Paradise: Too bright and too noisy. Not my choice for a good retirement spot. I have decided to settle for the Earthly Paradise atop Purgatory, with itParadise: Too bright and too noisy. Not my choice for a good retirement spot. I have decided to settle for the Earthly Paradise atop Purgatory, with its meadows, light music and pleasant breeze. Seems like the best long term investment at the end of this cosmic tour....more
In The Choephori, the bloodshed begun in the first play is continued (see Agamemnon for details, and for a discussion on translations). The theme of revenge and blood-curse continues to haunt the House of Atreus. At first glance it might seem as if there is indeed no end to this recurring tragedy that has been playing itself out in these intrigue-filled halls, but despite all the mirroring Aeschylus effects between the first and second plays (both have legitimate avenging missions, both weave a web of deceit, both murders the unsuspecting, both murderers are accompanied by unidimensional accomplices, both murders leave everlasting stains, both think that the buck will stop with them) that is supposed to show the inevitability of this tragic course/curse with no scope for a resolution, there are significant differences:
1. Clytaemestra acted alone, under her own sense of right and wrong; Orestes acts under the express direction and protection of Apollo himself. 2. Clytaemestra makes a token gesture of atonement by promising to give up her wealth but instead establishes a tyranny; Orestes is racked by guilt and renounces his position and wealth to atone for his crime. (I wonder who ruled the kingdom in his absence...) 3. Clytaemestra defends her actions and takes no steps to alleviate them by rituals, etc. until a nasty dream shakes her up; Orestes accepts his guilt immediately and takes protection under Apollo and does all the ritual cleansing and prostrations required. 4. Clytaemestra is probably egged on by Aegisthus's greed and allows him to benefit by her actions. Orestes turns to Pylades just once who only repeats Apollo's words and has no personal stake in the business. (though could it be that he becomes the regent in Orestes absence?) 5. Clytaemestra never hesitates in her deed of revenge and as an add-on murders an innocent (?) Cassandra too; Orestes shows his reluctance till he very last moment and had to be driven to his deed. He murders only the expressly guilty. (One has to wonder if Apollo was in fact avenging Cassandra and not Agamemnon!) 6. Most importantly Clytaemestra thinks she can be the final arbiter while Orestes is willing to allow himself to be judged by greater powers, be it the Gods, or the Law.
All this allows for hope that the ending of this second installment, of Orestes' story, and the punishment for his crime need not be externally imposed but might in fact be sanctioned by this modern man himself.
How exactly this will play out Aeschylus leaves for his climactic play, but the Greeks of his time would have been in no doubt as to where it was all leading and would have been eagerly awaiting the mythical re-imagination/show-down it would entail. Society is progressing, and like in Hegel it was all going to culminate in the Perfection of the Present!...more
Each of the plays that make up The Oresteia tetralogy are supposed to be stand alone pieces as well as perfect complements to each oth The First Strike
Each of the plays that make up The Oresteia tetralogy are supposed to be stand alone pieces as well as perfect complements to each other. All the themes that The Oresteia is to explore later are planted and ready for internal development at the end of Agamemnon. Aeschylus works magic with the triadic structure of the plays and of greek rituals (the fourth was probably a conventional satyr play and is lost to us) by going for a feeling of tit-for-tat of conventional revenge stories in the first two and a ‘third and final’ resolution in the third (though I feel game-theory wise a tit-for-two-tats additional play would have made for a good thought experiment!).
So in Agamemnon we are presented with the first strike -- and the tit-for-tat is ready, prophesied and waiting inevitably for the reader/viewer in the next part. It is the bleakest and most ominous ending to a play that I have witnessed because unlike a Hamlet, here there is no cosmic meaning to give us solace either. Agamemnon ends ominously and without significance-in-itself, leaving us with the feeling that the tragedy has just begun and there is a long road yet to be traversed before we can glimpse any possibility of a resolution.
A Note on the Translations
I have over the past several months read the whole play (only Agamemnon) in multiple translations. A few thoughts on each:
The Richmond Lattimore Translation: is sonorous and grand — quite impressive. You feel like you are really reading an ancient master, unlike in the Fagles version. However, it uses complex structures and hence the reading is not quite smooth. With Fagles you can just read on and on and never stop due to a complex phrasing or unclear meaning, but with lattimore you have to pause and rewind often to catch the exact drift.
The Robert Fagles Translation: is immediate and easy on the ear. It is also quite easy to grasp as the words do not form confusing structures as it does in the Lattimore translation. However I felt a certain something missing and couldn’t put my finger on it. I prefer the Lattimore version.
E.D.A Morshead Translation: Rhythmic but compromises on ease of reading to achieve the metric scheme. Could hardly grasp a thing on first reading of most verses. Has the advantage that it demarcates the Strophe, Antistrophe & Epode of each choral ode and that helps the reader visualize better. None of the other translations do this and I felt it was very useful.
The Alan Shapiro Translation: Written in beautiful blank verse, this is probably the best placed to merit first rank as a poetic work. Shapiro injects new power into the verse by his poetic take and provides a fresh perspective on almost all important scenes and imagery. But needs to be a supplementary read since it departs often from the other translations in sometimes subtle and sometimes significant ways. It tries to be an improvement on the Lattimore version but in my opinion it can at best be read as an additional indulgence by the reader already well acquainted with Lattimore.
The Headlam Translation: is bilingual and gives the Greek text on the facing page. This is useful in clarifying doubts arising from conflicting translations or interpretations. The translation itself is slightly long winded and pompous and does not strike the fine balance that Lattimore strikes between majesty and simplicity. Does provide the most elaborate stage directions and that is a plus as an aid to accurate visualization (which in my opinion can make or break your reading of almost-exotic plays).
The Denniston Commentary, the edition under which this review appears: is one which I have not read (and do not have access to) and in the interests of neutrality I have selected it — since it has no translation and is in fact the Greek text itself with english commentary, which seems to be widely accepted as some of the best scholastic commentary on the play.
I will add notes on other translations if and when I track them down....more
This is the best commentary I could find on The Poetics. Bywater's is a much better translation and immensely readable, except for the places where he This is the best commentary I could find on The Poetics. Bywater's is a much better translation and immensely readable, except for the places where he employs the Greek without transliteration. A good strategy could be to keep to Bywater for a first read, and then use Whalley's idiosyncratic and 'deliberately clumsy' translation while studying his notes. We can even supplement it with the Lucas notes.
The best essay length criticism can be had from Lucas and Else, both of which are referred to often by Whalley. I am planning to read at least one of them soon.
Whalley's comparisons with Coleridge is particularly useful if the reader is interested in learning to think about how Aristotle's percepts can be made to fit modern literary works.
Also his approach is no to treat every word A. uses as a technical term, which is an unfortunate tendency of most academic works. So we usually end up talking very particularly about terms which Aristotle probably wanted to give a wider ambit to. This is when it becomes easy to lapse into thinking that Aristotle is too formalistic and hence dismissing him. That would be poor form for a student....more
Heraclitus is all rolled into one. His fragments are tantalizing, hinting at a wisdom lost to us, but I am sure tha Philosopher-Poet-Prophet-Proverbist
Heraclitus is all rolled into one. His fragments are tantalizing, hinting at a wisdom lost to us, but I am sure that he meant them to be fragmentary, so that all he does for the reader is a quick nod in the direction of a distant window, leaving the reader to make the journey, to peep out, and to make of the sight what he will. In the sure knowledge that Heraclitus had pointed him there and whatever he sees there is worth interpreting.
“Things keep their secrets.”
Herclitus is often called a Wisdom-Poet, sharing kinship with the authors of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. Such Wisdom-Poetry specializes in a special sort of pessimism -- one that frees the reader from the shackles of a cherished belief. Heraclitus does this repeatedly:
They raise their voices
at stone idols
as a man might argue
with his doorpost,
they have understood
so little of the gods.
Like Buddha, Heraclitus is known to have given up his throne to seek wisdom. He became the author of what is today often considered to the first philosophical treatise of the Western mind -- that tries to arrive at the truth through a discourse.
However, the philosophy is nascent in these writings, being more prophetic and poetic than a structured discourse, with ideas leading one into the other.
These aphorisms tread lightly, avoiding being an elitist composition open only to the initiated. Heraclitus makes himself mysterious and accessible at the same time. it is no wonder that most philosophers after him refer to him with an awe reserved for a master who first teaches one to truly see the world anew.
Simple, uncomplicated poetry. It is no wonder that Larkin is one of the best loved poets. He never tries to hide anything behind his words, his words Simple, uncomplicated poetry. It is no wonder that Larkin is one of the best loved poets. He never tries to hide anything behind his words, his words and his poetry are all-in, so to speak. I need to read the properly arranged version, but this was a good start.
Favorite:
“Best Society” by Philip Larkin
When I was a child, I thought, Casually, that solitude Never needed to be sought. Something everybody had, Like nakedness, it lay at hand, Not specially right or specially wrong, A plentiful and obvious thing Not at all hard to understand.
Then, after twenty, it became At once more difficult to get And more desired — though all the same More undesirable; for what You are alone has, to achieve The rank of fact, to be expressed In terms of others, or it’s just A compensating make-believe.
Much better stay in company! To love you must have someone else, Giving requires a legatee, Good neighbours need whole parishfuls Of folk to do it on — in short, Our virtues are all social; if, Deprived of solitude, you chafe, It’s clear you’re not the virtuous sort.
Viciously, then, I lock my door. The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside Ushers in evening rain. Once more Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
“It makes no difference to me, provided you give the answers, whether it is your own opinion or not. I am primarily interested in testing the argum
“It makes no difference to me, provided you give the answers, whether it is your own opinion or not. I am primarily interested in testing the argument, although it may happen both that the questioner, myself, and my respondent wind up being tested.”
***
“Well, then, do you say that ignorance is to have a false belief and to be deceived about matters of importance?”
THE TAO OF TEACHING
The Protagoras is at its core a simple dialogue that questions the role of teachers in society - Is teaching possible? What is to be taught? How do we choose? Can only experts be teachers? Is expertise possible? How are we to judge?
As a setup for a Critique on teaching, what better way than to confront the best teacher of the day? And to show him up!
I wonder how many teachers and professors of our day would be able to stand up and defend their own capacity to teach, or their own claim to expertise.
When I categorize the Protagoras as primarily a critique on teaching, I might get an objection that this dialogue is applicable to only the non-expert fields of education such as the humanities or literature, or more specifically to the really debatable fields such as political theory. My counter would be that unlike what Plato firmly believed in (naively?) back then - that some fields can have experts, we now know that no field can, not really. Hence, to me this dialogue can now be characterized as universally applicable to all types of education, educational institutions and educators.
In any case, the question - if the teacher REALLY understands what he purports to teach - must be some nightmare to confront! One has to credit Protagoras for being able to stand up to that scrutiny.
This dialogue is a must-read for everyone in the teaching profession.
Moral of the story?
As long as they are like Socrates and only trying to learn, in company, then it is hunky-dory. Never call yourself teachers. (only communal learners?)
Accept teaching to be a joint exploration. That is the best claim that can be made without being shot down for hubris!
The Socratic Loop
Thus, the Protagoras is concerned with the nature and acquisition of human excellence and the credentials of those who purport to teach it.
So we move from who can teach — to what is the end of teaching — to what it is they are teaching — soon reaching the familiar Socratic territory of arete — ‘what is excellence’ & ‘what is the Good Life’.
Once Socrates establishes that the answer to both these questions is in the ‘art of measurement’ i.e. knowledge, then we can again loop back to the beginning and question for ourselves the credential of a teacher who cannot even explain what it is he is teaching, and what its purported end is, and how whatever is being taught ties up with this end …
- in the real dialogue, discussion breaks down before a full conclusion and is left for another day
- the dialogue is over but we have no choice except continue the debate!
The Perils Of Education
A sophist is an educator. Socrates was not happy about the fact that Protagoras taught arete, or virtue, to young men of rich or noble families, and taught it in a worldly way, as the means to “get on in life.” He also charged high fees and became rich.
Protagoras offers to teach young men ‘sound deliberation’ and the ‘art of citizenship’—in other words, as Socrates puts it, human ‘virtue’, what makes someone an outstandingly good person. But can this really be taught? Socrates doubts that virtue can be taught at all, and all the more that Protagoras can teach it.
Inevitably Protagoras and Socrates came to verbal blows. But Protagoras posed him an unusual problem, for unlike most of the clever men Socrates met and debated with, Protagoras was highly rational, moderate and quite a match for Socrates!
Protagoras is committed to holding that it can be, especially by him, and he expounds an extremely attractive Promethean myth (of the cover of this edition - the word "Prometheus" originally means "Forethought" by the way!) about the original establishment of human societies to show how there is room for him to do it.
[image]
Ultimately Protagoras’ answer, as of all self-proclaimed experts (and all experts are self-proclaimed!) devolves to authority - which amounts to “I can teach because I am qualified. My qualification attests to my knowledge. And my knowledge gave me the qualification. (Logical loop, anyone?). This qualification is conferred on me by others like myself - who in turn got it form others."
So rests the whole edifice of authority.
From the whole spicy argument between Socrates and Protagoras, neither seem to be entirely convinced...
One thing, however, is established for certain - which is precisely what Socrates set out to discover in accompanying his friend Hippocrates to confront Protagoras: even if virtue can be taught, no one should entrust himself to Protagoras to learn it, since he does not even have a coherent view of what it is.
Student: What will I get out of Education?
“Well, Protagoras,” I said, “as to why we have come, I’ll begin as I did before. Hippocrates here has gotten to the point where he wants to be your student, and, quite naturally, he would like to know what he will get out of it if he does study with you. That’s really all we have to say.”
Hippocrates here represents those students who have no idea what he/she wants in life, or wants to be taught - and tags along purely out of heard reputation of the teacher-sophist.
Socrates does manage to convince Hippocrates (and all future students?) of the folly of this unconsidered approach to education. Which, to me, is one good conclusion to arise from the dialogue.
The Poetry Review Exercise
As an addendum to the discussion of how teaching is unreliable, Socrates calls literature and poetry to the stands.
The point is to demonstrate the unreliability of written texts and the folly of attempting to ‘decipher’ them or ‘analyze’ them - since the author is not around to explain.
[image]
Socrates demonstrates this by taking a well-known poem by Simonides (dealing with the thesis - “It is hard to be good”) and then putting his own theories into Simonides’ mouth with such breathtaking ease!
“So the tenor of this part of the poem is that it is impossible to be a good man and continue to be good, but possible for one and the same person to become good and also bad, and those are best for the longest time whom the gods love.”
While an interlude, this thrilling ‘review’ of Simonides’ poem, its structure, word order, hypothesis, reason for composition, etc, is an amazing example of how adept Plato/Socrates was at literary criticism and structural theory.
Socrates does this by taking Simonides' poem and re-rendering it in prose form. Socrates advises his audience: just imagine that Simonides is making a speech, instead of writing poetry. Then let us approach it!
“And that, Prodicus and Protagoras,” I concluded, “is what I think was going through Simonides’ mind when he composed this ode.”
THE HOME RUN!
Protagoras is, for the most part, a pretty slow dialogue and after a while, I gave way to thinking that surely the point was already made and these digressions were more for the participants’ sake and less for me, the reader’s sake.
I even developed a theory on why some of these dialogues must have been fun back then but not to me: part of the Dramatic potential of the dialogues is lost to us because a big part of it must have been to see real life figures of the Polis being put on the stand by Socrates and made to look perfectly foolish!
As the argument veered towards expertise and its definitions, I was worried that this would be a corollary dialogue in which one aspect, expertise, would be better explored but nothing really new set forth.
I must confess that for a while there, I was thinking that this would be the first Platonic Dialogue to which I would award less than the full Five Stars.
And then, Socrates blew me out of the park with the delightful discussion that marked the closing of the dialogue. I was reinforced in my conviction that every dialogue of Plato is an absolute gem!
The Home Run had been hit and the Five Stars were on the board!
Courage? No Such Word in My Dictionary!
“But all people, both the courageous and the cowardly, go toward that about which they are confident; both the cowardly and the courageous go toward the same things.”
The argument does get a little convoluted here, but the essential aspect of it is this: Courage is ‘knowing what to fear’ and going AWAY from what is to be truly feared, since no wise man will go towards something that is genuinely ‘bad’. It depends on what your confidence tells you is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in any given choice. The wise will know what is truly good for them and will go towards it - this movement is wisdom, not courage. Socrates effectively argues that true Courage is just a reflection of wisdom! While Cowardice is a reflection of Ignorance.
“So then, wisdom about what is and is not to be feared is the opposite of this ignorance?”
He nodded again.
This amounts to completely inverting the meaning of Courage. Let me try to explain:
Any movement (used here for the act of exercising a choice) is based on Confidence - which does not depend on real knowledge but only on the perception of knowledge. This is just another version of ‘Opinion’ that Socrates derides much elsewhere.
1. If going towards the ‘Good’, it is because of this same confidence, but one backed by true knowledge. It should not take any Courage since we are only moving towards what is Good for us. (Even if the path is difficult, sine Good here only signifies the total Good, after any Bad involved in that choice is also weighed in the balance and found less than the Good that will result - the example given is of a painful surgery(
2. If going towards the ‘Bad’ (long term vs short term, once weighed with ‘art of measurement’), then that is what takes Courage, surely? (redefined as Stupidity, then?)
- Explanation: this movement too is backed by confidence/opinion, but of the mistaken variety, backed only by ignorance of what is really Good. We move towards the Bad, thinking it is the Good.
So courage, if defined conventionally as moving towards something that is Bad for us, is required only where ignorance prevails. And then, of course, it is not courage but only seems so!
This quote has just become my favorite inspirational quote of all time (yeah, it is about a bit more than adventure sports!)
[image]
This is where it can get a bit funny:
As we said, this is only seemingly 'courage', not in reality!
1. Consider a ‘Coward’ looking at such a ‘Courageous Man’. What does he see?
- From the viewpoint of the ignorant, such people who go towards the Good seem courageous (or foolish) since they cannot see from their vantage point what the wise see!
2. Now, Consider someone going towards a goal that he considers is Courageous. Why would he consider himself courageous?
- Even if someone is going towards the Good and thinks one is acting courageously - it would only mean that one lacks confidence in that Good and is hence acting out of ignorance.
So ‘courage’ as a concept does not even exist on this Earth - it is all about confidence - whether it is mistaken or actual. If you are going to Bad, you are in ignorance, if to Good, you are Knowledgeable and wise.
There is no question of Courage here. It has been inverted, it has been subsumed under the dictionary entry for Wisdom.
It has been removed from the dictionary!
The Fine Art of Measurement (of the Good)
This entire argument depends on one hinge. That we can actually know what is the Good and the Bad. That is, that we can achieve knowledge that gives us confidence of what is really in our own best interests. This is what Socrates calls the “Art of Measurement” - the knowledge of how to “measure” the personal Good that would result from any choice, finely weighing in the balance all results, short term and long term, to our soul and to our bodies, to our societies, families, etc.
[image]
This is where the argument takes special importance. Socrates, by proving that Courage is just an aspect of Wisdom, soon goes on to argue that, similarly, all virtue is one - namely a single knowledge. The conclusion is that our ‘salvation in life’ depends upon this ‘Art of Measurement’ that will overcome the power of appearance and get us to act rightly always.
At the end of the complex argument, Socrates is thus revealed as deeply committed, more deeply indeed than Protagoras, to Protagoras’ initial claim that virtue is a rationally based expertise at deliberation and decision. But how, then, can he have been right to doubt whether virtue is teachable? Aren’t all rationally based expertises acquired by teaching?
Socrates believes that this “Art of Measurement” exists and it can be developed with consistent Philosophical enquiry.
We can either roll our eyes or make the best of a bad deal. Do we really have another option?
“Then if the pleasant is the good, no one who knows or believes there is something else better than what he is doing, something possible, will go on doing what he had been doing when he could be doing what is better. To give in to oneself is nothing other than ignorance, and to control oneself is nothing other than wisdom.”
It took me a while to decide on the translation to use. After a few days of research and asking around, I shortlisted Musa and HollanAbout Translation
It took me a while to decide on the translation to use. After a few days of research and asking around, I shortlisted Musa and Hollander. Went with Hollander since it seemed better organized. Turned out to be a good choice.
The translation is fluid and easy on the ear. The Italian version is also available when you want to just read the Italian purely for the sound of verse. I am no judge of the fidelity of the various translations, but this was an easy read and that was good. There is enough difficulty in the poem without the translation adding to it. Besides, Dante’s own Italian is supposed to be written in an unaffected style anyway. To me the more important consideration in choosing the edition was the quality of the footnotes and the ease of accessing them.
About Footnotes
Here the notes are scholarly yet accessible with very little arcane stuff (and mind you this is a classic for which proper footnotes are essential to the reading to keep up with the erudition (classical, political, geographical, etc) displayed by Dante throughout the Comedia).
As an intro to the Longfellow translation (Barnes & Nobles: The Inferno: The Longfellow Translation) says: The best advice to the reader of The Divine Comedy in general and to the Inferno in particular is to pay attention to the literal sense of the poem. The greatest poetry in Dante resides in the literal sense of the work, its graphic descriptions of the sinners, their characters, and their punishments. In like manner, the greatest and most satisfying intellectual achievement of the poem comes from the reader’s understanding (and not necessarily agreement with) Dante’s complex view of morality, or the sinful world that God’s punishment is designed to correct. In most cases, a concrete appreciation of the small details of his poem will almost always lead to surprising but satisfying discoveries about the universe Dante’s poetry has created.
Dante demands more careful reading. Because of that demand, because of the immense and minute scholarship that has been expended upon Dante, and because too few English readers have been pointed in the right direction to him, Dante has acquired a reputation as an immensely difficult poet.
It is true that Dante writes in depth. Though his language is normally simple, his thought is normally complex. But if the gold of Dante runs deep, it also runs right up to the surface. A lifetime of devoted scholarship will not mine all that gold; yet enough lies on the surface—or just an inch below—to make a first reading a bonanza in itself. All one really needs is some first instruction in what to look for. Thereafter he need only follow the vein as it goes deeper and deeper into the core of things.
But of course, footnotes is not all. The footnotes are like our Virgil through these pages, the guide that is Reason. But at some point we have to surrender to the Poet to truly fathom its depth of feeling.
+++
After I finished Hollander I raced through the Ciardi translation, without pausing for the notes much. I also hope to read Carson (NYRB - Inferno) in the future. Earlier I had read the Inferno with Longfellow, and sad to say I had been left as scared as Dante at the beginning of his own journey after that encounter. Hollander is the one who offered to be this reader’s gentle Virgil. Overall the Ciardi translation is grander and more familiar - since a good chunk of the famous quotes and phrases come from it, and Ciardi also tries to force us into looking at the symbolism of the poetry overtly by pointing it out at the very beginning of his cantos.
This is helpful, but in the final analysis, the Hollander is the better choice for the new reader. So in case you are searching for the right translation and using that as an excuse to procrastinate (like me), you can go with Hollander and get down to it.
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For Comparison
John Ciardi:
Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say
what wood that was! I never saw so drear, so rank, so arduous a wilderness! Its very memory gives a shape to fear.
Death could scarce be more bitter than that place! But since it came to good, I will recount all that I found revealed there by God’s grace.
How I came to it I cannot rightly say, so drugged and loose with sleep had I become when I first wandered there from the True Way.
But at the far end of that valley of evil whose maze had sapped my very heart with fear! I found myself before a little hill
and lifted up my eyes. Its shoulders glowed already with the sweet rays of that planet whose virtue leads men straight on every road,
and the shining strengthened me against the fright whose agony had wracked the lake of my heart through all the terrors of that piteous night.
& ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
MIDWAY upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more; But of the good to treat, which there I found, Speak will I of the other things I saw there. I cannot well repeat how there I entered, So full was I of slumber at the moment In which I had abandoned the true way. But after I had reached a mountain’s foot, At that point where the valley terminated, Which had with consternation pierced my heart, Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders, Vested already with that planet’s rays Which leadeth others right by every road. Then was the fear a little quieted That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout The night, which I had passed so piteously.
& All hope abandon, ye who enter in!
Robert & Jean Hollander:
Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh—
the very thought of it renews my fear! It is so bitter death is hardly more so. But to set forth the good I found
I will recount the other things I saw. How I came there I cannot really tell, I was so full of sleep
when I forsook the one true way. But when I reached the foot of a hill, there where the valley ended
that had pierced my heart with fear, looking up, I saw its shoulders arrayed in the first light of the planet
that leads men straight, no matter what their road. Then the fear that had endured in the lake of my heart, all the night
I spent in such distress, was calmed.
& Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate (Inf. 3.9)
"Hafiz - a quarry of imagery in which poets of all ages might mine."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shams Ud-Din Muhammad or Hafiz is said to be an almost exact "Hafiz - a quarry of imagery in which poets of all ages might mine."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shams Ud-Din Muhammad or Hafiz is said to be an almost exact contemporary of Chaucer. The pen-name ‘Hafiz’ means ‘one who can recite the Koran by heart’. Not much else is known about Hafiz. The poems from The Divan (or Collected Works) of Hafiz is in fact more or less all we know of his life, where we learn that Hafiz received his gift of poetry from a Gypsy-mystic-scholar who appears only once in a while to mortals.
Background
Hafiz lived in what was called the ‘times of troubles’ of the Persian civilization, just before the establishment of the Timurid Dynasty, again forcing us to draw parallels with Chaucer.
Before entering the poetry of Hafiz, we need to understand the world that produced it. Hafiz was a Shi’ite. Shi’ism was more than just a quarrel of succession for these conquered Persians - it was the religion of the non-Arab oppressed who found in the dispossessed Ali and his sons symbols for suffering and martyrdom. It was also an outlet for the mystical and religious longings of this ancient civilization, expressed through the cracks of a much more rigorous new religion (which forbids much of the Dionysian aspects of Persian culture as well as their ecstatic connection with the mystical).
Without keeping in mind the two major currents of religious influence in Persia at the time: Shi’ism and Sufism (font of much of the lyric poetry of the time), Hafiz cannot be fully appreciated. The suffering and pathos of early Shi’ism and the pantheism and the life-celebration of Sufism comes together in Hafiz to form an exhilarating yet humanizing mix that has given it such grandeur and such an endearing personal quality, allowing it to transcend time and still touch our hearts.
So the Sufist deification (or re-deification) of wine and of the wine keeper as well as the Madhushala (मधुशाला) and the neo-Platonian conception of the divine as Absolute Beauty all meld together in Hafiz’s poetry to form an intoxicating yet deeply sad mix. Here again we can notice the parallels between medieval poetry of Chaucerian English and the personal lyric poetry of the Persians.
Imagery
Medieval Persian poetry trades in a number of stock images such as: the moon as the perfect lover’s cheeks; the rose as the lover’s face; the hyacinth the curling locks; the cypress the graceful form… Leading to dual images of the nightingale helplessly enamored of the rose; the morning breeze as the messenger of love; the scent of musk the beloved’s smell of tresses; the beloved as seller of sweetmeats and the lover-poet as an eloquent sweet-loving parrot… All leading us to the eternal image of the Lover contemplating the Absolute Beauty, of Man gazing at God.
This stylized imagery forms the basic stock and trade of all such poets - much of the poet’s art consists in the ingenious recombination and re-application of these traditional stock-symbols.
And Hafiz’s genius is the extraordinary degree to which they become vivid, natural and spectacularly personal in his hands.
Such a poet as Hafiz depends on an audience which takes these stock images for granted yet which is sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate the subtleties and ingenuities - understanding the poems on several simultaneous levels of significance.
Again we are drawn to the comparison of how the same dynamics enliven Chaucer’s poetry (with the multi-fold allegorical interpretation of scripture and other devices).
Thus almost any poem of Hafiz can be read on at least three levels of significance (though one or the other might be foremost and highlighted):
- As a celebration of wine and love (of sensuality); - in terms of Sufi theology - as experiences of the universal mystic (beloved transposed as the Divine - Sacred and profane love thus intermixing un-self-consciously!); - as courtly panegyrics - lauding his kingly masters as equals to the gods.
The following are a few more pointers that are not applicable to Hafiz alone but for much of oriental poetry. I have found it important to keep such distinctions in mind to understand poetry that at first glance seems outlandishly far-away. While much of this comes from the translator’s notes, it might be useful advice for reading other beautiful works too.
Add to all this the consideration that these were meant to be sung and not to be read and were composed mostly impromptu on the urging of an unforgiving patron and we can begin to see the true genius of the poetry.
Structure
Hafiz’s poetry (and in fact much of oriental poetry) seems disconnected to the modern ear - drawing criticism such as being ‘oriental pearls strung on a random sting’ - but this is because they were not influenced by the ‘beginning-middle-end’ Aristotelean conception of structuring.
The unity in such poetry emerges from a symbolic unity of the leading imagery of each Ghazal/couplet - each linked to the others only through imagery (but not through ideas) - deliberately suppressed for effect, sometimes even forming multiple interlinkages (skipping couplets to form multiple threads) to form a delicious arabesque imagery through the poetry… it is hard to conceive of.
In addition, the whole composition being circular rather than linear allows the couplets to eventually lead you back to where you began from (similar to much of the Persian miniature painting principles).
As if a necklace of images has at long last been clasped - completed.
Excerpts
Now for a few excerpts:
Boy, bring the cup! And circulate the wine! How easy at first love seemed… but now the snags begin.
...
Except for this one fault I can find no fault in your beauty - That your face reveals no trace of truth or of love…
…
Tears, tears like pearls must thread your eyelashes, Before you drink the wine from the eternal jeweled cup
…
None shall, as Hafiz does, withdraw Thought’s veil, Who has not combed out language, like a bride.
…
Love knows no difference between monastery and drinking-booth, For the light of the Friend’s face irradiates all..
…
Come let us get drunk, even if it is our ruin: For sometimes under ruins one finds the treasure
…
A laughing wine cup, a tangle of knotted hair - And let good resolutions, like those of hafiz be shattered!
…
If you sit above my grave with music and wine At the fragrance of you I shall rise from that narrow place and dance!
…
We are not bigots nor puritans; we need no penance: Preach to us only with a cup of unmixed wine.
…
This worship of wine, Hafiz, is a virtuous business, So be resolute in performance of Righteous works!!...more
Could not consider the experience complete without reading Heaney's acclaimed translation. The acclaim was well deserved. This version was much easier Could not consider the experience complete without reading Heaney's acclaimed translation. The acclaim was well deserved. This version was much easier to read, less choked by stylistic anachronisms and more alive in every sense. Gummere's translation has an elegance and presence that intimidates and exalts the reading but Heaney brings it home, makes it as familiar as Homer's epics and somehow makes us at ease with the strange manes and the stranger tides....more
All the poems are so well translated and seems to keep true to their original innocence and wonder. Each piece in this collection should be repeated m All the poems are so well translated and seems to keep true to their original innocence and wonder. Each piece in this collection should be repeated multiple times to feel its true resonance - like the humming and the mumbling that these poets talk of when they talk of chanting poetry.
The gibbons chattering, the moonlight flowing over you, the soft wind caressing, the lofty mountains for friends, the white clouds playful all around and the other minute yet infinite details of a secluded life take special meaning in each repetitive but strangely innovative verse.
And of course, the boats keep drifting, empty, alone; filled only with the silver moonlight.
My favorite one:
River. Snow.
A thousand mountains. Flying birds vanish. Ten thousand paths. Human traces erased. One boat, bamboo hat, bark cape — an old man. Alone with his hook. Cold river. Snow....more
“As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave
“As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image.”
~ James Joyce, Ulysses
“The Universe is the externalization of the soul.”
~ Emerson
To attempt to review this now would be like trying to review a book after finishing the first couple of chapters. There is no way to do justice to it, or to even be sure of what one is prattling on about. So seasoned readers, please do excuse any over-eager generalizations or over-enthusiastic missteps.
Poetry in Proust
There is an atmosphere of grandness that is felt as one reads this initial book, everything is charged with a sense of premonition, as if these are all musical notes that are being played for us now in a subdued key, and exquisite as they are, they are all going to reappear in grander forms later.
There is a sense throughout of stage being set, themes being set forth and of being invited to an extremely long composition that could last a lifetime if the reader is engaged enough.
On the other hand, every paragraph I read seemed to me self-contained, like understated poetry; like a leaf so brilliantly illuminated that it outshines the whole tree, until you move your gaze to the next, when the same magic is repeated again.
Proust as Teacher
There is greatness in this work and it is beyond the obvious literary value or aesthetic pleasure that it provides. Proust also liberates literature in a way, in being so unapologetically, irrepressibly romantic about everything in life!
Thus the narrative runs on with undisguised romanticism and wide eyed enthusiasm for every detail of life. There is no attempt to tone anything down. There is none of that tendency for manly acceptance of the drollness life or of a skeptical indifference to its inevitable ugliness.
Everything is lived to its fullest and described as it should be lived. It almost feels like a fairyland, so fully heightened are the colors and emotions of Marcel’s life. Until we realize that that is exactly how rich inner lives always are, if we only surrender to the sense of wonder that drives our lives. If only we could recapture the color and the poetry.
Proust teaches us how to live.
Reading Notes:
Some of the notes (as in musical notes) that struck (a chord with) me the most, and which I know will leave a lasting impact no matter how they are modified or reinforced in the later chapters (books) are:
Proust As Madeleine
The Proust experience opens a portal to one’s own childhood — to a re-creation of one’s entire life, in fact.
This re-creation enables one to embark on the path of one’s own memories as well - to resurrect one’s childhood paths and travel them, think of fears and of flames.
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Like remembering the pond one used to walk by, rediscovering the beauty and the colors that surrounded our lives…
Memories come thick and fast as we savor the Madeleine that is Proust.
The Intimate Acts of Creation
“Our social personality is a creation of the minds of others”
Thus we no longer need to hunt for the memory-objects wherein our pasts are locked away. The reading itself serves that function. And as we recreate thus our internal world, Proust also teaches us how we created the external world around us:
Just as the world is constructed after dreaming, the whole structure of society is created anew from birth for each child. We all reinvent it and then propagate it. Unless we choose the other ‘way.’
Discovering slowly class and social barriers. Understanding now how we might have been indoctrinated unconsciously…
We come with freedom and then the ties slowly bind us — constraining us, showing us already defined paths. This crystallization of our future path is what we later call our life, the path we travelled. By which we define ourselves.
How we created and defined and imbibed social relations, including superiors and equals, in an intensely solipsistic fashion. Just as when Marcel meets an aristocrat, first sees her as an ordinary person, had expected to be more, is seen to be not, and is then recreated based on the expectations — invented in short.
One example by Proust is enough to call up a hundred more of our own.
Aesthetic Oneness with Proust
Thus, you find yourself drawn into the world Proust is sketching. The involvement deepens to an immersion where the ordinary, everyday world dims and fades from the center of attention, you begin to understand and even share the feelings of the characters on the page — under ideal conditions you might reach a stage where you begin to participate in some strange way in the love being evoked.
Now, if at that moment you were to ask yourself: “Whose love is this?” a paradox arises.
It cannot be Marcel’s love for Gilberte, nor Gilberte’s love for Marcel, for they are fictional characters. It cannot be your own love, for you cannot love a fictional character. Could it be memories evoked?
Could it be that both Marcel and Gilberte exist no longer in what you feel as love as you read about them? Could it be that the emotion exists at another plane of existence now?
In any case, it is a peculiar, almost abstract love without immediate referent or context — left to you, the reader, to actualize and bring to life.
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A Sanskrit aesthete would ease your anxiety by explaining to you, probably with examples from Kathakali, that you are at that moment of paradox “relishing” (asvadana) your own “fundamental emotional state” (sthayi-bhava) called “passion” (rati) which has been “decontextualised” (sadharanikaran) by the operation of “sympathetic resonance” (hrdaya-samvada) and heightened to become transformed into an “aesthetic sentiment” (rasa) called the “erotic sentiment” (srngara).
This “aesthetic sentiment” that is so subtly wrought in us is a paradoxical and ephemeral thing that can be evoked by the novel but is not exactly caused by it, for many readers may feel nothing at all during the same instance in the book. You yourself, reading it again next month, under the same circumstances, might experience nothing.
It is, moreover, something that cannot be adequately explained on analytic terms, the only proof for its existence is its direct, personal experience.
The evocation of this intense personal experience is the highest function of art.
But there is one more aim that art can have — to not only evoke it but also make you aware of how it is done. This rarified level of achievement is what Proust reaches. Proust makes you one with his world but also makes your personal experience with a piece of art concrete, through his own narrator’s experiences coming alive in what he is to eventually create out of everything he (and now you) passes through in these pages.
Proust allows us to not only experience sublime art but also its very creation.
Proust as Meditation
There is a breathlessness for the reader in everything in Proust, as we try to squeeze out meaning from every word and expression, every chance direct address by the narrator. These meanings and themes we might squeeze out are charged with special gravity in Proust — since we know that we have to remember them, we have to take them along with us in the long journey that awaits us. We cannot afford to be careless in this first sojourn. If we miss any key now, we might encounter a beautiful door that will refuse to yield later.
This effect does not depend on truth, it does not matter whether what we get out of this early reading will be valuable in reality later or not. The possibility is enough to invest a special sort of magic into the reading. A stillness of expectation, of anticipation is created. That atmosphere can be stifling or it can be as expansive as a zen garden.
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One might feel lost in it or one might feel oneself in the presence of a literary holy grail. For me, I could not even tolerate the disturbance rendered by my own breathing when I read. I wanted total stillness.
Tennyson is famously to have declared Shakespeare 'greater in his sonnets than in his plays'. While the reader who might not soar as easily along the paths described by these Sonnets would find the comparison absurd to a degree, he/she would also have to admit that they understand the sentiment behind Tennyson’s blasphemy. Some of the sonnets are so well-crafted and consists of such unexpected imagery that they can leave one breathless at their majesty and imagination. Indeed, some of them are eloquent and eternal invocations of love at par with the best love poetry - just as his romances and tragedies that outrage conventions are the best in their genres!
Even when he departed from most conventional expectations of poetry, Shakespeare was still able to leave his imprint on the very sonnet form itself. That should tell us how important these sonnets really are to literature. The form is now called ‘Shakespearean Sonnets’, and to do that centuries past the invention of the sonnets as a form is also an achievement that defies imagination.
The Chatter of the Critics
Now we come to the depressing aspect: critical discussion on these, some of the best love poetry in the language, unfortunately centers more on historical speculation than on philosophical or aesthetic appreciation.
Most of the introductions and critical commentary that accompany the sonnets focus on a biographical excavatory project, mining the sonnets for information, leaving behind tired mounts in their wake. Scholarship have been tragically been too sidetracked on this issue - away from the heart of poetry to its scholarly peripheries where readers might not want to accompany them.
I wish some of these elaborate commentaries and footnotes that accompany almost every word of these sonnets were focussed instead on how the poems should be interpreted personally by the reader! Imagine if all poems were disassociated from the reader and read purely from a historical perspective of the author’s love-life or forensically on figuring out who it was addressed to - poetry would lose much of its universality!
The problem is that we know so little biographic detail of Shakespeare and the Sonnets provide a tantalizing prospect to scholars. The question ‘when, and to whom was this written?’ is one which the poems repeatedly invite their readers to pose, and which they quite deliberately fail to answer. Of course he may not even have wanted his sonnets to be printed; there was, after all, an interval of approximately fifteen years between composition and publication, which makes the sonnet’s poet an unreliable narrator at best - we have no clue what the sonnets were intended for. And speculations/recreations of the ‘Drama of the Sonnets’ have shown almost as much inventiveness as we might expect in Shakespeare himself!
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Were they select poems sent to a single lover? Are they a collection of poems sent to many lovers, subject changing with each sonnet? Were they compositions made to amuse his friends or visitors, to impress them with his mastery? Were they lonely exercises of genius, indulged on to pass the time of the depressing Plague years? We really do not know. And knowing nothing, we still prefer to stumble about and tarnish the beauty of the poetry by wild surmises!
That is tragic.
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As I said, the sonnets are tantalizing and they keep teasing the reader to make meaning out of them. At times they seem to build up a body of recurrent structures and preoccupations, and even a narrative of sorts, even shaping itself around possibly real events. And then it seems not to. A story converges from the lyrics, and then it vanishes. Instead, the reader should accept that the sonnets are so heavily patterned that almost any form could be seen in it - they are like the clouds, you only need to have enough enthusiasm and imagination to mould them to yourselves.
Through all this however, and throughout, the ‘voices’ of the Sonnets appear in all their intricacy and dramatic power, resisting any simple reading. Shakespeare begins his sonnets by introducing four of his most important themes - immortality, time, procreation, and selfishness and then plays them off against each other:
Sonnets of abject praise generate undertones of irony and criticism; Sonnets of abject depression generate undertones of hope and eternity; Sonnets of worldly criticism generate undertones of the exalted nature of poetry; Sonnets singing boasts about the power of poetry generate undertones of fear of mortality - the variations are endless and exhilarating.
Exit The Cave
There is an introductory essay called ‘The Cave and The Sun’ in the Dover-Wilson edition of the Sonnets, of which I read only the introduction since I wanted to stick to my Arden edition which had better and more detailed footnotes (with very useful headnotes accompanying each sonnet and sonnet sequence - highly recommended). I found the metaphor employed and the advice given by Wilson to the raiders to be very relevant to my own reading experience. I want to discuss it a bit here, even though Wilson went on to disappoint me by not sticking to his own prescriptions on how the sonnets should be read and critiqued.
Sir Walter Raleigh, who wrote the most human short life of William Shakespeare that we possess, began his section on the Sonnets as follows:
'There are many footprints around the cave of this mystery, none of them pointing in the outward direction. No one has ever attempted a solution of the problem without leaving a book behind him; and the shrine of Shakespeare is thickly hung with these votive offerings, all withered and dusty.'
Wilson adopts this metaphor and elaborates: Raleigh’s cave of mystery calls another to mind, Plato's cave of illusion, in which the human race sit chained with their backs to the sun without, and are condemned to accept the passing shadows on the wall before them for the truth—the real truth being only revealed to the few who are able to break their bonds and turn to face the light of day. Absorbed in our own attempts to solve the biographical puzzles that the individual sonnets offer us, we remain blind to the sun that casts these shadows but gives meaning to the whole.
Begin by seeing that meaning and recognizing the whole as the greatest love-poem in the language, and the mystery of the detail becomes so unimportant as to fade away.
That this is the right approach to an understanding, apparently so obvious and so natural, is surely beyond contest? At least to me it is.
The Philosophy Vs The Biography
Coming back to the sonnets themselves, one of the continuous experiences that enthrall the reader is to see how the sonnets keeps defying expectations and conventions. For example, neither the exhortation to love and ‘settle down’, the love for the young man, nor the passion for the 'dark woman' are subjects an ambitious poet would be likely to choose as the most suitable to display the genius of his verse.
They instead form testimony to Shakespeare’s overriding powers of imagination.
Peter Ackroyd, in his biography of Shakespeare, speculates that Shakespeare experimented and stretched the sonnet form to its breaking point - perhaps because he was bored of poetry, which came too easy to him.
When we consider the repetition of themes and the easy show-offiness of how Shakespeare uses the Sonnets to tell the same things again and again, but always with consummate expertise and ease, it is hard to dismiss the idea.
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This might be reflected in the fact that so many of the Sonnets are overly megalomaniacal about the power of his verse, boasting of the defeat of time and the acquisition/granting of immortality.
But even as these exalt us, even while we may be in awe at the overwhelming force of Shakespeare’s imagination, we would also be melancholy at the theme of relentless failure expressed in the poems, over and over, dealing with self-deception and betrayal; with the inadequacy of the mind, or the imagination, or poetry, to have any effect, even on the poet’s own feelings.
This is how Shakespeare continually inverts the themes and explores them from multiple angles. When he praises the ennobling qualities of love in one Sonnet, he might make it about love's insecurities and dark aspects later, either in the same sonnet by employing the structural ‘turn’ or in a linked sonnet later on in the sequence.
All this might make the reader feel out of sorts and uneasy. It is as if the conversation jumped from topic to topic in a broken-backed fashion. At times affectionate and intimate, at times abject and distant; but nothing clicks tight, no overall theme emerges. The poet of the Sonnets veers back and forth from the dream of omnipotence to the dread of mortality and impending loss, continuously in flux.
Even the conclusion of this is almost wistful, a testimony to the ultimate powerlessness of the art that has been so hyperbolically praised, but at the same time leaving it hanging in mid-air, since we do not really know if these 'concluding' sonnets are really the conclusion, or if they were ordered right, or if Shakespeare intended to contrast the theme of the 'concluding' couple of sonnets by another soaring portrayal of Cupid reasserting himself. Again, we can only speculate.
Reading the Sonnets is a particularly rewarding (and time consuming) exercise due to these delightful perversities of history and of the poet’s pen.
Thus the reader would conclude the reading of the Sonnets with a strong sense that the emotions expressed in them refuses to fit into pigeon-holes that we/critics may have constructed for them.
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Individually most of the sonnets are creatures of infinite beauty but also bewildering due to their contrasting colors, and when we read the whole sequence as one, we might experience them differently. As one of the critics say, from its total plot, however ambiguous, however particular, there emerges something not indeed common or general like the love expressed in many individual sonnets, but yet, in a higher way, universal. While this is indeed true, we again lack the tools or the certainty to convert the individual sonnets into a ‘plot’ - we might try to understand a ‘philosophy’ of love and life from these meditations, but to hunt for a plot among them can only take away from the pleasure and the true experience of it.
To me at least, the conclusion was that to relentlessly attribute autobiographical aims to the sonnets is to not give due credit to the imaginative genius of Shakespeare and impute that he was incapable of inventing such realistic emotions with his poetic person than he was able to achieve with his dramatic one. Why credit only the dramatic author to be capable of this imaginative creativity and not the poet? I think it is only desperation that forces this on us.
We should accept that the author-character that emerges from the sonnets is not created for our convenience. It is not necessarily William Shakespeare, the man; it is William Shakespeare, the poet.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation; departed. A cold blast at the back, So rudely forc'd, like Philomela. It was Tiresias', it was he who doomed all men, throbbing between two lives, knowing which?
Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole! Excuse my demotic French!
****
Let us go then, him (that carbuncular young man), and you - In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
You may come or go, but speak not of Michelangelo.
When there is not solitude even in the Mountains, When even the sound of water could dry your thirst, Then you can lift your hands and sing of dead pine trees.
Have you yet been led, through paths of insidious intent, through every tedious argument, To that overwhelming question?
****
Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
Sweet Thames, sweating oil and tar, Sweet Thames, run on softly till I end my song, for I speak not loud or long, for I speak not clear or clean, for I speak in the hoarse whispers of the last man, for it was I who murdered you, and Ganga, right under the nose, of mighty Himavant!
You who were living is now dead. We who were living are now dying - With a little patience!
Break The Bough, and hang yourself from it, Sweeney, Prufrock, The Fisher King and the sterile others, all will follow first, like corpses etherised on well-lit tables.
****
Remember me, me - Tiresias, once more, for we are all him, yet not.
The present will always look at the mirror, and see only a Wasteland, The Past is always the heavenly spring, running dry now.
Perspective, Thy name is Poetry.
****
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down These fragments you have shored against my ruins.