May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
~ W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939
I.
The mind wanders where it listeth. Indeed, even in the most solemn moments, or the most sacred places, thoughts precede the will which has the unique power to govern them. Fragmentary images or full-blown fantasies burst onto the mental screen unbidden and, once there, hold sway like a tyrant. Whether by design or by accident, certain things (especially objects of art) have the ability to draw forth the demiurgic fancy, sunder it from its governing will, and lead it towards a climax often unexpected, sometimes shocking, but always bursting with meaning.
As an example I will give the iconic statue of the Virgin Mary that adorns many Roman Catholic churches. She is shown treading upon the head of a serpent, representing, of course, Satan, while her gaze is directed blissfully toward the holy seat. Besides her hands and face, the only bare flesh shown is her foot, which is carven with exquisite delicacy. Anyone with even a slight inclination towards sexual submission or fetishism will find something disturbingly erotic about this image. Certainly one of the most memorable scenes in Umberto Eco's masterpiece, The Name of the Rose, is of the depraved old monk, flat on his face, masturbating before the Virgin. Note I have already used two terms from the conceptual language of morality: "disturbing" and "depraved." Why would an atheist find the sexualization of the Virgin Mary disturbing, or consider a person utilizing her for the sake of release depraved? Possibly because all art requires a certain amount of reverence, and such reverence must be directed toward a concept, at least, if not a specific object. Reverence, of course, is another moralistic term, denoting a concept not usually invoked in contemporary discussions of literature, possibly because of religious overtones. Yet reverence for the sacred is an immemorial theme in poetry and the visual arts. And the relation of fallible human beings to the all-pervasive sacred powers begins in the Western tradition with the Iliad and continues to the present day.1
Buried deep in our shared past, both literary and psychological, is the union of the sacred and the sexual -- indeed, extending back into pre-history, the sexual was sacred, and vice-versa -- and it is the sundering of these complementary and often indistinguishable 'forces' that has caused the de-stabilization of the self in the face of conflicting moral idea(l)s to become the dominant theme in literary art to this day. The earliest writings that we recognize as poetry are concerned with the conflict between selfish desire and the obligations owed to the community, which includes the gods. Moral lapse, and the effort to undo its effects, is the poetic theme par excellence. So what is poetic about an embarrassing lapse of morality?
We have three themes here: 1) the sacred, 2) the sexual, 3) the moral stability (or lack thereof) of the human person. That the sacred is the product of atmosphere (and therefore pre-conceptual) none, I think, will deny. By this I mean, for example, that even an atheist cannot fail to be moved to a certain attitude of refined reverence in the space of a church or cathedral. The idea that a large number of people believe such a space to bear witness to the presence of the deity is not the only reason for reverence. The careful attention paid to every detail of construction, to every opportunity to inject symbolism into literally every corner, turns the mind away from self-reflection towards a contemplation of a meaning beyond oneself. The atmosphere of the space becomes charged with mystery, even, perhaps, awe.2 At this point, one is living poetry. Conversely, there is no mystery surrounding one's personal sexuality. Unless one has a neurotic, self-denying attitude towards one's sexuality, the various desires at work in the scheme of arousal and satisfaction are all too clear. In short, I know exactly what I want. When the glory of self-transcendence bumps up against the familiar vibration of sexual arousal, I am thrown into a moral dilemma. Do I permit the two to mingle, and thereby drag down to earth that which was capable, even if only for a moment, of drawing my attention away from my self, and toward the mysterious 'other' that captivates imagination and lends an otherworldly luster to life? The fact that this dilemma is the result of a millennia-old cultural separation of the sacred and the sexual is a purely intellectual consideration; the evolution of human self-consciousness that gave rise to the concept of the person as HUPOSTASIS is the foundation of all Western morality and ethics, and it involves a strict separation of the 'lower' physical funtions, over which the will has little control, and the higher noetic or intellectual functions, which, when in concert with the will, allows the person unmediated access to, or contemplation of, the sacred.3 Therefore, a cost / benefit analysis is clearly in favor of keeping the sacred inviolate, yet the overwhelming power of Eros is a nearly indomitable force, and it is truly wonderful to dissolve into ecstasy beneath the power of sexual desire hypostasized in / as the beloved, whom the "Goddess" (to borrow a trope from Robert Graves, in his book The White Goddess) uses as her instrument for the sake of inspiring the lover (or "Muse-poet") with an ecstatic, self-transcending joy productive of the most sacred art. Clear-sighted attachment to the world of concrete experience is the first step towards an ethically sound and morally stable existence. It is not, however, conducive to a craftsmanly life of personal co-operation with the infinite.
Georges Bataille, for example, was well aware of this, and spilled much ink on the topic. The "notion of expenditure," as he called the ecstatic destruction of valuabe things for the sake of some transcendent end, is precisely what I have in mind here, especially the role played by morality (and by this loaded term I mean a fully developed, theoretical conscience, i.e., a strong conception of how the world and the self ought to be). Even the most hardcore atheist will feel at least a tinge of shame if he fantasizes about taking the serpent's place beneath Mary's foot. This shame may, of course, be due to residual cultural influence, especially if our atheist was brought up as a Christian, or at least in Christian surroundings. But morality is a complex thing, and a person who respects, theoretically at least, the sacred objects and notions of other persons, will feel a healthy shame at utilizing one of their sacred objects for a 'base' end like sexual gratification. There is also -- and this must not be discounted -- the sense of self-esteem which all healthy persons possess. It is shameful to debase oneself before another; indeed, I think even the most devoted submissive feels a tiny bit of non-sexual shame as he licks the bottom of his mistress's boot. A moral stance, then, towards oneself and the other, depends upon acknowledging two types or morality: that which involves a respect for persons, and that which involves respect or reverence for a concept. In the example of the 'slave' at his mistress's feet: if she is not simply a means to an erotic end, but also a person loved by the 'slave' -- and especially if she returns that love -- any shame felt by the submissive will be mitigated by and through that love, and an intense erotic experience will result; if the submissive, however, is engaging in a fantasy role-play scenario in which the actual woman recedes into the distance and gives way to a conceptual Goddess, then the shame will be carried out of the 'dungeon' and into the bright streets of non-fantasy existence, where that shame may rankle and cause psychological discord of a rather complex kind.
In the realm of poetry, and literature in general (novel, short story) we have a roughly analogous situation. A dominant theme or trope will draw its power from the focus either on an individual and his or her experience, or more generally on a concept meant to include all of humanity (or at least a certain sub-section of humanity, if you will). It is the difference, quite simply, of a poem by the self to the self (what I will call 'I' poems) and a poem addressed to others ('We' poems). To bring Robert Graves in again, the dedicatory poem with which he opens The White Goddess, entitled simply "In Dedication," is a rather powerful 'I' poem.
But I am gifted, even in November
Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense
Of her [the Goddess's] nakedly worn magnificence
I forget cruelty and past betrayal,
Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
Yet for some reason, when he reprinted this poem under the title "The White Goddess," in his Poems and Satires 1951, Graves exchanged, literally, the 'I's for 'We's. As Harold Bloom rightly pointed out, this alteration ruins the poem. But I think it also serves as a fine illustration of how the direct power of personal experience and revelation, in which sanctity and reverence are moral responses to ones place in the world, can be productive of unmediated poetic expression, whereas rhetorical or didactic efforts to communicate something supposedly universal is often (not always!) productive of limpid poetry of a supremely forgettable sort.4 In other words, even if I do not share the other's experience, if that experience is rendered in an especially moving, personal manner, I will have a moral, reverent response to my fellow human being's communicated experience, no matter how far beyond my ken it may be. However, if I am asked or expected to identify with that experience, by way of the 'We' method, I may easily grow annoyed or even insulted. Mention should also be made of 'We' poems masquerading as 'I' poems. Whitman's fawning "O Captain! My Captain!" does not demand the reader to join him in his effusions, but it does not fail to insult by its shameless hero-worship. When I read that poem I am embarrassed for Whitman, whose poetic personality deserved to remain on a loftier plane. One may consider this comment ironic or even self-contradictory, given my erotic-submissive predilection. I will forestall such an objection by shamelessly labeling my own poetic celebrations of the Goddess post-modern chivalry. Whitman's sad little poem is mere jingoism. Chivalric love exalts the lover; hero-worship, especially of the political kind, only degrades.
* * * * *
Concept-formation is the task of philosophy, not of poetry. When expressing a sense of life as it ought to be, that expression must -- if it is to be poetic -- be of a personal desire or longing for an existence suitable to the 'I.' Let philosophy speak of the 'We' and attempt to come to terms with life as it is, the Lebenswelt. And I will add that I believe the only philosophy still relevant in our day is that which acknowledges Geworfenheit, the "thrown-ness" that characterizes our relationship to the world, the disorientation that results when we attempt to reduce the world to categories of understanding, only to find that the world is not amenable to such reduction. In this type of existentialist-gnostic mode of thinking, there can be no study of universals, only of unique moments in the unfloding of personal becoming. Therein lies the difference between poetic thought (and the style of philosophy that rouses itself by way of poetry) and what, for want of a better, less loaded term, I will call 'objective': as soon as we begin to universalize, we necessarily abandon idealism for the gray realm of description; when we are attentive to the complexities of personal response to atmosphere(s) generated by works of art, or by the other (whether beloved, hated, or admired, etc.), the inspiration is not to description but to production. The 'I' becomes a Demiurge.
The Classical style of poetry always demanded proper imitation as the goal, whereas the Romantic style emphasized emotion, inner experience, personal response, etc. Classical imitation, of course, presumed the world to be essentially orderly, a representation of divine wisdom. No serious person believes that today. Romanticism understood the world to be a vale of tears. As Byron put it so powerfully in Canto IV of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
Our life is a false nature -- 'tis not in
The harmony of things, -- this hard decree,
This ineradicable taint of sin,
This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew --
Disease, death, bondage -- all the woes we see,
And worse, the woes we see not -- which throb through
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.
The poetic art has always had the power to bring the 'I' to the fore, over-against the whimpering others who just want to live "life on life's terms" and "celebrate diversity" when what they really mean is "pretend we are all alike." True diversity is maintained, if not celebrated, by shining light into the darkest corners of one's self, and not being afraid to shock or even appall. My decision to begin this essay with a reflection on fetishism, masturbation, and erotic domination was not made merely for shock-value; I actually enjoy these things, and one of my earliest sexual memories was getting an erection as I sat in church "contemplating" the statue of the Virgin. Perhaps I will write a poem about that experience, without pausing to consider what, if any, cultural value it may have. But first, a consideration of a contemporary novel is in order.
II.
Recently, in a spate of desire for timeliness (I suppose) I read an extraordinary novel (alas! not the one I am going to discuss here) by Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows. I snatched it off the shelf for the obvious reason: it dealt with Shakespeare. But it was much more than that. I was expecting, after my rash snatch, an attempt at another Nothing Like the Sun, by Burgess. It was no such thing. The self-referentiality is what made me feel that I was reading genuine literature (and never mind, I will not attempt to differentiate between literature and mere entertainment here; I shall save that for another essay) ... Yes, it was a literary experience. Perhaps I shall reserve some time for a review of that book of air and shadows, however belated. For now, I'll turn to a less (obviously?!) literary novel by Gruber, The Return. This novel has all the trappings of a typical crime drama: bereft husband, murderous drug lords, a subtle seductress, exotic location ... it goes on. Yet it is quite more than the sum of its parts. Gruber is aware, throughout his text, that he is writing a work of fiction. In The Book of Air and Shadows he engages in meta-commentary quite extensively, telling his reader straightforwardly that he is inventing dialogue, not recording it. And this self-conscious, compositional referendum (if you will) does much to raise that novel to the level of a sophisticated work of art, however strenuously Gruber strives to pull his text down to earth. This in stark contrast to another contemporary novelist, for whom my feelings are mixed (one Donna Tartt), who invites the reader into a contained space of eternal, faultless memory. Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, is an engaging tour-de-force, but it sacrifices verisimilitude for the sake of an all-encompassing narrative that forgets old Aristotle's sage advice: focus on a single action. I couldn't care less about Richard's (the "main character," I suppose) off-the-cuff observations, even less about his sexual un-conquests. Tartt's is a good story, that is all. Gruber's is something else.
In The Return, Gruber is more earnest (than Tartt) in his tale-weaving. I admit to boredom at certain points, especially during the reflections on the glories of Mexico and the rather gratuitous reminiscences of Vietnam. The device he was attempting to employ (tropic flashbacks {no pun intended}, even metonymic correspondences) failed to convince. What kept me at the novel was the almost unbearable tension between approaching mortality, present sexuality, and pure fear. Quite a combination.
So. In this novel we have the protagonist, one Richard Marder (and the allusion to "martyr" is intentional, despite Marder's disavowal of such at a rather poignant scene), a man who has lost his wife to suicidal madness after her parents were killed by Mexican drug cartel assassins, for refusing to pay tribute. Marder's deceased wife, of course, was Mexican, and Marder, as we come to discover, had seduced his beloved soon-to-be-wife away from her home in Mexico, resulting in her estrangement not only from her parents, but from her culture. We get a sense of the conflicting bitterness and love she (the dead wife) felt towards her husband. We are assured that her love for him was genuine, deep, and abiding. That makes her suicide, during what we are told was a drug-induced mania, all the more tragic. (Notice my use of 'we').
The novel opens with Marder being informed by his doctor that he (Marder) has an inoperable brain tumor. Death is inevitable; the only question is, How much time? In this arena of uncertainty, Marder unleashes an attack upon the cartel that murdered his wife. It is initially a quiet attack. He purchases a home on a small island off the western coast of Mexico and, with the help of a (fateful and faithful) friend, fortifies this island and provokes a war with the very cartel of infamous memory. This all sounds like pure crime-drama material, but I assure you, dear Reader, it is not. Themes of religious conviction, murderous passion, sexual inevitability, prevail; our protagonist becomes (thankfully) not a hero but a human. His death is not described in the novel, but his effective existence is given tribute. We find that a flawed, selfish, conflicted human being, when confronted with his own death, strives not to become a blessed memory, a "saint," but rather desires to make other people into saints. This is Marder the martyr. His genuineness is beyond dispute. As I read the novel, in one enjoyable, Sunday-long sitting, I found illustrated in a gripping yarn my own notion of morality conceptual and personal (and the union of the two).
Marder turned his lovely island paradise into a fortification, for the purpose of defying the brutal cartel. Those who stood with him were under no compulsion; they remained by his side out of love. Yes, love as a motivation is not outmoded. Verily, AGAPE OUDEPOTE PIPTEI, as the great poet Paul wrote. I believe that the moral purpose of Gruber's novel was to make this point, in a manner amenable to contemporary taste. In my opinion, he succeeded. While I remain an atheist, I hold to a faith in the noetic capacity of my fellows. We shall love not out of compulsion, but out of moral conviction. Yes, this sounds quaint, trite even ... But consider the alternatives.
The orgasm was once upon a time called the "little death." To die into another is the ultimate sacrifice, the absolute expression of a love that can be rejected but never called into question. Death is authentic. Bad faith is a living error. Death erases all error. Marder, laboring along with full knowledge of his inescapable death, found himself capable of a super-human exercise in virtue, a style of living that made him beloved of his dependents, and an object of awe to his intimates. But despite -- or perhaps because of (good novels promote the ambiguous, and this is an excellent novel) his conscisouness of death, Marder rises to heights of astounding sacrifice, made all the more impressive by his ability to remain relaxed, even as he hears his arch-enemy, in the next room, getting cut apart by a hot knife.
In some quiet moments I recall the glorious presence of my own ex-wife. She is still alive, as far as I know. Thankfully. If my doom is to worship her only in memory, so be it. A kind fate awaits those who love without compulsion. But the Virgin stands resolute. No matter where I go, no matter how I think, identification with the serpent is my fate.
I did not intend this second section of this little essay to be a review of Gruber's book. Rather, I needed a springboard. I have written a couple of poems that I must share soon, with some peers. But Gruber's novel reminded me of something ... Concept versus experience. If I abandon myself to the rolling structure of this world, without even attempting to alter Fate's Sodden Way ... If I flow into warm, cocoonish oblivion ... If I stay here as I am, is it possible to forget? I don't think so. The Concept and the Person. Together we tap out "different futures for everyone, one of which would come true" (Gruber, The Return, p. 366, finale).
As Huysman made clear, in his masterpiece La-Bás: there are certain personalities of the highest order who refuse to take second place. Moral considerations animate them not. Such persons desire to be Pope or a Master Warlock, it matters not, as long as the 'I' is supreme. In such persons, the concept of greatness, super-humanity, is the target, the goal. Once achieved, the fuel of life (for them) has been spent. Nothing moves. One alternative to this self-destructive power-play is Marder's nearly ecstatic giving of himself to the living, his transformation of his own impending death into a gift to everyone with whom he has come into contact, in his fateful final days. Another alternative is the demiurgic giving of the mind to those one will never meet, those readers who might cite one, in a article or book or lecture ... To become a deus absconditus is not a bad fate for a Christian Gnostic, who will believe that he will be capable of witnessing, from his warm and cozy seat in the PLEROMA, the effect that his work has had upon the unfortunates still laboring hylically in the realm of ... air and shadows.
Conclusion
It would be easy to conclude this text, if I knew, beyond doubt, my point. I don't. What I do know is that I must write. At my alcoholic back I always hear, the wheels of an ambulance drawing near. Will I be remembered, when I am gone (and that time is approaching)? And I don't mean remembered by Google or whatever digital storage systems that will come along to prevent my words from gathering noble dust. I wish, I hope, to be remembered by persons.
I think my days of writing academic works are over. If you have stayed with me this far, dear Reader, you will think one of two things, I'll wager: Edward Moore is a fine writer, erudite if recondite, bursting with a desire to communicate his "bright illimitable soul"; or, EM is a weirdo, plying us with his odd-ball dominatrix fantasies that he somehow thinks are literary material -- What a waste of digital space! And I would be lying if I said it doesn't matter. I truly desire the former to be the (ahem) dominant judgment of my work. In my passage from devout Orthodox Christian to rather annoyed atheist, I find little satisfaction in knowing that my books and articles on various aspects of Christian theology are rather consistently, if not widely, read. I would really love an audience of ...
Well, since I am being honest here, I would really love an audience of ONE. And she knows who she is.
Notes:
1. From the invocation of the Muse in Homer, to the solemn dedication to a loved one that graces the first page of many a contemporary novel, the moral value of a work of art is acknowledged. Indeed, if there were not something about the poetic art provocative of a reverential or at least a morally attuned attitude, poets or novelists would not find it proper to dedicate their productions to those they love or admire. And the latter would not find it necessary, occasionally, to demand that their name be removed from the dedicatory page, if there were not something morally objectionable about the work dedicated to them.
2. I suppose this is the place to mention Mont-St.-Michel and Chartres, by Henry Adams, and, of course, the relevant reflections by Ruskin, especially in his Stones of Venice. The latter text, especially, has remained in my mind as a paean to the Northern Spirit: cold hard passion, refusing to melt away in the harsh light of the other.
3. My reader might find it strange, at least, that I assign what has usually been termed mysticism to the intellect and the will. Certainly, traditional understandings of mysticism, in the Western tradition, involves a notion of surrender or abandonment of the merely human intellect and will in favor of the overriding power of the divine. In the last analysis, however, I believe that the discipline of the mystic -- at least in the Western tradition -- is a personal intellectual exercise, and that it is a mistake to give the credit for the resulting contemplative clarity to the deity rather than to the dedicated human person, to whom that credit really belongs. See my work on St. Maximus the Confessor, which has met with considerable objections over the years, mostly from dedicated Orthodox Christians, notably my doctoral dissertation, Origen of Alexandria and St. Maximus the Confessor (Boca Raton: Dissertation.com, 2005).
4. A famous example of an irritating piece of poetic preachiness is Pope's Essay on Man, which for some reason has remained in the so-called canon. I admit to enjoying the poem when I first read it, many years ago, likely due to recognition of certain verses that have come into popular usage, for example, "Hope springs eternal ...". However, when I began to reflect upon the philosophical message of the poem -- a dangerous, de-personalizing piety that seeks to tether the human mind to earth -- I found no reason to return to it. Contemporary examples of annoying preachy poems (and, indeed, counterparts in novel or short story form) are legion.
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