Can a wreck be beautiful?
Yesterday I crashed. Old
Metal got a savage dent;
Still a wondrous vehicle
Within which Senex* rides--
What an accidental world!
A squirrel on the road
I didn't see and plunged
Into a ditch. You helped me out;
I leave behind a pool of oil,
Then this splendid, mortal wreck
Disappeared from sight.
'Senex' is Latin for Old Man. Senex is a stock comic character in the plays of Seneca and Plautus.
On March 15, 2023, Nirmala and I traveled to Washington D.C. to attend a riveting performance of King Lear at the Shakespeare Theater.
1.
Of all the great tragedies written by Shakespeare, I had found King Lear the most difficult to appreciate. How can an old man be so foolish as to banish his favorite daughter for not having praised him enough? And how is it that he was unable to see through the fulsome praise of his daughters? Now that I have reached Lear's age, when I too have been having some difficulty coming to terms with old age, I see things differently--and the excellent performance we attended helped me to change my mind. Now I understand why many view Lear as Shakespeare's greatest achievement.
First, I would like to put Regan's and Goneril's speeches in contemporary context. When the eldest sister, Goneril, is given the opportunity to state how much she loves her aged father, she replies,
Sir, I do love you more than words can wield the matter:/ Dearer than eyesight, space, or liberty,/Beyond what can be valued rich or rare, / No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor,/As much a child e'er loved, or father friend,/ A love that makes breath poor and speech unable,/ Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
Lear, 1:1 lines 46-53
Regan subsequently gives an equally unctuous speech--and equally clever: she knows what her father wants to hear, and, without concerns for her father's welfare, says it.
I am thus reminded of the lies contemporary politicians tell their constituents in this very politically divided nation. The latter are not concerned with truth as much as they are with hearing what they want to hear. The primary concern of such politicians is to stay in power, a desire so strong that it trumps what politicians are supposed to do: serve the public.
What we can learn from Lear at this point is the necessity of critical thinking.
Lear at this stage of the play is extremely vulnerable, and his elder daughters know it. Just like many U.S. citizens, he feels threatened by loss of meaning--age and unemployment are primary examples of ways to debilitate critical thinking.
Cordelia, his youngest, however, tells her father exactly what he doesn't want to hear. When Lear asks her, "What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?," she replies, "Nothing, my Lord."
Why does this one word trigger such anger in Lear? Why does this word result in a disinheritance of his honest daughter that ensures that the play will end in tragedy? It is because, at least in this interpretation, Lear fears becoming nothing himself. He knows that life is a one-way journey from cradle to grave; he knows that he is close to the end of that journey. His ego is invested in seeing himself as an absolute monarch; he's used to commanding, he's used to being obeyed. It's as if Time is telling him, "You put on a nice show. You've grown old; the play is over. Time is your master now, come with me!"
Shouldn't Lear have known better than to banish Cordelia? Of course he should have. But his refusal to come to terms with the inevitability of old age has made him very edgy and volatile. Like a crazed Quijote, he charges his windmill--in this case, death--without any concern for all the pancho villas in his way.
2.
The performance of Lear which we attended on March 15, 2023, was among the best theater experiences we've ever had. Patrick Page, who played Lear, was masterful. The productions I am familiar with were all marred by Lears who portray neither the physical weaknesses of age nor the mental decline that often accompanies old age. For instance, Ran, the Kurasawa/Japanese retelling of Lear, had the character--who admittedly very much looked the part--running up and down hills as if he was a man of thirty. Not in Page's interpretation. His Lear, for instance, demonstrated the main character's vulnerability and irascibility by raising his voice in anger on several occasions. This irascibility is characteristic of persons, especially old persons, who become emotionally labile due to fear of losing control and/or are simply not feeling well. Page acted splendidly throughout the play. Simon Goodwin's excellent direction indicated Lear's decline explicitly: he had Lear, after ranting on the heath, placed in a hospital bed receiving IV fluids.
I don't usually enjoy a contemporary staging of Shakespeare's tragedies, but Goodwin's was subtle and worked well. The modernizations were excellent indicators that follies and vanities are not limited to the Elizabethan era. For instance, Goneril and Regan, dressed in bright-colored, expensive clothes and wearing spike heels, looked like they could have starred in Real Housewives. (Cordelia, in contrast, was dressed in black and wore flats.)
All the other cast members were a good deal more than adequate. Page's performance, however, stood out: Never before have I witnessed such a stellar interpretation of Lear's descent from king to madness then to a broken man who learned his lesson too late.
3.
What is the moral of this play? It certainly has one, which we will soon discuss. Shakespeare, however, was first and foremost a dramatist; for aesthetic reasons, he's going to let those audience members who are so inclined infer any moral message. Shakespeare is not a Hallmark Card.
Shakespeare's plays, especially the tragedies, often contain a message, a moral, if you like. But he is most often indirect and extremely subtle; his tragedies are by no means as direct as an Aesop fable. Dickenson's famous line, "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant," comes to mind. For instance, Hamlet, being the smartest person of the play, is burdened by the task he sets himself: to restore order in troubled times: "The times are out of joint, O cursed spite/that ever I was born to set it right." Later on, after facing death, he comes to a new realization, accepting things as they are, and not how his ego wished things to be. "There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be not now, 'tis to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all." Hamlet finally learns that the ego's 'hands are much too short to box with God.' The irony is that Hamlet, having transcended his immaturity, is finally ready to be king when he is poisoned by Laertes. Hamlet's gain in wisdom, however, must be inferred; it is never directly stated.
Lear, in my interpretation, is also about transcending egotistic vanity; he learns that relationships are what's essential. This knowledge, that is, wisdom, often comes with age, as the mature person realizes that exclusive identification with the self no longer is tenable as the body breaks down. Egotistic behavior--to a degree-- is more acceptable in younger individuals, who are bent on establishing themselves in the world. It is especially tragic in older individuals; an arrogant greybeard is often ridiculous. Older people, however, still have a lot to offer emotionally to those around them. The realization that one is not the center of the universe; this realization of joyous relationship with the universe, especially in the form of loving one's neighbor, is called wisdom. This attitude helps compensate for the back pain, weak knees and all other increasingly painful declines of old age.
Lear lacks this wisdom throughout most of the play. Having been an absolute monarch, Lear was surrounded by yes men his entire life. He learns the hard way that the basis of most of those yeses was not love, but acquiescence to power. He wants assurances from this daughters that they love him unconditionally. Not even Cordelia can give him that. He realizes that it is time to give up power, but still wants power after he abdicates. He demands that each of the elder sisters accept an entourage of one hundred knights, a masculine court, as it were, which must accompany him during his monthly visits. We certainly can have some sympathy for Goneril and Regan when the unruly knights cause havoc in their households. We lose all sympathy, however, when one sister tells her husband that Lear must learn his lesson and not be prevented from wandering in his madness while a storm rages. No one who loves her father would ever permit that.
In Act l Scene V, the Fool tells Lear, "Thou shouldst not have been old before thou hadst been wise." Lear learns too late the importance of what he has always had: Cordelia's love.
The Fool's words are the key to the entire drama and a lesson for us all.
Despite what a great poet wrote, it is not wise to "Rage, rage, against the dying of the light," lest we wander in darkness like Gloucester, lest we wander in madness like Lear. What should an old person do then? The best way to leave the world is to become the World, as it were; there is only one way to accomplish this. Auden perhaps said it best: "We must love one another or die."
I recently wrote a poem that sums up the theme of this essay. It is entitled "The Lesson of Lear."
Age can turn kingdoms into glue traps;
age can turn kings into mice.
The loveless thrive--until they don't;
Senescence is a painful cage;
when there's no exit, where can one go?
when there's no exit, what must one do?
Self decline isn't inevitable.
'Against the dying of the light,' rage
is not the answer. What about love?
Inertia thinks she's the Queen of England. She treats me as her subject and expects obeisance from me whenever she passes. I'm sorry to say, she usually obtains it. I, more often than not, bow to her; after she proceeds down the royal street of dreams, I stare into space and lose track of time. Last Saturday, my mind's eye saw her approaching from the distance. "Maybe we should stay home," I told my wife, "I'm feeling a bit lazy. Besides, Fedora isn't Don Giovanni. "Nothing doing," my wife replied, "we're going!" This time Inertia passed by without a bow from yours truly. Inertia is very British; she walked on pretending not to notice my lapse of protocol. But she must have felt at least a little slighted, for this time a native-born jewel in the crown, (that's how I imagine Inertia would have referred to her, this time, Nirmala, my queen, won.) I put on my coat and we left for Charles Theater in Baltimore, where a live HD performance of Fedora, an opera in three acts by Umberto Giordano, was about to take place on January 14, 2023.
I had never heard the opera before. I expected a so-so performance of a so-so opera; turns out I was only half right. The Met cast was outstanding; the staging by the Scottish designer Charles Edwards, was excellent as well.
First a few words about the opera.
Umberto Giordano (1867-1948) was an Italian opera composer who composed a string of operas in the Italian verismo style. His most famous work is André Chénier, composed in 1896. A few years before that, Giordano attended a performance of the French play, Fedora, by V. Sardou. Fedora was played by Sarah Bernhardt. Giordano thought the play would make a fine opera; he contacted Sardou to obtain the rights. Sardou refused, because at the time Giordano was largely unknown; after the success of André Chénier, however, Sardou changed his mind and gave Giordano permission--for a fee, of course--to compose an opera based on his play. The first performance was very much a success; the major tenor role was sung by Enrico Caruso, who encored an aria after the first performance.
Operas, especially Italian operas, were very popular at the time. "Talkie" films were still a generation away. The people went to operas in those days to be entertained; they were the rough equivalents of soap opera fans of today, although they had better ears for music. The plot of Fedora could easily be transposed to episodes of As The World Turns, or even episodes of La Rosa de Guadalupe. It was emotional pitch that was popular, not Shakespearean drama.
And, boy, does Fedora ever contain non-stop raw emotion. It's as if the singers were singing from a thready tightrope suspended over an abyss--and, with the public listening far below them, they had to sing in full voice to be heard. The tessitura of the voices of the main characters is high as well.
During an intermission, one heard an excerpt from a future production of Don Giovanni, specifically the aria, Deh! veni alla finestra, which Don Giovanni sings. It was a pleasure to hear someone singing a ballad without attempting to shatter a vase in the next room. The main singers of Fedora have to negotiate almost hysterical emotion. In this performance, I admire the athletic prowess of the soprano and of the tenor to be able to endure so well the stentorian singing that the score demands.
The Tele Novela plot begins with Fedora at the villa of her fiancé, Count Vladimir. She is to marry him the next day, but alas! he is brought on stage mortally wounded. Is Fedora devastated? You bet. The next act takes place during a party in Paris. Fedora is confronted by Loris, who is the alleged assassin who killed her fiancé, Does she fall in love with him? You bet. Nevertheless, she sends a letter to the police back in Petersburg, denouncing Loris and his brother as nihilists and murderers. Does she live to regret this letter? You bet. Loris returns and tells her the reason why he had a duel with Vladimir is because he seduced the former's wife and was only marrying Fedora for the money. They declare their love. The third act takes place in Fedora's villa in Switzerland. A secondary character named De Siriex tells Fedora that the count's father, after reading the letter, had Loris's brother arrested, who died a horrible death in prison. The melodrama is advanced by the fact that Loris's mother died of grief when she heard the news. When Loris learns of the letter he is outraged; then he finds out that it was his love, Fedora herself, who penned it. She begs for forgiveness and in order to ensure its arrival, she swallows poison. Does she die in Loris's forgiving arms? You bet. The end.
The score is supposedly suffused with gorgeous melodies, but, on first hearing, I wasn't convinced. Nothing like La Donna è Mobile, an aria which Verdi deleted from rehearsals of Rigoletto, because he knew it would be leaked and everyone would be humming it before the premiere. I doubt if anyone left Fedora with melodies from the opera suffering from a melodic earworm.
The cast was outstanding. Sonya Yoncheva, who sang the title role, has a truly amazing voice, rich and full with a beautiful tone. The Polish tenor, Piotr Beczala, less of an actor, was nevertheless very effective in the title male role. He looks a bit like the late Robert Goulet, but sang a lot better. The secondary roles of Olga and De Siriex, sung by Rosa Feola and Lucas Meachem, did not disappoint.
At the premiere, the young Enrico Caruso sang the role of Loris. The most famous aria of the opera, a short aria, Amor ti vieta, as mentioned previously, was encored by Caruso after the first performance. Here it is sung by Piotr Bezcala himself:
A beautiful voice, no doubt, but here is a version by Placido Domingo, whose voice, at least to my ear, has more character:
I'm very glad that I attended a performance of this opera. But what if I hear of another performance of Fedora? The goddess Inertia stares me down. No worries, I tell her, I'm staying home; perhaps I'll practice scales. She smiles.
Are the fences finally closing in in the barnyard? Is the Turkey of Mar-a-Lago about to be crushed?
No one is above the law is often bandied about today. Whenever a pundit makes this claim, I feel like laughing. (One time I actually did.) Trump--and so many others--have been above the law for years. From screwing his employees as a real estate mogul in New York to his illegal removal of classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, (I invite you to include some of the many examples that occurred in between these two events)--so far the turkey has not been caught. I could mention all the poor people who are languishing in jail due to marijuana possession, while wealthy abusers of more dangerous drugs continue their illicit habits; I could mention the overburdened court-appointed lawyers who often fail their clients miserably, but I won't. Let's stick to the subject at hand--Why is the turkey still flaunting his wattle before a gaggle of lilywhite flightless fowl? Today, the barnyard, tomorrow the world?
Let us not insult turkeys any further. Trump is a very flawed human being, a pathological narcissist. He cannot live without praise. The worst insult for him is to be called a loser. He is extremely needy. Deep down--perhaps very deep down--he knows what he is, a sad fact which he cannot accept. He has convinced himself so well that he can do no wrong and has been able to convince others as well, which has done great damage to the nation. Too bad he isn't also pathologically shy!
His tragedy is thinking he's Louis XlV; his tragedy is that he doesn't realize that the era of Absolute Monarchy is over. L'état c'est moi, he seems to be telling himself. Lui? He has no idea what a democracy with its checks and balances is; he is that ignorant.
I sometimes feel sorry for him; he is obviously mentally ill. My pity would be justified, however, if his arrogance was burned out of him by his disease. But he apparently doesn't know how sick he is.
Look at his face.
In a way, Trump can't help it. His extreme narcissism cannot accept loss. He has convinced himself that he won the last election, and is willing even to suspend the Constitution to thwart the will of the voters. He is as needy as a giant sandworm of Arrakas is voracious. The pundits are wrong to say that he is lying. Deep down there he might know he lost, but this knowledge must be erased from his consciousness as readily as the knowledge of death is erased from our minds during sex. If he realized who he was, he wouldn't survive unless he became a truly penitent monk. Fat chance for that!
His father apparently taught him, drilled into him, pounded into him, that winning is everything; the worst thing possible is to fail, to be a loser. (How I delightfully imagine the crowd at a rally, finally realizing that not only the emperor has no clothes but he is ready to take the shirt off your back and let you freeze from the cold. Empathy and Donald go together like apple pie and strychnine.
As a student of physics, I have serious doubts whether free will exists or not, so it might not be all his fault. It's as if his father cut off his legs and we expect him to walk.
He doesn't walk; he pushes around those who know his number until he finds his lying voice in his reflection telling him, You, Sir, are Number One. (He just may be one digit off.)_
Note: the writing of this essay has been interrupted by Covid. My wife and I, both fully vaccinated, have contracted Covid, possibly from a patient at her office. We are both still quite symptomatic.
So let me get this essay out of the way, so I can focus on recovering. I wish to conclude by making two points.
1. The sympathy we might feel for a mentally ill person must be tempered by the harm the mentally ill person does. Trump has put our democracy in danger, so sympathy is out of place until he no longer has power and influence.
2. Trump may not be able to act responsibly, but what about the scores of Republican representatives that have made Trumpism possible? They know that a large part of their base consists of ardent Trump supporters, so they go along with Trump's idiocies, even though they know better. What good is losing your soul in order to maintain power? If the choice is dedication to the Constitution or dedication to self-interest, most Republican representatives have chosen the latter. This is a sad--and dangerous--option.
When the walls are closing in, you can expect an insane, inane reaction. Perhaps Trump's inner angel is beginning to realize that his outer devil's assertion that he is a 'stable genius' is a lie. Don't expect an apology! As Trump's inner cookie crumbles, expect more desperation, more craziness, and that's what we got. I'm referring, of course, to his 'major announcement' that he is initiating and hawking Superhero NFTs, When I first heard about this, I thought it was a joke. He asserts that he is, that is was, a better president than Lincoln or Washington. He asserts that America needs a Superhero, then presents a series of tacky cards which depict him in various superhero roles. Does he think we're a bunch of pimply kids collecting baseball cards on steroids? (Apparently. His base bought them like mad.) Probably the most brazen attempt of self-aggrandizement that he has done to date. He must know that the cathedral his vanity has built, in which he is the living god, is crumbling. Let's hope he is right.
Enough said. Time to concentrate on my own fever, a Covid fever--Too bad there's no medicine, effective as aspirin, to reduce the fever of fascism!
Covid Talks
Back
I just want
to survive
(What about
him? Let him sleep.)
BTW, I
don’t do metaphors:
I really
don’t want anything,
You’re the
guys who think.
Maybe I
came from some bloke
In the gym,
maybe a patient’s
Cough, three
moist shakes
From an unwashed
hand,
Whatever: veni
caecus vinci.
In a few
days this little virus
Infected,
as it were, Afghanistan
(All right,
I do do metaphors)
A body, a
country much larger
Than I –Not
bad for an enemy
Only half
alive! If I could, I’d feel
Proud as a
Nazi in Poland.
One measly
strand of RNA
Managed to
lower
His oxygen
level to 89
A little
bit more and he’d die
I’d have to
die with him of course
What comes alter
that
Who knows? Not I
Without
woofs to wake him up
I’m part of
no god’s clean-up crew
A
mercurial, unconscious,
Insidious dog.
The poet
stirs cough cough
He’s had
his vaccinations
Too bad Expect
more poems
Until the
day he dies How sad—
He’s going
to survive.
The Sustain Pedal, Poems by Carol Jennings,
Cherry Grove Collections, 2022
ISBN 9781625494009
Carol
Jennings’s The Sustain Pedal is a very beautiful collection of
poems that deserves a wide reading. Poetry and music have sustained her
during her long life—she is a year older than I am--and this collection is a
culmination of a life passionately lived.
She is very musical; it’s as if her poems are accompanied by the
haunting melodies and rhythms of Chopin and those of other composers, with the
pitiless metronome of time in the background, the latter ending in total stillness.
Her language is musical as well, as this excerpt from the poem, All Hallows’
Eve, indicates:
Because of
tilt of earth and angle
of
sunlight, autumn crisps and curls
across
summer’s fading fullness
in its
unrelentling passage.
One of the
themes of her poetry in this autumnal collection is revealed in this, and in many
other passages as well: the fleeting duration of human existence, the
indubitable fact that our time on earth is brief and that the clocks of our hearts
will soon by stopped by death. For instance, the brevity of our lives, here
compared to the near-infinite lifespan of the visible universe, is clearly
demonstrated by the last two lines of the poem Clairvoyance:
I don’t
mind a slight blur while standing at a canyon’s edge
to count rock strata that reveal
the brevity of my time
To look
across an unpolluted sky that proves
the slight measure of my place in
the dust
Notice the
adjective my in my time and my place; all the poems are
personal, an intimacy uncloaked by generalization. Although biographical
material is scattered throughout, it is used by the author merely as material
to construct noteworthy poems; the poems are not confessional poems.
2.
I would
like now to discuss two poems of the collection, Ultima Thule and Russian
Dream.
One of my
favorite poems of the collection, Ultima Thule, illustrates Jennings’s
method of composition. She writes primarily to please herself; the content of
her poems is always filtered through the alembics of the sine qua nons of
writing good poetry. First of all, the language used must be clean and pleasant
on the ear. Second, the poem must convey a poetic meaning, not necessarily a
logical, prosaic one. All poets must comply with the first rule; regarding the
second, language poets such as Wallace Stevens, compose poems the meanings of which
can be quite ambiguous. Jennings, like most modern poets, follows both
principles. Her language is clean, but the gist of the poems can almost always
be summarized in prose. Let us now quote the poem Ultima Thule in
its entirety.
On the icy
fringes of
a solar
system we call ours,
your two
spheres melded
In soft
collision. Bright scarf
circles the
point of contact
so you
resemble a lopsided
snowman,
look not unfriendly
as caught
in photos by
spacecraft
hurtling to reach
outer edge
of the Kuipfer Belt
before
burning out.
I look at
three quarters of a century,
measured in
revolutions
around the
sun, a few lines
written,
adagios on the piano,
ancient
ruins entered, dreams
that twist
dark reality,
the deaths
that keep coming.
On Mauna
Kea, the Milky Way
seems to
wrap itself around
our
lonesome minor planet,
where I
have never felt at home.
Ultima
Thule, you will be
among the
last to melt
as our star
expands in death throes.
Your name
meaning
place
beyond the known—
I want it
to be yours alone.
This poem
is a good illustration of what I mean by stating that Jennings writes to please
herself. (Like so many poets of quality, she has, I imagine, given up the drive to become
famous: The vast majority of poets with strong name recognition are, for the
most part, dead.) She wrote this poem, I assume, shortly after the NASA flyby
of the minor planet Ultima Thule, now known as Arrokoth. One cannot assume,
without footnotes, that the average reader would know that Ultima Thule is a
tiny binary rock in the Kuipfer belt, 4 billion miles from the Sun; the most
distant object in the solar system at the time of its discovery in 2014. As
Jennings explains, the two spheres joined together by a “soft collision;” a
“bright scarf” between them records their ancient contact. Who would have
known, without a google or two, that the rock literally looks like a lopsided
snowman? (Supplying footnotes is not a
very aesthetic thing to do.) The derivation of the term Ultima Thule is as
follows: Ultima, Latin for farthermost, is combined with Thule, a mythical land
beyond the borders of the known world.
The second
stanza of the poem adds dark, personal material. The poet is now seventy-five
years old; what has she accomplished? A few lines written--She is being very
modest here, darkly self-critical; she has written remarkable poetry. Most
poets, however, at least occasionally, feel as lonely and isolated as Ultima
Thule; the cold rocks of the Kuipfer Belt scattered around it, blindly obeying the laws of physics,
hardly constitute an audience, She favors playing adagios on the piano, no
major-key allegro con brios for her, who has never felt at home on our 'lonesome minor planet,’ compared
with a distant, cold dead rock, billions
of miles away. She is of course unfair both to herself and to the marvelous
planet on which she resides; however, she is being true to her feeling at the
time she wrote this poem; mastery of craft and raw feeling might make a sad
poem, but a genuine poem nevertheless. In the last stanza, she refers to the
time when our sun will expand, about four billion years hence; having long
since obliterated the Earth, Ultima Thule will warm up and be among ‘the last
to melt.” The last line turns the poem on its head, which good last lines have
been known to do. I interpret it to mean that she would like the place beyond
the known to be reserved for Ultima Thule alone, that is, the ambiguities and
many pains of existence on Earth would be resolved.
A memorable
poem.
The second
poem which I have chosen for more detailed analysis is Russian Dream,
which I will now quote in its entirety.
I dream
myself
In St.
Petersburg,
a city I
have never seen.
The time
fifty years
before I am
born,
and the
Pathétique is débuted,
led by the composer
just nine
days before
his mystery
death.
I am pulled
into the lyric
of dolorous
descent
in his
second theme,
as I have
been every time,
since I
heard it
first at
age ten.
When the
end comes,
and the
pulsating cellos
fade into
stillness,
I want to
tell him—
before I am
forced
to leave
the dream
for my own
life—
that I know
he was not
free to love,
and I am
sorry.
One of the reasons I was chosen to review this marvelous collection is because I am a poet and an amateur musician as well; unlike many readers, I understand all the musical references that occur throughout the book. That she felt ‘Pulled into the lyric/ of dolorous descent/ in his second theme’ (in his sixth symphony), says a lot about Jennings’s character. Those deeply affected by music will instantly understand what the poet is referring to. Tchaikovsky, as demonstrated by the wistful theme Jennings is referring to, had an extraordinary gift for melody; he was , however, a very unhappy man, a fact which comes across in his hyperemotional symphonies. In the fourth symphony, we hear the rhythm of fate which crushed the composer; in his final symphony which Jennings refers to, the feelings of melancholy, self-pity and resignation come across hauntingly. The melody Jennings refers to is one of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful; the emotions that come across, at least for this listener, is a sad coming to terms that life has turned out, to put it mildly, not the way he would have liked it; a very sweetly poignant farewell to life comes across as well. The last seven lines of the poem are very revealing. She leaves the ‘dream’ (sometimes more like a nightmare) of her life to tell the composer, that is, telling herself as well, that she knew, due to nineteenth century constraints and the melancholy nature of the man (there are indeed a near-infinite number of ways to become melancholy in this life) that Tchaikovsky was ‘not free to love’—hints of determinism, the lack of free will, even self-hate for not being what one’s ideal image wants one to be, are revealed here.
When I was
trained in poetry, I learned about the importance of the last line in a poem,
which summarizes the entire poem often with a jolt of surprise. The last line
here is excellent; Jennings is sorry for the composer, but really is sorry for
herself and the sadness of her life as well. She, like the great composer, has lived a
life with many regrets. Sure, we might have preferred a more mature Bach or
Mozart reference, but the expression of a negative emotion in a successful poem
is a triumph, nevertheless.
3.
The theme
of the book is the evanescence of life, the brevity and tragedy of human
existence; this is partially countered by beauty, specifically, the beauty of
music. Music, however, exists in time; even Wagner operas come to an end. The
chief metaphor of the book, present in its title, is the sustain pedal. The
sustain pedal permits notes to be sustained by removing contact from the
dampers on strings for the duration that
the pedal is pressed. It gives one a very brief experience of permanence. As
she writes in “A Flickering Light,” the first poem of the collection:
The way a flickering
light
can trick
the eye to see it
as a
constant, and knowing
this may be
the antidote
to
everything.
I hold, however, that there is more to life than the illusion of permanence which a flickering life under certain circumstances affords. For instance, in a poem by Harvey Lillywhite, the ‘Flickering light’ becomes a button; the poem concludes with the following lines;’ I’ll know/ How to hear when you call/A last time to promise/to deliver the one button I own/ to your unfathomable wardrobe.” What’s missing in Jennings’s poems is cosmic connection. The universe might be near-infinite, while humans are very finite indeed. But the fact that we’re the only known species in whose finite brains fits, as it were, at least as a concept, the entire universe. This paradox can provide a source of wonder.
The cover
of the collection gives us a view of the pedals of a piano much as a child
would see it. Jennings’s poem, ‘Year of My Birth.’ concludes with the following
lines: ‘I crawled under the grand piano,/where Mother played her homage/to a
more romantic time,/ watched her right foot depress/and release the sustain
pedal/ again and again.’
She used
the sustain pedal to sustain the song of the flickering light of human
existence. This provides a consolation, which, however, like everything else in
Jennings’s view of things, soon comes to an end.
The lack of
a cosmic philosophy, however, doesn’t detract from the beauty and poignance of
most of the poems. Though I do my best
to resist, not always successfully, the negative aspects of life, I have a
great affinity for Jennings’s poetry and her aesthetic. At best, her poems,
with the help of the sustain pedal, transform the flickering light of human
existence into great poetry, not a mean achievement. This is a remarkable
collection.
