I am holding Granta's May edition titled ‘Britain’ in my hands, and staring at the cover all I can think of
is:
And the crack in the tea
cup opens
A lane to the land of the
dead.*
How strange this connection
between man and poetry.
If you have ever read a poem and felt the lines spoke to you; they articulated your thoughts and hopes then you'd understand why 'In relation to the future, a poem is like a note sealed in a bottle and thrown into the sea'. Charles Simic in a recent post in NY review of books
states, “If poetry is not the most utopian project ever devised by human
beings, I don’t know what is”. You’ll have to read Simic’s post to work out how (or even
whether) this sentiment applies to your understanding of poetry. For words and
the constant misunderstanding of the intent behind them could, if one is
pressed for a quick response, be summarized as the sum total of the drama that is human existence.
Though one would, perhaps, end with a flourish– ‘all existence is meaningless’.
Talking about
meaning and misunderstanding, or should it be called different ways of understanding, the
poem that comes to mind is Yeats ‘The Second Coming’**. Lines from this poem get
quoted with regular frequency whenever the world has faced a crisis in recent
history, just like Keynes during an economic crisis. And just like Robert Frost
and the end of 'The Road Not Taken' (it is the sigh–
I shall be telling this with
a sigh––that makes one pause and consider the road not taken), here
too it is the last few lines that have been widely interpreted.
Though if you read the poem
carefully and ‘see’ the vast image brought forth by the Spiritus Mundi (spirit of the world) would you still believe that
the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem could be our saviour? And if you read about Yeats and his theory of gyres then the doubts will recede further.
Why does a poet write? Why does a reader read? Sometimes these seem like questions worth considering, though most of the time a person pens a few lines and moves on. Another person reads them and moves on. Just like life.
The Moving Finger writes;
and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.***
*W.H. Auden, As I walked
out one evening.
**TURNING and turning in the
widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the
falconer;
Things fall apart; the
centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed
upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is
loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence
is drowned;
The best lack all
conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate
intensity.
Surely some revelation is
at hand;
Surely the Second Coming
is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly
are those words out
When a vast image out of
Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight:
somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and
the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless
as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs,
while all about it
Reel shadows of the
indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again;
but now I know
That twenty centuries of
stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by
a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its
hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem
to be born?
Interesting trivia: The
Second Coming has not only been quoted in many books, comics and music albums, but also has been
the source of the titles of some very popular books:
Things Fall Apart by
Chinua Achebe
Mere Anarchy by Woody
Allen
Slouching Towards
Bethlehem by Joan Didion
No comments:
Post a Comment