Rilke, Roethke, Lessetier: Three Poems About Alcohol

1.
My mentor in poetry, the renowned Philippine poet Jose Garcia Villa, once told me about his visit to a famous painter--I forget who--(This was over forty years ago.) A guest at the painter's remarked about a "delightful" painting on the wall--"How happy those bright colors look," the guest effused. "It's a good example of how art can lift one's spirits!" "Oh, that one," the painter replied, "I painted that during the time I was contemplating suicide."

This, I think, is a good example of why we should not assume that every work of art is autobiographical. An artist is like a mansion; a mansion has many rooms. The belief that art is merely confessional is especially pernicious in respect to poetry, since poetry is a very intimate medium. Many readers, who probably had written bad confessional poetry when young, forget that good poetry is good fiction. Poetry, I believe, should be autobiographical in the broadest sense, that is, having to do with inner and outer aspects of being human. No, I'm not advocating essays in verse--in poetry, language is always primary. This does not mean that meaning is not important.

In this essay I will discuss three poems about alcholism. They are the best poems about this affliction that I know. I'm not sure that any of them are autobiograpical; the best one is by Rilke, who certainly did not have a drinking problem. Substance abuse has been a problem for centuries; these poems address the issue in different ways and are, in their respective ways, profound. First of all, though, as poems must, they delight us as poems. Both form and content will be discussed, as is appropriate when writing criticism.

Let's start with Rilke.

2. Das Lied des Trinkers

Es war nicht in mir. Es ging aus und ein.
Ich wollte es halten. Da hielt es der Wein.
(Ich weiss nicht mehr, was es war.)
Dann hielt er mir jenes und hielt mir dies
bis ich mich ganz auf ihn verliess.
Ich Narr.

Jetzt bin ich in seinem Spiel und er streut
mich veraectlich und verliert mich noch heut
an dieses Vieh, an den Tod.
Wenn der mich, schmutzige Karte, gewinnt,
so kratzt er mit seinem grauen Grind
und wirft mich fort in den Kot.

Prose translation:

It wasn't in me. It came and it went.
I wanted to keep it. Wine did that.
(I don't know any more what it was.)
Then wine held this and wine held that
until I became wine's tool--
what a fool!

Now I'm part of his card game. He deals me out
with disdain and just might lose me tonight
to that beast, Death.
If that one wins me, a filthy card,
he'll scratch a gray scab with me
then throw me off into muck.

Needless to say, the German is vastly superior to the English version; since I do not assume much, if any, knowledge of German among readers of this article, I won't descant on the poem's verbal virtues. The impressive understament of the poem--always a plus in poetry--and the psychological depth is apparent even in translation. (One should recall that Lou Andras Solome, Rilke's longtime friend and sometime lover, introduced him to Frued, literally and figuratively.) A lot is said in this short poem. The pre-addict did not feel good, did not feel normal. He or she is like a lizard, cold-blooded, at the mercy of the elements, lacking means to provide himself with inner warmth. An intolerable situation that finds temporary relief by getting drunk. Remember the medieval sculptures on certain European cathedrals in which a handsome prince--the devil--proffers a delicious apple? Look at the back of the statue and you see writhing serpents. In this case, the prince offers a chalice full of wine. How beautifully Rilke sums up the entire sitiuation in the last line of the first stanza! But, as this line informs, it is too late. Now wine is in complete control. In the second stanza, it becomes apparent that wine is a buddy of death. They are now two Bruegel monsters playing cards. The protagonist has lost his humanity; he now is nothing but a dirty thing, a soiled card. Death scratches a scab with the card that was once a human being, and throws it into a pile of filth.

I know of no other poem that depicts the horror of addiction better than this one. The last lines in German have an extremely powerful impact; they are truly chilling. The rhythm and the words of these lines form an incomparable expression of a human being having become a thing in the hands of an indifferent beast, oblivion.

3. MY PAPA'S WALTZ

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unform itself.

The hand that held my wrist
We battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

--Theodore Roethke

I like to think of the poem as one written by the drunkard of Rilke's poem, when he was at the point in his life depicted by the last line of the first stanza--alcohol has taken over his life and has begun to poison his family. This poem is also a great example of understatement, making the horror all the more harrowing. The father has a wound on his hand, perhaps from falling while drunk. He is unaware that the buckle of his belt is scraping his son's ear--something that a father should indeed be aware of! The belt suggests abuse, perhaps even sexual abuse, since the boy's head is at the father's waist. Violence is suggested by his keeping time--presumably roughly--on his son's head. The poor child is being forced to dance with a father just about out of control--a frightening prospect. We assume that a grown man is recalling a scene from his childhood--we also assume that the man is scarred by such events--who wouldn't be? This, of course, is only suggested--why else would the man recall this? (Well, it's more than suggested: the boy hangs on like "death" indicating how emotionally wounded he is.) What I would like to bring to attention, however, is line three of the second stanza. All the other lines are in iambic rhythm--the regular rhythm suggests the unfortunate dance. But the stress on "my" and the on the first syllable of "countenance" make this line stand out. Even though the mother is only mentioned in this and the subsequent line, the stress of the "mother-line" gives her great importance. And it is a negative one: she disapproves of the father's action, but is unwilling or unable--perhaps he would then abuse her--to intervene. She is a so-called "enabler"--beautifully expressed by stressing her importance with a new rhythm, and stressing her inablity to help her son. Roethke does this so subtly--the rhythm change here is a true masterstroke! If you were raised in a alcoholic family, as I was, you know very well what this poem relates: helplessness and terror. The poem is a little masterpiece.

3. THE DRUNKARD

I came off the bottle screaming;
until it became my sole friend
decades later, hope kept me weaned
with pure lies. Now that youth

is long past, I face facts:
my only fear is life itself;
weaning a baby from whiskey, again, again,
my sole acts of bravery.

(My father's cruel binges taught me
cowardice
may have nothing to do with fulfillment or God
but it's safe.)

As a child, I pictured heaven
as my own room where I
curl beneath the thickest blankets
with heroes on TV forever and

that's what I got and it's hell.

--Robert Lessetier

I find this poem to be very moving. I like to think that the child in Roethke's poem has grown up and has become an alcoholic himself. It is well known that children of alcoholics tend to withdraw and have difficulty making friends--childhood damage that remains for life, an affliction, I might add, that is very familiar to me. The protagonist of this poem uses alcohol in a different way from Rilke's protagonist, who begins to use the drug because he feels something important is missing in his life, and uses alcohol in an attempt to retrieve it. He is probably a first-generation alcoholic. It is differennt in this poem. The poor man here is using alcohol to remove the anxiety caused by his traumatic upbringing. And, like Rilke's addict, alcohol takes over his life and destroys any chance of his becoming a mature adult. I love the emphasis on "cowardice"--the only word in line two of stanza two. The protagonist blames himself and judges himself harshly. What he only wants is peace and to be left alone--he has withdrawn from everything since everything provokes anxiety. This is of course no way to live and inevitably leads to a wasted, unhappy life. The end of the poem is quite effective--Be careful what you wish for, lest you obtain it! He is caught in a vise--one side prevents him from engaging in life and the other side crushes with the realization of how devastating the resultant loneliness is. A very true-to-life and effective portrait of the ravages of alcohol on children and the adults they become.

I find all three poems to be noteworthy portrayals of the horrors of alcoholism-- very effective both in what they reveal and how they reveal it. I hope you enjoyed this essay; I enjoyed writing it for you. After writing about these poems, however, I think I will skip my usual evening glass of wine and have some green tea!

RILKE AND POETRY AFTER SIXTY

Beginning next week, I have the privilege to give a little course about the great poet, Rilke, at Oshler Lifetime Learning Institute at Towson University. The center targets people over fifty, but most are over sixty, hence the title of this little essay. The three previous courses that I gave at Towson were on Thomas Mann, Kafka and Camus. Since I am a poet, I thought it was time to discuss a poet, even though reading Rilke is not always easy.
The two points I want to make in this essay are that the understanding of poetry for the average reader is easier as one gets older and that discussing Rilke in English translation is a very difficult task.

1.

It has been my experience that poetry comes easier to children, becomes increasingly more difficult with the onset of puberty and returns in one's later years. (I am discussing the average individual, of course, not poets or those who read poetry regularly--the latter becoming so rare that both the former and the latter are, I fear, almost one and the same.)
Children below eight or nine tend to think in concrete terms, have little sense of abstraction, and, trained on nursery rhymes, have a sense of rhythm. They are typically not afraid to dance or sing, much of the desire for which wanes as self-conscious individuality develops. Well, let me stop writing abstractly and turn to a striking example of a child's poem. She was Chinese, and, about five years old. A poet through Poets In The Schools conducted a little writing exercise in a New York City pre-school, and was astonished by the little girl's poem:

YELLOW

Yellow, yellow, yellow.
The sky is yellow
The sun is yellow
My skin is yellow

Must be a yellow day!


Isn't that delightful? It reads very well, like a good nursery rhyme. And notice how she joins macrocosm to microcosm--so frequent in Shakespeare and so often the cause of poetic catharsis. First comes sky, then the sun beyond the sky--and then the skin which is right here. She unites all of these, proclaiming like a little Sufi that everything is one. And notice that she does this without a hint of abstraction, like a true little poet. I find these lines amazing, especially since it isn't written by an author playing faux-naif, but by an "innocent" child!

This ability declines rapidly as adolescence approaches. From that time into old age, Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us," applies--meaning, of course, the world of the ego. The adolescent for the first time becomes acutely aware of his own individuality, limitations, and the increasing impositions of culture. Learning isn't just a thing to do, it has a specific goal: success in the workplace. During this time of life, what I call prose-thinking dominates.

As a physician, I have seen many poems written by adolescents over the years. I put them into two categories, the "Ode to Death," ones by depressed adolescents and the "Ode to Love," ones by those who have been wounded by Cupid. Both varieties are invariably terrible. I was in an adult poetry workshop in the sixties; the instructor, who was perhaps too direct, told us he had to have a few martinis before class so he could stomach reading our poems. Too right, too rude.

After one realizes that the mark one has left on life is not in indelible ink and will soon wash off, a different mind-set arises. One has put one's individuality in perspective. No need to impress, no need to compete. One appreciates life day by day. One no longer has to be so functional--one can play as an adult child. If this stage of life is preceded by a well-integrated middle-age, it can be delightful.
As an example, I offer a poem by my mother, who never wrote a poem in her life until well into her sixties, and then for only a week or two. She wrote it years after my brother married a Chinese woman. (Note: it is a joke; she was very fond of her daughter-in-law and of us)


FORTUNE COOKIE

One son
Two son
Woe is me!

Two son
One son
Woe is she!

My mother explained to me that the last line is not a grammatical error made to accommodate a rhyme. She meant that her daughter-in-law now personifies Woe, has become Woe, after marrying my brother. This poem is not as good as the five year old's but it's not bad--it is unburdened by abstractions, is understated and contains wordplay, humor--and a surprise ending that surprised even her as she made sense of it later. This is a principle of poetry: letting language take you where it wants to go, and, if need be, editing the text afterwards.




2.

I was astounded to find a poem by Rilke that illustrates the three ages of poetic life. I was also astounded to discover that the competent translator missed the point entirely. Rilke, whose poetry is first of all musical, also contains deep meaning. Since this and many other examples of botched translation that fail to convey the music and/or meaning, I chose a bilingual edition. I will have a lot of explaining to do! Here is the poem and translation:

Ich finde dich in allen diesen Dingen,
denen ich gut und wie ein Bruder bin;
als Samen sonnst du dich in den geringen
und in den grossen giebst du gross dich hin.

Das ist das wundersame Spiel der Kraefte,
dass sie so diendend durch die Dinge gehn:
in Wurzeln wachsend, shwindend in die Schaefte
und in den Wipfeln wie ein Auferstehn.

I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.

The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world:
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.

A prose translation: I find you in all these things which I love and to which I am like a brother; you sun yourself as seed in little things and in great things you enter greatly. That powers enter things in such an accommodative manner is a strange game: growing in roots, fading into the trunks, and in the treetops like a resurrection.

I don't want to burden the reader with a line-by-line account of what has been lost in translation here. The reader is invited to do that herself. I will address only the last two lines, which contain the gist of the poem--as good last lines do--which was totally missed by the translation: growing in roots (like the poetry of children); fading in tree trunks (like the poetry of adolescence and average adults), and then, resurrection--the return of poetry. In other words: the stage of children's (poetic) delights, followed by the stage of the Ego's (prosy) burdens, followed by the final stage: the delight of a child resurrected in an experienced adult.

Next week I will do my best to overcome inadequate translations to help my students appreciate a major poet. I also espect that our advanced years will make my job a little easier.

SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK, MAHALIA JACKSON AND A BIT OF NIETZSCHE

We have recently been celebrating my wife's birthday with many activities, including concerts. Among these were an Indian dance concert at Kennedy Center, an extraordinary performance of Mozart's 23rd piano concerto by Christoph Eschenbach, and an unforgettable performance of Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchesta at the B.S.O. The last of the concerts is discussed in this little essay, a performance by Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Many of you are probably familiar with this excellent a capella African-American female group; if you aren't I suggest you should. Founded in Washington D.C. back in 1973, the group, composed of five singers few of whom are original members, sings Gospel, spirituals, political, and secular--sometimes even saucy--songs. When they are good, they are very very good indeed. During this performance--we had heard them before--the emphasis was on spiritual music. They began with the familiar spiritual, "I been buked and I been scorned; I been talked about sure's yaw born." What lovely words, and what even lovelier music. They sang it with elegance and deep emotion; it was a wonderful moment. They then sang a spiritual that I've heard before but I don't know by name. It was about someone at a dying person's bedside providing consolation and asking the dying person to greet their common friends and relatives on the other side. Such a premise has indeed wound up in horrible, cliched music, but this is never the case with spirituals. They can move the most sophisticated--provided that the listeners haven't lost their soul. What might sound kitschy without the music is profound with it. I was moved almost to tears. Later came the familiar and wonderful "Somebody callin my name, O Lordy...What shall I do?" Again, wonderful words and even more wonderful music. They were perhaps a bit too mellow here, at least for my taste--There is a very gripping performance of this spiritual on CD, sung beautifully by Jessye Norman, accompanied by a mostly white chorus, which was excellent.
The newer music, including numbers composed by members of this impressive group, was less successful. This is one of the points I want to make--This is not a very religious age, and newer spiritual music is often much less, well, musical, than the great works of the past. One of the pieces included such horrible lines as "Sacred is the milk from the bosom of Mother Nature"--a line one could imagine that a ten year old with a lot to learn might come up with. The music wasn't much better, although when sung by such talented musicians, almost anything can sound good. The exception was a new song written by one of the most dignified members of the group. Both the words and music are good. The song included such lines that state that, once one is deeply religious, "It doesn't matter if you're here or there." The rest of the lyric and the music matched this deep level of understanding, as opposed to the New-Age cliches of the song mentioned before this one. It wasn't nearly as deeply moving as the spirituals, but it was a bona fide religious song, a rarity for this age.
Comparing the spirituals with the newer music, I thought of what an old friend once told me, "What's good for the Jews is bad for Judaism and what's good for Judaism is bad for the Jews." We can see the same principle at work in the increased amount of concern for others among the Japanese in response to their recent national disaster. The premise is this: it is in the times of great pressure when diamonds are created. Among the jewels of the spirit composed in difficult times are spirituals. They are truly amazing. They have no bitterness, egotism, superficiality and lack all the glittery things modern music is full of. They go right to the jugular and yet have great artistry--which includes, of course, understatement and restraint. My view of this is that during times of great oppression, superficial persons either do not survive, or are crushed into silence, or become profound. Another way of saying this is evinced by Nietzsche's great dictum: whatever almost kills you makes you stronger. No decent person could ever advocate bringing back say, slavery, to get great music, but music, unfortunately, like everything else, tends to be contaminated by froth during fat times. (Perhaps there is a Darwinian explanation of depression here: the dissatisfied separate themselves from the group and create, the results of which abet survival.) What a world we would have if the haves could submerge their superficiality in the servce to, and love of, the so many million of have-nots! We would not only have better people, but better art. What's good for prosperity is bad for the spirit, what's bad for the spirit is good for prosperity--Too, too bad.
When I was a lot younger, I would often dance to the music of Mahalia Jackson with my African-American son, Philip, who was a toddler at the time. The music moved me very much and still does. Some years later, I wrote the following poem, which touches on the theme of this article. (This poem, by the way, resulted in the greatest compliment one of my poems ever received. An English professor was so moved by this poem that he carried a copy of it in his wallet.) I want to assure you that I do not share--far from it--the sunny-nunny view that God never gives more suffering than one can handle. A lot of good people go under when times get rough; others, afflicted by adverse personal or political events, are sometimes transformed and reach a stage that the rest of us find hard to imagine. When they become artists, a sensitive person's viceral response is both delight and awe.


HOMAGE TO MAHALIA JACKSON


1.

At the very height of suffering,
most are destroyed; the wounded rest
survive to limp toward nothing
on paths short or long; lost
except for very, very few
who become immortal songs.

From her best recordings I imagine
the transport of Aquinas’s last years.
Dust has no kingdom in such music:
to her, death’s a gate we pass through
on the low road to glory; Lordy,
who can hear and believe she was wrong?


2.

Despite music, darkness reigns
still inside, outside us.
Which is final? Who has ears,
hear her, singing conviction,
especially Lazarus, lost in affliction:
light, pure light, it can reach you.


3.

Her message was joy
because she knew
her people then
could ill afford
the luxury of sadness.

Poverty, madness,
and hate’s unbearable load
had killed far too many
for her to sing blues.
No girl’s or boy’s


lament over toys
broken in two
by hard fate in
her! On sorrow’s road
she reveals joy which is

got without illness
or drugs: (Lord,
Lord, this simple woman,
how well she knew
what God is!) love.