Museum Monday 2024/20

 

detail of the Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children by Lavinia Fontana, now at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco

Friday Photo 2024/19

 

on the campus of UC Berkeley

Poem of the Week 2024/19

An Everywhere of Silver

With Ropes of Sand

To keep it from effacing

The Track called Land.

– Emily Dickinson

The brevity of this poem – barely longer than a haiku, & just as concentrated in its implications – contributes to its force. An Everywhere of Silver: as often with Dickinson, her capitalizations provide emphasis to words that might otherwise not receive full weight. Its an ecstatic image: shining silver, spread all over, covering all. But what is this she's viewing & describing? It's only with the second line that we get a clue: there are ropes of sand. This silver expanse (which might have been moonlight, or a field of flowers) is apparently the ocean, hit by sunlight so that it looks like a molten expanse of silver. Anyone who's been to the seaside, & I honestly don't know if that includes Dickinson or if she's going on imagination & desire here, has seen the waters like that.

But why ropes of sand? As the shore stretches out, it could look like rope, but it could just as easily look like a wall or barrier or the solidity of our earth. Ropes suggest something more tenuous than any of these, some attempt to control something wild, or potentially unruly, like even a domesticated animal. Obviously humanity did not place the sand there, but the word gives the sense that it is somehow related to humanity, something made, held against the vast & gorgeous silver sea. & why are these "ropes" there?

The answer comes in the concluding two lines: To keep it from effacing / The Track called Land. Effacing suggests complete disappearance, & at some subliminal level, the face hidden in the word suggests an erasure of the human face. Land is where the viewer most likely is standing (how else could she see the ropes of sand?). With her characteristically slyly elliptical style, Dickinson, without presenting any obvious humans in this scene, suggests not so much that they don't happen to be present at the moment but that they are swept away into invisibility & even nonexistence by this boundless & regardless Beauty.

Track is an interesting word; as with ropes, it suggests something narrower & more fragile than our usual conception of the massive solid Earth that we live on. The Emily Dickinson Lexicon has an interesting entry for track: the first definition is "Footprints; set of footsteps; trace of passing; marks left behind when one walks on a path; evidence of passing over the ground in a certain direction." Again, the presence of humanity is suggested indirectly, with the suggestion of absence: people were here, but they've passed on (& of course, to pass on is a euphemism for death, & the ocean is often a metaphor for the vast & unknowable life of the universe, & the primal source of life).

Silver is usually found under the earth, or extracted & shaped by humans for their enjoyment or benefit or enrichment. Here Silver is Everywhere; though the poet doesn't mean the word literally – there are narrow barriers keeping it back, however tenuously, from the land – it is metaphorically an erasure of our usual land-based existence. Water is a necessity for life, but the poet never mentions water; it is suggested only by the gorgeous spread of silver, a combination of water & light. The splendor of this view is more than a sumptuous celebration of Nature for the delectation of the human viewer: as with the sensuous allegorical emblems in Spenser, there is a moral message lurking beneath the beauty: a reminder that Nature & what we see as its glories are indifferent to us, that we could disappear & they would go on, that our very admiration of such beauty can wipe us out: with ecstasy comes annihilation.

This is #884 in the Thomas Johnson edition of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Museum Monday 2024/19

 

detail of a Six-Armed Demon with Flaming Hair, a Javanese shadow puppet now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Friday Photo 2024/18

 

two sphinxes with broken noses, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

Poem of the Week 2024/18

Bliss

                        I

                All bliss

            Consists in this,

    To do as Adam did:

And not to know those superficial toys

    Which in the garden once were hid,

    Those little new invented things.

    Cups, saddles, crowns are childish joys.

        So ribbons are and rings.

        Which all our happiness destroys.

                        II

                Nor God

            In His abode

        Nor saints nor little boys

Nor angels made them, only foolish men,

    Grown mad with custom, on those toys

    Which more increase their wants, do dote.

    And when they older are do then

        Those baubles chiefly note

    With greedier eyes, more boys tho men.

– Thomas Traherne

Though most of his work was hidden in manuscripts until the early twentieth century, the Church of England priest Thomas Traherne was part of the great seventeenth-century flowering of spiritual poetry in English.

Bliss is a heady subject: not contentment, or even happiness, which seem like possible earthly states, but bliss, a state associated with the ecstasy of personal communion with God, which on earth seems available only in the occasional saintly trance. Starting with the title, this poem tells us to turn away from worldly things & look to the heavenly. It's a radical subject to take. & the poet's treatment of it is radical: in tight & elegantly balanced lines, he advocates a rejection of most of what we consider civilization & a return to the prelapsarian ways of Adam, in a garden without the "superficial toys" that occupy most humans. In fact this seems to be a garden without Eve; this is a conspicuously male-centered view of life, mentioning men & boys only. It is possible that the "ribbons and rings" listed as childish joys are meant to refer to feminine ornaments, but it's equally plausible that they refer to male insignias: ribbons in the sense of a military/political decoration or something attached to a medal, rings as signs of office or authority (or ribbons & rings as worn by the more ornately dressed men of the time). The other "childish toys" – cups, saddles, crowns – seem masculine as well: the cups referring to drinking parties, saddles to hunting, & crowns neatly encompassing both the British coin & the ultimate political authority, the monarch. (Women of course drank, if not in parties, & some hunted, & there were queens as well as kings, but these things were seen as predominantly male-centered & male-dominated.) Romantic or sexual love does not even make an appearance in the list of worldly vanities.

So what did Adam do, besides not know "superficial toys"? The state described is before he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, so he didn't know that. What did he know? It doesn't seem to be a matter of consciously knowing; the poet says bliss is to do as Adam did, not think or feel as he thought or felt. Adam experienced God the Creator, & Nature his creation, in a very direct & personal way. How is it possible for us, the fallen children of Adam, to regain this state? By taking the recommendation of the more austere saints (Buddhist as well as Christian), & renouncing the world: not the natural world of God's creation, but The World in the sense of striving & struggling human society. What we think of as long-lasting traditions are dismissed as little new invented things: not only novelties, but small ones as well. Contrast that with the eternity of God; Traherne notes that God in His abode (Heaven, of course, but isn't He also present in His creation?) did not invent these ways, nor did angels, nor saints, nor "little boys", but "foolish men". The contrast between boys & men is interesting; the poet specifies little boys, so he seems to be embracing, long before Rousseau or the Romantic movement, the idea that children are born pure & corrupted by society (so much for Original Sin!).

The edifice of human society, the weight of tradition & "how things are done", is here summarized as foolish men, gone mad with custom, for things that are, after all, recent & ephemeral. The poet advocates a radical rethinking of our relationship to society, to Nature, & therefore to God. He notes that ambition can never be satisfied: those toys the more increase their wants; superficial toys, childish joys, baubles: no value is given to earthly attainments; they are destroyers of happiness. The foolish men prove their folly & their madness by eyeing them greedily, never satisfied with what they have, never thinking they could approach existence in a different way. The close proximity of dote & older suggests that what used to be called the second childhood of senility is endemic among the ambitious. The pinnacle achievements of manhood are here equated with the rawness of boys; these accomplished adults are, psychically, more like boys, despite their official manhood. Here boy suggests not innocence but immaturity. Is it simply the exigency of rhyme that leads to the poem's ambiguous play between the innocence of little boys, who would never come up with the foolish things of the world, & the immaturity suggested in dismissively terming authoritative, accomplished men boys? Even as the poet suggests childhood is a time of innocence, the weight of Biblical teaching tells him that all human states, even childhood, are prone to corruption. This would not be the first time rhymes led a poet into a fruitful, suggestive tension.

I took this poem from Selected Poems & Prose by Thomas Traherne, edited by Alan Bradford for Penguin Classics.

Museum Monday 2024/18

 

a detail of Agitation, a tapestry designed by George Harris, now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Friday Photo 2024/17

 

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco

Poem of the Week 2024/17

When that I was and a little tiny boy,

    With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

    For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man's estate,

    With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,

    For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas, to wive,

    With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

By swaggering could I never thrive,

    For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came unto my beds,

    With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

With tosspots still had drunken heads,

    For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world begun,

    With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;

But that's all one, our play is done,

    And we'll strive to please you every day.

– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act V, scene i, ll 391 - 410

He that has and a little tiny wit,

    With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,

Must make content with his fortunes fit,

    Though the rain it raineth every day.

King Lear, Act III, scene ii, ll 74 - 77

Yesterday, 23 April, is the date traditionally assumed to be Shakespeare's birthday, but as he was not of an age but for all time, I figure it's OK to slip this form of commemoration to the day after.

The first & longer song above is the final moment of Twelfth Night. The action of the play has already concluded with Duke Orsino's speech tying up the various plot strands: go placate Malvolio, as we need information from him about the sea captain; his beloved Olivia will now be his sister, & he plans to stay on at her place until everything is settled; he will still refer to Viola by her male pseudonym, Cesario, until she's back in women's garb, when she will be "Orsino's mistress and his fancy's queen" – the same fancy (imagination) he indulged in his celebrated opening lines of the play, "If music be the food of love, play on, / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die". Guided by the whims of his fancy, Orsino's love for Viola seems unlikely to be as strong or as long-lasting as hers for him (a supposition foreshadowed & strengthened by their debate in Act II, scene iv). It's part of the underlying melancholy of this funny & sad play. (Most productions I've seen play up the farce at the expense of the poetry & pensiveness, which is too bad.)

This song continues the overcast mood of the play (very overcast, with all the wind & the rain). It is delivered by the fool Feste, who has sung other mournful & lovely songs for us, along with some drunken rounds. He wanders between households, disappearing & reappearing without excuse (his first appearance in the play, in Act I scene v, begins with the maid Maria reprimanding him for being gone without leave). Though involved in the action, particularly the plot against Malvolio, he stands a bit outside of it all. And in his final song, he sounds a bit outside his usual character; here he is not a witty jester but an ordinary, very ordinary, man, beaten down by life in general. In the final stanza, he abandons all pretense of being anything but a working actor, packing up his stage props & hoping you've found the show worth your time.

The song progresses through the stages of a man's life (very specifically a man's), somewhat in the manner of Jacques's famous, & more elaborately theatrical & poetical, Seven Ages of Man speech in As You Like It, Act II, scene vii. It begins with the singer as "a little tiny boy", surrounded by foolish things & trifles. But the second & fourth lines of this stanza, & each stanza to follow until a variant in the last line of the last stanza, cast a gloomier mood over the lyrics: after the traditional nonsense refrain of "hey, ho", we immediately get "the wind and the rain". Is the singer shrugging off the bad weather? defying it with a cheerful hey ho? merely noting its inevitability? Whatever it is, the wind & the rain are his constant companions through life. No golden afternoons here!

In the second stanza, the singer is now a man, & aware of the duplicity & cheating rampant among his kind: he shuts the gates against them. Then he marries, unhappily (alas!), though we don't hear his wife's side of things (personally I imagine her as sister to Chaucer's Wife of Bath, standing up for herself against a husband who tries to dominate through the ineffective arrogance of his swaggering). Then he becomes an old man (a physical diminution which seems to lie behind the more vivid metaphor of his coming "unto his beds"); he drinks too much, & hangs out with drunkards (tosspots). A sad & ordinary life, sad in its ordinariness, ordinary in its sadness. He still repeats his hey ho (philosophical acceptance? on-going resistance? merely the mental habit of a lifetime, carried into alcoholic elder years?) in the face of the constant wind & rain. Presumably some sunshine would be a  good thing, but he's beyond lamenting its absence, or wishing for its presence. (I at least find some beauty in the drama of the wind & rain; I keep picturing something like Hiroshige's Driving Rain at Shono).

The phrasing of the song, its persistent refrains, & its emblematic view of life make it sound like an old ballad, some sort of summation of folk wisdom. It's a beautiful & amusing song (the guy can't catch a break), but also resigned & even hopeless (because, again, the guy can't catch a break). The first line of the final stanza, A great while ago the world begun, moves us beyond the individual singer into a world-view, but one that does not contradict our singer's damp & chilly experience. That's all one, he shrugs, resigning himself to . . . fate? destiny? the universe? God? the general hardness of living? The simplifications of this sunless life lend it a ruefully comic aspect.

And as we all know, there is a very fine & blurry line between comedy & tragedy. This song must have been fairly popular, as it received a bit of a sequel in King Lear. Again, it is sung by a licensed jester, the enigmatic & satirical Fool, who comments on action that he is mostly apart from. He loyally follows Lear out into the literal wind & rain of the storm on the heath, which is where he sings his stanza. (Shortly after this song, the Fool makes his odd reference to a prophecy by Merlin, who will live after his (the Fool's) time: does this strange unearthly figure have some sort of second sight?)

But there are some interesting shifts from the Twelfth Night song to the lagniappe in King Lear: for one thing, we no longer have the impression that the singer is speaking of himself, & of himself as a sort of Everyman; here the first line singles out He that has and a little tiny wit: we don't know if the Fool means himself, Lear, or someone else, but the line does seem to make a distinction between those with "a little tiny wit" & others – he's commenting, to some extent, on the arbitrary divisions of fate (or destiny, the universe, chance, God. . . ). As in Twelfth Night's "a little tiny boy", we get the intensifier of a redundant "little tiny", but here it refers to insight & intelligence, not just to the general state of being a small boy. Such a one must make content with his fortunes fit (that is, be satisfied with the hard fortune that suits his level of wit/intelligence) though the rain it raineth every day. Though is an important switch there; in the Twelfth Night song, For the rain it raineth every day states a general truth; switching for (because) to though (that is, despite the fact that for you it raineth every day – it doesn't do so for all people, as for implies) makes it a more peculiar & individual fate. The rain is part of the hard fortune you must deal with, possibly through your own fault (that is, the fault of your "little tiny wit" & the errors it has led you into). In Twelfth Night, there is some human solidarity in the universal wind & rain; in King Lear, it becomes part of the inexplicable & arbitrary cruelties that fall on some but not on others possibly more deserving of punishment.

The reappearance of the comedy's song in the tragedy is an interesting link between what are probably my two favorite plays by Shakespeare. I used the Signet Classic editions (general editor Sylan Barnet), though of course there are many editions of both plays available.

Museum Monday 2024/17

 

Faith Ringgold, 8 October 8 1930 – 12 April 2024

detail of Listen to the Trees: The American Collection #11, seen at the de Young Museum's 2022 retrospective, Faith Ringgold: American People