Month: November 2008

I thought I’d balance yesterday’s “Remorse” against two poems that appear in the last 100 pages of Borges Selected Poems, two poems that are certainly much more optimistic than “Remorse.” The first of these includes a reference to Shinto deities, which took me directly to What are Kami since I know absolutely nothing about Shintoism, though, in retrospect, the first stanza of the poem stands quite well on its own.

SHINTO
 
When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us–
touch us and move on.

In essence, Borges seems to be saying that when we are depressed that the humblest thing can help us shake that depression if only we are “mindful” of it. Most, though not all of the things he lists, appeal to our senses directly, like “the taste of fruit,” the “first jasmine of November,” or, even, ” a sudden physical pain.” This seems to suggest that if we actually live in the moment we can escape our sorrow.

He expands on these ideas in “Happiness.”

HAPPINESS

Whoever embraces a woman is Adam. The woman is Eve.
Everything happens for the first time.
I saw something white in the sky. They tell me it is the moon, but
what can I do with a word and a mythology.
Trees frighten me a little. They are so beautiful.
The calm animals come closer so that I may tell them their names.
The books in the library have no letters. They spring forth when I open
them.
Leafing through the atlas I project the shape of Sumatra.
Whoever lights a match in the dark is inventing fire.
Inside the mirror an Other waits in ambush.
Whoever looks at the ocean sees England.
Whoever utters a line of Liliencron has entered into battle.
I have dreamed Carthage and the legions that destroyed Carthage.
I have dreamed the sword and the scale.
Praised be the love wherein there is no possessor and no possessed, but
both surrender.
Praised be the nightmare, which reveals to us that we have the power to
create hell.
Whoever goes down to a river goes down to the Ganges.
Whoever looks at an hourglass sees the dissolution of an empire.
Whoever plays with a dagger foretells the death of Caesar.
Whoever dreams is every human being.
In the desert I saw the young Sphinx, which has just been sculpted.
There is nothing else so ancient under the sun.
Everything happens for the first time, but in a way that is eternal.
Whoever reads my words is inventing them.

I particularly like lines like “Everything happens for the first time” because, as I remember it, that is precisely the way it feels the first time you do something. That’s precisely the reason I search out new things to do. And, of course, I’m struck by lines like “Trees frighten me a little. They are so beautiful,” a line that reminds me a lot of lines from Whitman.

Mike sent me this note, “Borges (in his criticism) takes Whitman to task for his glorification of the personality, insinuating that it’s a poor substitute for more substantial writing: ‘He believed he had only to enumerate the names of things in order to make their unique and surprising nature immediately palpable …From Whitman on, many have been caught up in this same fallacy.'” While that may be true, the lines beginning “Whoever…” seem to me to mirror Whitman’s technique.

And it would certainly be easy to imagine Whitman saying, “Everything happens for the first time, but in a way that is eternal.”

For some reason Borges’

REMORSE

I have committed the worst sin of all
That a man can commit. I have not been
Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion
Drag me and mercilessly let me fall.
My parents bred and bore me for a higher
Faith in the human game of nights and days;
For earth, for air, for water, and for fire.
I let them down. I wasn’t happy. My ways
Have not fulfilled their youthful hope. I gave
My mind to the symmetric stubbornness
Of art, and all its webs of pettiness.
They willed me bravery. I wasn’t brave.
It never leaves my side, since I began:
This shadow of having been a brooding man.

reminds me of Roethke’s The Right Thing
which contains the line, “The right thing happens to the happy man.” The poems seem like opposite sides of the same coin.

Of course, no one really believes that not being happy is the “worst sin of all,” but it provides a dramatic introduction to the poem. If you asked almost any parent what they most wanted for their kids,I think they would say, ” I want them to be happy.” It was certainly my dream for my kids, and I was willing to sacrifice some of my own immediate happiness to ensure that happiness. It is what my parents wanted for me.

Considering his fame and success, it’s surprising to hear the poet argue that his devotion to art, to “all its webs of pettiness,” has caused his unhappiness. Those who aspire to be artists must imagine that being a successful artist will bring them happiness. Borges would seem to argue otherwise, to argue that in order to be a “successful” artist you have to give in to that pettiness.

It’s not clear why he thinks he hasn’t been “brave,” but one might guess from the last line that it has something to do with having become a “brooding man,” a quality that probably contributed to his literary success.