“MR. COGITO MEDITATES ON REDEMPTION”

[Madonna/Trinity Cross, 14th century, in Sejny (on the Polish-Lithuanian border; it may have been used by the Teutonic Knights as a field altar]

MR. COGITO MEDITATES ON REDEMPTION

He shouldn’t have sent his son

too many saw

the son’s pierced hands

his ordinary death

            we were doomed

            to be reconciled

            through the worst of reconciliations

too many nostrils

drew in with pleasure

the smell of his fear

            one mustn’t

            stoop

            fraternize with blood

he shouldn’t have sent his son

it was better to reign

in a palace of marble clouds

on the throne of terror

holding the scepter of death

          ~ Zbigniew Herbert,

translated from Polish by Oriana

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You can read more of my translations of Herbert's poems here:
http://www.thescreamonline.com/poetry/poetry7-2/herbert/oriana_ivy.html

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It is interesting that the medieval and Renaissance tradition of presenting the Trinity in the form of God the Father holding the horizontal beam of the cross as though to display his martyred son, with the Holy Spirit as a dove hovering around the cross or perched on top of it, vanished from large-scale religious art in later centuries. Possibly, as religion became milder, the image was seen as too gruesome.  And yet even now the image, and of course the concept of the deity requiring a blood sacrifice, has not been completely lost in popular religious art, as can be seen in the “trinity crucifix.”   

                                                                           

In Christ, A Crisis in the Life of God, Jack Miles writes,

"The crucifix is a violently obscene icon. To recover its visceral power, children of the twenty-first century must imagine a lynching, the body of the victim swollen and distorted, his head hanging askew above a broken neck, while the bystanders smile their twisted smiles. Then they must imagine that grisly spectacle reproduced at the holiest spot in whatever edifice they call holy. And yet to go even this far is still to miss the meaning of the image, for this victim is not just innocent: He is God Incarnate, the Lord himself in human form." 

To the believers, however, this is the image of supreme love, more so than the universal and non-controversial image of Madonna and Child. The pleas of those who would like the triumphant image of the Resurrection to take precedence have been ignored. And thus we are left with what may be called the "tragic vision." Tragedy is the dominant genre in great literature, perhaps because we sense its vision is more accurate.


And yet, having seen endless representations of the crucifixion, I would say that only a minority are gruesome. For all my admiration for Jack Miles, who won the well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, I don't think I'd classify most depictions of the crucifixion as pornography of violence. Some of them are striking for the serenity they convey, the calm acceptance. Simone Weil remarked that they are meant to be a healing image -- like the copper serpent that Moses showed to those bitten by "fiery serpents."


My favorite religious images, those that seem to have a healing power, are neither crucifixion nor resurrection, but those that present Christ as a radiantly serene figure.


One of the ironies and paradoxes is contained in the very name of Jesus, which is the Greek form of Yehoshua -- Joshua in English, the great warrior. But this new Joshua says, "Turn the other cheek" and "Love thy enemy." The radical nature of this message startles us even today.


It's been suggested that if Christianity is to survive, the archaic idea that "Jesus died for our sins" must be abandoned (e.g. Bishop John Shelby Spong). What remains of value is the message of non-revenge (cf  the Buddhist "hatred by hatred never can be ended") and compassion. In some areas, there has been progress toward compassion and forgiveness, but the problem of suffering remains. Perhaps the ideal should be not universal love, but universal respect. If humans ever learn to treat one another with respect, then indeed we can build paradise right here on earth.

As for Herbert's poem, I think it would be even more powerful without the set-off stanzas, i.e. no commentary. Well, poems can be somewhat flawed, yet still powerful. For me, the "shiver factor" remains.

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Ursula:

As a non-Catholic I always found the crucifix to be both horrifying and fascinating in a most unpleasant way.  Seems to me Jack Miles is making some good points.

Oriana:

He does make some good points. I probably became desensitized to the violence of the image through many years of daily exposure starting in early childhood.

[Masaccio, The Holy Trinity with the Virgin and St. John, 1427; Florence, the church of Santa Maria Novella]

Mary McCarthy writes, “The fresco, with its terrible logic, is like a proof in philosophy or mathematics, God the Father, with his unrelenting eyes, being the axiom from which everything else irrevocably flows.” (The New Yorker, 8/22/1959)

Angie:


Re: Madonna with the Trinity Cross. This is wonderful.  I, too, love that the Madonna is bigger than the Trinity.  And what an impish smile she has.  Fantastic.


Oriana:


It's as though the Mother Goddess, holding her child, asserted that what's below there, the barbarous sacrifice, is nonsense, since the eternal axis is the loving bond between mother and child. "Mother" is of course whoever is the primary care-giver. The most essential law is compassionate and nurturing love, and not the "ransom of blood" for some primordial offense. 

VALZHYNA MORT'S "POLISH IMMIGRANTS"

Lake Strusta, Belarus


Valzhyna Mort (the pen name of Valzhyna Martynova) was born in 1981 in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Though her first language was Russian, she fell in love with the music of Belorusian. Her bilingual volume, Factory of Tears, has been translated into English, Swedish, and German. At the age of 24, she moved to the United States. Currently she lives in Baltimore, MD, and teaches at University of Baltimore. Her second volume, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press, consists of work written in English. (I wonder if she'll eventually translate her English-language poems into Belorusian; I find it extremely difficult to translate my poems into Polish.)


Valzhyna Mort has been influenced by the work of modern Polish poets, whose work she translated into Belorusian. This influence (particularly, I think, that of Zbigniew Herbert) shows itself in this marvelous poem:

POLISH IMMIGRANTS

how do they break away from the land

where even stones take root

how do two languages share one mouth

like two women in one kitchen

how do they bring the bloody bodies

wrapped in accordions instead of bandage

through Security

do new hotels remind them

of boxes of german chocolate

it is true that their pillows

are stuffed with soil

softer than any feather

their faces differ from the locals’

by the number of wrinkles

as if they started

sculpturing something new out of their skin

but then stopped having changed their minds

and never finished their reincarnation

the tiny wrinkles in the corners of their eyes

twisted and shiny from sweat

like bonbon wrappers

but when you look into those eyes

you are looking down the barrel of a gun –

what do you need

in the territory of their city

painted on the wall of the restaurant

Taste of Europe

and there

that very taste

fills your eyes with saliva

~ Valzhyna Mort, from Factory of Tears, 

translated from Belarusian by the author, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Franz Wright  

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This strong poem is chiefly metaphorical, and yet anyone familiar with history will also find it quite realistic. As for the ending, I understand it in two ways: first, it shows the defiance that's part of the Polish cultural tradition (again: see history), and it may also refer to the feeling of having been betrayed by the West, "sold" to the Soviet Union in the Yalta Pact (which Churchill called a pact with the devil, as any agreement with Stalin had to be). 


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Valzhyna Mort's Factory of Tears is somewhat uneven, but its treasures outweigh its flaws. In fact, considering the author's youth, this is an extraordinary book. Her poems abound in rich, unexpected statements. For instance, “Marriage” starts:

this isn’t how you glue a broken cup

it’s collecting drop by drop

ocean sprayed all around the world

“White Trash,” a prose poem, makes some poignant statements about living in the age of terrorism:

 

Once they used to say, “One body is nobody.” Now it’s all in reverse. Yesterday one was an infantryman, another – a cavalryman; another rode a tank. Today you alone are weapons and the whole cavalry and a brigade of a million infantryman at once. Your glance in certain circumstances can replace tear gas. The footsteps you leave are nothing but mines. And everybody raises a serpent in her mouth. And everybody carries a bomb inside his head.

 

We need players who are still not afraid to go outside, not afraid to take trains, open their suitcases, people whose main life principle is “It won’t happen to me.”

 

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Scattered throughout are amazing statements about God. My favorite passage comes from an untitled prose poem dedicated to the poet’s grandmother:

 

I see your life as God’s bible, as a manual that will teach God about humans and make him believe in them. I see God kneeling beside your life.

 

Dear Valzhyna’s Grandmother! This is God talking to you. We haven’t been personally introduced, but you might have heard about me – I was mentioned in books here and there. I can’t talk long. These tears appear so out of the blue, like an enemy army, special forces landing on my face. These tears in their uniforms of protective color – transparent in the air, adopting the color of cheek, of anything they land upon. Grandmother! I’m so old that already many speak publicly of my death! If it keeps going like this I myself will soon believe it. Put me in your lap, tell me the stories about the world that is standing on tortoises. Your hands feel like a tortoise’s shell. Let me hide my head in them.

 

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There are many more striking lines in this volume. I’ll limit myself to the ones below:

I protest against everything: low-quality goods in supermarkets, pigs in the subway, and those who protest against pigs in the subway . . .  this is the only way to survive.

[ we were] completely free only in public toilets
where for a little change nobody cared what we were doing

 

come on, let this system kiss my

accordion

 

( – yes, in addition to writing, Valzhyna Mort also plays the accordion.)

 

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LINDA PASTAN'S "ORPHEUS"; H.D.'S "EURYDICE"

I know what some of you may be thinking: Orpheus has been "done to death" in poetry, music, and painting. And yet, and yet . . .  every Orpheus poem I've read, and that must be over a hundred by now, is different, and most are fascinating.  The story continues to haunt us, maybe because it's "unfinished business." Why did he turn? How did Eurydice feel about it? Was she furious and then self-empowered, as in h.d.'s Eurydice, or, as Rilke hints, relieved, since Orpheus ("she asked softly, Who?") ceased to mean anything to her. 

In fact, the first two stanzas of Linda Pastan's poem consist of questions. The last stanza ends with the "music of the body," different from the music of art. But ultimately it's the music of great art that survives, though it draws on the mysterious music of life that it must in the end survive. 


My favorite stanza is the first one, which poses the most important question, and has the magical phrase, "a fraction of darkness." 


Orpheus

When Orpheus turned

and looked back and knew

that genius wasn’t enough,

I wonder which he regretted most:

the failure of will,

Eurydice lost,

or what it must mean for her

to remain

a fraction of darkness?

Did he still tame animals

with his songs,

or would that seem a child’s game now?

Did he tune his lyre

to a minor key,

the last notes falling

like darkened leaves

to drift toward Lesbos?

In Balanchine’s ballet

the failure seems Eurydice’s fault

who tempted his blindfold off,

as if the artist must be absolved,

as if what matters

is the body itself –

that instrument stringed

with tendon and bone

making its own music.

   ~ Linda Pastan
      from A Fraction of Darkness


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What did it mean to Eurydice to remain "a fraction of darkness"? More broadly, how does a woman feel when the man she thought a savior who would take her out of a hellish life into a larger, breathable world, betrays her in the last moment? (Not that it's ever wise to expect a man to be a savior -- see my "Tear Jars: Freud to Eurydice" poem


http://oriana-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/05/freud-and-jung-to-eurydice.html


HD has an interesting poem in the persona of Eurydice. The last section is especially strong.  It is generally thought that in this poem the betrayer is D.H. Lawrence, but h.d. had a whole series of men, starting with Ezra Pound, to whom she looked up as saviors, who then left her. 

EURYDICE

So you have swept me back,

I who could have walked with the live souls

above the earth,

I who could have slept among the live flowers

at last;

so for your arrogance

and your ruthlessness

I am swept back

where dead lichens drip

dead cinders upon moss of ash;

so for your arrogance

I am broken at last,

I who had lived unconscious,

who was almost forgot;

if you had let me wait

I had grown from listlessness

into peace,

if you had let me rest with the dead,

I had forgot you

and the past.

II

Here only flame upon flame

and black among the red sparks,

streaks of black and light

grown colourless;

why did you turn back,

that hell should be reinhabited

of myself thus

swept into nothingness?

Why did you glance back?

why did you hesitate for that moment?

why did you bend your face

caught with the flame of the upper earth,

above my face?

What was it that crossed my face

with the light from yours

and your glance?

What was it you saw in my face?

The light of your own face,

the fire of your own presence?

What had my face to offer

but reflex of the earth,

haycinth colour

caught from the raw fissure in the rock

where the light struck,

and the colour of azure crocuses

and the bright surface of gold crocuses

and of the wind-flower,

swift in its veins as lightning

and as white.

                               III

Saffron from the fringe of the earth,

wild saffron that has bent

over the sharp edge of earth,

all the flowers that cut through the earth,

all, all the flowers are lost;

everything is lost,

everything is crossed with black,

black upon black

and worse than black,

this colourless light.

                               IV

Fringe upon fringe

of blue crocuses,

crocuses, walled against blue of themselves,

blue of that upper earth,

blue of the depth upon depth of flowers,

lost;

flowers,

if I could have taken once my breath of them,

enough of them,

more than earth,

even than of the upper earth,

had passed with me

beneath the earth;

if I could have caught up from the earth,

the whole of the flowers of the earth,

if once I could have breathed into myself

the very golden crocuses

and the red,

and the very golden hearts of the first saffron,

the whole of the golden mass,

the whole of the great fragrance,

I could have dared the loss.

                              V

So for your arrogance

and your ruthlessness

I have lost the earth   

and the flowers of the earth,

and the live souls above the earth,

and you who passed across the light

and reached

ruthless;

you who have your own light,

who are to yourself a presence,

who need no presence;

yet for all your arrogance

and your glance,

I tell you this:

such loss is no loss,

such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls

of blackness,

such terror

is no loss;

hell is no worse than your earth

above the earth,

hell is no worse,

no, nor your flowers

nor your veins of light

nor your presence,

a loss;

my hell is no worse than yours

though you pass among the flowers and speak

with the spirits above earth.

VI

Against the black

I have more fervour

than you in all the splendour of that place,

against the blackness

and the stark grey

I have more light;

and the flowers,

if I should tell you,

you would turn from your own fit paths

toward hell,

turn again and glance back

and I would sink into a place

even more terrible than this.

                              VII

At least I have the flowers of myself,

and my thoughts, no god

can take that;

I have the fervour of myself for a presence

and my own spirit for light;

and my spirit with its loss

knows this;

though small against the black,

small against the formless rocks,

hell must break before I am lost;

before I am lost,

hell must open like a red rose

for the dead to pass.

      ~ h.d.

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 I love the last stanza -- all of it, but especially "before I am lost, / hell must open like a red rose." I don't need the last line about the dead. The rose says it all.