The once unthinkable happened yesterday and we barely noticed. Indeed, you might not know what I have in mind were it not for my headline, but here it is in black and white: on May 5, 2022, the United States passed the mark of a million Covid deaths.
Struck by our seeming indifference, a Baruch College theatre history professor composed a twitter thread about Ionesco’s The Rhinoceros. It’s a good connection to make.
Ionesco wrote his play to capture the herd mentality that can take over a society so that, well, the unthinkable becomes normalized. The particular “unthinkable” he had in mind was rising fascism—also only too relevant in this day and age—but it applies to all situations involving mobthink. Caplan sums up the plot:
[O]ne by one, an entire town of people suddenly transform into rhinos. At first, people are horrified but as the contagion spreads, (almost) everyone comes to accept that turning into a rhinoceros is fine.
Caplan was led to her observations when, walking around New York City, she realized that virtually no one was wearing a mask, even though Covid continues live and well in the country. As she puts it,
Over the last few weeks, as mitigation measures drop, millions of Americans who were previously cautious about Covid (and millions more who never were) have decided that it’s time to move on and pretend that it’s 2019 again.
Bars and restaurants are packed with unmasked people, mask mandates hardly exist anywhere and are no longer tied to infection rates, the new CDC map makes it look like everything is under control, and we seem to have all collectively decided that Covid is “over.
And then she points to the reality:
The idea that we can live with Covid WITHOUT any mitigation measures and expect things to turn out ok (both for individuals and as a society) is a lie. We are watching an astounding mass delusion unfold in real time.
Caplan is particularly concerned about the possibility of contracting Covid repeatedly and reports that even 5% of the vaccinated are getting it. With Covid, meanwhile, comes the possibility of long Covid, which can have devastating effects. I can testify that one of my students this past semester has long Covid—she contracted it abroad very early in the pandemic—and although she bravely soldiers on, it has been making her life miserable.
Caplan notes that she feels like Berenger, who by play’s end is the only human left. Telling people she’s going to keep taking precautions, she says,
feels a little like Berenger’s monologue at the end of the play, where he declares his intent to remain human to a herd of rhinoceroses who no longer understand him. The contagion has already spread, and nobody is listening anymore.
“You’ll get used to it, you know,” Daisy (the love interest) tells Berenger. “It’s the wisest course to take,” his co-worker Dudard agrees. “Well, I can’t get used to it,” Berenger insists. “I wonder if one oughtn’t to give it a try?” Dudard replies. Then, he becomes a rhino.
Later, as more and more of their friends get infected, Daisy begins to change her mind about the value of staying human. “Those are the real people,” Daisy says, about the rhinos. “They look happy. They were right to do what they did.”
“We’re the ones who are doing right, Daisy, I assure you,” Berenger insists. “It’s the world that’s right – not you and me,” Daisy tells him. And then, she becomes a rhino too.
Caplan observes that she has accepted that, in all likelihood, she and her family will get Covid at some time or other. The goal, she says, “is to delay infection for as long as possible. The fewer times we catch Covid, the better.”
And she adds,
People who are trying not to get Covid aren’t “anxious” or “not moving on.” We’re looking at the facts and we’re reasonably concerned. Eliminating an opportunity for a 5% chance of developing serious heart, lung, or brain problems is worth a lot.
Which brings her back to Berenger:
Like Berenger in Rhinoceros, it feels very lonely to be caring about any of this right now. The world has moved on. But it’s the world that’s wrong, not those of us who see this for what it is.
Speaking for myself, I must admit to have gotten casual about wearing a mask. In some ways, I can get away with it since I live in a bubble. Both Sewanee the college and Sewanee the town required masking up until this past March; my students have all been vaccinated; and I myself have been twice vaxxed and twice boosted. All this has led me to become complacent.
Caplan’s Ionesco allusion, however, reminds me that I’ve got to be willing to look weird to others—i.e., put on a mask—when I enter venues that are less protected. My 96-year-old mother, even though fully vaccinated, would have real problems were she to contract a breakthrough case. And I myself am 70.
In other words, don’t let the rhinos of the world dictate your own health choices.
A couple of weeks ago, someone tweeted out, “Russia doesn’t have an army. It has an armed, uniformed, barbarian horde,” to which Macolm Nance, a former member of the Armed Services who has become an expert on authoritarian skullduggery, tweeted back, “That’s why we call them Orcs.” It was the first time I had heard that particular designation but, the more I read up on Russia’s approach to military conflict, the more apt the allusion appears.
Nance, incidentally, has put his money where his mouth is and is now in Ukraine fighting the Russian Orcs.
One of the military experts that I follow on twitter—I can’t remember which one—recently made the comment that armies that exhibit self-discipline perform far better than armies that don’t. In other words, if your men are raping women, looting stores and stealing washing machines, and executing civilians, they will actually perform less effectively in the field than armies that adhere to a code of conduct. Of course, all armies will have people who commit atrocities, as America knows well, from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam to the Abu Ghraib abuse of prisoners during the Iraq War. But with those war crimes, there were some attempts at accountability—not just for humane reasons but because, when members of the armed forces are held to standards, they operate at a higher level.
Of course, Donald Trump doesn’t believe this—that’s why he pardoned a notorious American soldier that a military tribunal had found guilty of killing innocent Iraqi civilians—and Vladimir Putin doesn’t either. In their eyes, the best way to fight is to intimidate through brutality. But sadism will not put steel in one’s spine the way that fighting for one’s freedom will. Russian rapists are proving no match for Ukrainian patriots.
I remember a general observing during the Iraq War that the Geneva Conventions are not for the enemy but for ourselves. While acknowledging that some of the enemies did not observe the conventions, he said Americans still should because it keeps them tethered to their moral bearings. I vaguely remember him invoking Joseph Conrad’s famous novella as he talked about getting lost in one’s inner “heart of darkness.” A code of conduct gives one something to stop the slide.
The Russian army has a long history of atrocities, as a recent article in The Hill reports. These include the slaughter of Prussian civilians in the first year of World War I; the execution of 21,857 prisoners of war, including approximately 10,000 Polish officers, in the infamous Katyn Forest massacre in 1940; the rape of two million German women at the end of World War II; the killing of 1.3 million Afghan civilians during the Soviet Union’s Afghanistan War; and (under Putin) the slaughters of Chechens, Syrian Kurds, and now Ukrainians. In fact, it was accounts of Soviet armed forces that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to come up with Orcs in the first place.
There are two centers of evil in Tolkien’s Middle Earth: Sauron and Saruman. While the trilogy is not to be read as a political allegory, the historical events of the time are clearly influencing Tolkien, with Sauron and his Nazgul having affinities with Hitler and Saruman and his fighting Orcs resembling Stalin and his armies. In other words, applying the Orc label to the Russian invaders of Ukraine is simply going full circle to the source of Tolkien’s imagination.
Tolkien reports getting the word “orc” from Beowulf. His own Orcs are super goblins who call themselves the Uruk-hai, and we get our closest look at them when they capture Merry and Pippin. They have Saruman’s white hand on their shields and an S-rune on their helmets (their version of the Russian Z). When we see them sparring with Sauron’s Mordor goblins about what to do with the captive hobbits. it brings to mind the uneasy Soviet-German alliance that preceded World War II:
‘Aye, we must stick together,’ growled Uglúk. ‘I don’t trust you little swine. You’ve no guts outside your own sties. But for us you’d all have run away. We are the fighting Uruk-hai! We slew the great warrior [Boromir]. We took the prisoners. We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand: the Hand that gives us man’s-flesh to eat. We came out of Isengard, and led you here, and we shall lead you back by the way we choose. I am Uglúk. I have spoken.’
‘You have spoken more than enough, Uglúk,’ sneered the evil voice. ‘I wonder how they would like it in Lugbúrz. They might think that Uglúk’s shoulders needed relieving of a swollen head. They might ask where his strange ideas came from. Did they come from Saruman, perhaps? Who does he think he is, setting up on his own with his filthy white badges? They might agree with me, with Grishnákh their trusted messenger; and I Grishnákh say this: Saruman is a fool. and a dirty treacherous fool. But the Great Eye is on him.
‘Swine is it? How do you folk like being called swine by the muck-rakers of a dirty little wizard? It’s orc-flesh they eat, I’ll warrant.’
Although they are fierce fighters, the Uruk-hai don’t have the discipline of the Riders of Rowan who, somewhat like the Ukrainians, know the terrain and know how to inflict maximum damage while minimizing their own losses. Here’s an excerpt from the battle:
[Pippin] saw that riders away eastward were already level with the Orcs, galloping over the plain. The sunset gilded their spears and helmets, and glinted in their pale flowing hair. They were hemming the Orcs in, preventing them from scattering, and driving them along the line of the river….
A few of the riders appeared to be bowmen, skilled at shooting from a running horse. Riding swiftly into range they shot arrows at the Orcs that straggled behind, and several of them fell; then the riders wheeled away out of the range of the answering bows of their enemies, who shot wildly, not daring to halt. This happened many times, and on one occasion arrows fell among the Isengarders. One of them, just in front of Pippin, stumbled and did not get up again.
Night came down without the Riders closing in for battle. Many Orcs had fallen, but fully two hundred remained. In the early darkness the Orcs came to a hillock. The eaves of the forest were very near, probably no more than three furlongs away, but they could go no further. The horsemen had encircled them. A small band disobeyed Uglúk’s command, and ran on towards the forest: only three returned.
Later, having escaped the Orcs, Merry and Pippin watch the end of the battle from afar:
Then with a great cry the Riders charged from the East; the red light gleamed on mail and spear. The Orcs yelled and shot all the arrows that remained to them. The hobbits saw several horsemen fall; but their line held on up the hill and over it, and wheeled round and charged again. Most of the raiders that were left alive then broke and fled, this way and that, pursued one by one to the death.
Later, in the Battle at Helm’s Deep, it will be the men from Rowan–along with Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas–who are besieged. I have thought about this battle while watching the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol. Here’s an excerpt:
Brazen trumpets sounded. The enemy surged forward, some against the Deeping Wall, other towards the causeway and the ramp that led up to the Hornburg-gates. There the hugest Orcs were mustered, and the wild men of the Dunland fells. A moment they hesitated and then on they came. The lightning flashed, and blazoned upon every helm and shield the ghastly hand of Isengard was seen: They reached the summit of the rock; they drove towards the gates.
Then at last an answer came: a storm of arrows met them, and a hail of stones. They wavered, broke, and fled back; and then charged again, broke and charged again; and each time, like the incoming sea, they halted at a higher point. Again trumpets rang, and a press of roaring men leaped forth. They held their great shields above them like a roof, while in their midst they bore two trunks of mighty trees. Behind them orc-archers crowded, sending a hail of darts against the bowmen on the walls. They gained the gates. The trees, swung by strong arms, smote the timbers with a rending boom. If any man fell, crushed by a stone hurtling from above, two others sprang to take his place. Again and again the great rams swung and crashed.
Éomer and Aragorn stood together on the Deeping Wall. They heard the roar of voices and the thudding of the rams; and then in a sudden flash of light they beheld the peril of the gates.
‘Come!’ said Aragorn. ‘This is the hour when we draw swords together!’
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the Ukrainians at Mariupol will survive, despite their bravery. There are no tree-like Ents to come to their rescue. I wonder if, in the interludes between fighting, they have conversations resembling the one that Sam has with Frodo when they are expecting to be swallowed up by the erupting Mount Doom after having destroyed the ring:
Slow rivers of fire came down the long slopes towards them. Soon they would be engulfed. A rain of hot ash was falling.
They stood now; and Sam still holding his master’s hand caressed it. He sighed. ‘What a tale we have been in, Mr. Frodo, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘I wish I could hear it told! Do you think they’ll say: Now comes the story of Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring of Doom? And then everyone will hush, like we did, when in Rivendell they told us the tale of Beren One-hand and the Great Jewel. I wish I could hear it! And I wonder how it will go on after our part.’
If they expel the Russians and reestablish their country, Ukrainians will indeed tell the tale of Mariupol for generations to come. It may be scant consolation for those who are about to die but, as it is for Sam, it’s consolation nonetheless.
Further thought: My friend Sue Schmidt reminded me of this passage from Lord of the Rings. I don’t think Orcs are responsible this time but certain Sauron allies. Still, it’s an example of using atrocities as a psychological strategy:
Soon there was great peril of fire behind the wall, and all who could be spared were busy quelling the flames that sprang up in many places. Then among the greater casts there fell another hail, less ruinous but more horrible. All about the streets and lanes behind the Gate it tumbled down, small round shot that did not burn. But when men ran to learn what it might be, they cried aloud or wept. For the enemy was flinging into the City all the heads of those who had fallen fighting at Osgiliath, or on the Rammas, or in the fields. They were grim to look on; for though some were crushed and shapeless, and some had been cruelly hewn, yet many had features that could be told, and it seemed that they had died in pain; and all were branded with the foul token of the Lidless Eye. But marred and dishonoured as they were, it often chanced that thus a man would see again the face of someone that he had known, who had walked proudly once in arms, or tilled the fields, or ridden in upon a holiday from the green vales in the hills.
In vain men shook their fists at the pitiless foes that swarmed before the Gate. Curses they heeded not, nor understood the tongues of western men; crying with harsh voices like beasts and carrion-birds. But soon there were few left in Minas Tirith who had the heart to stand up and defy the hosts of Mordor. For yet another weapon, swifter than hunger, the Lord of the Dark Tower had: dread and despair.
Since news broke about the Supreme Court planning to take away women’s right to make their own reproduction decisions—or rather, to allow rightwing legislators to do so—we can see why some on the right have been seeking to ban Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale from schools. Nothing like seeing dystopian fiction coming true in real time to focus the mind.
Indeed, if the Supreme Court really is on the verge of overturning Roe v Wade, there will be someone who actually once bore the title of “handmaid” voting with the majority. According to the Washington Post, in 2010 Justice Amy Coney Barrett “was one of three handmaids” in an Indiana branch of the People of Praise, a conservative Catholic group which taught that husbands are the heads of families and have authority over their wives. Apparently (perhaps after getting bad press from the novel?) the group now calls these women “leaders.”
In the novel, abortion doctors are tortured and executed. Nor are there any exceptions for rape, as we see when woman #230 must publicly testify about her abortion. It so happens that the narrator of the novel knows her:
Two-thirty comes during Testifying. It’s Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault, her fault, her fault. We chant in unison. Who led them on? She did. She did. She did. Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen? Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.”
In the eyes of certain current legislators, it’s not even a “terrible thing” but an opportunity. Here’s what Ohio state Rep. Jean Schmidt said when confronted with the hypothetical of a 13-year-old becoming pregnant from a rape:
It is a shame that it happens, but there’s an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she’s going to do to help that life be a productive human being.”
While Handmaid’s Tale is only too relevant given the news, on Twitter today I saw many turning to a passage from another popular work:
“Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.”
I’m sure many of you will recognize the quote. In Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time, Meg’s father has been captured by some dark force which has descended upon the earth. There are different interpretations as to what the darkness is, but the darkness many of us today fear is authoritarianism, whether in the form of Trumpism, Putinism, or Sharia law (the Christian version).
With that darkness having descended on both the Supreme Court and the GOP, we need to tap into Meg’s strength to make sure it doesn’t capture Congress and the presidency as well. At one point in the novel Meg suffers a debilitating paralysis but manages to rally. Like us, she doesn’t have the luxury of despair.
Last week I cited A. E. Housman’s poem about the Battle of Thermopylae as I looked at the Ukrainian stalwarts striving to hold off the superior Russian forces in the city of Mariupol. Upon reading the post, my friend and tennis partner Walter Kurtz, a (mostly) retired judge and bronze star recipient for his service in Vietnam, alerted me to Greek poet C.P. Cavafy’s poem about the famous battle.
He says he carries it around with him, and I can see why. After all, we want our judges to be
in all things virtuous, But never so hardened by virtue as not to be
Compassionate, available to pity…
In Walter’s case, the invading Persian hoards would be threats to the cause of justice. Cavafy wants us all, like the Greeks warriors, to stay focused on our sacred mission, never allowing ourselves to be “distracted from what is right to do, and right to be.” I imagine Walter holding himself to those standards as he listens to cases and makes rulings.
But back to the actual battle. The Greeks were finally defeated when a traitor, Ephialtes, betrayed his countrymen by showing the Medes and the Persians a goat path around the mountain passage that the Greeks were defending. In the end, the Greeks were slaughtered because they were attacked from the front and the back both. Cafavy is saying that we must stick to our principles and fight the good fight, even though we know it is only a matter of time before we will be betrayed and experience defeat. Even though we know we live in a world where scoundrels often prevail over the virtuous, we can’t surrender in our own private Thermopylaes—which is to say, we can’t sell out what is right and true as we encounter life’s challenges. Here’s the poem:
Thermopylae By C.P. Cavafy Translated by David Ferry
Honor is due to those who are keeping watch, Sentinels guarding their own Thermopylae; Never distracted from what is right to do, And right to be; in all things virtuous, But never so hardened by virtue as not to be
Compassionate, available to pity; Generous if they’re rich, but generous too, Doing whatever they can, if they are poor; Always true to the truth, no matter what, But never scornful of those who have to lie.
Even more honor is due when, keeping watch, They see that the time will come when Ephialtes Will tell the secret to the Medes and they Will know the way to get in through the goat-path.
The Ukrainian holdouts may not encounter betrayal (except for Russia’s broken promises of safe passage for the remaining civilians), but they must know that they are on the verge of losing everything.
Muslims celebrate Islam’s feast of Eid al-Fitr today (some celebrated it yesterday), and my Pakistani student—who has been Ramadan fasting since April 1–found that his religious observance gave him special insight into Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. In his essay Hamza found something familiar in the protagonist’s search to connect with a rich family lore.
In the novel, Milkman is a selfish and self-absorbed young man who begins finding meaning in his life when the journey he’s taking unexpectedly becomes a roots quest. He discovers that his great grandfather was (so local legend has it) one of the “flying slaves” who flew back to Africa, and other parts of Milkman’s past become clear to him as well. Suddenly, knowledge of family history becomes more important than material things. Hamza noted that Morrison employs magical realism to capture Milkman’s breakthrough, with a limp that he has had all his life suddenly disappearing. As a result of his journey, he finds himself grounded as he has never been before:
[H]e found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there—on the earth and on the place where he walked. And he did not limp.
By the end, there’s even a (magical realist) possibility that Milkman can fly. Here’s the final paragraph, which describes Milkman facing up to his BFF-turned-enemy, who is about to kill him:
Milkman stopped waving and narrowed his eyes. He could just make out Guitar’s head and shoulders in the dark. “You want my life?” Milkman was not shouting now. “You need it? Here.” Without wiping away the tears, taking a deep breath, or even bending his knees—he leaped. As fleet and bright as a lodestar he wheeled toward Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it
By the end of the novel, Hamza writes, Milkman reconnecting with his family history and his culture “helps him find a sense of spirituality”:
To explain what is meant by Milkman being spiritually charged, we can compare Milkman’s realizations to the religious practice of fasting during Ramadan for Muslims. In Ramadan, Muslims do not eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. This on the surface may seem like a simple fast but in actuality has a deeper spiritual meaning to Muslims as it allows them to see one another as humans who face the same struggles as themselves. For example, rich and wealthy Muslims experience the same hunger and thirst as poor Muslims, which sparks a sense of humbleness in them. Milkman’s journey to learn about his family sparks the same types of realizations, as his experience during the hunt makes him understand that he has taken his privilege for granted. Learning about his family allows him to see his parents as humans who are not perfect and a product of unfavorable circumstances. These realizations and experiences thus are very transformative for Milkman and result in cultural and spiritual enrichment, very similar to how the month of Ramadan spiritually enriches Muslims.
Hamza concludes:
Milkman has come a long way from being a narrow person to someone who is spiritually charged and cares about others. Toni Morrison uses Milkman taking a leap and surrendering himself to the wind as magical realism symbolizing Milkman’s ascension to self-actualization. Having buried his grandfather’s bones and connected with his family ancestors, Milkman’s character has evolved to the point where he has faith in his ability to fly. By the end of this novel, Milkman, through his quest for self-realization, has evolved from a shallow person who limps to a culturally enriched and deeply developed character who can fly.
When we discussed his paper, Hamza added that to have bad thoughts about someone during Ramadan is another way to violate the fast. Worshippers must focus on love and understanding, both of which come to Milkman in the late stages of his own journey. That in turn led us to examine Milkman’s friend Guitar, who has found a different purpose to his life.
Guitar, once a sensitive and admirable man, has become so unhinged by racial injustice that he has taken it upon himself to (as he sees it) right the imbalance: he joins a group that kills an innocent White for every innocent Black who is murdered. Murderous violence takes on a dynamic of its own, however (as Martin Luther King Jr. recognized), and suddenly Guitar isn’t only targeting Whites. Blacks whom Guitar judges to have been overly accommodating to White society are also fair game, and amongst these he includes his former friend.
As I talked with Hamza, I thought of the recent Afghanistan Mosque bombings. A suicide bomber killed 50 Ramadan worshippers in a mosque three days ago and there was another bombing the following day. The violation of a religious observance meant to foster peace, understanding, love, and spiritual connection is comparable to Guitar killing Milkman and his aunt Pilate when they are ritually burying an ancestor’s bones.
In her novel, Morrison sees hate and love vying for supremacy in young Black men and, as her final paragraph notes, she’s not sure “which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother.” But she knows, as Hamza knows, which path brings us closer to spirit. Hate destroys the soul while love puts us in touch with the divine.
If we surrender to the air—if we surrender to the spirit—we can ride it.
I have an action-packed church service today, what with serving as crucifer, server, and lector. I’m particularly looking forward to reading the story of Saul/Paul’s road-to-Damascus conversion. It’s quite dramatic:
Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” [The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
The self-mocking narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man has a fun take on the episode. Invisible Man has just found a new cause to believe in, one that he is sure will stick this time: he will join the Brotherhood, perhaps a reference to the American Communist Party. With his oratorical skills, he is sure he will go far:
Still, I liked my work during those days of certainty. I kept my eyes wide and ears alert. The Brotherhood was a world within a world and I was determined to discover all its secrets and to advance as far as I could. I saw no limits, it was the one organization in the whole country in which I could reach the very top and I meant to get there. Even if it meant climbing a mountain of words. For now I had begun to believe, despite all the talk of science around me, that there was a magic in spoken words. Sometimes I sat watching the watery play of light upon Douglass’ portrait, thinking how magical it was that he had talked his way from slavery to a government ministry, and so swiftly. Perhaps, I thought, something of the kind is happening to me. Douglass came north to escape and find work in the shipyards; a big fellow in a sailor’s suit who, like me, had taken another name. What had his true name been? Whatever it was, it was as Douglass that he became himself, defined himself. And not as a boatwright as he’d expected, but as an orator. Perhaps the sense of magic lay in the unexpected transformations.
Had he had recalled his grandfather’s words at this moment, however, he might have been a bit more tempered in his enthusiasm:
“You start Saul, and end up Paul,” my grandfather had often said. “When you’re a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul — though you still Sauls around on the side.”
Don’t go thinking you’ve become a saint, in other words.
Poet Sir John Betjeman also has a tempered view of transformation. In “The Conversion of St. Paul,” he notes that most of us do not have Paul’s blinding come-to-Jesus moment. The process is more of a stumbling and blindly groping affair.
The Conversion of St. Paul By Sir John Betjeman
What is conversion? Not at all For me the experience of St Paul, No blinding light, a fitful glow Is all the light of faith I know Which sometimes goes completely out And leaves me plunging into doubt Until I will myself to go And worship in God’s house below — My parish church — and even there I find distractions everywhere.
What is Conversion? Turning round To gaze upon a love profound. For some of us see Jesus plain And never once look back again, And some of us have seen and known And turned and gone away alone, But most of us turn slow to see The figure hanging on a tree And stumble on and blindly grope Upheld by intermittent hope. God grant before we die we all May see the light as did St Paul.
I’ll have to admit my experiences have been more like Betjeman’s than like Paul’s. Then again, God accepts us, whatever road we take to get there.
Justin carrying the cross at the National Cathedral
Friday
Every year at this time, Julia and I pause to remember our oldest child, who died in a freak drowning accident on April 30, 2000. Justin was 21 at the time and, feeling exuberant on a beautiful spring day, he flung himself into the St. Mary’s River—a place where he had swum as a child—only to be grabbed by a rogue current and swept away. Life moved on, as life does, and our other two sons have given us five grandchildren between them, so we have much to be thankful for. Still, the wound of loss never entirely heals. Nor do I want it to since the pain somehow keeps him present.
Language can never do justice to the death of someone we love, but poetry comes closer than any other form of language to articulating our feelings, so as usual I share a poem. Today I turn to that luminous poet Jane Hirschfield, who captures both the way we acclimatize ourselves to a death and how it always remains poignant. After the poet makes her observation about the potency of life–a version of Dylan Thomas’s “And death shall have no dominion”–I love how she slips into an understated but oh so powerful parenthetical aside.
In that second ending, the distant comes close to where we can touch it again. The abstract yields to the personal.
Poem with Two Endings By Jane Hirschfield
Say ‘death’ and the whole room freezes – even the couches stop moving, even the lamps. Like a squirrel suddenly aware it is being looked at.
Say the word continuously, and things begin to go forward. Your life takes on the jerky texture of an old film strip.
Continue saying it, hold it moment after moment inside the mouth, it becomes another syllable. A shopping mall swirls around the corpse of a beetle.
Death is voracious, it swallows all the living. Life is voracious, it swallows all the dead. Neither is ever satisfied, neither is ever filled, each swallows and swallows the world.
The grip of life is as strong as the grip of death.
(but the vanished, the vanished beloved, o where?)
Ukrainian American poet Ilya Kaminsky has a moving essay in Oprah Daily on the necessity of poetry in tough times. In it, he tells the story of a friend who, while spending whole nights in Kyiv subway stations serving as bomb shelters, has taken to
reciting poems to herself and those around her to keep sane. When she grows tired, she starts translating those poems into other languages, just as a way of keeping going.
Her story prompts Kaminsky to observe,
Critics in the West often ask whether poetry matters. I now realize that the only valid response to this question is: Do such critics matter? If a person sheltering deep underground as her city is bombed recites poems as a survival tool—to soothe herself and others—that is all the evidence I need that poetry matters.
And then he adds,
But we humans always knew that.
Yes, we always have known that. It’s just that sometimes we need reminding. I, of course, seek to remind you daily of this. But my reminders don’t have the fierce urgency that Kaminsky has as he reports experiences of poet friends still in Ukraine.
For instance, there’s his friend from Kharkiv, Anastasia Afanasieva, who “took a long break from poetry” to set up a successful business selling fishhooks but, with Russian bombs now having destroyed the business, she’s back to writing poetry again. Although in the past she won two of Russia’s top awards for poetry, Afanasieva has now shifted to Ukrainian. One poem, where she describes the decision, begins in Russian but shifts to her national language midway through.
Kaminsky quotes from her e-mail to him, which he observes reads at time like a prose poem:
Since the war started, I feel it’s like one long day: I still don’t know what day of the week it is or what date. The past was cancelled in one minute. Imagine a magic eraser, which erases all the text in one moment from the paper—and paper becomes white as a new snow. Personal past is no more. No former goals, no former job, no former habits, no former stores we used to visit for groceries every day, no former walking routes, no former landscapes, no home, no former dreams—pure nothing. You’re born again at the age of 40—having only a book of memories with you, a book, which you read till the end and there are no new chapters. And you, like a newborn, try to learn to walk and speak again.
“Poetry,” Kaminsky concludes,
now is as necessary as ever. Not because it is pretty or fancy. But because it helps us to articulate the most impossible moments: It gives us a gasp, a scrap of air in our lungs. When we have nothing else, we can still hold a handful of words in our memory, a tune, and that might be all we have got now to survive—we don’t know yet. But if we are lucky, it is there.
And then he leaves off with this advice:
Keep it safe, this verbal music. Memorize new line poems if you can. You might need them one day, war planes or not. When facing the blank wall that is crisis, everyone needs a bit of music, a tune, a balm.
During the German blitzkrieg of 1940 and 1941, London bookstores apparently sold out their poetry. If there are any bookstores left intact in Ukraine, I suspect they have as well.
Additional Afanasieva poem: I believe the following poem, translated from the Russian by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco, was written after the Russian invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014. Reading it now, one thinks of those Ukrainian refugees who, having escaped to the west, are now returning home, in spite of the danger. As the poem notes, people sometimes hear a call that overrides all other considerations:
That’s my home. . .
1
That’s my home. There was a bridge here. Now there isn’t.
That’s my home. That’s my yard. It’s still here.
Where a bridge stood, there’s a river. No more bridge.
Where there was once a pass, now there’s a line.
We live here, on the line.
In the devil’s belly, that’s where.
2
I came back Barely made it Took a while to get everyone out I have a big family My parents are old Then there are my Brother my sister my pregnant daughter I got them all out Out of that damned house Just imagine There’s a river There was a bridge there Now it’s destroyed On the one side of the river these people On the other side, those Whoever they are Between them, our house It took me so many trips There and back For each person I barely got them out A big family These on the one side, those on the other The house stands like a shadow As though lead passes through the walls Or the house contorts its beams So that it can dodge the hail of bullets It twists left and right What it took me, a woman To get all of them out You can’t imagine One by one Right from the belly of the beast Coming back every time, Diving into all of that, Not knowing If there will be a way But I got them all out And now my daughter Yes, the pregnant one Says she wants to return She’s headed back tomorrow She has someone there A man she loves See, he stayed back there And love, well You know how love goes With those young people You know how it is for them Anything for love
Like much of the world, I’ve been thinking about those Ukrainians holed up in Mariupol, heroically resisting as Russia rains missiles down upon them. The Greeks resisting the Persian army at Thermopylae come to mind and, with them, A.E. Housman’s allusion to the battle.
Housman was a classicist as well as a poet, and details in “The Oracles” are drawn from Herodotus’s account of the famous battle. It took days of fighting before the large Persian army was able to overwhelm the smaller band. As Herodotus reports it, Xerxes imagined, somewhat like Putin, that the Greeks would simply retreat rather than stand and fight. After all, the numbers were all on his side. Here’s the famous Greek historian:
Hearing this Xerxes was not able to conjecture the truth about the matter, namely that they were preparing themselves to die and to deal death to the enemy so far as they might; but it seemed to him that they were acting in a manner merely ridiculous…
In Herodotus’s telling, an informant with inside information told Xerxes,
Hear then now also: these men have come to fight with us for the passage, and this is it that they are preparing to do; for they have a custom which is as follows: whenever they are about to put their lives in peril, they attend to the arrangement of their hair.
The Spartan king Leonidas, meanwhile, had been told an oracle that (again, according to Herodotus) either the Spartan capital of Lacedaemon would be “sacked by the children of Perseus” (the Persians) or he himself would die:
O ye men who dwell in the streets of broad Lacedaemon! Either your glorious town shall be sacked by the children of Perseus, Or, in exchange, must all through the whole Laconian country Mourn for the loss of a king, descendant of great Heracles.
When, after four days of waiting, Xerxes did not witness the expected Greek retreat, he attacked. Even then it took numerous assaults, three days of fighting, and a Greek betrayal before he finally broke through.
In Housman’s poem, two oracles are mentioned: the Oracle of Dodona and the Oracle of Delphi (“the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain”). That the oracles of old are now mute doesn’t bother the speaker. After all, he’s not important enough to warrant an oracle, and besides he has his own oracle–“the heart within”—that tells him he’s going to die. Therefore he tells the oracle priestess, whom he impudently calls “my lass,” to can it. Combining a stoic fatalism with a dash of bravado, he tells her,
Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it; But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more. ’Tis true there’s better booze than brine, but he that drowns must drink it; And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.
In the face of overwhelming odds and expecting the worst, the Spartans calmly sat down and combed their hair. The speaker imagines himself doing something similar in the face of his own imminent death.
The Oracles By. A.E. Housman
’Tis mute, the word they went to hear on high Dodona mountain When winds were in the oakenshaws and all the cauldrons tolled, And mute’s the midland navel-stone beside the singing fountain, And echoes list to silence now where gods told lies of old.
I took my question to the shrine that has not ceased from speaking, The heart within, that tells the truth and tells it twice as plain; And from the cave of oracles I hear the priestess shrieking That she and I should surely die and never live again.
Oh priestess, what you cry is clear, and sound good sense I think it; But let the screaming echoes rest, and froth your mouth no more. ’Tis true there’s better booze than brine, but he that drowns must drink it; And oh, my lass, the news is news that men have heard before.
The king with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning; Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air. And he that stands must die for naught, and home there’s no returning. The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.
I doubt that the Mariupol defenders are combing their hair, but they appear to be no less stoic. And like Leonidas and his followers, they are setting themselves up to become legendary in their turn.
