The Whole Five Feet

Volume 41

English Poetry II: Collins to Fitzgerald

From William Cowper's On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture out of Norfolk

My mother! when I learnt that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?
Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss:
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss--
Ah, that maternal smile! It answers--Yes.
I heard the bell toll on thy burial day,
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,
And, turning from my nursery window, drew
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu!
But was it such?--It was.--Where thou art gone
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,
The parting word shall pass my lips no more!

From Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain-side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

Robert Southey's The Scholar

My days among the Dead are past;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old:
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.

With them I take delight in weal
And seek relief in woe;
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedew'd
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the Dead; with them
I live in long-past years,
Their virtues love, their faults condemn,
Partake their hopes and fears,
And from their lessons seek and find
Instruction with an humble mind.

My hopes are with the Dead; anon
My place with them will be,
And I with them shall travel on
Through all Futurity;
Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.

Leigh Hunt's Jenny Kiss'd Me

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
  Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
  Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
  Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
      Jenny kiss'd me.

From Keat's Ode to a Nightingale

O, for a draught of vintage, that hath been
  Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
  Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
    With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
        And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
  And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
  What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
  Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
        And leaden-eyed despairs;
  Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
    Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

--CRB, November 5, 2007

Volume 42

English Poetry III: Tennyson to Whitman

From Tennyson's Ulysses

There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

From Tennyson's Maud

There has fallen a splendid tear
  From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
  She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
  And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
  And the lily whispers, "I wait."

She is coming, my own, my sweet,
  Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
  Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
  Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
  And blossom in purple and red.

Matthew Arnold's Shakespeare

Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil'd searching of mortality;
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst walk on earth unguess'd at. Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
  All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,
  Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

Swinburne's A Match

IF love were what the rose is,
  And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
  Green pleasure or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
  And I were like the leaf.

If I were what the words are,
  And love were like the tune,
With double sound and single
Delight our lips would mingle,
With kisses glad as birds are
  That get sweet rain at noon;
If I were what the words are
  And love were like the tune.

If you were life, my darling,
  And I your love were death,
We�d shine and snow together
Ere March made sweet the weather
With daffodil and starling
  And hours of fruitful breath;
If you were life, my darling,
  And I your love were death.

If you were thrall to sorrow,
  And I were page to joy,
We�d play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
  And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
  And I were page to joy.

If you were April's lady,
  And I were lord in May,
We'd throw with leaves for hour
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day like night were shady
  And night were bright like day;
If you were April's lady,
  And I were lord in May.

If you were queen of pleasure,
  And I were king of pain,
We�d hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
  And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure.
  And I were king of pain.

From Longfellow's Children

Come to me, O ye children!
  And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing
  In your sunny atmosphere.

For what are all our contrivings,
  And the wisdom of our books,
When compared with your caresses,
  And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads
  That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
  And all the rest are dead.

And, a personal favorite, Walt Whitman's Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun

1

GIVE me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content,
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturb'd,
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire,
Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a rural domestic life,
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only,
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!
These demanding to have them (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack'd by the war-strife),
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,
While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,
Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me up,
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me forever faces;
(Oh I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for).

2

Keep your splendid silent sun,
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets--give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes--give me women--give me comrades and lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day--let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of the trumpets and drums!
(The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flush'd and reckless,
Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torchlight procession!
The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,
Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets (even the sight of the wounded),
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

--CRB, November 8, 2007

Volume 43

American Historical Documents: 1000 - 1904

For better or worse, most of the Classics are no longer looked on as essential in the way they were when the Shelf was compiled. But if there is one volume whose contents should still be considered required reading for all educated Americans, it's this collection of American history. It begins with first-hand reports of the successive arrivals in the New World of the Vikings, Columbus, Vespucci, and Cabot. But the bulk of the volume tells the story of our country's founding, its expansion, and its survival through civil war. In keeping with the Shelf's unspoken policy towards history, this story is told entirely through primary documents. Here, then, are the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the first of the Federalist Papers.

Here, too are a number of treaties written in almost comically collegial tones. The 1783 Treaty with Great Britain ending the Revolution notes the wish of the two countries to forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wish to restore.  Just thirty years later, at the end of the War of 1812, the same two countries commit to restoring, upon principles of perfect reciprocity, peace, friendship, and good understanding between them.  The Treaty with Mexico that gave Texas to the U.S. also expressed a sincere desire to put an end to the calamities of the war which unhappily exists between the two Republics, and to establish upon a solid basis relations of peace and friendship, which shall confer reciprocal benefits upon the citizens of both, and assure the concord, harmony, and mutual confidence wherein the two people should live, as good neighbours.

Taken together, these treaties -- along with others entered into with France and Spain and Russia -- document the fitful, piecemeal expansion of the United States, which has since come to seem so inevitable. They also paint a picture of war as a kind of gentleman's game, after which the opposing parties meet at halfcourt to shake hands. Which makes it all the more incredible to find, in the middle of this volume, Frank Aretas Haskell's Account of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Haskell served at Gettysburg as the aide-de-camp to General John Gibbon. He died in battle about a year later. In between, he wrote this letter to his brother, more than a hundred pages long, describing the battle. In this letter, there is not mistaking that war, even a just one, is more than a game:

All senses for the time are dead but the one of sight. The roar of the discharges and the yells of the enemy all pass unheeded; but the impassioned soul is all eyes, and sees all things, that the smoke does not hide. How madly the battery men are driving home the double charges of canister in those broad-mouthed Napoleons, whose fire seems almost to reach the enemy. How rapidly these long, blue-coated lines of infantry deliver their file fire down the slope.

But there is no faltering--the men stand nobly to their work. Men are dropping dead or wounded on all sides, by scores and by hundreds, and the poor mutilated creatures, some with an arm dangling, some with a leg broken by a bullet, are limping and crawling towards the rear. They make no sound of complaint or pain, but are as silent as if dumb and mute. A sublime heroism seems to pervade all, and the intuition that to lose that crest, all is lost. How our officers, in the work of cheering on and directing the men, are falling.

As this passage may suggest, the most remarkable of the many remarkable things about this letter, is the rhetorical heights to which it sometimes climbs:

Already, as I rode down from the heights, nature's mysterious loom was at work, joining and weaving on her ceaseless web the shells had broken there. Another spring shall green these trampled slopes, and flowers, planted by unseen hands, shall bloom upon these graves; another autumn and the yellow harvest shall ripen there--all not in less, but in higher perfection for this poured out blood. In another decade of years, in another century, or age, we hope that the Union, by the same means, may repose in a securer peace and bloom in a higher civilization. Then what matters it if lame Tradition glean on this field and hand down her garbled sheaf--if deft story with furtive fingers plait her ballad wreaths, deeds of her heroes here? or if stately history fill as she list her arbitrary tablet, the sounding record of this fight? Tradition, story, history--all will not efface the true, grand epic of Gettysburg.

Surrounded as it is by Lincoln's Inaugural Address on one side and his Gettysburg Address on the other, this letter suggests a great historical moment inspiring men to unusual levels of eloquence. Even more, it suggests a kind of pre-lapsarian time when the English language, even for politicians, had not yet been debased, when it could still be used not just to sell and to spin but to stir.

--CRB, November 12, 2007

Volume 44

The Sayings of Confucius

Though his Analects begin this first of the Classics' two volumes of Sacred Writings, Confucius was an ethical and political philosopher, rather than a spiritual leader as such. Like Machiavelli or Francis Bacon, he has little to say about the invisible workings of this life or the next, and much to say about navigating the world as we know it. But unlike these thinkers, he maps out a world of ethical and moral responsibilty rather than self-interest, which is one reason why his teachings are so easily conflated with religious traditions. An exchange like the following one would be unlikely to appear in Machiavelli:

Duke Ai asked: What should be done to make the people loyal?

Confucius answered: Exalt the straight, set aside the crooked, the people will be loyal. Exalt the crooked, set aside the straight, the people will be disloyal.

At times, Confucius sounds like an Eastern version of Socrates, as when he says, To know what we know, and know what we do not know, that is understanding, or To learn the truth at daybreak and die at eve were enough. But he also makes much use of figurative language, which may be why he often sounds mystical, even when he is being rather mundane: Without truth I know not how man can live. A cart without a crosspole, a carriage without harness, how could they be moved?

Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes

The Classic's selection from the Hebrew Bible includes nothing from the Torah -- the five books that begin the Bible and are unquestionably the most important documents for the Jewish faith. The more charitable explanation for this fact would be that the editors eschewed historical and theological importance for literary worth. The less charitable explanation would be that the editors chose those books that most strongly suggest something lacking in the divine order that might be addressed by the arrival of Jesus Christ. Both explanations are plausible: Job, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes are all among the most beautiful in the Bible; they are also all among the most disappointed. Many of the prophetic books include lamentations about the behavior of the Israelites, but very few contain anything like Psalm Thirteen:

How long, O Jehovah? wilt thou forget me for ever?
How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
Having sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O Jehovah my God:
Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death;
Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him;
Lest mine adversaries rejoice when I am moved.

Or the famous opening from Psalm Twenty-Two:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou answerest not;
And in the night season, and am not silent.
But thou art holy,
O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
Our fathers trusted in thee:
They trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
They cried unto thee, and were delivered:
They trusted in thee, and were not put to shame.
But I am a worm, and no man;
A reproach of men, and despised of the people.

Of course, most of the the Psalms take a more positive view of God's presence in the lives of his chosen people, but throughout this book there is no mistaking one central fact: things aren't going well on the ground for the Israelites. Even Psalms that praise God often begin as stark pleas for help:

Unto thee, O Jehovah, will I call:
My rock, be not thou deaf unto me;
Lest, if thou be silent unto me,
I become like them that go down into the pit.
Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee,
When I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.
Draw me not away with the wicked,
And with the workers of iniquity;
That speak peace with their neighbors,
But mischief is in their hearts.
Give them according to their work, and according to the wickedness of their doings:
Give them after the operation of their hands;
Render to them their desert.
Because they regard not the works of Jehovah,
Nor the operation of his hands,
He will break them down and not build them up.

Blessed be Jehovah,
Because he hath heard the voice of my supplications.
Jehovah is my strength and my shield;
My heart hath trusted in him, and I am helped:
Therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth;
And with my song will I praise him.
Jehovah is their strength,
And he is a stronghold of salvation to his anointed.
Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance:
Be their shepherd also, and bear them up for ever.

The drama that is being enacted here on the political level -- the drama of the suffering of God's people -- is enacted on the personal level in the Book of Job.  Ecclesiastes, too, is much occupied by the problem of evil under the sun.  The book fascinates with its voice, which borders at times on nihilism:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath man of all his labor wherein he laboreth under the sun? One generation goeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to its place where it ariseth. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it turneth about continually in its course, and the wind returneth again to its circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again. All things are full of weariness; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Reading these books, one is tempted to conclude that their beauty and their uneasiness are in fact intimately related. Their is a profound poignancy to their disappointments, which are so utterly human. Eliot and his peers couldn't possibly have intended this, but these books speak more clearly than many others he might have chosen to an age that feels increasingly forsaken.

Luke and Acts

There's a rather startling narrative turn in the sixteenth chapter of The Acts of the Apostles. The book's early chapters concern Peter and the other apostles going out among their fellow Jews to preach the word of Christ. Along the way, we hear about the martyrdom of Stephen at the feet of a young man named Saul. Saul, of course, was among the leading persecutors of the early Christians before his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus. After this conversation, he will arrive in Damascus to proclaim Jesus and to make a daring escape out of the hands of the Jews.  From this point forward, Acts is taken up almost entirely by the work of Saul -- or Paul, as he is renamed. He will be called to preach to the Gentiles -- a calling that doesn't agree with many other leaders of the early Church. Which brings us to this moment:

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: There was a man of Macedonia standing, beseeching him, and saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. And when he had seen the vision, straightway we sought to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel unto them. Setting sail therefore from Troas, we made a straight course to Samothrace, and the day following to Neapolis; and from thence to Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, the first of the district, a Roman colony: and we were in this city tarrying certain days.

This we and us are completely new developments.  By now Luke -- the narrator of Acts -- has given us his entire Gospel and much of this history of the early Church without once acknowledging that he is a companion of Paul's. We look back now with fresh eyes at certain passages from his Gospel:

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and his neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that even so there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine righteous persons, who need no repentance. Or what woman having ten pieces 2 of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a lamp, and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth together her friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost. Even so, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

I don't think it's too much to say that Luke has been preparing us from the very beginning for the greatest prodigal son of them all, Saul of Tarsus. By the end of Acts, he has become a nearly God-like figure himself; one of the books last scenes involves Paul laying on hands to heal a dying man. A different writer might have told a very different story. And indeed, the three other Gospel writers did tell much of Luke's story differently. It's a striking reminder of how much perspective matters, even in books that some think of as the word of God.

--CRB, November 20, 2007

Volume 45

Corinthians I & II and Hymns

In the first volume of Sacred Writing, Christianity was represented by the Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke, who was one of Paul's followers in the early church. This Pauline emphasis is continued in the the second volume, which begins with Paul's letters to the Corinthians. It's true that Luke's two books and Paul's epistles make up the bulk of the New Testemant, but taken alone they offer an incomplete view of Christian scripture. Mostly, the Classics ignore the Johnnine material -- John's Gospel and the Book of Revelation.

What's the difference?  Well, the Gospel of John is substantially more mystical than the three synoptic Gospels, and it emphasizes the divinity of Jesus to a much larger degree. As for Revelation, it's sheer strangeness has made it the most popular New Testament books among casual readers. The mystical and apocalyptic elements of Christianity are much in vogue these days, but to men like those who edited the Harvard Classics, admirers of Emersonian Unitarianism, Christianity mostly meant a stable social structure and an almost rationalist ethical system. One can see why they would avoid John, and why they would be drawn to Paul, who emphasizes action in the world and the practical matters of Church organization.

Indeed, some of the most famous passages of Paul's letters read something like modern arguments for right action over religious dogma:

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is king; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away.

Buddhist Writings

One consequence, probably unintended, of the editorial emphasis throughout the selection of Judeo-Christian scripture is to make the eastern religions that round out this volume seem more foreign to the western reader than they probably are. There is nothing in the Job or Acts to prepare us for their elaborate cosmologies and schemes of reincarnation represented in Buddhist and Hindu writing. But once we have assimilated these elements, both faiths emerge in this volume as remarkably practical worldviews.

There is a great section among the Buddhist writings entitled, Questions Which Tend Not to Edification.  In it, a religious seeker complains:

These theories which The Blessed One [i.e., the Buddha] has left unelucidated, has set aside and rejected,--that the world is eternal, that the world is not eternal, that the world is finite, that the world is infinite, that the soul and the body are identical, that the soul is one thing and the body another, that the saint exists after death, that the saint does not exist after death, that the saint both exists and does not exist after death, that the saint neither exists nor does not exist after death,�these The Blessed One does not elucidate to me. And the fact that The Blessed One does not elucidate them to me does not please me nor suit me.

He goes to the Buddha to ask him to clear these matters up, but the Buddha only questions the purpose of such speculation:

It is as if ... a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions, his relatives and kinsfolk, were to procure for him a physician or surgeon; and the sick man were to say, I will not have this arrow taken out until I have learnt whether the man who wounded me belonged to the warrior caste, or to the Brahman caste, or to the agricultural caste, or to the menial caste.

The point is that Buddhism relates to the immediate problem of suffering in the world. Even its most complex elaborations stem from this problem. There aren't many religions that are willing to admit that many questions -- perhaps even the questions that seem most urgent to us -- simply can't be answered. Simply stop asking them -- this is far easier said then done. But the mere suggestion that we might accept the limits of our knowledge may be what feels strangest to us about these teachings.

The Bhagavad-Gita

The Hindu poem Bhagavad-Gita is a dialogue between a prince named Arjuna and Krishna, and incarnation of the god Vishnu, who remains for the most part disguised as a chariot driver. The two stand on the cusp of a battle in which Arjuna is reluctant to fight, but Krishna admonishes him:

How hath this weakness taken thee? Whence springs
The inglorious trouble, shameful to the brave,
Barring the path of virtue? Nay, Arjun!
Forbid thyself to feebleness! it mars
Thy warrior-name! cast off the coward-fit!
Wake! Be thyself! Arise, Scourge of thy foes!

The pacificist mortal is set straight by the hawkish god -- admittedly, it's a troubling context for a devotional work. But as the poem progresses, fighting in this battle emerges as a metaphor for living in the world. It struck me as a particularly apt metaphor for our own time, when any level of participation in society seems to implicate us in countless troubling acts. Like most of the Buddhist writings before it, the Bhagavad-Gita is ultimately concerned with a deeply practical question, in this case one with which nearly every religious tradition struggles -- is it better to engage with the world, or remove oneself from it? As I understood it, the answer it provides is something like both. Specifically, we should work in the world but practice detachment from the fruits of our labors.

I told thee, blameless Lord! there be two paths
Shown to this world; two schools of wisdom. First
The Sankhy's, which doth save in way of works
Prescribed by reason; next, the Yog, which bids
Attain by meditation, spiritually:
Yet these are one! No man shall escape from act
By shunning action; nay, and none shall come
By mere renouncements unto perfectness.
Nay, and no jot of time, at any time,
Rests any actionless; his nature's law
Compels him, even unwilling, into act;
[For thought is act in fancy]. He who sits
Suppressing all the instruments of flesh,
Yet in his idle heart thinking on them,
Plays the inept and guilty hypocrite:
But he who, with strong body serving mind,
Gives up his mortal powers to worthy work,
Not seeking gain, Arjuna! such an one
Is honorable. Do thine allotted task!
Work is more excellent than idleness;
The body's life proceeds not, lacking work.

Do the work; reject the reward. It seems a bit like the worst of both worlds. If you're going to give up the gain of work anyway, at least practicing detachment lets you get more sleep. Compare to Ecclesiastes: that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy good in all his labor, is the gift of God.  But it's also a moving idea, that each of us has a job to do, and that the job itself brings honor with it.  The good is the labor.  Do thine allotted task! Now if we could just figure out what that is.

Chapters from the Koran

Another result of the editorial choices for the Hebrew and Christian bibles is that a reader of the Classics first encounters many of the most famous biblical figures in selections from the Koran. Before reading these selections, I'd known that the Koran includes Abraham and Isaac, Noah and his ark, Moses and Aaron, Joseph and his brothers, Jesus and Mary; and I'd known that Muslims have historically referred to Jews and Christians as people of the book. But I didn't realized the extent to which the Koran, especially its earliest Suras, represents a kind of dialogue with the other monotheistic traditions. Some chapters add details that weren't included in the original stories, like this conversation between Abraham and his father.

And mention, in the Book, Abraham; verily, he was a confessor,--a prophet. When he said to his father, O my sire! why dost thou worship what can neither hear nor see nor avail thee aught? O my sire! verily, to me has come knowledge which has not come to thee; then follow me, and I will guide thee to a level way. O my sire! serve not Satan; verily, Satan is ever a rebel against the Merciful. O my sire! verily, I fear that there may touch thee torment from the Merciful, and that thou mayest be a client of Satan.

Said he, What! art thou averse from my gods, O Abraham? verily, if thou dost not desist I will certainly stone thee; but get thee gone from me for a time!

Said he, Peace be upon thee! I will ask forgiveness for thee from my Lord; verily, He is very gracious to me: but I will part from you and what ye call on beside God, and will pray my Lord that I be not unfortunate in my prayer to my Lord.

And when he had parted from them and what they served beside God, we granted him Isaac and Jacob, and each of them we made a prophet; and we granted them of our mercy, and we made the tongue of truth lofty for them.

It struck me that this dialogue, which appears without any larger narrative context, makes almost no sense without some familiarity with its biblical antecedents. This is a literary point, not a politcal or historical one. But it's also a reminder of the extent to which Islam and Christianity both depend on their Abrahamic foundation. At their best, these faiths build on that foundation, modifying lasting truths for different times and places. At their worst, they vilify a tradition without which they would never exist.

--CRB, November 28, 2007

Volume 46

Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe

As Marlowe's Edward the Second begins, Edward has just ascended to the crown, and he calls his favorite, Gaveston, home from exile.

My father is deceas'd! Come, Gaveston,
And share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.

It's clear -- though never stated directly -- that Edward's father sent Gaveston into exile because of the questionable relationship between Edward and Gaveston. The gay themes in Marlowe's play are unlike anything included in the Classics so far. As Gaveston makes his way back to England, he imagines for himself and Edward a Dionysian revelry that wouldn't have been out of place in post-Stonewall Greenwich Village:

I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits,
Musicians, that with touching of a string
May draw the pliant king which way I please.
Music and poetry is his delight;
Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night,
Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;
And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,
Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;
My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
Shall with their goat-feet dance an antic hay.
Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape,
With hair that gilds the water as it glides,
Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,
And in his sportful hands an olive tree,
To hide those parts which men delight to see,
Shall bathe him in a spring; and there hard by,
One like Actaeon peeping through the grove
Shall by the angry goddess be transform'd,
And running in the likeness of an hart
By yelping hounds pull'd down, and seem to die;--
Such things as these best please his majesty,
My lord.

Marlowe himself was known as something of a wanton poet, but he doesn't paint an especially sympathetic picture of homosexuality. Edward's indulgences towards Gaveston -- which include giving him a series of titles and betrothing him to Edward's niece -- lead directly to their deaths. For the play's first half, Edward is portrayed as basically frivolous -- not just corrupt but unserious -- and it's this weakness that can't be abided in a king. But at the very least Marlowe recognized that Edward's downfall -- which he took in large part from history -- had the necessary dignity to rise to the level of tragedy. Early in the play, Edward agrees to send Gaveston back into exile. As they part, Marlowe allows them much of the pathos of any star-crossed lovers:

Gaveston: Is all my hope turned to this hell of grief?

Edward:  Rend not my heart with thy too-piercing words:
Thou from this land, I from my self am banished.

After Gaveston is brought back to England, the tone of the play changes remarkably, as Marlowe seems to give himself over wholly to the idea of Edward as a tragic hero, banished from himself. I doubt that many other playwrights of the era -- or most other eras -- would have chosen this material or, having chosen it, would have let it become the great tragedy that Edward the Second is.

Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth & The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Okay, so -- Shakespeare. The short list of writers who compare to him -- Homer, Dante, maybe Aeschylus, that's about it -- appear in the Classics in (mostly unremarkable) translations, which means that, even in a collection of the greatest literature in the history of the world, Shakespeare stands alone. If anything, reading him among all these other greats makes his achievement even more impressive. One can compare the breadth of his characterization against Chaucer's, the depth of his tragic sense against Sophocles', the music of his poetry against Milton's, etc., etc. Almost all the great dramatists and poets have one thing in particular that they do especially well -- and whatever it is, Shakespeare does it better.

But the best thing about reading these plays, which have been so carefully combed over for hundreds of years, is just being allowed to enjoy them. I've probably written half a dozen papers about Hamlet, about his lack of proleptic imagination, about his use of irony, about appearance and reality and entropy and misogyny and self-awareness. But what most strikes me when I read the play now is how clearly I can see him, how individual and real all the characters seem. Hamlet sounds like Hamlet; Polonius sounds like Polonius; Ophelia sounds like Ophelia; the snozzberries taste like snozzberries. From Hamlet's first line -- his famous aside about Claudius: A little more than kin, and less than kind -- his sly, tortured voice is unmistakable. Even a casual reader will be struck, throughout Shakespeare's great tragedies, with how many lines have entered our collectice cultural memory. But more impressive is that even in the plays' most poetic moments, it's always the character speaking, never the writer.

In this spirit of immediate enjoyment, I must admit that my favorite Shakespeare play isn't one of these high tragedies, but his farewell work, The Tempest, which may be the one play where the famously elusive playwright comes closest to revealing himself. The voice of the sorcerer Prospero is probably as near as we can get, at least within the plays, to Shakespeare's true voice. Which may be why the moment when Prospero gives up his art is so oddly moving:

I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call�d forth the mutinous winds
And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and, when I have requir'd
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.

After this play, Shakespeare will break his staff and drown his book.  He will retire to Stratford-upon-Avon, where/Every third thought shall be my grave.  But his rough magic is still one of the great pleasures that life affords.

--CRB, November 30, 2007