It was ten years ago yesterday when Hillary Clinton told us that, if DJT were elected, Vladimir Putin would have a puppet in the White House. The accusation came in their debate after Trump refused to disavow Russia, saying that it would not be a bad thing if Russian and the United States got along. When he said that Putin had no respect for Clinton, she responded, “That’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president.”
This has not only proved to be spot-on but it becomes truer with every passing week. Heather Cox Richardson points to some of the strings that Putin has pulled in the last few days:
In just over a week, Trump has lifted sanctions on the sale of Russian oil on the global market, a way both to send desperately needed money to Russia to fund its war on Ukraine and to begin the process of reintegrating Russia into the global economy. Either Trump or Musk or both appear to have slowed down Starlink and Starshield—the two systems that manage communications for defense and offensive drones, respectively—making them inoperable during one of the worst Russian bombardments of the war. And on Friday, Trump waived additional sanctions Congress demanded in a recent law named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) two days before the sanctions were to go into effect.
I went looking for poems about puppets and came across a gem by Angelina Weld Grimké. Born in 1880, Grimké was the mixed-race daughter of a former slave-abolitionist pairing and the grandniece of the famous 19th century abolitionist and suffragist Angelina Grimké Weld. The poet’s racial background must have created a sense of distance from both white and Black societies, whose elaborate responses to racial codes made them appear stiff and unnatural:
The Puppet-Player
Sometimes it seems as though some puppet-player, A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin Sits just beyond the border of our seeing, Twitching the strings with slow, sardonic grin.
The puppet imagery reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s “The Harlot’s House” where he describes dancers as automatons when viewed through a curtain at night:
Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille.
While Grimké was perhaps thinking of Americans responding to racism, her poem describes Putin perfectly as a puppet-player. She even gets the “slow sardonic grin” right. Meanwhile Trump, when he does his little inane dance step, appears to be pulled by strings.
Thanks to the GOP’s refusal to hold DJT accountable for his open corruption, Putin differs from Grimké’s puppet-master only in that he has no need to hide his manipulation. We don’t have to look beyond the border to see him at work.
Last week I reported on surviving Rohinton Mistry’s roller coaster of an epic, A Fine Balance. In it, I quoted a key passage in which Vasantrao Valmik, who has been journalist, marketer, campaign writer, proofreader, and lawyer, reveals the secret of life to college student Maneck. Despite things having gone wrong in each of his professions, he refuses to despair, choosing instead to follow advice offered up by a William Butler Yeats poem:
“Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote: “All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay.’”
“Yeats?” guessed Maneck.
The proofreader nodded. “You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.” He paused, considering what he had said. “Yes,” he repeated. “In the end, it’s all a question of balance.”
The poem is “Lapus Lazuli,” which begins with “hysterical women” questioning the worth of painting, music, and those poets “that are always gay.” Why aren’t they out there doing something drastic rather than “just” making art. Given that these hysterics are forecasting the carpet bombing of cities—the year is 1938 and the London blitzkrieg is only two years away– their hysteria can’t be casually dismissed.
W.H. Auden famously said—this in his 1939 poem “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”—that “poetry makes nothing happen,” which is why doomsayers are questioning it. Yet Valmik relies on poetry to keep him going. As you look at the poem, keep in mind that “gay” for Yeats means joyous affirmation of life:
I have heard that hysterical women say They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow, Of poets that are always gay, For everybody knows or else should know That if nothing drastic is done Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out, Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in Until the town lie beaten flat.
Yeats then points to Macbeth—“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage”—and perhaps as well to Jaques’s similar analogy in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely actors.” How can either we or the theater actors performing those roles keep going, he asks. The answer is that they feel lifted up, not beaten down, by the poetry. Gaiety transfigures desperate humans at the moment when tragedy is “wrought to its uttermost.” When we are in the presence of Hamlet or Lear, all our dread over what we have aimed at, found, and lost is blacked out. Heaven blazes into the head:
All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear, That’s Ophelia, that Cordelia; Yet they, should the last scene be there, The great stage curtain about to drop, If worthy their prominent part in the play, Do not break up their lines to weep. They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay; Gaiety transfiguring all that dread. All men have aimed at, found and lost; Black out; Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, And all the drop scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages, It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
In a nutshell, [the poem] seems to me to be about that paradox of “tragic joy.” We can experience a tragedy as profound and as bleak as Shakespeare’s King Lear or Sophocles’ Oedipus, and yet come out of it strangely exhilarated, uplifted. To Yeats, this curious reaction to the witnessing of human suffering points to rather complex issues not only about human psychology, but about the nature of destruction and of creation, and the elusive interactions between them. In this poem, Yeats juxtaposes the cataclysmic waves of destruction and of suffering that humanity has faced and continues to face, with the joy of rebuilding, of creating out of the ashes.
This is the advice that Valmik offers Maenick, who unfortunately does not take it, choosing instead to commit suicide. The Parsi woman and the two untouchable men do so, however, even though their situations are more desperate. When everything else has been taken away from them, they hold on to their improbable friendship. The precious moments they continue to build together far outweigh anything that the scoundrels in the book achieve with their horrific actions.
It’s a point Yeats continues to make in his poem’s final three stanzas. Although old civilizations have been “put to the sword” and precious works of art are forever lost, life continues to affirm itself through the creative spirit. In a Lapus Lazuli carving of two musicians and a servant carrying their instruments, he imagines that they are off to play “mournful melodies.”
Despite this, he writes, their “ancient, glittering eyes are gay.”
On their own feet they came, or on shipboard, Camel-back, horse-back, ass-back, mule-back, Old civilizations put to the sword. Then they and their wisdom went to rack: No handiwork of Callimachus Who handled marble as if it were bronze, Made draperies that seemed to rise When sea-wind swept the corner, stands; His long lamp chimney shaped like the stem Of a slender palm, stood but a day; All things fall and are built again And those that build them again are gay.
Two Chinamen, behind them a third, Are carved in Lapis Lazuli, Over them flies a long-legged bird A symbol of longevity; The third, doubtless a serving-man, Carries a musical instrument.
Every discoloration of the stone, Every accidental crack or dent Seems a watercourse or an avalanche, On lofty slope where it still snows Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch Sweetens the little half-way house Those Chinamen climb towards, and I Delight to imagine them seated there; There, on the mountain and the sky, On all the tragic scene they stare. One asks for mournful melodies; Accomplished fingers begin to play. Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
In think of William Carlos Williams’s observation about poetry that doesn’t acknowledge the news of the world, which would include aeroplanes pitching “like King Billy bomb-balls in/ Until the town lie beaten flat”:
While it is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.
One thing found there is hope in the face of despair. Yeats understood this at the end of his life and the character Vanick, recognizing this essential message, uses it to guide his life.
Detail from Jean-Léon Gérôme, Moses on Mount Sinai
Sunday
In today’s Old Testament reading, about Moses on Mount Sinai, God informs him that He is too powerful to appear directly. Authors from different traditions have imagined the charged moment when humans encounter the divine, including the Brahmoist-Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore in “Face to Face.”
Here’s God conversing with Moses:
Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Even this indirect encounter with the divine leaves Moses so elevated that he himself must wear a veil in order to communicate with the others (Exodus 34:29-30):
And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.
In the story of Semele, the mother of Bacchus/Dionysus, the Roman poet Ovid shows what happens when she asks for a direct experience of Jupiter. A jealous Juno has tricked her into making the request:
Semele asked Jupiter for an unspecified gift. ‘Choose!’ said the god, ‘Nothing will be refused, and, so that you may believe it more firmly, I swear it by the Stygian torrent, that is the divine conscience, the fear, and god, of all the gods.’ Pleased by her misfortune, too successful, and doomed to be undone by her lover’s indulgence, Semele said ‘As Saturnia is used to your embrace, when you enter into the pact of Venus, give yourself to me!’ The god would have stopped her lips as she spoke: but her voice had already rushed into the air.
He groans, since she cannot un-wish it or he un-swear it. So, most sorrowfully, he climbs the heights of heaven, and, with a look, gathered the trailing clouds, then added their vapors to lightning mixed with storm-winds, and thunder and fateful lightning bolts. Still, he tries to reduce his power in whatever way he can, and does not arm himself with that lightning with which he deposed hundred-handed Typhoeus: it is too savage in his grasp. There is a lighter dart to which the Cyclops’s hands gave a less violent fire, a lesser anger. The gods call these his secondary weapons. Taking these he enters Agenor’s house. But still Semele’s mortal body could not endure the storm, and she was consumed, by the fire of her nuptial gift. (Metamorphoses, Book 3)
Coming out of the Judaic tradition, Paul imagines a time when, rendered transcendent by faith, hope, and (above all) charity/love, we will become “at one” with God (the atonement). Paul implies we will surpass even Moses in the encounter (1 Corinthians 13:11-13):
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
Jesuit Father Bob Dufford imagines the encounter in the beautiful 1973 hymn “Be Not Afraid.” The line “I will give you rest” comes from God’s assurance to Moses in today’s reading, but Dufford echoes Paul’s contrast with Moses. In this instance, “You shall see the face of God and live.” Here’s the first stanza:
You shall cross the barren desert, but you shall not die of thirst. You shall wander far in safety though you do not know the way. You shall speak your words in foreign lands and all will understand. You shall see the face of God and live.
Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come, follow me, and I will give you rest.
Now for Tagore, where connection with God is achieved through prayer, humble contemplation, and silence:
Face to Face By Rabindranath Tagore
Day after day, O lord of my life, shall I stand before thee face to face. With folded hands, O lord of all worlds, shall I stand before thee face to face.
Under thy great sky in solitude and silence, with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face.
In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil and with struggle, among hurrying crowds shall I stand before thee face to face.
And when my work shall be done in this world, O King of kings, alone and speechless shall I stand before thee face to face.
John Michael Rysbrack, battle scene from The Iliad
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.—Henry David Thoreau
Friday Memories of Books That Shook My World
When I was a young child, I would spend hours playing with little plastic toy soldiers, bought inexpensively from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. My brothers and I also owned a fleet of Matchbook army vehicles and would imagine elaborate battles. From there, it was a short jump to relishing the battles in The Iliad.
I can accurately report that reading Iliad was one of two experiences that saved my first year of high school, the other being playing for the tennis team. I’ll explain how in a moment. First, however, Freud’s observations in “Creative Writing and Daydreaming” comes to mind. I recognize my childhood play experiences in the following passage:
The child’s best-loved and most intense occupation is with his play or games. Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of own, or rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? It would be wrong to think he does not take that world seriously; on the contrary, he takes his play very seriously and he expends large amounts of emotion on it.
Then Freud makes the link to reading fiction:
As people grow up, then, they cease to play, and they seem to give up the shield of pleasure which they gained from playing. But whoever understands the human mind knows that hardly anything is harder for a man than to give up a pleasure which he has once experienced. Actually, we can never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for another. What appears to be a renunciation is really the formation of a substitute or surrogate. In the same way, the growing child, when he stops playing, gives up nothing but the link with real objects; instead of playing, he now phantasies.
I didn’t have to grow up to make the shift but, yes, the deep pleasure I get from reading I can never give up. I appreciate Freud revealing how deep the pleasure goes.
As far as the Iliad’s importance to 14-year-old me, some background is necessary. After a blissful year in Paris where my brothers and I had free range of the city’s museums and movie theaters, I found myself enrolled in a military high school. Hating the uniforms, the drilling, the hazing, and the Saturday morning inspections (SMIs), I felt thoroughly miserable.
My English teacher, however, had us read the entire Richard Lattimore translation of The Iliad, the first time I had ever read a great work of literature in a school classroom (which doesn’t say much for my elementary and middle school teachers). I had read a child’s version of Homer’s poem earlier, along with a book of Greek myths, but encountering the epic in its entirety was a far more profound experience. Having said that, however, once again I was lining up opposing armies. I particularly liked it when the gods entered the fray:
But Zeus who marshals the thunderheads replied, “God of the earthquake, well you know my plans, the strategy in my mind, and why I call you here These mortals do concern me, dying as they are. Still, here I stay on Olympus throned aloft, here in my steep mountain cleft, to feast my eyes and delight my heart. The rest of you: down you go, go to Trojans, go to Achaeans. Help either side as the fixed desire drives each god to act. If Achilles fights the Trojans—unopposed by us— not for a moment will they hold his breakneck force. Even before now they’d shake to see him coming. Now, with his rage inflamed for his friend’s death, I fear he’ll raze the walls against the will of fate.”
Of course, I was rooting for the Greeks, and it helped that Athena was my favorite god. All the gods that I knew from the individual stories were gathered in one place, a kind of team-up superhero drama such as one encounters in The Avengers:
And with that command Zeus roused incessant battle. Down the immortals launched to the field of action— their warring spirits split the gods two ways. Hera went to the massed ships with Pallas Athena, Poseidon who grips the earth, and Hermes god of luck who excels them all at subtle twists and tactics— and the god of fire flanked them, seething power, hobbling along but his shrunken legs moved nimbly. But Ares swept down to the Trojans, helmet flashing, and pacing him went Phoebus with long hair streaming and Artemis showering arrows, Leto and River Xanthus and goddess Aphrodite strong with eternal laughter.
Particularly thrilling was how the gods were battling each other. It was like how my friends and I took turns picking our favorite toy soldiers and vehicles:
So the blissful gods were rousing both opposing armies, clashing front to front but then, in their own ranks, their overpowering strife broke out in massive war. Down from the high skies the father of men and gods let loose tremendous thunder-from down below Poseidon shook the boundless earth and towering heads of mountains. The whole world quaked, the slopes of Ida with all her springs and all her peaks and the walls of Troy and all Achaea’s ships. And terror-struck in the underworld, Hades lord of the dead cringed and sprang from his throne and screamed shrill, fearing the god who rocks the ground above his realm, giant Poseidon, would burst the earth wide open now and lay bare to mortal men and immortal gods at last the houses of the dead—the dank, moldering horrors that fill the deathless gods themselves with loathing. So immense the clash as the war of gods erupted. There, look, rearing against the lord Poseidon Phoebus Apollo loomed, bristling winged arrows, rearing against Ares, blazing-eyed Athena, rearing against Hera, Artemis with arrow of gold and cry that halloos’ the hunt, the goddess raining shafts, Huntress sister of Phoebus the distant deadly Archer— rearing against Leto, Hermes the running god of luck and against the Fire-god rose the great deep-swirling river immortals call the Xanthus, mankind calls Scamander.
So god went up against god.
Given my detestation of all things military, it may seem curious that I fantasized about war games, whether with toys or with books. An analysis of gendered play, why a sweet little boy with a girlish side would be more interested in soldiers than dolls, more interested in warrior than caregiver narratives, is beyond the scope of today’s essay. More interesting to me is how Homer’s Iliad brought new complexity to my view of war. Suddenly conflict wasn’t all black and white. It was as though I was being initiated into adulthood.
I found myself sympathizing with certain Trojan characters and being horrified at the brutality of the killings. I shuddered as the greater Ajax kills Troy’s Simoeisios by piercing him in the right nipple so that the spearhead comes back out through the shoulder. And as Menelaus kills Pandarus by striking him in the face so that his spear goes through the cheek close to nose and eye, cuts through the teeth and tongue, and then emerges “underneath the jaw bone.”
To borrow from Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting,” I was seeing “the pity of war, the pity war distilled.” In that poem Owen makes indirect reference to Achilles’s horrifyingly blood rampage with the line, “when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels.”
I now realize, in my adolescent reaction, that I was responding as French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil does in her famous essay “The Iliad, or The Poem of Force.” Regarding it as one of the world’s greatest anti-war works, Weil writes,
The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad, is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man’s flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to.
As Wikipedia sums up Weil’s argument, she
discusses the emotional and psychological violence one suffers if forced to submit to force even when not physically hurt, holding up the slave and the supplicant as examples. She goes on to say force is dangerous not just to the victim, but to whoever controls it, as it intoxicates, partly by numbing the senses of reason and pity. Force thus can turn even its possessor into a thing – an unthinking automaton driven by rage or lust.
The impact of Weil’s essay was to turn the poem from (Wikipedia again) “a stirring tale of heroic deeds” to “accurate and compassionate depiction of how both victors and victims are harmed by the use of force.”
Additionally significant was the context. Not only was I reading the poem at a military school but at a time when the Vietnam War was heating up (the fall of 1965). Thus it helped me process life around me. When I reached 18, partly because of the poem and partly because of my father (who joined the War Resisters League after returning from World War II), I applied for and received conscientious objector status. Given that my draft number was 51, if the draft hadn’t ended before my college student deferment ran out I would have engaged in some form of social service.
As it was, I participated in multiple peaceful protests against the war, getting arrested once. No force was used.
Mark Zuckerberg as Grendel? The comparison came to mind after hearing Aaron Sorkin talk about his new movie The Social Reckoning.
The film looks at the damage Facebook has done to America, including its role in the January 6 assault on the Capitol. It also celebrates a courageous whistleblower, Frances Haugen, a member of Facebook’s Civic Integrity team. At first idealistic, she came to realize that the company was willing to harm vulnerable users, including teenagers, in its relentless pursuit of profit.
Discussing what drives Zuckerberg in a conversation with MSNOW’s Nicolle Wallace, Sorkin speculated that the Facebook head has never gotten over his feelings that he was denied access to the the cool kids’ table. “So he invents his own cool kids’ table,” the director said, “and he’s going to be the mayor of that.”
Sorkin noted that the same dynamic is operative with Trump. “I feel much of America is suffering from this syndrome,” he opined and then wondered whether Zuckerberg and Trump might have been better people had George Clooney and Brad Pitt invited them to sleepovers.
Grendel also rages over being excluded from the cool kids’ table. When Hrothgar and his warriors are celebrating their victories in the king’s newly built mead hall, we learn that success and prosperity come with a price:
Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him to hear the din of the loud banquet every day in the hall, the harp being struck and the clear song of a skilled poet
In my Beowulf book I talk in detail about the corrosive effects of murderous resentment. In Anglo-Saxon society, a warrior who felt that he had not received his fair share of gold rings could turn against his fellows—perhaps in a drinking session involving boasting and PTSD—with bloodshed the result. Although Denmark, as the regional superpower, doesn’t worry about outside threats, Hrothgar is powerless to prevent this internal violence.
There are multiple Grendels in the poem. Beer-guzzling Unferth, who sits at the king’s right hand, is affronted when Beowulf shows up offering to save the day:
Beowulf’s coming, his sea-braving, made him sick with envy: he could not brook or abide the fact that anyone else alive under heaven might enjoy greater regard than he did:
And then there is Hrothulf, the king’s nephew and designated regent should Hrothgar die before his sons come of age. The Queen knows he is ambitious and tries to appeal to his sense of honor and obligation to forestall any coup attempts. Her words are directed to Hrothgar, who is considering making Beowulf his heir, but she means for Hrothulf to hear them:
I am certain of Hrothulf. He is noble and will use the young ones well. He will not let you down. Should you die before him, he will treat our children truly and fairly. He will honor, I am sure, our two sons, repay them in kind when he recollects all the good things we gave him once, the favour and respect he found in his childhood.”
Wealhtheow here might just as well a member of Denmarks Civic Integrity team, making Francia Haugen-type appeals to Hrothulf’s better angels. An early Zuckerberg. Hrothulf does indeed go after Hrothgar’s sons when he becomes regent, killing one and attempting to kill the other. (The action happens outside the poem, so we know this from other sources.) The surviving son gets revenge but, in the turmoil, the great mead hall burns down.
Beowulf stands up to Grendel with firmness and strength. Because no one did this to Zuckerberg, our own great hall–beginning with the Capitol–has been tottering.
I’ve finished reading Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance and–hoo boy!–what an epic ride it has been. The cover excerpt from a Wall Street Journal review describes it as “a rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter,” but I must say the moments of laughter are few and far between. The title refers to the fine balance between hope and despair, and given what happens to the main characters, “balance” seems overly optimistic. Time and again the action tilts into despair.
A professional man who has had many jobs and experienced multiple reversals explains the balance concept to college-student Maneck:
“Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote: “All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay.’”
“Yeats?” guessed Maneck.
The proofreader nodded. “You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.” He paused, considering what he had said. “Yes,” he repeated. “In the end, it’s all a question of balance.”
Set in the years leading up to 1975, the year of Indira Gandhi’s emergency measures and sterilization program, Fine Balance follows Maneck; Dina, a widow from a wealthy Parsi family; and two Hindu untouchables. Despite their wide differences, the four are drawn together as chaos swirls around them. Dina is determined to make it on her own and hires Ishvar and Om, two men fleeing from unimaginable Brahmin brutality in their small town, to do piece work for a clothing company. Maneck, meanwhile, rents a room from her.
Throughout the novel we watch class and ethnic differences divide India, sometimes directed against untouchables, sometimes against Muslims, sometimes against Sikhs. The challenges of a woman seeking provides its own drama. Yet despite it all, the four rise above prejudice and find comfort in each other—or at least do so for a brief moment, after which all is shattered by the nation’s ugly political realities.
In the end (spoiler alert), the untouchables have been forcibly sterilized—the younger man is also castrated by the brahmin honcho who has lynched his father and burned his family alive—and are reduced to begging. Meanwhile Dina, without her tailors, loses her business and is forced to return home, essentially becoming a maid in her brother’s household.
In the epilogue we see Maneck, back from Dubai eight years later, shattered by what has happened to his friends. He is also distraught by how a college friend has been tortured and killed by the government, leading his friend’s three sisters to commit collective suicide. Although, unlike his three friends, Maneck has money—he has earned enough in Dubai to start a business—he instead throws himself in front of a train. He has not learned the secret of survival.
The little remaining hope is the ongoing friendship, once deemed impossible, between Dina, Om, and a now legless Ishvar, who must be pulled around on a cart. They can only meet when her brother is absent but, despite their fallen state, they’re still capable of enjoying small moments. The novel ends with one of these moments.
She opened the door again for them. “Don’t forget the umbrella.” She tucked it under Om’s arm.
“It was very useful last night,” he said. “I hit a thief who tried to grab our coins. He raised the rope and hauled. Ishvar made a clacking-clucking sound with his tongue against the teeth, imitating a bullock-cart driver. His nephew pawed the ground and tossed his head.
“Stop it,” she scolded. “If you behave that way on the pavement, no one will give you a single paisa.”
“Come on my faithful,” said Ishvar. “Lift your hoofs or I’ll feed you a dose of opium.” Chuckling, Om trotted away plumply. They quit clowning when they emerged into the street.
Dina shut the door, shaking her head. Those two made her laugh every day. Like Maneck used to, once. She washed the two plates, returning them to the sideboard for Nusswan and Ruby to dine off at night. Then she dried her hands and decided to take a nap before starting the evening meal.
So yes, there is some laughter. At the same time, we are reminded of Maneck, the once accomplished tailors return to begging, and a formerly proud and upbeat business woman returns to household drudgery.
I was discussing the novel with an Indian scientist and two cousins (one of them his wife), and KK gave us special insight into the novel. As he did so, I was reminded of the importance of having a diverse professoriate: not only has America been the beneficiary of a brilliant mind from abroad but KK could share things about the novel that eluded the rest of us. Many of my deepest insights into literature have come from colleagues of different ethnicities, especially from my African American colleagues Lucille Clifton and Jeffrey Coleman.
KK said that he identified with Maleck, whose family protects him from India’s ugly realities but who, as a result, is less able to handle life’s horrors. If Dina and the untouchables can keep going, it’s because all three are well acquainted with reversals of fortune and life’s unfairness. Applying their mindset to ourselves, my cousins and I noted the difference between our response to DJT’s assaults on voting and the rule of law and those of certain African American friends. We are only learning what they have known for years: that democracy’s guardrails are flimsier than we thought.
But because African Americans have this perspective, they have provided the Democratic Party with its bedrock. They can see Martin Luther King’s long arc better than many of their white counterparts, who fall more quickly into despair.
India in 1975 and 1984 is not the contemporary United States–nor is it 2026 India, for that matter—so one must be careful about drawing parallels. Nevertheless, our book group was unsettled by the similarities. Think how many of the following scenarios from the book we see playing out in DJT’s America:
–there is little to no accountability for the police and other enforcers, who perpetrate violence on vulnerable citizens, often rounding up street people in mass sweeps;
–rampant corruption means that anyone with money has the law on his side. Landlords think nothing of sending in thugs to evict tenants so that they can repurpose their property;
–while technically a judicial system is in place, attempting to use it to fight abuses comes with steep costs and insuperable difficulties;
–age-old animosities are revived so that, rather than joining to oppose the government and its wealthy friends, different ethnic populations turn against each;
–the state claims that it has the right to dictate what happens to your body (although in 1975 India’s case the issue was forced sterility rather than forced birth).
As I read Fine Balance, I continually wanted to exclaim, “That couldn’t happen here,” only to think of occasions where it has indeed happened and is continuing to happen. Along with DJT’s naked corruption, his abuse of the Department of Justice, the assault on reproductive rights, and the demonization and round-up of immigrants, I think of how, in the 1960s, so-called urban renewal in American cities saw poor but vibrant neighborhoods swept aside and cut up by highways. Meanwhile we now see tech bros imposing their AI centers on small communities, sucking up water resources and pushing up power bills in the process. For their part, DJT and his buddies plan mining projects for national parks, protected Native American lands, and wilderness areas.
So how about hope? At the moment, of course, liberal and progressives are hoping for a blue tsunami come November 4, making the election “too big to rig.” That’s more hope than any of the characters have in Fine Balance. But if nothing else, Mistry’s novel reminds us, in this vale of tears, to treasure the small moments.
I missed Indigenous Peoples’ Day yesterday so here’s a poem to mark the occasion. According to Wikipedia, Joy Harjo is a seventh-generation descendant of Monahwee (also known as Menawa) of the Muscogee people as well as a former U.S. Poet Laureate.
While American neofascists call for a blood and soil politics (and also celebrate Columbus Day), Harjo’s “Remember” shows what it really means to be rooted in the earth. In her vision, this earth welcomes all races and ethnicities:
Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth.
This is because, in Harjo’s greater vision, we are all one:
Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you.
Nor does it end with people:
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems.
And then there are the vast reaches of vast interstellar space:
Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night.
A spirit blows through creation and has done so since the beginning of time:
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe.
All that is beautiful and vibrant arises out of this spirit, the dance language that is life.
It’s a vision far richer than anything Columbus imagined.
Remember By Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers. Remember your father. He is your life, also. Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems. Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe. Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. Remember language comes from this. Remember the dance language is, that life is. Remember.
This is the second post I’ve written on the use of poetry in Ted Lasso, the delicious Apple TV show about an American coaching British soccer. Julia and I just finished watching season four and were struck by how it concludes with a Mary Oliver lyric.
Having coached a premier league men’s team in the first three seasons, Ted coaches a women’s team in season four. His folksiness, quirky sense of humor, humanity, empathy, and balanced perspective win over pretty much everyone.
In my previous post, I examined why an episode would turn to Phil Larkin’s “This Be the Verse,” along with its well-known line, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.”
The issue raised by that poem—whether Ted has been good father to his son after having had a bad father himself—comes around again in the season four finale (spoiler alert). Because his job has forced him to miss all his son’s soccer games, Ted demotes himself from the head coach position. Instead, he elevates his assistant, a prickly woman who expected the job initially but who now, under his mentorship, has become an excellent coach.
That’s not the only farewell in this finale. The Richmond women are also mourning the death of Mae, the old lady who runs the local tavern and has been the team’s most ardent fan.
Along with these endings, however, are also beginnings—a marriage in one case, a baby in another, and (for the coach of the Richmond men’s team) an offer to coach the legendary team Chelsea. (Like his pregnant girlfriend, upon his getting the offer Roy throws up.) A reading of Oliver’s “When Death Comes” accompanies the final montage.
When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox
when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: What is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence
and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world
The use of the poem suggests the series too has come to an end. What we see, in the last episode, is people taking the world into their arms. Mae’s death plays a role in this, focusing people’s attention on what is important. Rather than sighing or arguing or playing it safe—rather than simply visiting the world—various characters decide to be lions of courage and “something precious to the earth.”
Thanks largely to Ted, who has shown them how to move beyond ego and “look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,” they have become brides of amazement.
I revisit today a poem I shared a decade ago that puts a positive spin on the golden calf story, one of today’s lectionary readings. Although the calf works as a handy stand-in for any form of materialist idolatry (including the gold plating that DJT is applying to the White House and various statues), its historical origins are more complicated. Rabbi Jacob J. Staub explores them in his thought-provoking poem.
First, here’s the story:
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.
When the Lord informs Moses up on the mountain what is transpiring, Moses must talk him out of destroying them all. “Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people,” he begs before reminding in God of the promise he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. At this urging, we are told, “the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”
While the Lord may have relented mind, however, Moses determines that heads still must roll. Speaking to the priest class (the Levites), he commands that “each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” We are informed that the Levites did as Moses commanded and that about 3000 people are killed.
Given this murderous turn, which conjures up images of current events in Gaza, we can see why Staub revisits the story. In his eyes, the people are rebelling against an overly doctrinaire and grim version of Judaism.
In this reading, Moses is a psychologically wounded man who wants to impose his narrow vision of Jahweh on the Israelites, Staub’s Moses sounds like Freud’s repressive patriarch in Moses and Monotheism, whom Freud imagines as a dictatorial leader that the Israelites rebelled against and killed. In Freud’s thought experiment, the Israelites then experienced Oedipal guilt, which they internalized as a stern and judgmental superego.
I don’t recognize all the names in the third stanza of Staub’s poem, but they seem to refer to a historical time when the Israelites worshipped multiple gods, some of whom were later explained away as different names for the One God (for instance, Adonai). “Ashira” may be Asherah, once believed to be the female consort of Jahweh. Apparently Judaism was not a strictly monotheistic religion until after the Babylonian exile, which was when the Book of Exodus was written. Historians place the historical Moses around 700 years earlier, which means the Exodus account may not be any closer to historical truth than Freud’s.
In any event, Staub imagines a free-flowing spirit that is chillingly repressed by priests. Moses, a “bridegroom of the blood,” himself ignores his wife Tzipporah and his sons. Staub wants Judaism to return to what he imagines are its more celebratory and less patriarchal roots. Our problem is not that we worship the golden calf, he says. It’s that we worship orthodoxy.
Think of it as a poem advocating for a multicultural Israel.
Sadly, Moses and the Levites in the poem sound like Netanyahu and his ultra orthodox followers. “We don’t need another Pharaoh to lead us into freedom,” Staub declares. True idolatry, I suspect he would say, is ethnic nationalism.
“Guide him please, Holy One of Compassion,” he begs the Lord. “Love him doubly, forgive him his wrath.”
The Golden Calf By Jacob J. Staub
From the valley below, the ebullient notes of celebrants, the beat of tambourines liberated after four hundred years of abuse.
Sing unto the One, Who smites the tyrant, Who hears the cries of the oppressed, Who parts the Sea and plants the seeds for generations yet unborn.
Ana, pool your gold. Adonai, give it to God. Hoshi’a, smelt it down. Na, cast the throne. Ashira, link your arms. Ladonai, circle the fire. Ki, spin into oblivion. Ga’oh, let go, let go, let go. Ga’ah, God is One, we are one. With broken bodies of former slaves, we undulate, following the Source enthroned into the wilderness of promise.
And up over the ridge, the Levites wait, in formation, swords on thighs, servants of the Lord, privileged to follow orders, to do as they are told. A martial clan descended from the heroes of the Battle of Shechem, they wear their forebears’ medals proudly. They have been instructed in the proper use of herbs and oils, in the dire consequences of disobedience, of initiative, of openheartedness. In formation, they await the signal from Moses, down from the mountain, to charge, to slay three thousand defenseless, spent from a night of celebration.
Moses claims that You love only him, that we were spared because he intervened, that You do not like our offering. Moses, who has never seen Your face— not in the silent, steamy eyes of Tzipporah, from whom he stays cloistered, not in the bloody foreskins of his sons, whom he ignores in the name of his holy work. Moses, who doesn’t touch. Moses, who doesn’t dance. Moses, the bridegroom of blood.
Guide him please, Holy One of Compassion. We don’t need another Pharaoh to lead us into freedom. Love him doubly, forgive him his wrath. He was taken as an infant from his mother. Only You know what befell the lad in the palace, but below, all we see is his sweltering rage. Otherwise, as You surely can foresee, generations will mistake fervent worship for idolatry.
