Byatt’s Babel Tower and Truth Today

By Robin Bates | Published: September 19, 2022

Tuesday

I recently finished reading A.S. Byatt’s Babel Tower at the same time that I was working with fellow Carleton alumni on a “Truth, Education and Democracy” session for our 50th reunion next year. The novel has me reflecting both on my Carleton experience and the liberal arts ideal in general. Allow me to explain.

Byatt’s 1996 novel has several threads, one of which involves excerpts from a novel that a tormented character named Jude Mason has written. In this novel, a group of aristocratic free thinkers, fleeing from the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, retreat into a solitary castle. Cutting off ties with the rest of the world, they determine to live an existence free of social convention and sexual restraint. The name of this novel within Babel Tower is Babbletower, with the word “babble” having arisen from the Biblical city of Babel.

The ringleader of the group is one Culvert, who sounds like Rousseau and other Enlightenment philosophes. He regularly gives inspirational lectures outlining the guidelines the group is to live by. Here are the first three of the guiding principles he recommends:

1. The community must strive towards complete freedom for each and every member to live and express himself—or herself—to the utmost.

2. To this end all false distinctions of the corrupt world from which they had fled must be abolished. There must be no masters and no servants, no payment and no debt, but a common consent about the workd to be done, the delights to be enjoyed, the just sharing of these, and the proper remuneration of all from the common fund of goods and talents. Professions must be abolished, along with privileges, all must turn their hands to all tht was possible, as their desires led them, for work desired to be done is work well done, and slave labor is always ill done.

3. “It will be found,” Culvert said, “I believe, upon just reflection, that many of the evil distinctions and oppressions in our world come from institutions we have not dared to question. Most of us have already questioned and rejected the religons of our forefathers and compatriots, seeing to what evils they have led, but we have ot sufficiently studied how those unnatural instituions—marriage, the family, the patriarchy, the pedagogic authoritarian relation between teacher and pupil—have also harmed our natural impulses and inclinations

Byatt sets her own Babel Tower in the freewheeling 1960s, when there were intense debates on these issues. Sometimes communes were set up with similar  guidelines. Jude Mason, using his novel Babbletower to explore the world in which he lives, explores the dark side of the Enlightenment. The community, which starts off with embracing free sex and an end to hierarchy, eventually descends into bloodshed and torture. In the 1960s, one can think of Woodstock as the aspirational ideal and mass murderer Charles Manson as freedom gone awry. In the novel-within-the-novel, the tension is between French utopian socialist Charles Fourier and the Marquis de Sade.

Because Jude Mason’s novel describes horrific tortures, including an instrument that is introduced into a woman’s vagina, first to pleasure her and then to cut her to pieces, the novel is taken to court as pornography. One of the witnesses defending the novel draws the Fournier/Sade contrast and argues that, rather than indulging lascivious tastes, the novel is actually examining the complexities of freedom, which many in the 1960s ignored. Here’s the defense attorney questioning philosophy Professor Marie-France Smith, who wants to “produce a dry, scholarly account of what she believes to be the intellectual background of Babbletower.” After outlining Fourier’s ideas, she turns to Sade:

Smith: Fourier really believed that the Terror in the French Revolution might, pushed a little further, have ushered in one desirable further breaking down of rules and conventions—the abolition of marriage, which made almost everyone, in his view, unhappy. “In Harmony,” he wrote, “every mature man and woman must be granted a satisfying minimum of sexual pleasure.”
Attorney: And you see Babbletower as in that tradition?
Smith: The first part, yes. The characters are setting off to found a Nouveau Monde Amoureux, a New World of Love. What happens owes as much to de Sade as to Fourier.
Attorney: Tell us bout de Sade. You take him seriously as a thinker?
Smith: You must. He is important. He represents the line from the Enlightenment philosophers who extol human reason and free will, in its cynical vein. He asks, If we are free to follow our passions, who can prevent us from following our desire to hurt others, to kill, to rape, to torture? Those are, he says, human passions; they are natural. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, the freethinkers, lead, according to one view, to the guillotine and the Sadeian boudoir. Mr. Mason has understood this. He has shown it.

And further on in the examination:

Smith: The Babbletower community is Fourier’s Nouveau Monde Amoureux. It is also Sade’s Chateau de Silling [the castle in 120 Days of Sodom], where the libertines cut the bridge that connects them to the outer world so as to perform their terrible deeds.

So how does this relate to a class reunion session on “Truth, Education, and Democracy”? Well, the modern college traces many of its ideals and practices to the 18th century Enlightenment. Students retreat from the world—in some schools there are even gates closing them off from the outside world (as in Harvard and Columbia)—so that they can engage in a free and open discussion of ideas. This in turn is held up as a model of how a democracy should function, with people of different perspectives coming together to engage in a collective project. Critical to the enterprise is a willingness to entertain different perspectives.

But colleges and democracies only work if everyone agrees to certain ground rules. If dialogue is not genuine—if one group refuses to listen to another, or even strives to silence another—then the community breaks down. And if there is not an agreed-upon way to arrive at truth and establish facts, whether through logic, reason, or the scientific method, then the institution is put into peril. This is not to say that we will all agree with the conclusions of others, but we must agree about how to conduct the dialogue that leads to conclusions, just as citizens in a democracy must all agree to abide by election rules.

Our group consists of an Emory philosophy professor, an American University law professor, an IUPUI Library Professor, a St. Mary’s College of Maryland English professor (me), and a noted doctor, so all of us are dedicated to the pursuit of truth, each in his own disciplinary way.  One question we are encountering is how much credence to give to those who dismiss truth, facts, and expertise altogether. If educators are censored because they don’t have the proper political views, if facts are determined by whoever shouts the loudest and bullies the best, if Enlightenment reason is attacked when it leads to unpopular and uncomfortable perspectives, then goodbye to truth and all truth-seeking endeavors.

It is always good to be skeptical and self-critical. That’s a vital part of the university project. But skepticism is not the same as anti-intellectualism. There has to be a commitment to the project itself. This commitment must undergird the session we are putting together.

Further thought: When it comes to the question of truth, I myself follow in the tradition of Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Johnson, Percy Shelley and others in seeing great literature as capturing the deepest truths about human beings. Salman Rushdie has written (in response to the torrent of lies we encounter in the public realm),

[A]s far as writers are concerned, we need to rebuild our readers’ belief in argument from factual evidence, and to do what fiction has always been good at doing—to construct, between the writer and the reader, an understanding about what is real. I don’t mean to reconstruct the narrow, exclusive consensus of the nineteenth century. I like the broader, more disputatious view of society to be found in modern literature. But when we read a book we like, or even love, we find ourselves in agreement with its portrait of human life. Yes, we say, this is how we are, this is what we do to one another, this is true. That, perhaps, is where literature can help most. 

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What You Missed in School Today

By Robin Bates | Published: September 19, 2022
Albert Anker, The Village School

Monday

 

A question for fellow college teachers: how often have you heard, from a student who missed a class, “Did I miss anything important.” Thomas Wayman has a wonderfully sarcastic set of answers to that question that I’ve shared in the past.

For a different approach, there’s Brad Aaron Modlin’s “What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade.” Consider it an exercise in expanding the possibilities of what education can accomplish. It’s a fun way to begin a new week:

What You Missed that Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade
By Brad Aaron Modlin

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math
equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

Yes, your questions, your longing, and your existence add up to something. Good teachers know this.

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Reaching Out to the Poor and Oppressed

By Robin Bates | Published: September 17, 2022
Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda

Spiritual Sunday

How is it that American white evangelicals, who once reached out to the poor and needy, now cheer as self-proclaimed Christians like Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott victimize vulnerable refugees as pawns in their political games. While we are still learning details, it appears that DeSantis used Florida taxpayer money to lure Venezuelan refugees onto an airplane with false promises of jobs and housing in Boston. They were then flown to Martha’s Vineyard, along with a photographer, and dumped without warning there.

Martha Serpa’s “Poem Found” functions as useful commentary on the spiritual emptiness of such an action. Its subject is the displaced New Orleans residents that were directed into the city’s Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. The dome reminds the poet of the “dome in the midst of the waters”—also translated as vault and firmament—in Genesis 1:6-8:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

While the Superdome served as a refuge, it was made intentionally uninviting. Citing from Time magazine and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Wikipedia reports,

Over the years city officials have stressed that they didn’t want to make it too comfortable at the Superdome since it was always safer to leave the city altogether. “It’s not a hotel,” said the emergency preparedness director for St. Tammany Parish to the Times-Picayune in 1999.

As the Superdome filled up, it became a hellhole:

[T]here was no water purification equipment on site, nor any chemical toilets, antibiotics, or anti-diarrheals stored for a crisis. There were no designated medical staff at work in the evacuation center, no established sick bay within the Superdome, and very few cots available that hadn’t been brought in by evacuees. Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin had stated that as a “refuge of last resort,” only limited food, water, and supplies would be provided. Residents who evacuated to the Superdome were warned to bring their own supplies with them.[12]

By August 30, with no air conditioning, temperatures inside the dome had reached the 90s, and the punctured dome at once allowed humidity in and trapped it there. Tempers began to flare as hunger and thirst deepened. Food rotted inside the hundreds of unpowered refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building. Blood and feces covered the walls of the facility. According to many, the smell inside the stadium was revolting due to the breakdown of the plumbing system, which included all toilets and urinals in the building, forcing people to urinate and defecate in other areas such as garbage cans and sinks. Some people even chose to wear medical masks to ease the smell.

The flood waters eventually reached the Dome, although they did not rise above field level. This allows Serpas to riff off the Genesis account, noting that, in this case, “the dry land land did not appear.” It might be an allusion to Noah’s flood as well.

The poet has written about the occasion of her poem,

I was seeing something like the interruption and reversal of creation, the heartless who floundered, and the strength of displaced people who lost and survived. Until then my work had focused on coastal erosion, a factor in what happened to the city, and an ongoing destruction of land and lives by encroaching water.

Those with money, of course, left the area or found better accommodations. Or as Serpas sarcastically puts it,

 And God allowed those who favored themselves

born in God’s image to take dominion over
the dome and everything that creeped within it

and made them to walk to and fro above it
in their jumbo planes and in their copy rooms

and in their conference halls.

Those who claim dominion, however, are not those that most concerned Jesus, and, like him, Serpas focuses on “the poor, the addicts, the blind, and the oppressed,” “the unsightly sick and the crying young.” If she were writing about DeSantis’s political gamesmanship, she would add Venezuelan refugees to the list. Here’s the poem:

Poem Found
New Orleans, September 2005

By Martha Serpas

…And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst
of the waters” and into the dome God put

the poor, the addicts, the blind, and the oppressed.
God put the unsightly sick and the crying young

into the dome and the dry land did not appear.
And God allowed those who favored themselves

born in God’s image to take dominion over
the dome and everything that creeped within it

and made them to walk to and fro above it
in their jumbo planes and in their copy rooms

and in their conference halls. And then
God brooded over the dome and its multitudes

and God saw God’s own likeness in the shattered
tiles and the sweltering heat and the polluted rain.

God saw everything and chose to make it very good.
God held the dome up to the light

like an open locket and in every manner called
the others to look inside and those who saw

rested on that day and those who didn’t
went to and fro and walked up and down

the marsh until the loosened silt gave way
to a void, and darkness covered the faces with deep sleep.

Serpas uses the locket metaphor to capture God’s love for us. By inviting us to look at it, God gives us a chance to love our unfortunate neighbors. If we do, we will find heaven on earth.

If we don’t, on the other hand, Serpas uses an environmental image to depict our fate. Her reference is to irresponsible tree-cutting and oil development, which have devastated the marshlands that in the past served as a buffer against hurricanes. If we choose greed over responsible stewardship, the loosened silt will give way and (to quote Isaiah’s riff off of Genesis, “darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples” (Isaiah 60:2).

Those that fail to open themselves to the goodness of God’s creation will, like restless souls, forever walk to and fro and up and down. Without God to guide them, ultimately they, like Dante’s sinners, will be swallowed by a void of their own devising.

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Music That Triggers Deep Longings

By Robin Bates | Published: September 15, 2022

Friday

I’m starting a new Friday feature today, which is related to the weekly poetry column I inherited from my mother in the Sewanee Mountain Messenger. “Bard to Verse” comes out every Friday, and henceforward I will devote each Friday’s blog post to discussing the poem I have chosen. Since sometimes I must settle for an except (since the Messenger has limited space), this has the added benefit of allowing Messenger readers to check out the poem in its entirety. If you’d like to see the publication, you can go to here. The weekly poem appears on the last page.

Today is the birthday of Alfred Noyes (b. 1880), whose “Highwayman” is one of the great poems of my childhood. In fact, for me it was the poetic equivalent of Lord of the Rings, capturing the imagination of a dreamy and romantic adolescent and taking him (as Emily Dickinson puts it) “lands away.”

I didn’t know of Noyes’s “The Barrel Organ” until I encountered it in my 11th grade British Literature class. That course was arguably the most important one I ever took (as I told teacher Sparky Edgin multiple times before he passed away) because it took my mind off of the unhappiness of attending a military high school. From that moment on, British Literature became my great passion.

I shake my head in wonder at how much Edgin had us read in that class. Even now, 55 years later, I can remember almost every work we read. (See the end of this post for a complete list.) Very wisely, Edgin started off with the 20th century so we read short stories by Somerset Maugham and Saki (I can remember the plots but not the titles), Dylan Thomas’s “Poem in October,” James Stephens’s “The Shell,” and another story about a bicycle accident that has two endings (which seemed very cool) but whose author and title I also can’t recall. And then there was Noyes’s “Barrel Organ.”

The theme of the poem is that the mechanical music issuing from a barrel-organ has the effect (at least at the moment when “the sun sinks low”) of triggering deep longing in everyone who hears it.

It’s as though people are not actually hearing popular airs from La Traviata and Il Trovatore, performed on a herky-jerky instrument,but their own inarticulate longings. And perhaps that’s what all music does. As Noyes puts it,

                 And there La Traviata sighs
                      Another sadder song;
                  And there Il Trovatore cries
                      A tale of deeper wrong;
                  And bolder knights to battle go
                      With sword and shield and lance
                  Than ever here on earth below…

The situation reminds me of my favorite chapter in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” The time of day is different—dawn rather than twilight—but the theme of longing-that-cannot-be-captured is the same. First Rat hears the distant music (he’s the poet after all) and then Mole. Grahame describes Rat’s response as follows:

Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with curiosity.

“It’s gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worthwhile but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it forever. No! There it is again!” he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.

In Grahame’s story, Rat and Mole come face to face with the source of the music—the Great God Pan—and this direct encounter with the divine is ecstatic. But it cannot last, and when it ends they are—a bit like all the lonely people in Noyes’s poem—lost and bereft. To save them, therefore, Pan bestows upon them “the gift of forgetfulness”:

As they stared blankly, in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realized all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses, and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the afterlives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and light-hearted as before.

Noyes too speaks of forgetting, and while he doesn’t describe it as a necessary forgetting, there’s a sense that “business as usual” could not go on if we stayed entranced by the distant music:

                  Yes; as the music changes,
                      Like a prismatic glass,
                  It takes the light and ranges
                      Through all the moods that pass;
                  Dissects the common carnival
                      Of passions and regrets,
                  And gives the world a glimpse of all
                      The colors it forgets.

In the poem we see all the characters struggling to get this glimpse. It doesn’t matter whether one is a “modish” woman or an “old and haggard demi-rep” (probably an over-the-hill prostitute), a businessman or a thief, a butcher or a clerk, a laborer or an Oxford oarsman. Each, for a moment, is caught up in distant dreams.

And while the barrel-organ’s music can’t restore what has been lost, when it “whirls” from sadness into a dance, it provides them with a consolation. They realize they can “come down to Kew in lilac time.” Unlike the “land where the dead dreams go,” it’s “oh so near to London.”

I remember how much I loved this poem as a teenager. At that age, our longings seem particularly intense—at least that’s how I remember them—so that poems which capture our condition feel like celestial gifts. I think of other mysterious poems from the period that I loved, like Walter de la Mare’s “The Listeners” (“‘Is there anybody there?” said the traveler/Knocking on the moonlit door”), A. E. Housman’s “Land of Lost Content” (“ Into my heart an air that kills/ From yon far country blows”), and E.A. Robinson’s “Luke Havergal” (“The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,/ Like flying words, will strike you as they fall”).

I would have found disappointing any attempts to pin down the mystery. At that age, my mind ranged freely.

As you read “The Barrel-Organ,” perhaps you will find that it touches upon some of your own longings.

The Barrel-Organ
By Alfred Noyes

There’s a barrel-organ caroling across a golden street
    In the City as the sun sinks low;
And the music’s not immortal; but the world has made it sweet
    And fulfilled it with the sunset glow;
And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain
    That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light;
And they’ve given it a glory and a part to play again
    In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

And now it’s marching onward through the realms of old romance
    And trolling out a fond familiar tune,
And now it’s roaring cannon down to fight the King of France,
    And now it’s prattling softly to the moon,
And all around the organ there’s a sea without a shore
    Of human joys and wonders and regrets;
To remember and to recompense the music evermore
    For what the cold machinery forgets. . . .

                  Yes; as the music changes,
                      Like a prismatic glass,
                  It takes the light and ranges
                      Through all the moods that pass;
                  Dissects the common carnival
                      Of passions and regrets,
                  And gives the world a glimpse of all
                      The colors it forgets.

                  And there La Traviata sighs
                      Another sadder song;
                  And there Il Trovatore cries
                      A tale of deeper wrong;
                  And bolder knights to battle go
                      With sword and shield and lance,
                  Than ever here on earth below
                      Have whirled into—a dance!—

Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
   Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland;
   Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume,
    The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!)
And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world’s a blaze of sky      
    The cuckoo, though he’s very shy, will sing a song for London.

The Dorian nightingale is rare and yet they say you’ll hear him there
    At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)
The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo
    And golden-eyed tu-whit, tu-whoo, of owls that ogle London.

For Noah hardly knew a bird of any kind that isn’t heard
    At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)
And when the rose begins to pout and all the chestnut spires are out
    You’ll hear the rest without a doubt, all chorusing for London:—

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
    Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland;
    Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

And then the troubadour begins to thrill the golden street,   
    In the City as the sun sinks low;
And in all the gaudy buses there are scores of weary feet
Making time, sweet time, with a dull mechanic beat,
And a thousand hearts are plunging to a love they’ll never meet,
Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat,      
    In the land where the dead dreams go.

Verdi, Verdi, when you wrote Il Trovatore did you dream
    Of the city when the sun sinks low,
Of the organ and the monkey and the many-colored stream
On the Picadilly pavement, of the myriad eyes that seem
To be litten for a moment with a wild Italian gleam
As A che la morte parodies the world’s eternal theme
    And pulses with the sunset-glow.

There’s a thief, perhaps, that listens with a face of frozen stone
    In the City as the sun sinks low;
There’s a portly man of business with a balance of his own,
There’s a clerk and there’s a butcher of a soft reposeful tone.
And they’re all of them returning to the heavens they have known:
They are crammed and jammed in busses and—they’re each of them alone
    In the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s a very modish woman and her smile is very bland
    In the City as the sun sinks low;
And her hansom jingles onward, but her little jeweled hand
Is clenched a little tighter and she cannot understand
What she wants or why she wanders to that undiscovered land,
For the parties there are not at all the sort of thing she planned,
    In the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s a rowing man that listens, and his heart is crying out
    In the City as the sun sinks low;
For the barge, the eight, the Isis, and the coach’s whoop and shout,
For the minute-gun, the counting and the long disheveled rout,
For the howl along the towpath and a fate that’s still in doubt,
For a roughened oar to handle and a race to think about
    In the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s a laborer that listens to the voices of the dead
    In the City as the sun sinks low;
And his hand begins to tremble and his face to smolder red,
As he sees a loafer watching him and—there he turns his head
And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled,
For he hears her softly singing, and his lonely soul is led
    Through the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s an old and haggard demi-rep, it’s ringing in her ears,
    In the City as the sun sinks low;
With the wild and empty sorrow of the love that blights and sears,
Oh, and if she hurries onward, then be sure, be sure she hears,
Hears and bears the bitter burden of the unforgotten years,
And her laugh’s a little harsher and her eyes are brimmed with tears
    For the land where the dead dreams go.

There’s a barrel-organ caroling across a golden street
    In the City as the sun sinks low;
Though the music’s only Verdi there’s a world to make it sweet
Just as yonder yellow sunset where the earth and heaven meet
Mellows all the sooty City! Hark, a hundred thousand feet
Are marching on to glory through the poppies and the wheat
    In the land where the dead dreams go.

             So it’s Jeremiah, Jeremiah,
                  What have you to say
             When you meet the garland girls      
                  Tripping on their way?

             All around my gala hat
                  I wear a wreath of roses
             (A long and lonely year it is
                  I’ve waited for the May!)
             If anyone should ask you,
                  The reason why I wear it is—
             My own love, my true love,
                   Is coming home to-day.

   And it’s buy a bunch of violets for the lady
       (It’s lilac-time in London; It’s lilac-time in London!)
   Buy a bunch of violets for the lady
       While the sky burns blue above:

On the other side the street you’ll find it shady
       (It’s lilac-time in London! It’s lilac-time in London!)
   But buy a bunch of violets for the lady,
       And tell her she’s your own true love.

There’s a barrel-organ caroling across a golden street
    In the City as the sun sinks glittering and slow;
And the music’s not immortal; but the world has made it sweet
And enriched it with the harmonies that make a song complete
In the deeper heavens of music where the night and morning meet,
    As it dies into the sunset-glow;
And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain
    That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light,
And they’ve given it a glory and a part to play again
    In the Symphony that rules the day and night.

             And there, as the music changes,
                  The song runs round again.
             Once more it turns and ranges
                  Through all its joy and pain,
             Dissects the common carnival
                  Of passions and regrets;
             And the wheeling world remembers all
                  The wheeling song forgets.

             Once more La Traviata sighs
                  Another sadder song:
             Once more II Trovatore cries
                  A tale of deeper wrong;
             Once more the knights to battle go
                  With sword and shield and lance      
             Till once, once more, the shattered foe
                  Has whirled into—a dance!

Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac time;
    Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)
And you shall wander hand and hand with love in summer’s wonderland;
    Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!)

The other works in my high school course: After reading works post-World War II, we went to the beginning, reading Beowulf, Chaucer’s Prologue and “The Miller’s Tale,” I think a Sidney poem, Hamlet, perhaps a Donne poem, definitely a Richard Lovelace poem (“Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make”), I think an excerpt from Pope’s Essay on Man, an excerpt from Gulliver’s Travels, definitely Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (and also The Vicar of Wakefield as a separate text), Thomas Gray’s “Elegy on a Country Churchyard,” Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality, Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” Tennyson’s “Flower in a Crannied Wall,” Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” and, as a grand finale, Shaw’s Pygmalion. My memory may have failed me on some of these and I’m sure there are ones I’ve left out, but the fact that many of these stick with me shows the impact they had.

One could note that there were no women or writers of color on the list. In 1967, we did not foresee how feminism, African-American studies, and post-colonialist discourse would change the literary landscape.

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Bulgakov: Ukrainian Grass Will Grow Again

By Robin Bates | Published: September 14, 2022
Mikhail Bulgakov, Ukrainian author of The White Guard (1925)

Thursday

For those seeking a better understanding of Ukraine, this past July Atlantic magazine recommended  Bulgakov’s The White Guard. I’ve finally gotten around to reading it and I can understand the shout out.

The novel takes place during the final year of World War I. Russia pulled out of the war following the Bolshevik Revolution, but that didn’t mean all fighting stopped. In White Guard, there’s a struggle over who will control Kyiv: White Russians, Bolsheviks, Germans and Ukranian Nationalists all fight for control of Kiev. We see the action through the eyes of the Turbin family, who are drawn into messy alliances as they try to sort out their way through the chaos.

Reading it with the current Russo-Ukrainian War in mind is sobering. Check out this passage early in the book, which seems to be about the weather but could be about a northern invasion as well:

Their life had been darkened at its very dawning. Cold winds had long been blowing without cease from the north and the longer they persisted the worse they grew. The eldest Turbin had returned to his native city after the first blast had shaken the hills above the Dnieper. Now, they thought, it will stop and we can start living the kind of life they wrote about in those chocolates melling books. But the opposite happened and life only grew more and more terrible. The snowstorm from the north howled and howled, and now they themselves could sense a dull, subterranean rumbling, the groaning of an anguished land in travail. As 1918 drew to an end the threat of danger drew rapidly nearer.

At one point, one of the characters turns to his local priest for consolation. The man let’s the Bible fall open and, unfortunately, it falls upon the following passage from Revelation 16:4:

‘And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.

The Turbin family has allied with the Germans to fend off the Ukrainian nationalist, but that’s a choice that is proving increasingly problematic. One thinks of the cities and towns seized by Russia early in the current war in the following passage:

Only someone who has been defeated knows the real meaning of that word. It is like a party in a house where the electric light has failed; it is like a room in which green mould, alive and malignant, is crawling over the wallpaper; it is like the wasted bodies of rachitic children, it is like rancid cooking oil, like the sound of women’s voices shouting obscene abuse in the dark. It is, in short, like death.

After much death and suffering, the novel ends in an almost mystical haze with a series of dreams. There we encounter this passage:

The snow will simply melt, the green Ukrainian grass will grow again, braid the earth…lush seedlings will come out…the heat will quiver above the fields and no more traces of blood will remain.

Optimistic though this sounds, with its image of new life, it is then somewhat by qualified the subsequent two sentences:

Blood is cheap on those red fields and no one would redeem it.

No one.

If Ukraine prevails in this war, it will be up to the survivors to make good on the promise of freedom that so many have died for.

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A Ukrainian Poem Rises Up

By Robin Bates | Published: September 13, 2022
While liberating Balakliya, Ukrainian soldiers discover a Shevchenko poem behind a Russian billboard

Wednesday

Here’s an instance of poetry stepping out of the pages of a book and onto the battlefield. As Ukrainian troops were tearing down Russian propaganda signs in liberated Balakliya, which had been occupied since March, they discovered that the invaders had papered over a passage by Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko. Ukrainian tweeter “Ipa” alerted me to the incident—you can view it here—along with a translation of the passage and its history.

Imagine that you have just liberated an area and suddenly the following lines blaze forth to greet you:

And glory, mountains blue, to you,
In ageless ice encased!
And glory, freedom’s knights, to you,
Whom God will not forsake.
Keep fighting — you are sure to win!
God helps you in your fight!
For fame and freedom march with you,
And right is on your side!
(Trans. John Weir)

The poem can be read in its entirety here. “Ipa” glosses it as follows:

This poem dates back to 1845. The leading theme of it is the passionate denial of the tsarist war in the Caucasus. Shevchenko created a sharp satire on the political, social, and ideological foundations of tsarist Russia: autocracy, serfdom, and Orthodoxy.

The poet eloquently debunks the colonialist essence of Russian imperialism with its hypocritical official demagoguery, soullessly cruel army, and docile bureaucratized church.

The poem is too long for me to discuss it in detail but here are a few thoughts. “The Caucasus” begins with an allusion to Prometheus, who stole divine fire for humanity and was chained for eternity to a rock, with an eagle daily eating his liver. In linking Ukraine with the Greek figure, Shevchenko reverses the story’s emphasis by noting that Prometheus never succumbs, despite the constant torture. Rather, he bounces back every day. The “sateless one” in the poem is never-satisfied tsarist Russia:

Mighty mountains, row on row, blanketed with cloud, 
Planted thick with human woe, laved with human blood. 
Chained to a rock, age after age 
Prometheus there bears 
Eternal punishment — each day 
His breast the eagle tears.
It rends the heart but cannot drain 
The life-blood from his veins — 
Each day the heart revives again 
And once again is gay.
Our spirit never can be downed,
Our striving to be free.
The sateless one will never plow 
The bottom of the sea.
The vital spirit he can’t chain,
Or jail the living truth.
He cannot dim the sacred flame,
The great god’s fame on earth.

Invoking both the Babylonian captivity (in the Book of Jeremiah) and St. Paul’s prediction in his letter to the Romans (“every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God”), Shevchenko foresees a time when “liberty and right” will prevail. He then adds, however,

But in the meantime, rivers flow,
The blood of men in rivers!
Mighty mountains, row on row, blanketed with cloud, 
Planted thick with human woe, laved with human blood.

This dark picture recalls the civilian massacres and prisoner torture we have been witnessing for the past six months. With scathing sarcasm, Shevchenko talks how the tsarist forces have found

Poor freedom hiding ’mid the crags 
(A hungry thing, and all in rags),
And sick’d our dogs to drag her down.

The tsar then thanks God for his victory, and in those lines one can’t help thinking about how the head of the Russian Orthodox Church has endorsed Putin’s invasion:

Temples and chapels, icons and shrines,
And candlesticks, and myrrh incense.
And genuflexion, countless times 
Before Thy image, giving thanks 
For war and loot and rape and blood,–
To bless the fratricide they beg Thee,
Then gifts of stolen goods they bring Thee,
From gutted homes part of the loot!

Counter to this, however, is the passage appearing on the sign—“Keep fighting—you are sure to win!”—which in the full poem is followed by a passage that reminds me of a speech President Zelensky gave two days ago. I find myself wondering whether Zelensky was channeling Shevchenko when he delivered the lines since they echo both the poet’s defiance and his characteristic sarcasm. In the poem, Shevchenko says that Ukrainians don’t need much so long as they are free to make their own decisions:

A hut, a crust — but all your own,
Not granted by a master’s grace,
No lord to claim them for his own,
No lord to drive you off in chains.

Zelensky’s speech came after Russia had bombarded several power stations, a war crime that left parts of the country in the dark. I frame Zelensky’s speech as a poem to reinforce the parallels:

Read my lips:
Without gas or without you?
Without you.
Without light or without you?
Without you.
Without water or without you?
Without you.
Without food or without you?
Without you.
Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst aren’t as scary and deadly for us
as your “friendship and brotherhood.”
But history will put everything in its place.
And we will be with gas, light, water and food
And WITHOUT you!

Russians may claim Ukrainians as friends and brothers—in fact, their extreme cruelty against Russian-speaking Ukrainians may be spurred by their disappointment at not being greeted as liberators—but Ukrainians have no such illusions. They have experienced the Russian yolk for centuries.

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Panic Gripping Russian Soldiers

By Robin Bates | Published: September 12, 2022
Attributed to Francesco Fontebasso, Roman Soldier and Woman Fleeing Man Armed with a Shovel (18th century)

Tuesday

What a turnabout we are seeing in the Russo-Ukrainian War. For the longest time, it appeared that the two sides had settled into a prolonged war of attrition, only for the Ukrainians to mount an impressive counteroffensive and recapture, in a week, land that Russian had taken two months to subdue. Military analyst Lawrence Freedman cited a passage from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises  to describe the turn of affair of affairs:

“How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Freedman explains,

As with bankruptcy so with military defeat. What appears to be a long, painful grind can quickly turn into a rout. A supposedly resilient and well-equipped army can break and look for means of escape. This is not unusual in war. We saw it happen with the Afghan Army in the summer of 2021.

For the past few days we have been witnessing a remarkable Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv. We have the spectacle of a bedraggled army in retreat— remnants of a smashed-up convoy, abandoned vehicles, positions left in a hurry, with scattered kit and uneaten food, miserable prisoners, and local people cheering on the Ukrainian forces as they drive through their villages. The speed of advance has been impressive, as tens of square kilometres turn into hundreds and then thousands, and from a handful of villages and towns liberated to dozens. Even as I have been writing this post paragraphs keep on getting overtaken by events.

Stories are emerging of Russian soldiers throwing away their guns and running, and perhaps you’ve seen this video of a panicked Russian tank, shedding soldiers clinging to its turret as it careens down the road before finally running into a tree. A running joke is that Russia has now become the leading supplier of armaments to Ukraine because of all the equipment that fleeing troops have left behind. Another joke—this one directed at spin from the Russian Minister of Defense—imagines him reporting that the Russian troops have retreated victoriously while the Ukrainian army is running after them in panic. Although one must be careful not to read too much into these reports, Ukrainian advances in the north have been impressive.

Which is why I’ve been thinking about the scene in Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage where the protagonist is himself seized with panic, throwing down his rifle, and fleeing in blind fear. The seeds are sown on his way to his first battle. I imagine the Russian soldiers looking out at a forest as he does:

Absurd ideas took hold upon him. He thought that he did not relish the landscape. It threatened him. A coldness swept over his back, and it is true that his trousers felt to him that they were no fit for his legs at all.

A house standing placidly in distant fields had to him an ominous look. The shadows of the woods were formidable. He was certain that in this vista there lurked fierce-eyed hosts. The swift thought came to him that the generals did not know what they were about. It was all a trap. Suddenly those close forests would bristle with rifle barrels. Ironlike brigades would appear in the rear. They were all going to be sacrificed. The generals were stupids. The enemy would presently swallow the whole command. He glared about him, expecting to see the stealthy approach of his death.

He thought that he must break from the ranks and harangue his comrades. They must not all be killed like pigs; and he was sure it would come to pass unless they were informed of these dangers. The generals were idiots to send them marching into a regular pen. There was but one pair of eyes in the corps. He would step forth and make a speech. Shrill and passionate words came to his lips.

Although he withstands the first round of fire from the enemy, the second proves too much, draining him and those around him of all resolve:

A man near him who up to this time had been working feverishly at his rifle suddenly stopped and ran with howls. A lad whose face had borne an expression of exalted courage, the majesty of he who dares give his life, was, at an instant, smitten abject. He blanched like one who has come to the edge of a cliff at midnight and is suddenly made aware. There was a revelation. He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit.

Others began to scamper away through the smoke. The youth turned his head, shaken from his trance by this movement as if the regiment was leaving him behind. He saw the few fleeting forms.

He yelled then with fright and swung about. For a moment, in the great clamor, he was like a proverbial chicken. He lost the direction of safety. Destruction threatened him from all points.

Directly he began to speed toward the rear in great leaps. His rifle and cap were gone. His unbuttoned coat bulged in the wind. The flap of his cartridge box bobbed wildly, and his canteen, by its slender cord, swung out behind. On his face was all the horror of those things which he imagined.

And:

He ran like a blind man. Two or three times he fell down. Once he knocked his shoulder so heavily against a tree that he went headlong.

Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder blades was far more dreadful than death about to smite him between the eyes. When he thought of it later, he conceived the impression that it is better to view the appalling than to be merely within hearing. The noises of the battle were like stones; he believed himself liable to be crushed.

As he ran on he mingled with others. He dimly saw men on his right and on his left, and he heard footsteps behind him. He thought that all the regiment was fleeing, pursued by those ominous crashes.

In his flight the sound of these following footsteps gave him his one meager relief. He felt vaguely that death must make a first choice of the men who were nearest; the initial morsels for the dragons would be then those who were following him. So he displayed the zeal of an insane sprinter in his purpose to keep them in the rear. There was a race.

Fear can be contagious, especially amongst troops that (like the Russians) are badly trained, badly equipped, and badly led. While there’s probably still a lot of fighting ahead, the last few days appear to have been a turning point.

The latest word is that Russia is having trouble getting troops to volunteer for the war—and to reenlist—leaving Putin with few options. After all, if he mobilizes the country as a whole, he will face increasing resistance. Russia’s war in Afghanistan brought down the Soviet Union and this war could well bring down Russia’s current dictator.

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Butler’s Nightmare Climate Change Vision

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2022
Octavia Butler

Monday

With all the ills that beset us, the most worrisome remains climate change, which is currently wreaking havoc in Pakistan, with its catastrophic flooding, and California, with its record temperatures and uncontrollable wild fires. Extreme climate events have also led to international incidents, such as the Syrian civil war (begin in 2011) and the northward migrations of Central Americans.

Science fiction author Octavia Butler predicted such incidents in her 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, set in 2024. Two weeks ago I posted on the narrator’s spiritual vision in the novel. Now that I’ve finished reading it, I can talk more about Butler’s vision of the havoc climate change will wreak upon social relations.

In some ways, Sower reads like a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, like Walter Miller’s Canticles for Liebowitz and Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, dystopian visions of people living in a world that has experienced nuclear holocaust. Novels that have followed Butler’s have been Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake trilogy and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. All of these novels feature a society that has descended to the state of nature described by political philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 work Leviathan:

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

In Sower, urban communities retreat behind walls to protect themselves from marauders, nihilists, and young people high on “pyromania,” a drug whose effects are enhanced by watching fires. As a result, there are non-stop cases of arson, along with wholesale slaughter. Lauren Oya Olamina, an African American teenager living in the outskirts of Los Angeles, is the only one in her family to escape when homicidal pyromaniacs assault her compound. She therefore sets out for Washington or even Canada, where climate change hasn’t wiped out the water supply. No one knows who is trustworthy—people may appear to be friends, only to murder you in your sleep for your shoes and bottled water—but she manages to assemble a community, which fend off attacks as they journey northward.

Complicating Lauren’s challenges is the fact that, because her mother abused drugs during her pregnancy, Lauren is hyper-empathetic, which means that she feels the pain of those around her. This means that, when she uses violence against those attacking her, she feels her own blows. I suspect she is a stand-in for the super-sensitive author, who acutely feels people’s assaults on the environment and on each other.

What sets Butler’s novel apart from other post-apocalyptic fiction—and makes it more interesting—is how she looks to the next generation for hope. Lauren, the narrator, is developing a philosophy/religion called Earth Seed, which she hopes will help people survive and once again flourish. She sets about building a community around these principles.

A least one member of her traveling group, her future husband, is skeptical. Older, he can’t understand why Lauren has hope. Here’s an interchange between the two that gives you a sense of their challenges:

“There’s been so much dying. There’s so much more to come.”

“Not for us, I hope.”

He said nothing for a while. Then he stopped and put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. At first he only stood looking at me, almost studying my face. “You’re so young,” he said. “It seems almost criminal that you should be so young in these terrible times. I wish you could have known this country when it was still salvageable.”

It might survive,” I said, “changed, but still itself.”

“No.” He drew me to his side and put one arm around me. “Human beings will survive of course. Some other countries will survive. Maybe they’ll absorb what’s left of us. Or maybe we’ll just break up into a lot of little states quarreling and fighting with each other over whatever crumbs are left. That’s almost happened now with states shutting themselves off from one another, treating state lines as national borders. As bright as you are, I don’t think you understand—I don’t think you can understand what we’ve lost. Perhaps that’s a blessing.”

And further:

He sighed. “You know, as bad as things are, we haven’t even hit bottom yet. Starvation, disease, drug damage, and mob rule have only begun. Federal, state, and local governments still exist—in name at least—and sometimes they manage to do something more than collect taxes and send in the military. And the money is still good. That amazes me. However much more you need of it to buy anything these days, it is still accepted. That may be a hopeful sign—or perhaps it’s only more evidence of what I said: We haven’t hit bottom yet.”

Counter to this is Lauren’s vision, which she expresses through poetry. Here’s one instance:

Create no images of God.
Accept the images
that God has provided.
They are everywhere,
in everything.
God is Change—
Seed to tree,
tree to forest;
Rain to river,
river to sea;
Grubs to bees,
bees to swarm.
From one, many;
from many, one;
Forever uniting, growing, dissolving—
forever Changing.
The universe
is God’s self-portrait.

And elsewhere:

Embrace diversity.
Unite—
Or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.

And finally:

Kindness eases change.

I have not yet read the 1998 sequel, Parable of the Talents, but you can see how prescient Butler was by the Wikipedia description. Not only does she predict the ravages of climate change, but she foresees a MAGA dictator, bolstered by white Christian nationalists, seizing control of America:

The novel is set against the backdrop of a dystopian United States that has come under the grip of a Christian fundamentalist denomination called “Christian America” led by President Andrew Steele Jarret. Seeking to restore American power and prestige, and using the slogan “Make America Great Again,” Jarret embarks on a crusade to cleanse America of non-Christian faiths. Slavery has resurfaced with advanced “shock collars” being used to control slaves. Virtual reality headsets known as “Dreamasks” are also popular since they enable wearers to escape their harsh reality.

According to the Wikipedia article, Butler had planned to write further books in the series but felt overwhelmed by the amount of research involved. I suspect the emotional toll that her vision took upon her also played a role. She reminds me in this way of Lucille Clifton—they must have known each other—since Clifton also sometimes felt her extreme empathy to be a burden. Clifton’s “water sign woman” could describe Lauren (only Lauren has to be on the move):

the woman who feels everything
sits in her new house
waiting for someone to come
who knows how to carry water
without spilling, who knows
why the desert is sprinkled
with salt, why tomorrow
is such a long and ominous word. 

they say to the feel things woman
that little she dreams is possible,
that there is only so much
joy to go around, only so much
water. there are no questions
for this, no arguments. she has 

to forget to remember the edge
of the sea, they say, to forget
how to swim to the edge, she has
to forget how to feel.

Like Lauren, however, Clifton pushes back against the naysayers. She too says that, if one is patient and looks at the beauty of the world, “water will come again”:

the woman
who feels everything sits in her
new house retaining the secret
the desert knew when it walked
up from the ocean, the desert,
 
so beautiful in her eyes;
water will come again
if you can wait for it.
she feels what the desert feels.
she waits.

Lauren might disagree only with the waiting part. Although she too believes patience is necessary, she also counsels action. Or as she puts it,

Belief
Initiates and guides action–
Or it does nothing.

And elsewhere:

A victim of God may,
Through learning adaption,
Become a partner of God,
A victim of God may,
Through forethought and planning,
Become a shaper of God.

Better that than being a victim, whether of climate change or the other ills besetting society. Completing this last poem, Lauren lays out the alternative:

Or a victim of God may,
Through shortsightedness and fear,
Remain God’s victim,
God’s plaything, God’s prey.

The choice between visionary planning and reactionary withdrawal, in other words, is up to us.

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Clifton’s Spiritual Meditations on 9-11

By Robin Bates | Published: September 10, 2022
Firemen run to the Twin Towers on 9-11

Spiritual Sunday – 9-11 Anniversary

Twice in the past I’ve shared the series of poems that Lucille Clifton wrote in response to the September 11 attack on New York and Washington. In her poems, Clifton draws on her religious roots to process the trauma. While raised Christian, however, Clifton shows her expanded vision of spirituality, so in her poems she embraces Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity.

At the time she wrote the poems, Lucille was a colleague of mine at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and we have posted all of them on plaques around St. John’s Pond, which sits in the middle of our campus. As one walks around the pond, one can read the sequence in its entirety.

The first poem turns on its head what it means to believe that God has blessed America. Worried about people who claim that America has a special relationship with God—and who might use the attack by Sunni Egyptians as an excuse to embark on a revenge holy war against all of Islam—Clifton shifts the conversation. Americans can learn something precious from what has just happened.

What they can learn is that, as a wealthy and safe country, we are mistaken if we think we are “exempt” from the suffering experienced “in otherwheres/israel ireland palestine.” Note that, for her “otherwheres,” Clifton names three peoples who have historically experienced more than their share of  persecution: Jews, Irish Catholics, and Palestinian Muslims. God may have blessed America with prosperity, but with the attacks, we received a different kind of blessing, one that is in line with Jesus reaching out to the wretched of the earth. God has blessed us with the knowledge of what these “otherwheres” regularly experience:

1 Tuesday 9/11/01

thunder and lightning and our world
is another place no day
will ever be the same no blood
untouched

they know this storm in otherwheres
israel ireland palestine
but God has blessed America
we sing

and God has blessed America
to learn that no one is exempt
the world is one all fear
is one all life all death
all one

In Wednesday’s poem, Clifton reminds us that Muslims no less than Christians are God’s children. God has multiple names and many tongues. This is not the time to focus on divisiveness, she says, either anger against Muslims or anger against those targeting Muslims. This is a time to pray together under one flag, “warmed by the single love/ of the many tongued God.”

2 Wednesday 9/12/01

this is not the time
i think
to note the terrorist
inside
who threw the brick
into the mosque
this is not the time
to note
the ones who cursed
Gods other name
the ones who threatened
they would fill the streets
with arab children’s blood
and this is not the time
i think
to ask who is allowed to be
american America
all of us gathered under one flag
praying together safely
warmed by the single love
of the many tongued God

Thursday’s poem uses a passage from Genesis (28:12) to honor the firemen who gave their lives. There we read that, while dreaming, Jacob “saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” Jacob’s dream captures those moments when the divine and earthly touch:

3 Thursday 9/13/01

the firemen
ascend
like jacob’s ladder
into the mouth of
history

Friday’s poem refers to the historical suffering of oppressed groups and passes along to all Americans an insight Clifton has struggled to learn as an African American woman: victims are not to blame for their suffering. While, following the attacks, various rightwing preachers like Jerry Falwell said that they were in retribution for America’s toleration of homosexuality, Clifton reassures Americans that we have done nothing “to deserve such villainy.”

4 Friday 9/14/01

some of us know
we have never felt safe

all of us americans
weeping

as some of us have wept
before

is it treason to remember

what have we done
to deserve such villainy

nothing we reassure ourselves
nothing

Saturday’s poem invokes Jesus and asks whether there is a higher purpose at work in our suffering. Following her embrace of persecuted minorities—perhaps in reaction to what she was hearing at the time from reactionary pastors like Falwell—Clifton notes that Jesus was a Jew and suffered as Jews have suffered throughout history. But perhaps there will be similar miracles of love in store for those who are suffering now, she observes, even as she acknowledges that the intention of “the gods” is difficult to understand:

5 Saturday 9/15/01

i know a man who perished for his faith.
others called him infidel, chased him down
and beat him like a dog. after he died
the world was filled with miracles.
people forgot he was a jew and loved him.
who can know what is intended? who can understand
the gods?

Sunday’s poem is dedicated to Lucille’s new granddaughter, born five days before the attacks. As she looks over the St. Mary’s River that flows by our campus, Lucille is struck by the calm, which is in marked contrast with the attacks. While she is well aware of humanity’s history of injustice and the many reasons to hate—she is “cursed with long memory”—she chooses to love instead.

Her granddaughter, she notes, is born innocent into a violent world. While Bailey will become aware of the bad, however, she will also become cognizant of the good. Buoyed by new life, Lucille talks about how she loves all of the world, despite “the hatred and fear and tragedy.” Ultimately, love trumps all.

6 Sunday Morning 9/16/01
for bailey

the st. marys river flows
as if nothing has happened

i watch it with my coffee
afraid and sad as are we all

so many ones to hate and i
cursed with long memory

cursed with the desire to understand
have never been good at hating

now this new granddaughter
born into a violent world

as if nothing has happened

and i am consumed with love
for all of it

the everydayness of bravery
of hate of fear of tragedy

of death and birth and hope
true as this river

and especially with love
bailey fredrica clifton goin

for you

It so happened that Rosh Hashanah fell upon September 17 in 2001, prodding Lucille to find symbolic significance in the Jewish new year and the supposed anniversary of Adam and Eve. While human evil emerged from the Garden of Eden, so did human love. Lucille writes that “what is not lost” from that original connection with God “is paradise.” In the sweet and delicious image of “apples and honey,” we see that Lucille believes that not all has been lost:

7 Monday Sundown 9/17/01

Rosh Hashanah

i bear witness to no thing
more human than hate

i bear witness to no thing
more human than love

apples and honey
apples and honey

what is not lost
is paradise

And so we continue on, finding something to salvage in even the grimmest of times.

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