screens were curved!”) rather than on the lasting impressions it leaves.

Better to see this with your own eyes — not rapidly moving behind shuttered lids, but wide open and lucid.

And don’t forget to look in the corner …

    
Marshal Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov      

Originally uploaded by Diggerjohn

НА СМЕРТЬ ЖУКОВА

Вижу колонны замерших внуков,
Гроб на лафете, лошади круп.
Ветер сюда не доносит мне звуков
Русских военных плачущих труб.
Вижу в регалии убранный труп:
В смерть уезжает пламенный Жуков.

Воин, пред коим многие пали
Стены, хоть меч был вражьих тупей,
Блеском маневра о Ганнибале
Напоминавший средь волжских степей.
Кончивший дни свои глухо, в опале,
как Велизарий или Помпей.

Сколько он пролил крови солдатской
В землю чужую! Что ж, горевал?
Вспомнил ли их, умирающий в штатской
Белой кровати? Полный провал.
Что он ответит, встретившись в адской
Области с ними? “Я воевал”.

К правому делу Жуков десницы
Больше уже не приложит в бою.
Спи! У истории русской страницы
Хватит для тех, кто в пехотном строю
Смело входили в чужие столицы,
Но возвращались в страхе в свою.

Маршал! Поглотит алчная Лета
Эти слова и твоих прахоря.
Все же, прими их —\ жалкая лепта
Родину спасшему, вслух говоря.
Бей, барабан, и, военная флейта,
Громко свистит на манер снегиря.

–Иосиф Бродский, 1974

ON THE DEATH OF ZHUKOV
Columns of grandsons, stiff at attention;
gun carriage, coffin, riderless horse.
Wind brings no sound of their glorious Russian
trumpets, their weeping trumpets of war.
Splendid regalia deck out the corpse:
thundering Zhukov rolls towrd death’s mansion.

As a commander, making walls crumble,
he held a sword less sharp than his foe’s.
Brilliant maneuvers across Volga flatlands
found him, like Pompey, fallen and humbled–
like Belisarius banned and disgraced.

How much dark blood, soldier’s blood did he spill then
on alien fields? Did he weep for his men?
As he lay dying, did he recall them–
swathed in white sheets at the end?
He gives no answer. What will he tell them,
meeting in hell? “We were fighting to win.”

Zhukov’s right arm, which once was enlisted
in a just cause, will battle no more.
Sleep! Russian history holds, as is fitting,
space for the exploits of those who, though bold,
marching triumphant through foreign cities,
trembled in terror when they came home.

Marshal! These words will be swallowed by Lethe,
utterly lost, like your rough soldier boots.
Still, take this tribute, though it is little,
to one who somehow–here I speak truth
plain and aloud–has saved our embattled
homeland. Drum, beat! And shriek out, bullfinch fife!

–Joseph Brodsky (b. 24 May 1940)

Translation by George L. Cline

(More Brodsky resources and links here.)

Er überlegte lange, ob er wirklich einen Kommentar hinterlassen sollte. Früher hatte er diese Art von Kontakt gesucht, aber immer war es ihm entglitten. Es war ausgeufert, vor allem unter dem Einfluss von Alkohol. Und er hatte eigentlich meist unter dem Einfluss von Alkohol gestanden. Er hatte Streit gesucht, weil er wusste, dass der Streit auf geradem Wege in Verzweiflung führte, und in aller Regel hatte er Streit auch gefunden. Himmel, nein, dass er eine besonders stabile Persönlichkeit gewesen war, konnte man wirklich nicht behaupten!

War das heute anders?

Er klappte den Laptop zu und stand auf, wollte sich dieser Selbstprüfung nicht unterziehen. Er beschloss, sein Hotelzimmer zu verlassen, bevor die Gedanken ihn wieder unter Normalnull gezogen hatten. Um die Minibar machte er einen Bogen. Man machte seine Erfahrungen, und selbst, wenn man glaubte, dabei klug vorzugehen, im Großen und Ganzen, kam der Augenblick, da man einfach mit dem Kopf durch die Wand musste. Vielleicht gar nicht unbedingt, weil man es selbst darauf angelegt hatte. Sehr viel wahrscheinlicher war, dass jemand einen mit dem Kopf durch die Wand stieß. Man selbst wäre auf diese Idee vielleicht nie gekommen.

Mit Malte Laurids Brigge und seiner todesschwer-modernen Mutlosigkeit in der Tasche überquerte er auf einem Vaporetto das Wasser, hinüber nach San Michele tuckernd, zur Toteninsel. Voller Böcklin’scher Vorfreude blätterte er in dem seegrasgrünen Insel-Bändchen. Er stellte sich vor, wie er zwischen den Reihen von Grabsteinen dahinziehen würde und über die Endlichkeit aller Dinge nachsinnen. Dann aber, als die hohen, kühlen Backsteinmauern von San Michele schaukelnd an ihm vorüberzogen, verließ ihn die Lust, sich diesem neuerlichen Anhauch des Tragischen auszusetzen, und er nahm wieder Platz. Er fuhr weiter nach Murano.

Murano, die Glasbläserinsel. Er machte einen weiten Spaziergang im sinkenden Licht, am Wasser entlang, über schmale, luftige Brücken hinweg. In einem kleinen Metallkiosk trank er einen Caffè. Ein Mensch im blauen Arbeitsanzug schüttete sich aus vor Lachen, über irgendwas. Verrückt, dass hier tatsächlich 80 von 100 Geschäften der Glasbläserei gewidmet waren. Als Mensch, der nicht aus der Glasbläserwelt kam, hielt man die Glasbläserei ja eher für etwas Marginales. Hier jedoch stürzte man sich mit einer Leidenschaft ins Glasblasen, die vielleicht auch Malte Laurids Brigge hätte kurieren können.

Jedenfalls tat es gut, diese zerbrechlichen Spinnereien aus Luft in den Auslagen der Läden zu betrachten, in Blau und Rot und Meergrün, in allen unwahrscheinlichen Farben der Phantasie. Jemand hatte sich die Mühe gemacht, diese Hirngespinste durch seine Lungen und in geisterhafte Formen zu jagen, und nun verharrten sie im unbestimmten, halb außerweltlichen Schwebezustand zwischen Sein und Nichtsein. Hamletische Figuren, dachte er, und ihm fiel ein, dass er einst an einem Roman geschrieben hatte, dessen Held “Malthe” hieß, ein Anagramm, wie geistreich, von Hamlet. Auch das, fand er, war tröstlich.

I am stunned by the similarity of Joseph Brodsky’s commencement speech to that of DFW’s. Both address the issue of dealing with boredom in adulthood. Though each of them (cranky phrase: rather use ‘they’ or ‘they each’? – I am teh suck) explores the problem differently, both insist that embracing boredom is essential. This nugget by Brodksy is priceless:

Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one’s mental equilibrium. It is your window on time’s infinity. Once this window opens, don’t try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open. For boredom speaks the language of time, and it teaches you the most valuable lesson of your life: the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. “You are finite,” time tells you in the voice of boredom, “and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.” As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of the limited significance of even your best, most ardent actions, is better than the illusion of their consequences and the attendant self-aggrandizement.

I had good fun back in college reading Beckett’s characters playing with stones and counting their farts, etc. but now that I am dealing with this dreaded thing myself, it’s only funny on a meta-level. But perhaps I am taking these words (and my own situation) a bit too earnestly.

(via Kottke)

Los ojos emocionados de Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) en la película “El lector” de Stephen Daldry cuando escucha a Michael Berg leyéndole pasajes de “La dama del perrito” de Chejov o de “La Odisea“,  no se emocionan ni se compadecen sin embargo ante las vidas de mujeres condenadas a muerte en los campos de concentración, y esto nos lleva de la mano al gran debate sobre si las artes y la literatura pueden incidir en algún momento y de algún modo sobre las formas del mal.

Joseph Brodsky, en su Discurso de recepción del Premio Nobel en 1987, (“Inusual semblante“, en “Del dolor y la razón” (Destino) afirmaba que, “para alguien familiarizado con la obra de Dickens, matar en nombre de una idea resulta más problemático que para alguien que no ha leído nunca a Dickens. Y hablo precisamente de leer a Dickens, Sterne, Stendhal, Dostoievski, Flaubert, Balzac, Melville, Proust o Musil; es decir, hablo de literatura, no de alfabetismo o educación. Una persona cultivada, tras leer algún tratado o folleto político, puede ser sin duda capaz de matar a un semejante y sentir incluso un rapto de convicción. Lenin era una persona culta, Stalin era una persona culta, Hitler también lo era; y Mao Zedong incluso escribía poesía. Sin embargo, el rasgo que todos estos hombres tenían en común consistía en que su lista de sentenciados a muerte era más larga que su lista de lecturas”.

Hanna Schmitz no sabe leer pero escucha la lectura. Esas lecturas entran por sus oídos y van emocionando sus ojos y alterando su espíritu. Le impresiona Chejov, le impresiona Homero. Si hubiera sabido leer, si hubiera leído, ¿ habría actuado quizá de otra forma? La literatura, la música – la belleza, en resumen -¿influye beneficiosamente sobre la superficie del mal?. “No sabemos – dice Steiner en “Lenguaje y silencio” (Gedisa) – si el estudio de las humanidades, de lo más noble que se ha dicho y pensado, contribuye efectivamente a humanizar. No lo sabemos; e indudablemente hay algo terrible en dudar si el estudio y el placer que se encuentra en Shakespeare hacen a un hombre menos capaz de organizar un campo de concentración. Hace poco uno de mis colegas, un erudito eminente, me preguntaba, con sincera perplejidad, por qué alguien que quiere entrar en una facultad de literatura inglesa ha de referirse con tanta frecuencia a los campos de concentración; ¿tienen algo que ver con el tema? Tienen mucho que ver y antes de seguir enseñando debemos preguntarnos: ¿son humanas las humanidades? y si lo son, ¿por qué se esfumaron al caer las tinieblas?”.

(Imágenes: 1.-”(Scholar).-America Series.- 1991.-por Benny Andrews.-artnet/ 2.- Mujer leyendo.-Matisse)

As poetry-type readers in the UK will know, political poetry is being discussed a lot around the place at the moment – what with the current issue of Poetry Review being dedicated to it, especially. However, it seems to be an international – or maybe perennial, universal – Zeitgeist. I was reading a blog that’s new to me – Bullets of Love: the VRZHU Press poetry & arts blog – and found this interesting nugget from America in the comments box:

The contradiction… between the political ineffectiveness in poetry (especially in countries or communities that don’t feel disenfranchised), on the one hand, and the refusal of poets to be happy about this is an important one. I’ve been chasing down the history of the idea, and the social conditions around it, for a while (ending up in 18th century English coffeehouses with Addison and Steele and in Parisian bohemia with Baudelaire), but the answer that seems to be emerging from all this research is a version of your ‘So poetry, orphaned, wanders around in the dark looking for a place to be’… Once aesthetic activity breaks free of service to church and state, and once (as is sometimes the case) it steps away from the marketplace, its raison d’etre is no longer obvious. One of the frequent justifications of poetry under these conditions is to say that it has only a private relevance, but another frequent justification is to claim some large-scale political relevance. Perhaps paradoxically, it is often the least overtly ‘engaged’ kind of writing for which these claims are made. This, I think, is connected to the idea that such writing represents a fundamental rethinking of things, rather than an attempt to accomplish particular political goal (in the ‘poets against the war’ vein).”

That’s written by Robert Archambeau, who writes a very interesting blog, and turns out to be a fellow Salt poet on the US list.

Meanwhile, Patrick Kurp got me reading Joseph Brodsky’s Nobel lecture again earlier. I really do think it always snaps straight back to Brodsky if you have any questions about the role of poetry in the life of a nation (or, I suppose, “the people”); his books of essays, Less than One and On Grief and Reason are two of my most important possessions (the first especially, because it’s signed). Brodsky says:

“The real danger for a writer is not so much the possibility (and often the certainty) of persecution on the part of the state, as it is the possibility of finding oneself mesmerized by the state’s features, which, whether monstrous or undergoing changes for the better, are always temporary.”

And he says:

Nowadays, there exists a rather widely held view, postulating that in his work a writer, in particular a poet, should make use of the language of the street, the language of the crowd. For all its democratic appearance, and its palpable advantages for a writer, this assertion is quite absurd and represents an attempt to subordinate art, in this case, literature, to history.” This very interesting thought, which I am inserting an aside into so you can savour it for a moment, continues thus: “It is only if we have resolved that it is time for Homo sapiens to come to a halt in his development that literature should speak the language of the people. Otherwise, it is the people who should speak the language of literature.”

(This, for all you people who think that might not be “accessible,” is what the Bible was. It’s also what the working men’s colleges, circulating libraries, subscription libraries, book clubs and state education were about. It started with Alfred the Great and ended with Big Brother.)

And this, on poetry as a guard against evil:

“…A man with taste, particularly literary taste, is less susceptible to the refrains and the rhythmical incantations peculiar to any version of political demagogy. The point is not so much that virtue does not constitute a guarantee for producing a masterpiece, as that evil, especially political evil, is always a bad stylist. The more substantial an individual’s aesthetic experience is, the sounder his taste, the sharper his moral focus, the freer – though not necessarily the happier – he is.”

He goes on:

“…In the history of Homo sapiens, the book is anthropological development, similar essentially to the invention of the wheel. Having emerged in order to give us some idea not so much of our origins as of what that sapiens is capable of, a book constitutes a means of transportation through the space of experience, at the speed of a turning page. This movement, like every movement, becomes a flight from the common denominator, from an attempt to elevate this denominator’s line, previously never reaching higher than the groin, to our heart, to our consciousness, to our imagination.”

and to:

“…the Russian tragedy is precisely the tragedy of a society in which literature turned out to be the prerogative of the minority: of the celebrated Russian intelligentsia.”

Patrick Kurp also throws this us little rosebud from Samuel Johnson:

“Books without the knowledge of life are useless, for what should books teach but the art of living?”

It’s that old translation business again, but as we all deal with it: the inner translation each of us must do whenever we put pen to paper. I wrote about it the other week, in relation to the Catalan poet Joan Margarit and his image of a crypt, which is the first language, opened perhaps by a secret password, and the “cathedral” of the common cultural language. Now we have Seamus Heaney (and, at second hand, or rather peering over Heaney’s shoulder to do a bit of back-seat driving, Ted Hughes) at it as well:

“Every writer lives between the vernacular given – whether it be the vernacular of Oxford or of the Caribbean – and some received idiom from the tradition. Ted Hughes had a marvellous little parable about this. Imagine, he said, a flock of gazelles grazing. One gazelle flicks its tail and all the gazelles flick their tails as if to say ‘We are eternal gazelle’. Most writers, Hughes says, have a first speech of that sort – a dialect of the tribe or the class or whatever. Suppose they are in a foreign city and they hear a familiar accent, it’s like a gazelle tail flicking, so then the other gazelle flicks and thinks, ‘Ah, I’m at home here, I’m strong here’. For every writer, there’s that first language and then there’s the lingua franca.”

SEE! I was right. I said at the time that I thought this was the same for everybody, and I’m vindicated. Not that I needed vindicating. Here’s what I said:

“It strikes me though that there is another way of reading this idea, too, which is less about empirical – or “cultural” – language, and more about each person’s own private language – our unconscious lexicon, our dream world which has its own language, unknown even to us except in translation. In other words, we are all simultaneously translating our inner material, our crypt-material, as we go. (For Margarit this will add another layer to his process…)”

Three weeks ago I asked what Brodsky would make of it. According to Heaney: “Joseph Brodsky believed we must keep to the lingua franca of the forms, but I am equally inclined to the gazelle-speak of south Derry.”

There we have it. Well, that was from the Guardian’s extract from the interview with Denis O’Driscoll (and they are in conversation on a stage in London even as I speak. Shame…) More to follow, I hope, when I’ve seen the book.

I’m posting this at Baroque in Hackney, too.

William Carlos Williams

Joseph Brodsky

Witold Grombrowicz

Ruth Stephan

James Weldon Johnson

Edith Wharton

Há crimes piores do que queimar livros. Um deles é não lê-los“

. Joseph Brodsky .