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Tarnmoor’s ABCs: G. K. Chesterton

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Chesterton with Admirer

Chesterton with Admirer

I was so very impressed by Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him. Because his origins were so far away (Lithuania and Poland) and so long ago (1920s and 1930s), there were relatively few entries that resonated personally with me. Except it was sad to see so many fascinating people who, unknown today, died during the war under unknown circumstances.

This blog entry is my own humble attempt to imitate a writer whom I have read on and off for thirty years without having sated my curiosity. Consequently, over the next few months, you will see a number of postings under the heading “Tarnmoor’s ABCs” that will attempt to do for my life what Milosz accomplished for his. I don’t guarantee that I will use up all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I’ll do my best. Today, we’re at the letter “G”:

This is my first ABC entry about the writers who have most influenced me. Interestingly, I discovered all of them right around the same time, just after 1970. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) is the only one of them who might very well be declared a saint of the Catholic Church during my lifetime—or not. Roman Catholic Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, England, has ordered an examination into the life of the author, which is the usual first step on the road to beatification and, eventually, canonization. Feeling is strong both for and against his sainthood, some alleging that he was anti-Semitic, though I have never seen any evidence to that effect.

GKC was incredibly prolific, writing journalism, fiction, essays, poetry, plays, biography, and political and religious works. I started by reading his essays (mostly published as journalism), then moved on to his fiction, and in the end reading as much of everything as I could find. He is probably one of the most quotable writers of the Twentieth Century. The following is from my favorite of his novels, The Man Who Was Thursday:

He knew that each one of these men stood at the extreme end, so to speak, of some wild road of reasoning. He could only fancy, as in some old-world fable, that if a man went westward to the end of the world he would find something—say a tree—that was more or less than a tree, a tree possessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end of the world he would find something else that was not wholly itself—a tower, perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these figures seemed to stand up, violent and unaccountable, against an ultimate horizon, visions from the verge.

And again:

Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactly upside down, that all trees were growing downwards and that all stars were under his feet. Then came slowly the opposite conviction. For the last twenty-four hours the cosmos had really been upside down, but now the capsized universe had come right side up again.

Following is a poem called “A Ballad of Abbreviations,” making fun of how Americans replace simple Anglo-Saxon terms with clumsier circumlocutions:

A Ballad of Abbreviations

The American’s a hustler, for he says so,
And surely the American must know.
He will prove to you with figures why it pays so
Beginning with his boyhood long ago.
When the slow-maturing anecdote is ripest,
He’ll dictate it like a Board of Trade Report,
And because he has no time to call a typist,
He calls her a Stenographer for short.

He is never known to loiter or malinger,
He rushes, for he knows he has ‘a date’ ;
He is always on the spot and full of ginger,
Which is why he is invariably late.
When he guesses that it’s getting even later,
His vocabulary’s vehement and swift,
And he yells for what he calls the Elevator,
A slang abbreviation for a lift.

Then nothing can be nattier or nicer
For those who like a light and rapid style.
Than to trifle with a work of Mr Dreiser
As it comes along in waggons by the mile.
He has taught us what a swift selective art meant
By description of his dinners and all that,
And his dwelling, which he says is an Apartment,
Because he cannot stop to say a flat.

We may whisper of his wild precipitation,
That it’s speed in rather longer than a span,
But there really is a definite occasion
When he does not use the longest word he can.
When he substitutes, I freely make admission,
One shorter and much easier to spell ;
If you ask him what he thinks of Prohibition,
He may tell you quite succinctly it is Hell.

You can find many of Chesterton’s best works available for free from Gutenberg.Com or for cheap from E-Book vendors.

A Neglected Poet

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Rain as a Subaltern

Rain as a Subaltern

Thomas Hardy is not one of our most widely-read poets. If anything, people are far more familiar with his novels, such as Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Far from the Madding Crowd. Fortunately, after years of neglect, his poems are coming into their own. The other night, I was reading an essay on the 20th century Russian poet Joseph Brodsky in J. M. Coetzee’s Stranger Shores: Literary Essays 1986-1999, and I came across the following:

[Joseph] Brodsky’s system can best be illustrated from the essay on Thomas Hardy. Brodsky regards Hardy as a neglected major poet, “seldom taught, less read,” particularly in America, cast out by fashion-minded critics into the limbo of “premodernism” (On Grief, pp. 373, 315, 313)

It is certainly true that modern criticism has had little of interest to say about Hardy. Nevertheless, despite what Brodsky says, ordinary readers and (particularly) poets have never deserted him. John Crowe Ransom edited a selection of Hardy’s verse in 1960 [I have a copy]. Hardy dominates Philip Larkin’s widely read Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973), with 27 pages as opposed to 19 for Yeats, 16 for Auden, a mere 9 for [T. S.] Eliot. Nor did the Modernist avant-garde dismiss Hardy en bloc. Ezra Pound, for instance, tirelessly recommended him to younger poets. “Nobody has taught me anything about writing since Thomas Hardy died,” he remarked in 1934.

Here is my favorite of Hardy’s poems. Picture a man struggling to walk through a rainstorm:

The Subalterns

I

“Poor wanderer,” said the leaden sky,
“I fain would lighten thee,
But there are laws in force on high
Which say it must not be.”

II

–“I would not freeze thee, shorn one,” cried
The North, “knew I but how
To warm my breath, to slack my stride;
But I am ruled as thou.”

III

—“To-morrow I attack thee, wight,”
Said Sickness. “Yet I swear
I bear thy little ark no spite,
But am bid enter there.”

IV

—“Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say;
“I did not will a grave
Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
But I, too, am a slave!”

V

We smiled upon each other then,
And life to me had less
Of that fell look it wore ere when
They owned their passiveness.

Hardy can be at one and the same time incredibly simple and incredibly deep. At the same time, we have sickness and death acting with compassion against the poor traveler. Who can write such a poem today?

He Died in Paris After All

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Peruvian Poet César Vallejo

Peruvian Poet César Vallejo

Since I’ve been reading so much about Peru, I felt bad that I had not read any Peruvian poetry. According to what I’ve read, the national poet of that land was César Vallejo (1892-1938). I took a fancy to the following poem, which I present in both English and Spanish:

Black Stone on Top of a White Stone

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris—it does not bother me—
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

It shall be a Thursday, because today, Thursday
As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders
To the evil. Never like today have I turned,
And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.

César Vallejo is dead. They struck him,
All of them, though he did nothing to them,
They hit him hard with a stick and hard also
With the end of a rope. Witnesses are: the Thursdays,
The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads…

Here is the original Spanish:

Piedra Negra Sobre Piedra Blanca

Me moriré en París con aguacero,
un día del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.
Me moriré en París—y no me corro—
tal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de otoño.

Jueves será, porque hoy, jueves, que proso
estos versos, los húmeros me he puesto
a la mala y, jamás como hoy, me he vuelto,
con todo mi camino, a verme solo.

César Vallejo ha muerto, le pegaban
todos sin que él les haga nada;
le daban duro con un palo y duro

también con una soga; son testigos
los días jueves y los huesos húmeros,
la soledad, la lluvia, los caminos…

It’s a rather somber poem about a man who dies alone in exile, after having been beaten with a stick and the end of a rope. And who are his witnesses? Thursdays, shoulder bones, loneliness, rain, and the streets. I would like to know more about the poet’s life, but I’ll just have to content myself for now with his lonely death on the streets of Paris.

Pacheco and the Dogs

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Another Great Poet Leaves Us

Another Great Poet Leaves Us

It is a well-known fact that poets don’t grow on trees. Belatedly, I am recognizing the death of José Emilio Pacheco, the Mexican poet who just recently died after a fall at the age of seventy-four. I am not familiar enough with Pacheco’s poetry—to be honest, I am not nearly familiar enough with poetry in general. I should read more, even though there is nothing that is more demanding—or rewarding. Take this simple example, called “A Dog’s Life”:

A Dog’s Life

We despise dogs for letting themselves
be trained, for learning to obey.
We fill the noun dog with rancor
to insult each other.
And it’s a miserable death
to die like a dog.

Yet dogs watch and listen
to what we can’t see or hear.
Lacking language
(or so we believe),
they have a talent we certainly lack.
And no doubt they think and know.

And so
they probably despise us
for our need to find masters,
for our pledge of allegiance to the strongest.

Thanks to Fred Runk, here is the Spanish text of the poem:

Despreciamos al perro dejarse
domesticar y ser obediente.
Llenamos de rencor sustanivo perro
para insultarmnos.
Y una muerte indigna
es morir como un perro.

Sin embargo los perros miran y eschucan
lo que no vemos ni escucharmos.
A falta de lenguaje
(o eso creemos)
poseen un don que ciertamente nos falta .
Y sin duda piensan y saben.

Asi pues,
resulta muy probable que nos desprecien
por nuestra necesidad de buscar amos,
poe nuestro voto de obediencia al mas fuerte.

A Frugal Chariot

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Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Here is one of Emily Dickinson’s simpler poems—but no less powerful for all that. It is called “A Book”:

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

At a time when poetry is being pushed aside by the young in favor of video games and other more spurious entertainments, it is good to see a simple statement of why it should not be so.

There are few things one can read that can so work the mind and enliven the spirit as a powerful poem, such as those of Emily Dickinson. Usually, they are complex arrangements of relatively few words. Fortunately, there is a reward for making the effort, a reward in the form of greater understanding.

 

“A Lonely Impulse of Delight”

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British Biplane in World War One

British Biplane in World War One

William Butler Yeats is one of my favorite Twentieth Century poets, and one of my favorites among his poems is “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.” Although deeply shrouded in skepticism, the poem speaks to all people who find themselves somewhere between a rock and a hard place:

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
No law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Kiltartan is a barony in Ireland’s County Galway, home to Augusta, Lady Gregory. Also, it was the occasional residence of the poet himself.

I am particularly drawn to the final quatrain, in which the airman makes an existential decision to fly for the RAF despite his lack of loyalty to the British cause and uncertainty that his people would be worse off if the Kaiser won. He appears to have been a young wastrel who hazards his life in an uncertain cause, joying only in the delight of flying into battle.

Metaphor

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Polish Poet Adam Zagajewski

Polish Poet Adam Zagajewski

Increasingly often and striking powerful chords, Eastern Europe calls to me. While I was looking for something else on my shelves, I pulled out Adam Zagajewski’s Unseen Hands and started scanning it. Here is a poem of his called “Metaphor”:

Metaphor

Every metaphor is a failure, said
the very old poet in the hotel bar,
turning to his rapt pupils.
The very old poet was in fine form
and said, with a wineglass in his hand:
It’s the fundamental problem of incarnation,
the things we love, the unseen things,
take flesh, of course, in what can
be seen and said, though never
absolutely, one to one,
so it follows that there’s always a little too much
or a little too little, the seams remain on the surface,
fingers jut, buttons, umbrellas, fingernails,
uncollected letters in azure airmail envelopes,
the sense of shortfall or excess remains,
someone is ominously silent, someone else
summons help, the ice cracks, the ambulance
arrives, too late, alas, but just wait,
thanks to this, thanks to this incongruity,
thanks to this inexplicable rupture,
we may keep chasing the chimera of metaphor,
all our lives we walk in darkness,
in a dim forest, we track the trail of simile,
imperfect, just like my
speech, just now reaching
its conclusion, although there is
no doubt much more to add,
but I fear that I’m already
growing weary and seem
to hear sleep calling.

I can just imagine the very old poet beginning to nod off, somewhat dismayed by the imperfection of language. Just as, I might add, I am beginning to nod off as my bedtime hour approaches. I like the use of the word “incarnation” to describe metaphor, an “unseen thing taking flesh.”

The Brotherhood of Silence

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Saint G. K. Chesterton?

Saint G. K. Chesterton?

G. K. Chesterton has for many years been one of my favorite writers. And now I hear there is a movement to have him canonized as a saint. That would be all right with me. In the current issue of Gilbert, the publication of the American Chesterton Society (of which I am a member), there is even a jocular article entitled “Why G. K. Chesterton Ought to be Canonized,” in which eighteen reasons which some cite against his canonization are turned around by author Peter Kreeft into reasons espousing his sainthood.

At the bottom of the second and last page of his article was this slight poem, which is typical of the man:

Love’s Trappist

There is a place where lute and lyre are broken,
Where scrolls are torn and on a wild wind go,
Where tablets stand wiped naked for a token,
Where laurels wither and the daisies grow.

Lo: I too join the brotherhood of silence,
I am Love’s Trappist and you ask in vain,
For man through Love’s gate, even as through Death’s gate,
Goeth alone and comes not back again.

Yet here I pause, look back across the threshold,
Cry to my brethren, though the world be old,
Prophets and sages, questioners and doubters,
O world, old world, the best hath ne’er been told!

I will write more about Chesterton soon. When I first started reading him, only a few of his works were in print. Now, partly thanks to the Ignatius Press’s edition of his complete works (which is slowly coming out one or two volumes a year), and to a resurgence of interest in works in the public domain, virtually all of his published books are available. Because he was a prolific journalist as well as a poet, novelist, and essayist, much of his works in newspapers and more obscure magazines has not yet been collected.

 

Things That Might Have Been

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Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

It takes a massively creative mind to imagine not only what has been, but what has not been—though they might well have been! I love the poetry of the late Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges, who died in 1986. Blind for much of his adult life, Borges saw things few poets have seen. Although he wrote less as he aged, everything he wrote is precious.

Things That Might Have Been

I think of things that weren’t, but might have been.
The treatise on Saxon myths Bede never wrote.
The inconceivable work Dante might have had a glimpse of,
As soon as he’d corrected the Comedy’s last verse.
History without the afternoons of the Cross and the hemlock.
History without the face of Helen.
Man without the eyes that gave us the moon.
On Gettysburg’s three days, victory for the South.
The love we never shared.
The wide empire the Vikings chose not to found.
The world without the wheel or the rose.
The view John Donne held of Shakespeare.
The other horn of the Unicorn.
The fabled Irish bird that lights on two trees at once.
The child I never had.

In another of his poems, Borges imagines that Don Quixote never left his library, but imagined all his adventures based on the epics of chivalry he read there.

Read Borges, and before long you, too, will see the other horn of the unicorn.

 

Looking Backward

PICcrab

Crab

A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backward. The brighter the light diffused around him by the progress of reason, the thicker is the darkness of antiquated barbarism, in which he buries himself like a mole, to throw up the barren hillocks of his Cimmerian labours.—Thomas Love Peacock, “The Four Ages of Poetry,” Works Vol. III