My granddaughters, who turn 10, 8 and 6 this year, are excited by the new Pixar film Turning Red, although the youngest girl (along three-year-old Ocean, the only boy) is most enthusiastic about the notion of having a red panda tail that can be waved about. The older two are a bit more attuned to the protagonist’s mood swings although they too are still too young to fully grasp the film’s maturation theme.
For those of you don’t know, the film is about a Chinese American girl who has inherited an ancient family trait. At a certain age, girls transform into red pandas at those moments in life when their emotions spiral out of control—which, for adolescent girls, is pretty much constantly.
The red panda, of course, stands in for menstruation but also for self-expression and self-assertion. One’s inner panda, we learn in the course of the film, can be repressed by a family ceremony where one makes a formal break with that side of oneself. Which is to say, one makes the decision to repress one’s feelings.
As Freud informs us, however, that which is repressed returns as a monster. When protagonist Mei Lee refuses to abandon her panda side the way her mother has, the mother’s inner panda returns in a creature the size of Godzilla. The film’s point is that women should develop a healthier relationship with their red panda sides.
After watching the film, I thought of several Lucille Clifton poems where she wrestles with, and then overcomes, the fear of letting her red panda show. The three I have chosen can be seen as a before, during, and after.
In “the way it was,” the speaker remembers a time when she felt the need to hold things in. While the cultural dynamics for African Americans are different than they are for Chinese Americans, there are resemblances:
the way it was
mornings i got up early greased my legs straightened my hair and walked quietly out not touching
in the same place the tree the lot the poolroom deacon moore everything was stayed
nothing changed (nothing remained the same) i walked out quietly mornings in the ‘40’s a nice girl not touching trying to be white
Clifton was a pioneer among poets about celebrating her inner panda—which is to say, about loudly proclaiming sides of herself that, until she came along, women were supposed to keep hidden. “homage to my hips” is one such poem but, since we’re going with a red theme in today’s post, I share “poem in praise of menstruation.” In this poem Clifton celebrates the “wild” river that returns faithfully each month to the same delta. She also prays that it connects her with animals (including, presumably, red pandas) that are beautiful and faithful and ancient and female and brave.”
if there is a river more beautiful than this bright as the blood red edge of the moon if
there is a river more faithful than this returning each month to the same delta if there
is a river braver than this coming and coming in a surge of passion, of pain if there is
a river more ancient than this daughter of eve mother of cain and of abel if there is in
the universe such a river if there is some where water more powerful than this wild water pray that it flows also through animals beautiful and faithful and ancient and female and brave
The last poem, “to my last period,” was written following the poet’s hysterectomy. In it, the poet waves goodbye to her red panda, or at least to one of its manifestations.
well, girl, goodbye, after thirty-eight years. thirty-eight years and you never arrived splendid in your red dress without trouble for me somewhere, somehow. now it is done, and i feel just like the grandmothers who, after the hussy has gone, sit holding her photograph and sighing, wasn’t she beautiful? wasn’t she beautiful?
Beautiful in retrospect, anyway. But there’s no reason to be ashamed of her.
It’s been just over a month since the Russians invaded Ukraine and virtually everyone is surprised–not only at the effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance but at the poor showing of the Russian army. It appears now that the Ukrainians have killed seven Russian generals, an astounding number. I’ve seen three tweeters turning to literature to capture the situation, sometimes resorting to dark humor.
First, there is “Decoding Trolls,” who writes that Russia
has done a Reverse-Napoleon. Tolstoy brilliantly shows Russian General Kutuzov’s strategy in War & Peace: draw the French further & in, so their supply lines are stretched. Napoleon sat in Moscovy waiting for Moscovy to surrender. Never did. French died retreating.
Tweeter Mark Gongloff (@markgongloff), meanwhile, does a riff on an Oscar Wilde line in The Importance of Being Earnest. Towards the end of the play, Jack must reveal to Lady Bracknell that he doesn’t know who his parents were:
Bracknell: Are your parents living? Jack: I have lost both my parents. Bracknell: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Here’s Mark Gongloff’s tweet:
To lose one general is a misfortune, to lose two er three er four what five oops six um seven just looks careless.
Actually, there’s an explanation for the high loss rate. As an article in the Washginton Post explains,
Military analysts and Western intelligence officials say the Russian generals in Ukraine may be more exposed and serving closer to the front because their side is struggling — and that senior officers are deployed closer to the action to cut through the chaos.
One Western official suggested that Russian generals were also needed to push “frightened” Russian troops, including raw conscripts, forward.
Finally, tweeter “Andrej” riffs off of the “Modern Major General” in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. If you know the song, you’ll recall that this particular general’s knowledge is vast until it comes to modern warfare. As he puts it, “For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and Adventury/ Has only been brought down to the beginning of the Century.” This means that he has not yet learned to distinguish “a Mauser rifle from a javelin,” and he knows no more about tactics, elemental strategy, or “what progress has been made in modern gunnery” than “a novice in a nunnery.”
Andrej finds similar incompetence in the Russian commanders:
I am the very model of a Russian Major General My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several My fresh assaults are faltering with battle plans extemporal I can’t recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can It’s all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral I am the very model of a Russian Major General
In times of war, one looks anywhere one can for a little humor.
This past Wednesday many Christians celebrated “the Annunciation,” which was the moment when the angel Gabriel annunciated (announced) to Mary that she would be carrying God’s child. March 25, after all, is nine months before December 25. I like the seasonal symbolism in the two dates, with the Annunciation occurring almost on the Spring Equinox and first day of spring (with all the hope that that implies) and Christmas falling close to the winter solstice and the darkest day of the year (when Jesus’s birth brings with it the promise of spring and new life).
I grew up thinking that Mary didn’t have much say in the matter, but Levertov changes my view. As she sees it, it’s a choice. We all face versions of such a choice.
First, here’s Luke’s account:
And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said to her: Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end.
And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man?
And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren: Because no word shall be impossible with God.
And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:26-38)
The moment when Mary agrees to carry Jesus is symbolic of all those times in life when we are presented with momentous choices. Too often we turn away from them. Levertov challenges the traditional depiction of Mary as meek and describes her rather as courageous. It takes a brave woman to step into destiny.
So here’s to the courage of the mothers who carry us and give birth to us. They are participants in an event that it no less miraculous for being common.
The Annunciation
We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily.
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest.
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent. God waited.
She was free to accept or refuse, choice integral to humanness.
Aren’t there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives? Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending.
More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue.
God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.
She had been a child who played, ate, spelt like any other child – but unlike others, wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph. Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible.
Called to a destiny more momentous than any in all of Time, she did not quail, only asked
a simple, “How can this be?” and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel’s reply, perceiving instantly the astounding ministry she was offered:
to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power – in narrow flesh, the sum of light.
Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love –
but who was God.
The poem was a favorite of my friend Maurine Holbert-Hogaboom, an extraordinary woman who made her way from a small Texas town, via Burlesque, to New York City during the Great Depression. There, by dint of her charisma and determination, Maurine made a living as an actress until she was blackballed during the 1950s for supporting Civil Rights. Eventually she made her way to St. Mary’s City, Maryland, which is where I got to know her. I read the poem at her funeral—she died at 98—because of the way the poem captures her own momentous decisions.
Booker cites Langston Hughes in Judge Jackson’s Senate hearing
Friday
As Senate Republicans went after Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in hearings that Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson notes were characterized by “racism, sexism, feigned outrage and general ugliness,” New Jersey’s Cory Booker (the Senate’s one Black senator) turned to a Langston Hughes poem, “Let America Be America Again,” to capture the true significance of the event. Poetry helps us regain our bearings when other uses of language fail.
Booker quoted the poem’s penultimate stanza as he celebrated Judge Jackson. With her probable elevation to the Supreme Court, Booker was saying, the founding dream of America will come a little closer to fulfillment for African Americans:
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!
The poem, like “I Too Sing America,” serves as both an homage and a corrective to Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, in which Whitman uses long lists to capture the spirit of America. After each of the first three stanzas of “Let America Be America Again,” after invoking America’s founding ideal, Hughes delivers a devastating reality check in the form of a parenthetical aside:
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
The following two-line stanza sets up two questions, one from an exploiter tangled in “that ancient endless chain/ Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!” (the first question) and one from poor Whites, Blacks, Indians and poor immigrants (the second question):
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
In Wednesday’s post, I cited another Langston Hughes poem that applies to Judge Jackson’s remarkable rise, not to mention the rise of Black women generally. “Mother to Son” captures the determination to keep keeping on, despite all the obstacles that one encounters. Yesterday on Morning Joe I heard the Rev. Al Sharpton reference the poem, talking about how life for Jackson has been “no crystal stair.” And indeed, at one point in the hearings Jackson herself—when asked how she would counsel young women in color—replied with the word that best characterizes the poem: “perseverance.”
Returning to “Let America Be America Again,” Hughes’s Whitmanesque list (although he doesn’t couch his list in free verse and he even has some rhymes and half rhymes) makes it clear he’s not only talking about African Americans but all those in our history who have been oppressed and marginalized. And because, as much as any other American author, Hughes is obsessed with the American dream, which he often refers to as “the dream deferred,” he makes clear how all of these figures are unified by their dreaming. Thus, even though they have all suffered because America has fallen short of its ideals (he provides multiple examples), nevertheless the hope lives on:
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home— For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.
Even as he says “free,” Hughes realizes the word sounds hollow. It’s “a dream that’s almost dead today,” he admits. But “almost” is not “entirely” and the poem ends on a note of hope.
That’s why Booker quoted it and why he was so excited to see Jackson sitting in front of him. At a time when the Senate has reached a stagnant gridlock and when the forces of reaction appear able to shut down any forward movement in the country as a whole, he felt hope stir.
Will his citing the poem do any good? Republican leader Mitch McConnell is calling Jackson a radical leftist and vowing to vote against her, so the Hughes poem didn’t sway him. I think, however, Booker quoting Hughes reminded people of the high ground after the sordid tactics of the Ted Cruzes, Josh Hawleys, and Marsha Blackburns (my own senator, I say to my shame). By reminding people of the momentousness of the dream, the poem may be enough to get all the Democrats to vote for her (including conservative Joe Manchin) and maybe even pick up a handful of Republican votes.
Poems often have the ability to put us in touch with our best selves. Some GOP members of Congress may not be altogether deaf to their better angels.
I recently finished listening to and thoroughly enjoying the Ian McEwan novel Saturday (2005). I share today an episode (major spoiler alert!) where Matthew Arnold’s famous poem “Dover Beach” (1867) prevents rape and possibly murder. Poetry breaks through where other forms of communication fail.
One Saturday morning on his way to a squash game, neurosurgeon Henry Perowne is sideswiped by a thug and two cronies, who then prepare to beat him up. The date is February 15, 2003, the place is London, and there is a large rally underway protesting U.S. and British plans to invade Iraq. Just as he’s about to be thrashed, however, Perowne diagnoses the man (whose name is Baxter) as being in the early stages of Huntington’s disease. He disarms him and saves himself from a beating by talking to him about the illness. In listening to Perowne, however, Baxter loses face in front of his friends and later intrudes on a family dinner party to get revenge. I pick up the action after Baxter and one of his accomplices have just forced Perowne’s daughter to strip and then, as she stands before them naked, to read a poem from her upcoming book, the proofs of which she has in her possession. Although she pretends to read from the manuscript, however, Daisy instead recites “Dover Beach” and gets an unexpected response.
So that you can get the full effect of what transpires, here’s Arnold’s magnificent poem:
The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
I should add that, when she strips, Daisy reveals to both the thugs and her family that she’s two months pregnant. Here’s the scene:
Henry has been through her book a few times, but there are certain poems he’s read only once; this one he only half remembers. The lines surprise him—clearly, he hasn’t been reading closely enough. They are unusually meditative, mellifluous and willfully archaic. She’s thrown herself back into another century. Now, in his terrified state, he misses or misconstrues much, but as her voice picks up a little and finds the beginnings of a quiet rhythm, he feels himself slipping through the words into the things they describe. He sees Daisy on a terrace overlooking a beach in summer moonlight; the sea is still and at high tide, the air scented, there’s a final glow of sunset. She calls to her lover, surely the man who will one day father her child, to come and look, or, rather, listen to the scene. Perowne sees a smooth-skinned young man naked to the waist, standing at Daisy’s side. Together they listen to the surf roaring on the pebbles, and hear in the sound a deep sorrow which stretches right back to ancient times. She thinks there was another time, even further back, when the earth was new and the sea consoling, and nothing came between man and God. But this evening the lovers hear only sadness and loss in the sound of the waves breaking and retreating from the shore. She turns to him, and before they kiss she tells him that they must love each other and be faithful, especially now they’re having a child, and when there’s no peace or certainty, and when desert armies stand ready to fight.
The reason Perowne only half remembers the poem is because it isn’t, of course, actually in her book. Not familiar himself with the literary canon, Perowne believes that his daughter is being “wilfully archaic” and throwing herself back into another century. In this perception, he reminds me of the narrator in Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” who commends Menard because, after having immersed himself deeply in the life of Cervantes, he is able to recreate, word for word, two and a half chapters from Don Quixote. In other words, a work that seems archaic if written in the past seems daringly new, flouting various 20th century literary conventions, when written by a modern author. Through this comic story, Borges makes the point that the same work can appear very different to readers of different eras, especially if they don’t make an historical adjustment.
But set that aside because the most remarkable thing about the scene in McEwan’s novel is the effect the poem has on Baxter, who has been holding a knife to the neck of Perowne’s wife. Baxter is dangerous because, as a man who knows his medical future, he feels he has nothing to lose. Yet he orders Daisy to read the poem again, and his mood, already prone to wild alterations because of his condition, shifts again:
It’s hard to tell, for his face is never still, but Baxter appears suddenly elated. His right hand has moved away from Rosalind’s shoulder and the knife is already back in his pocket. His gaze remains on Daisy. Baxter has broken his silence and is saying excitedly, “You wrote that. You wrote that.” It’s a statement, not a question. Daisy stares at him, waiting. He says again, “You wrote that.” And then, hurriedly, “It’s beautiful. You know that, don’t you. It’s beautiful. And you wrote it.” She dares say nothing. “It makes me think about where I grew up.”
A moment later he is telling Daisy to get dressed:
For a moment she doesn’t move, and they wait for her.
“I can’t believe it” Nigel says. “We gone to all this trouble.”
She bends to retrieve her sweater and skirt and begins to pull them on.
Earlier, while they are all listening to the second reading, Perowne imagines the effect the poem must be having on Baxter:
[Daisy] turns back a page, and with more confidence, attempting the seductive, varied tone of a storyteller entrancing a child, begins again. “The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits—on the French coast the light gleams and is gone…”
Henry missed first time the mention of the cliffs of England “glimmering and vast out in the tranquil bay.” Now it appears there’s no terrace, but an open window; there’s no young man, father of the child. Instead he sees Baxter standing alone, elbows propped against the sill, listening to the waves “bring the eternal note of sadness in.” It’s not all of antiquity, but only Sophocles who associated this sound with the “turbid ebb and flow of human misery.” Even in his state, Henry balks at the mention of a “sea of faith” and a glittering paradise of wholeness lost in the distant past. Then once again, it’s through Baxter’s ears that he hears the sea’s “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath of the night wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world.” It rings like a musical curse. The pleas to be true to one another sounds hopeless in the absence of joy or love or light or peace or “help for pain.” Even in a world “where ignorant armies clash by night,” Henry discovers on second hearing no mention of a desert. The poem’s melodiousness, he decides, is at odds with its pessimism.
The poem doesn’t magically end Baxter’s lethal threat. McEwan is too much of a realist to believe that literature can perform that kind of a miracle, no more that poetry can stop the U.S. and Britain from invading Iraq. For that matter, Russian poet Yevgueni Yevtushenko’s “Do the Russians Want War?”, alluded to by Ukrainian president Zelensky shortly after Putin’s invasion, did not stop the advance of Russian forces. “Dover Beach,” however, does manage to interrupt Baxter’s violent trajectory, and in that pause the family finds a way to save itself.
And the poem continues to work his magic. After Perowne and his son throw Baxter down the stairs, cracking his head open, Perowne finds himself—as the on-call surgeon—operating on the man. Reflecting on what to do next after a successful operation, Perowne decides he will try to get the man psychological and medical help rather than press charges. “[H]ere is one area where Henry can exercise authority and shape events,” the novel tells us. “He knows how the system works—the difference between good and bad care is near infinite.” He does so in part because of Baxter’s response to the poem:
Daisy recited a poem that cast a spell on one man. Perhaps any poem would have done the trick, and thrown the switch on a sudden mood change. Still, Baxter fell for the magic, he was transfixed by it, and he was reminded how much he wanted to live. No one can forgive him the use of the knife. But Baxter heard what Henry never has, and probably never will, despite all Daisy’s attempts to educate him. Some nineteenth-century poet—Henry has yet to find out whether this Arnold is famous or obscure—touched off in Baxter a yearning he could barely begin to define. That hunger is his claim on life, on a mental existence, and because it won’t last much longer, because the door of his consciousness is beginning to close, he shouldn’t pursue his claim from a cell, waiting for the absurdity of his trial to begin.
And so the book ends, with Perowne, like the figure in Arnold’s poem, looking out his window in the middle of the night with his beloved wife sleeping behind him. Indeed, “Dover Beach” shapes McEwan’s novel itself, which has come full circle since action at this same window 22 hours earlier. Then Perowne, waking early, gazed out of at the early morning sky with similar meditations. And while the world is a dangerous and often bewildering place, we also see the love he has for his wife and his children, who are now—at least temporarily—safe again. But whether safe or not, there is love. Or as Arnold puts it, “Ah love, let us be true to one another.”
It is a reminder we desperately need since we know what has happened in the almost 20 years since when the book is set. We know that mayhem will break out, not only in Iraq, but in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Georgia, Chechnya, and now Ukraine. We are certainly on a darkling plain where armies are clashing.
I have one other thought about poetry’s role in current events. While I state above that Yevtushenko’s “Do the Russians Want War?” appears to have had no effect on Russia’s Ukraine invasion, that may not be entirely true. Granted, the poem’s assurance that any country that has endured 20 million killed in World War II cannot possibly want war seems contradicted my Putin’s warmongering. But if Russians all over the country are, with unimaginable bravely, standing up to protest the war, it’s in part because Yevushenko and others have instilled in them a sense that war is justified only in self-defense, not as a naked power grab. They are so appalled at what is being done in their name that they are willing to give up their liberty and their futures to voice their opposition.
Just as poetry can sometimes reach through a thug’s diseased mind and stay his actions, so it can help a country get in touch with its soul and to turn its back on egotistical power trips.
Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson at her Senate hearing
Wednesday
I didn’t watch the Senate hearing yesterday as Ketanji Brown Jackson faced questioning in her bid to become a Supreme Court justice, but I heard that someone—maybe Senator Cory Booker?—recited Langston Hughes’s “Mother to Son” at one point. I don’t have confirmation of this but, if it happened, it’s perfect for the occasion, given what a long and tortured journey Black women have gone through to get to this point. Jackson, if confirmed, will become the first African American woman to serve on the court.
In “Mother to Son,” a Black mother uses the extended metaphor of climbing an apartment complex stairwell to convey to her son what he can expect out of life—and how he should keep climbing, regardless of the difficulties he is sure to face. The poem is tough, tender, and inspirational all at once. It rings with the wisdom of someone who, despite having seen all that life can dish out, keeps going.
Mother to Son By Langston Hughes
Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now— For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s been a long time coming, but sometimes one gets all the way to the top.
John Callcott Horsley, Satan touched by Ithuriel’s spear while whispering evil thoughts into the ear of Eve
Tuesday
As my faculty discussion group continues to work its way through Paradise Lost, we came across an episode that captures why certain men and women fall for whacky conspiracy theories. Since such people represents a significant threat to good governance and democratic rule, the topic is worth a post.
Satan, seeking to corrupt God’s new creation, sneaks into the Garden of Eden, where some of the good angels discover him whispering into the ear of a sleeping Eve. For our purposes today, think of him as QAnon or some other originator of harmful “phantasms and dreams”:
Him there they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams…
Milton goes on to say that Satan is not only seeking to corrupt human fantasizing but also our emotions. While these emotions are initially pure, arising “like gentle breaths from rivers pure,” they can become contaminated with Satanic venom, at which point they will give rise to “distempered, discontented thoughts”:
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise At least distempered, discontented thoughts, Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, Blown up with high conceits engendering pride.
I think of how, say, commentators on Fox News play on their viewers’ emotions by indulging their egos, speaking to their longings, and stoking their resentments. They assure their public that Covid, climate change, and Biden’s election victory are hoaxes, which is their version of “vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires.” Conspiracy believers, not doctors, scientists, and other experts, are the ones who actually know what’s going on (they are “blown up with high conceits engendering pride”).
In Book V, we learn the contents of Satan’s whispering because Eve recounts her dream to Adam. It turns out that the devil is offering her the fantasy of special knowledge, available through eating from the tree of knowledge. She will be able to see what others miss, he tells her, as the whole world will be laid out before her and made clear. This desire for special knowledge may be QAnon followers’ fondest wish. In the following passage, Eve is reporting on what Satan tells her in her dream:
“Taste this, and be henceforth among the Gods Thyself a Goddess, not to earth confined, But sometimes in the air, as we, sometimes Ascend to Heaven, by merit thine, and see What life the Gods live there, and such live thou!” So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held, Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part Which he had plucked; the pleasant savory smell So quickened appetite, that I, methought, Could not but taste. Forthwith up to the clouds With him I flew, and underneath beheld The earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide And various…
After Adam hears Eve’s dream, he explains how Fancy works. When the faculty works in conjunction with Reason, he says, then all is well. Reason surveys and builds upon Fancy’s productions (“imaginations, aery shapes”) and arrives at (or “frames”) “all what we affirm or what deny, and call our knowledge or opinion.”
But know that in the soul Are many lesser faculties, that serve Reason as chief; among these Fancy next Her office holds; of all external things Which the five watchful senses represent, She forms imaginations, aery shapes, Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames All what we affirm or what deny, and call Our knowledge or opinion…
In Milton’s formulation, we are never purely rational; imagination always plays an important role in our thinking. But we must be reasonable in our mental processes. When we are, we arrive at reliable knowledge and well-grounded opinion.
Reason, however, leaves the scene at night when we’re sleeping. (As Milton puts it, she “retires into her private cell, when nature rests.”) At that point, Fancy operates unchecked. And while Fancy may appear reasonable—our dreams have a certain logic—she misjoins shapes, “ill matching words and deeds,” some old and some recent. The final result is “wild work”:
Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakes To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes, Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams; Ill matching words and deeds long past or late
QAnon fantasizing mimics Reason insofar as it strings together a set of disparate claims into a coherent narrative. Or rather, it misjoins these shapes, although “misjoining” dramatically understates what conspiracy theorists do. It’s more a case (to borrow Samuel Johnson’s description of metaphysical poetry) of “the most heterogeneous ideas…yoked by violence together.” According to Wikipedia, QAnon followers believe that “a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic sexual abusers of children operating a global child sex trafficking ring conspired against former U.S. President Donald Trump during his term in office.”
One issue that has come up in our group’s discussion of Milton is whether people whose dreams have been invaded by Satan are responsible for their actions. Milton answers in the affirmative, making clear that Eve has free will –she has what she needs to resist temptation. (As God puts it earlier in the poem, she and Adam are “sufficient to have stood though free to fall.”) In fact, free will is an enduring theme for the poet, and we should keep in mind that conspiracy theorists are also responsible for their actions, including storming the Capitol. They don’t get a pass just because QAnon, Fox News, and others have squatted like a toad whispering into their ears. Without accountability, Fancy will rampage unchecked.
One other thing: In the poem, Satan is exposed the moment that angel Ithuriel’s spear touches him. Milton says his transformation back into his real self is like a gunpowder explosion:
Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper, but returns Of force to its own likeness: Up he starts Discovered and surprised. As when a spark Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid Fit for the tun some magazine to store Against a rumored war, the smutty grain, With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air; So started up in his own shape the Fiend.
Imagine if, with a touch of angelic truth, we could expose to the world all those grifters cynically feeding their followers and viewers with phantasms and dreams. Now there’s a fantasy devoutly to be wished!
It’s not every day that one sees the results of one’s literature class on national television, but such was the case with one of the members of our faculty discussion group last week.
Jon Meacham, Pulitzer-prize winning historian and regular MSNBC commentator, was discussing with Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough Ukrainian president Zelensky’s address to the U.S. Congress. At one point he quoted a passage from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, a work he happened to have read in John Reishman’s Victorian Novels class when Meacham was an English major at Sewanee.
John Reishman, now retired, has led our group’s discussion of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Tennyson’s In Memoriam.
For his part, Meacham was discussing with Scarborough about how Zelensky appears to be “bending history” (Scarborough’s phrase) as he and his country sacrifice everything to hold onto their democracy. The “thrilling and terrifying thing about democracy,” Meacham replied, “is how all of us in the end have the capacity to bend history.” Democracy, he went on to say, is “the fullest manifestation of all of our heart and mind.” Sometimes the only difference between those who visibly bend history and those who don’t is that the former are given an epic scope.
He then went on to cite others who have been given this epic scope, including Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Lewis, the feminists at Seneca Falls, the Selma, Alabama marchers, and the Tiananmen Square protesters. Meacham also mentioned St. Theresa because she is the example cited in Middlemarch. Eliot mentions Theresa in order to set up a contrast with her protagonist, Dorothea Brooke. Here’s what Eliot writes of Theresa:
Theresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.
Not everyone, however, is given the epic scope of a religious order, Meacham observed—which is precisely Eliot’s point:
That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity…
In other words Dorothea, a remarkable woman who longs to accomplish great things, could have been a Zelensky under other conditions. Instead, she finds herself the wife of a narrow-minded pedant.
In his discussion, however, Meacham then made Eliot’s follow-up point. Everyone, he said, can make life a little less difficult for another. These are “the table stakes of democracy.” Quietly making the world a better place is what Dorothea goes on to do:
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Even though Meacham’s comments appeared to have strayed from Zelensky, his point was on target: Zelensky, in fighting for democratic freedom, is fighting for all of us who worry about the rise of authoritarianism, in this country as well as elsewhere. The stakes are immense because, in democracies, each of us matter, even when our acts are unhistoric. If things are “not so ill with you and me as they might have been,” it is because there have been others working invisibly on our behalf.
Democracies call for all of us to be heroic, even though only a few of us capture the limelight.
Further thought: In his remarks, Meacham associated Eliot’s observation with one that Robert Kennedy made in a speech he gave in apartheid South Africa on June 6, 1966. The speech is known as the “ripple of hope” speech because of the following passage:
Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
We know about Zelensky but, as the Ukrainian president is the first to point out, he is just the face of all those unknown Ukrainians who are resisting the Russian occupation. Many are dying.
Madeleine L’Engle has one of the best takes on Lent that I know. She worries that Lenten disciplines focus too much on denial and not enough on connecting with Christianity’s life-affirming dimensions. It’s the vision of Lent we get from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:
After Christmas there came the cold cheer of Lent, When with fish and plainer fate our flesh we reprove.
Some people talk about giving up sweets or social media but do so as though it’s a form of self-flagellation. They make Lenten resolutions the way they make New Year resolutions and break them just as quickly.
It is such a vision of Lent that L’Engle is disavowing when when she says that her Lent is “to break my Lent.” Her Lent will not involve a rejection of food or shelter. She won’t be inviting pain.
Instead, she chooses social activities that feed the soul. She will listen—really listen—to others, and she will talk when she’d rather retreat into herself. To truly belong to Christ, she will try to “turn from none who would call on me.” In other words, she will take seriously the Sermon on the Mount.
It’s a way of capturing the true spirit of the season.
For Lent, 1966 By Madeleine L’Engle
It is my Lent to break my Lent, To eat when I would fast, To know when slender strength is spent, Take shelter from the blast When I would run with wind and rain, To sleep when I would watch. It is my Lent to smile at pain But not ignore its touch.
It is my Lent to listen well When I would be alone, To talk when I would rather dwell In silence, turn from none Who call on me, to try to see That what is truly meant Is not my choice. If Christ’s I’d be It’s thus I’ll keep my Lent.
