Far Beyond the Personal

A Belated Review of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch

Edward Moore, PhD (patristics@gmail.com)

This may seem an untimely time to be preoccupied with questions of literature, the novel, and the art of writing in general. The year 2015 has barely begun, and thoughtful persons -- and persons of action (usually, but not always distinct) -- are concerned with police brutality (at the local and national level), the machinations of the so-called Islamic State, freedom of speech (and other Western values) versus fanatical and oppressive ideology, among other important problems. As it should be. Yet for those of us who remain enclosed in a cocoon of self-referentiality or, to use a more accessible term, seasonal depression, the pursuit of beauty -- and the simultaneous escape and self-revelation it provides -- is perhaps the most timely occupation. This is not to say that practicioners of the discursive arts (which includes cinema along with novels, short stories, and plays) have not been busy trying to be timely. Indeed, recognition official and unofficial has been given to works that deal with such perennially timely topics as Nazi-occupied Europe, the American civil rights movement, and the usual coterie of race and gender-themed productions. But, as usual, a foray into the complex psychology of a single human being -- reasonably well-educated, perhaps neurotically sensitive, and prone to highly personal philosophical reflections, oh, and wracked by tragic personal loss (not loss of a nation or a culture -- all abstractions -- but of something endemic to the 'I') -- is a rare find in our post-Romantic, post-post-modern era. 'Tis better to remain with the dead white European (not necessarily) males, in order to retain consciousness of ... well, what makes those of us unfortunate enough to have been born inside the borders of the current waning Empire tick.

With that mindset, I have read, at last, Donna Tartt's much-discussed book (note I have not labeled it a novel -- more on that later) The Goldfinch (2013, New York: Little, Brown and Company). Since I permit myself only a handful of new works of fiction per year, being far more concerned with older, neglected writings, I tend to be a bit behind the times, as it were. I also tend to be very selective. Unless I am contracted to write a professional review, and receive the book directly from the publisher or author's agent, I have no qualms about putting down a work that bores me. I took Donna Tartt's book off the shelf, voluntarily, after having seen it mentioned several times during my casual perusal of literary reviews and magazines. Resting and bored over the Christmas holiday week, I began Tartt's book on a Friday evening -- and completed it the following afternoon. As is my wont, my reading was careful, analytical, but by the time I reached the middle, roughly, of the rather hefty tome (771 pages), I realized I had become emotionally involved. This does not often happen when I read a work of fiction, and only less rarely when I read poetry (I watch movies only when forced by friends). And so it is the highest praise I can give to any work of literary art.

That being said, I nearly put the book down before reaching the definitive crisis of the narrative, the terrorist bombing of the museum and the resultant death of the narrator's beloved mother (p. 31). Excessive first-person reflections about minor details, combined with overwhelming descriptions of persons and things, runs counter to my aesthetic of economy in narrative. Perhaps it is my background as an academic philosopher that causes me to recoil from the no-stone-unturned approach to fictional writing; in philosophy such an approach is the norm, and when I turn to fiction I expect writing that is, well, breezier than typically verbose philosophical essays. But for some reason, I stayed my hand, and continued to read. As with a ponderous Romantic symphony, if one is to appreciate the work, one must allow ones response(s) to unfold at the pace set by the composer. If the composer is astute, and atuned to his themes, the patience will be rewarded. Such is the case with The Goldfinch. One of my first unbidden thoughts, as I followed the course of events, was of Dostoevsky. I immediately checked myself. How dare I compare any work, or writer, to the mad Russian, one of the greatest novelists of all time? Perhaps my emotional response to Tartt's work was clouding my judgment, for there is really nothing about her style, and little more about here theme(s), that justifies a comparison with Dostoevsky. Yet there it was. I vowed at this point to be more critical in my reading; I was clearly losing my objectivity (What?! Isn't the whole point of reading a work of literature to become immersed in the world set up by the author?) Upon reflection, however, I asked myself: Why not? Is Dostoevsky some jealous god? Will I be struck down if I dare to find a contemporary work that is more satisfying for me than The Brothers Karamazov? Yes, The Goldfinch is (sorry) a very different animal; but comparing my first reading of the former with the latter, the personal fact is that my response to Tartt's work was immediate, variegated, and inviting -- after the initial emotional overflow -- of continued reflection (and forget about the false objective / subjective dichotomy. As a philosopher I should know better!). My response to Dostoevsky's masterpiece, as I recall after a space of over twenty years, was rather ... laborious.

During my lifetime my taste in literature has undergone various minor changes, ranging from a youthful love of fantasy and horror (Poe, Dunsany, Lovecraft, and the old Gothic novelists were my mainstays, and Tolkien followed me everywhere), to a fascination with psychopathy and altered states (French Surrealism, the novels of Bataille, the effusions of Artaud) to a current interest in questions of purpose and meaning, as well as personal legacy (recent works by Linda Holeman, Michael Gruber, Sarah Dunant and, of course, Donna Tartt). The one aesthetic constant has been atmosphere. By that I mean the elusive, because indefinable, quality of a piece of writing that provides an anchor for memory, a point of reference that is non-discursive and unmediated in its mnemonic force, like a scent or a landscape. My favorite writings are those that conjure an inescapable atmposphere, the way a person will produce, if you will, an aura. When the mere mention of a title is sufficient to transport my imagination back to vivid, pervasive scenery and voices, attitudes ... then it can be said that the writer has succeeded in creating a multifloriate atmosphere that may or may not be comparable to my life. It need not be, for a work of art is, of course, a world in itself. And whether the atmosphere is that of early nineteenth-century Liverpool, twenty-first century Manhattan, or Middle Earth in the Third Age, it matters not -- the resultant sense of the place as existing beyond myself, there to be discovered, is the artistic success that raises writing to the level of literature, art.

The most realized atmosphere in The Goldfinch is, oddly enough, the alcohol and drug-addled period spent by the narrator and lead character, Theo Decker, in the Nevada desert, with his unlikely and, as it turns out, fateful friend, Boris. The rather plodding introspection of the preceding section gives way to an almost frenetic, fragmentary manner of recounting a hazy, dreamlike episode -- or series of episodes -- which, as we find out much later, was largely an alcoholic blackout (the chapter sections grow correspondingly shorter here, mimetic of the fragmentary consciousness of the professional abuser of substances). If the startling contrast between the cement canyons of Manhattan and the agoraphobic expanse of the sun-baked Nevada desert is not sufficient to disorient both narrator and reader, the mind-warping intake of alcohol and drugs does the trick. Any description of the desert that did not involve some level of perceptual and noetic distortion would read as woodenly naturalistic. In this section there is almost a metonymic correspondence between Theo's roiling consciousness and the hazy reality of the environment in which he has landed. Tartt's prose in this section effortlessly maintains this sensation at a fever pitch.

It is only as we reach the end of the book that we call into question -- not perhaps for the first time but certainly with greatest force -- the narrator's reliability. The only real constant in the 'story' is Theo's post-traumatic stress disorder, the result of losing his mother in a terrorist bombing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (during the immediate aftermath of which he filches, for a noble purpose, the eponymous 1654 painting by Fabritius). To say that this painting is some sort of symbolic or emotional anchor is not quite correct, as we discover that Theo has idealized the work in a very personal -- and idolatrous -- manner -- so much so that he is unaware, for a very long time, that the package that he thinks contains the painting actually holds an old civics textbook, switched by his rather amoral friend Boris, who cannot help but covet and steal, even from his only true friend. The switcheroo by Boris takes place during the Nevada episode, which is appropriate. This episode is one of many mini genre-pieces, so to speak, in Tartt's lengthy but remarkably coherent text. I would not hesitate to label the Nevada episode a bildungsroman, for we sense (since we are not explicitly shown) Theo coming of age, or entering into self-awareness, if you prefer. There is striking verisimilitude in this section, for Theo is very selective in his focus -- as we all are, to a greater or lesser extent -- pushing or drinking away anything or anyone that does not aid him in his personal quest for stability, if not contentment or, imagine, happiness. For example, an underlying homoerotic element in his friendship with Boris is subtly suggested in this section, and later verified nonchalantly by Boris. Theo, apparently, was so blacked out he didn't recall his brief foray to the other side, just as he was too tanked to notice that his beloved painting had been switched by his best friend.

It would be simplistic to say that events happen to Theo and he responds. While this is the surface of the narrative at this point, there is a depth. Theo's remarkable adaptability, when wrenched from familiar surroundings and placed in an alien environment with his father -- a wreckless gambler and addict who had abandoned his mother and him, only to return after the former's death for selfish reasons -- and the father's drug-dealing girlfriend, cannot be said to be due to his immersion in alcohol and drugs, although this likely helps. Rather, Theo is seen doing what strong persons who experience tragedy often accomplish: drawing upon that experience for protection against the continually hostile forces of life, and for the power to endure. In less capable hands this would be trite, if not maudlin. Not so here. We do not witness Theo merely rising above the pain of losing his mother; rather, we see him delving deep into his anger and disgust at the mindlessness of existence (and existents), and transforming those dark emotions into a sort of intellectual and emotional fuel. As Theo's introspective habit develops, he becomes acutely aware of his pendulum-like emotional life, swaying from ecstatic love for Pippa (the girl he first saw in the museum the day of the bombing) and a depression so deep he cannot find a single word for it. This "black curtain of horror" is more than just a symptom of opiate withdrawal. He reflects:

But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time. The writhing loathsomeness of the biological order. Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms. Oh, isn't he cute? Awww. Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hell awaited them ... (p. 476)

If The Goldfinch is a dialectical work, in the Hegelian sense, the above quote would represent the antithesis, as Theo passes from love of a person (his mother -- the thesis) to a harsh despising of most -- not all! -- of humanity (antithesis), to a final, fully self-conscious love of beauty as an ideal or, more precisely, love of the beauty that exceeds the person and makes him feel a deep yearning to participate in that beauty -- in other words, love of the sublime (synthesis).

And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky -- so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime. (pp. 770-771)

Indeed, when I finished reading this work, a passage from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit came to my mind. To paraphrase: The life of the Spirit is not the life that shrinks from feebleness and decay but, in utter dissolution, finds itself. This could easily have served as an epigraph for the entire work.

There are various novelistic techniques for building suspense. Every third-rate hack writer knows how to do this. Just read James Patterson, if you have the stomach. Tartt manages to evoke an oppressive sense of impending danger, if not doom, not by any analyzable technique, but 'simply' by telling the tale. "A story is, finally, what it tells and no more," wrote Gore Vidal in an essay on Calvino. It is the sense of the inevitable, on all levels, that makes a story convincing, that produces tension and suspense without recourse to any writer's workshop stylistics. The result is a propulsive force that, yes, keeps the reader turning pages. And, in The Goldfinch, this atmosperic charge is not to be found in any external events, but rather within the consciousness or subconsciousness of Theo himself, as rendered through Tartt's versatile, poetic prose. The subtly threatening visit from his father's loan shark produces tension in the manner of a typical thriller or crime drama, but one never gets the sense that Theo is in any physical danger. The real danger is yet another upheaval of persons and place; at this point, we are not sure if Theo's fragile eggshell mind can handle another displacement. After the death of his father, in a not very suspicious automobile accident, given the dad's constant use of pills washed down with booze, we know that Theo will soon be leaving Nevada, and Boris. Yet we are told that he will be meeting Boris again (over 150 pages later) ... and are left to imagine under what (likely unsavory) circumstances.

It is impossible to synopsize this book, in whole or in part. Suffice to say that Tartt wields her prose with such virtuosity that one gets the sense that one is not reading writing so much as experiencing ever-shifting mental states that sometimes correspond with, sometimes jar against, the environments and atmospheres in which Theo finds himself. Take, for example, the second paragraph of Chapter 6, still in Nevada:

Winter or summer, the days were dazzling; the desert air burned our nostrils and scraped our throats dry. Everything was funny; everything made us laugh. Sometimes, just before sundown, just as the blue of the sky began darkening to violet, we had these wild, electric-lined, Maxfield Parrish clouds rolling out gold and white into the desert like Divine Revelation leading the Mormons west.

In two substantial sentences the visceral response to the desert is recorded, as well as the less tangible interplay of mind and place that is so much like poetry. I thought of Ginsberg when I read these lines, and perhaps Tartt did too, for she reigns herself in (rightly so) and returns us to the reality of Theo's (and Boris's) situation rather quickly. "Our diet had made us malnourished, with soft brown bruises on our arms and legs -- vitamin deficiency, said the nurse at school, who gave us each a painful shot in the ass and a colorful jar of children's chewables." This would be humorous, if we were not aware that both of these young men's fathers are highly unstable. There is the very real danger of Boris's father beating him to death in a drunken rage. While Theo's father is not physically abusive -- except for one uncharacteristic outburst -- the danger of repercussions from his (the father's) unpaid gambling debts hover over everything Theo does. The physical decay is not symbolic of a deeper emotional decay; it is very real. Theo and his buddy eat junk food, drink vodka like water, and live a see-saw life of artifical highs and all-too-natural lows. While their friendhip is genuine, it is of a self-destructive nature typical of substance abusers: big plans for a glorious future while high, followed by vomit-drenched, blinding reality after the come-down. I let out a temporary sigh of relief when Theo finally boarded the Greyhound for New York. Of course, as those of us who have battled addiction know all-too-well, one can change location as often as one likes or is able, but the demon always follows ...

If there is a moral anchor in this tale (for want of a better term) it is Hobie, restorer of fine furniture and friend (more like grandfather-figure) of Theo's beloved Pippa. The conversations between Theo and Hobie are sometimes deeply philosophical, dealing with the morality of beauty and the purpose of maintaining beautiful things, whether furniture or other artworks, or meaningful relationships. Again, nothing cloyingly sentimental, just realistic dialogue between two introspective, highly sensitive persons. Here is Hobie:

Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only -- if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things -- beautiful things -- that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another? (p. 757)

One can easily replace "objects" and "things" and impersonal pronouns, here, with "persons," etc., and get at the 'truth-saying' of this, and similar passages. I daresay that most people who read literature have had the experience of an elusive beauty that they are trying, with every new experience, to recapture. Attachment to art of any kind is often a surrogate for a human attachment that once was, but is no more. If every writer writes for a particular person -- or with the hope that a lost beloved will someday read his words -- many readers, I think, read for insight into their own partially-formulated desires to regain a lost emotional Elysium. That this Elysium all-too-often involves one irreplaceable person is one of the great -- if not the greatest -- tragedies of life. To spend a lifetime seeking an absent presence is to forego other meaningful relationships, and to only partially see, or even to ignore, other manifestations of beauty. To make the transition from the love of a single person to the love of persons, and finally to the love of beauty as a universal, an ideal, is to gain a sort of redemption -- a redemption from the self-centeredness of the personal quest, as concern is transferred from the 'I' and its attendant 'other' to the ethical and moral grounding of the 'We'.

I will not attempt to discuss the symbolism of the Fabritius painting, as it is inscribed in ever-shifting ways throughout the tale until the synthesis, if you accept my Hegelian schema. For one of the great pleasures of this book is flipping to the frontispiece to contemplate the painting as one encounters it in various contexts throughout the tale. Suffice to say that meaning is bestowed, not produced. This goes for meaning found in works of art, as well as in human relationships. If I choose to call a certain failed relationship a mistake ... well, then it is just that. The meaning I derive, then, will be that of a lesson or -- worst-case scenario -- a sickening waste of time, which is no meaning at all. If I choose to consider my failed relationship as a temporary sojourn in a transcendent realm where, for a brief time, I experienced the love that surpasses all understanding, I will have the melancholy comfort of knowing there is a space beyond the self, the 'I' -- a space that is perhaps obtainable again, by way of some heretofore inconceivable person, place, or thing.

[I]t is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time -- so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next. (p. 771, finis)

It would be pedantic of me to remind the reader that it is not only the painting that Theo is reflecting upon here, but I'll do it anyway. He is reflecting upon every person for whom we bear memories of deep love, and maintain those memories for the sake of giving immortality to our ephemeral moments of transcendence. We bestow meaning upon a person's memory in the same manner we bestow meaning upon a work of art: by preserving its immediacy, the initial shock that pulled us -- if only for a moment -- out of our cocoon of self-referentiality.

Now to the question of the novel. Why did I not label The Goldfinch a novel? Every label is shorthand for a definition. And, as every philosopher knows, any definition that is not rigorous and precise is no definition at all. Since we live in a post-Platonic era, in which categories of understanding have given ways to searchable categories of convenience, I feel that hanging a label on this work would be, at best, an unhelpful reduction -- at worst, a silencing or imprisonment of the polyphonic logoi that raise their voices in a single consciousness throughout this text. Of course, it is inevitable that The Goldfinch will go down in literary history as an example of a particularly unconventional novel, such is the academic desire to codify and catalogue for the sake of curriculum (alliteration intentional). This is not without some justification, I will add, for Tartt, while avoiding the sort of meta-commentary on writing that one finds in Michael Gruber's work, for example, does include at the book's end a brief note in which Theo explains how he has not written these pages from memory, but rather from a series of letters to his mother that he began writing at the age of thirteen, and continued throughout his life. He admits that the text we are reading was compiled from these voluminous letters "with the idea that Pippa will see it someday -- which of course she won't" (p. 763). One gets the sense that Theo has intended this work for a posthumous posterity (a pleonasm, but you get my point, I'm sure), not for the eyes of anyone who has participated, wittingly or not, in his life. This is not a mechanical device to add verisimilitude; rather, it lends an extra layer of pathos to an already saturated chronicle of heart and mind. This is not a negative criticism. In an age of dialogue-soaked novels that read like movie scripts, with wooden characters and meager boilerplated prose, reading Donna Tartt's prose is like hearing Joshua Bell perform the Sibelius violin concerto after having suffered Dantesque torment at a Taylor Swift concert.

Of the modern novel, Nathalie Sarraute once wrote that it must "dispossess the reader and entice him, at all costs, into the author's territory. To achieve this the device that consists in referring to the leading characters as 'I' constitutes a means." Anyone who has attempted to write a novel knows how difficult it is to maintain a consistent focus, and sustained interest for the reader, when writing in the third person. And most readers, I daresay, prefer the intimacy of a first person account to the often journalistic third person narration. Obviously, the third person method permits the omniscient narrator to take control and lead us to places a single consciousness could not possibly go. This works especially well in the genres of horror or crime drama / thrillers where true suspense cannot be achieved if the character in danger is the one doing the telling. He or she obviously escaped if he or she is alive to tell the tale. But when the concern is not with mere physical survival, but with intellectual and emotional survival, if not endurance or triumph, then the first person is not only preferable, but necessary. In matters of the heart and mind, I want to hear it from the horse's mouth. It is impossible to imagine The Goldfinch as a third person narrative. It is equally impossible to imagine it as a movie (and I hope Donna Tartt refuses to sell the rights when and if the offer comes). So while this work resembles, superficially, many a modern novel, it is not for the reason (or perhaps purpose) that Sarraute had in mind when she wrote that the cinema "garners and perfects what is left of it by the novel." It is perhaps a tired cliché to state that all great, and some good, novels, old and modern, are successful because they contain a memorable character. But it is useful to remember that characters are memorable because they communicate some truth about life, or the human condition; and that this is accomplished by representation through language that is itself a representation of actions and states. Words are not signs of signs, operating in an ever-expanding network of inter-referentiality, inter-textuality. Words are signifiers referring to very real conditions in the life-world. A text -- a writer! -- is only successful to the extent that this truth (yes, truth!) is kept firmly in mind. Communication is an art. It cannot be accomplished by the clashing voices of a committee, a political party, a group of university creative writing students, or professors at a cocktail party. Only the individual, the person, can communicate truths that ring down the halls of the ages.

I am not aware of the manner in which Donna Tartt composed her work, except that it took several years to complete. I have the image of her sitting alone, in quiet contemplation, like a Romantic poet of old, seeking just the right word, the right image, to make the communication successful. Of course, it is possible that she 'workshopped' some of the chapters, or that she painstakingly reviewed current trends in literature, revising and re-revising in an effort to be unique. I do not want to know. The Romantic image is much more ... human. Either way, The Goldfinch is a success in a way a movie simply cannot be. Technology is no substitute for the creation of worlds with words. Great acting is no substitute for the demiurgic relationship of reader with writer. Dialogue is saying; prose, properly achieved, is showing, telling, effecting. An unforgettable atmosphere is one that has been produced in the same manner as meaning: through the unique, unrepeatable, creative response of the 'I' to the unique, unrepeatable creation of / by the 'other'. 'We' leave the cocoon of self-referentiality and enter the world of art. In this we are, indeed, far beyond the -- merely -- personal.

The Virgin and the Pervert

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.

Being and Nothingness, is through my own consciousness, my supreme freedom. Since I cannot find, in myself, a stable ground upon which to conceptualize and thereby control (intellectually, at least) my world, I experience anguish. If I wish to rid myself of this anguish, I must give up my freedom by giving myself over to societal structures, illusory 'human nature,' political ideology, etc. This is what Sartre calls "bad faith." Indeed. The fact that so many people wish to identify with others, and do away with the differences that make us all unique, unrepeatable entities, or hupostaseis, for the sake of communal or even global harmony, is one of the gravest dangers of our time. A morality centered on the 'I,' with a healthy, critical suspicion of any universalizing efforts, of any discourse spoken in the name of 'We,' is the beginning of a solid defense against de-personalization.

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.

The Great Butterslide

One night I was arrested, beaten, imprisoned, tortured. When at last I was released (With nothing but the prison clothes on my back and a brown bag of worthless goods) I found myself on the side of the road In the middle of nowhere Looking for a phone. I stumbled through bracken and scraped My already fractured head ... I fell in a pile of who-knows-what And proceeded on my quest For a phone ... A gas station convenience store! Thank you (whoever you are)! "Please, I am hurt and need to make a call," I said, "Sure," the fellow said, "use my phone, but perhaps a hospital would be a better place. Let me call 911." "No," I cried, "just let me call my family. They will get me out of here." "Dad, is that you? I need your help, I am hurt ..." ... "What do you mean? I have no clothes, no money, nowhere to go!" ... "Do you want me to die out here?" ... "Right, then. I guess I did bring it on myself. Alcoholics are nothing but immoral grazers on the lawns of good people and we all deserve death. ... Goodbye, Dad." ... And so I left the station Walked along the road Waited for the sound of ... There it is! -- a semi: (Crouch, wait, listen ... JUMP!!!) I write this from the place whence no one returns. I write this from the mid-point of my own life The time at which I need a Virgil more than anything ... No seven storey mountain for me Just a butterslide into oblivion. Thanks, everyone

Work in Progress (Uncanny Silence and Loss)

Preface I grew up listening to Bach played on period instruments. Such was the vogue, I suppose, at the time (late '80s - early '90s). The fourth Brandeburg concerto (BWV 1049) was, according to instructions in the score, to be accompanied with "continuo," which meant, in Bach's time, the harpsichord. BWV 1057, for those who know and care about music, was intended as a re-write, so to speak, of the earlier piece, but still -- modern tempering of the piano was long in the future, at the time Bach lived, and so we still find ourselves listening, from the smokey distance of imagined memory, to the harpsichord tinkling out those glorious notes. Why does this matter? Simple. I am surrounded by barbarians. My only refuge is the recondite ... the knowledge of obscure matters pertaining to music, poetry (Did Faust really exist?), and philosophy (knock it off, with your foolish prayers, christian!) ... My escape is accomplished with the aid of the old greats, each of them unique, but united in one thing: the maintenance of Western culture. So why is this important? and what has it to do with Bach? Again, simple. The Baroque style, (and the word 'baroque' means, simply, an irregularly shaped pearl. Ha!) the containment of overwhelming emotion in the variegated contours of a unified structure, is conducive to revelation, confession of the things that we do not want to actually TELL others ... These things bubble to the surface, and among sophisticated people these things become works of art, not raunchy bar talk, nor sad puppy-dog-eyed professions to some slut at a park at two in the morning, after downing a half-gallon ... I am surrounded by barbarians, and like Rome, I will soon fall, if no grace comes my way. It is nice to stand in the midst of a bunch of academics and feel at home, when one has a paper on the program, and especially if one is a key note speaker ... It is especialy thrilling if one is sharing this thrill with one's unfaithful shrew of a wife ... It is especially galling to feel the weight of responsibility alight upon a light moment ... It is especially irksome to want to kill the very thing you love the most: yourself. Especially: guides, mentors, amanuenses, tailors, ribaldry, cloaks of black, heavy metal, storms, lightning, silence, peace, justice, hatred and the truth of the human condition. Hatred is easy to foster, love is the stuff of legend -- a bad legend, foolishness, yet the colorful chords of Bach resound in every corner to give us a sense of humanity not as it is but (yes, Aristotle) as it OUGHT to be. Air flows through unaided, as the 'block flutes' of Bach's great concerto ... Unaided: Who wants to be such? I. Make not my glad cause cause of mourning. ~ George Peele Happiness makes me want to drink beer. When lovely Barbara called me, suggesting a date, I was so happy that I downed a fifth of gin and then proceeded to sample all the beers at the local bar. Undone, I went home, to find that Barbara was no longer a possibility. Oh so glad, glad, I was crying ... yes, drunken tears ... An acrobatic mind takes such things and translates them into noetic corpuscules as he listens to Bach. Somehow, the flute sounds lonely in Bach's concerto, a poor little guy, striving to get his warbling voice heard amidst the din of dull, block-headed instruments making only sound, not MUSIC. Genius is comforting. Bach had it, Shakespeare, the great (and my favorite) Lord Byron, and recently, Plath and, well, as much as I hate to say it, Cormac McCarthy. When the head spins it is often correct to say that genius has caused the spin. An open chord descending quietly to something diminished but lovely: such is my life. An open chord frolicking in the grass around a contrapuntal stream: such is my wish. A power chord (Townshend-style) crashing upon the shore of my now-isolated brain: such is my wish. Botticelli. How is beauty born? Ask that guy. Deception is the order of the day for many .. and you know what? I am stopping. Academic time is upon me. I know nothing of the stove the faucet The clarion call of the amphibian Swollen beyond recall Taken by claws of a goddess Taken by nature's sweet rlease Taken when I least need it Taken when I want to remain Taken when I need a vacation Taken Optimism and music sing together Sing like silly finches on a branch Malebranche and word-association Hegel and eagle and finch Somewhere I am thriving And she knows it Somewhere the style persists The lungs cough smoke and New Orleans The lungs cough New York and cheapness The lungs cough poverty and South River The lungs cough smiles and handjobs The lungs ask for a small room where the BRAIN Can write. II. Success is counted sweetest By those who ne're succeed. ~ Emily Dickinson The inner life is our judge. If I go to Facebook and see some photos posted by an ex-girlfriend, photos in which she seems to be revelling in life, embracing a most unsavory fellow, embracing nothing but a cock (pardon me, but it's true) ... If I witness such things, is it acceptable for me to pull out my Glock and let light shine? Of course not. Is she happy? Not without me she's not!!! I am the key to EVERYONE'S happiness: I am the god who walks the deck. No. I am the demon who lurks below, finding solace in subtle, intellectual, ironic torture. I am damned good at it. Something positive this way comes. Memories. They are more fierce than the Conqueror Worm, more potent that any draught (I cannot drink away my memories) ... At the beginning of October, I warn the masses: Edward walks now. Come to me.

Why Read Anglo-Saxon Poetry?

The Robert Zemeckis film of Beowulf, while highly entertaining (for many of the wrong reasons), is sufficient cause, I believe, to lead one to an appreciation of the ancient poem itself. As Michael Alexander rightly stated, this work is a portal into a pre-Christian past, in which the oral tradition of poetic composition prospered. Fruitless attempts to identify Beowulf as an ancient vegetation god, a-la Frazer, or as an early concoction of a Germanic hero with a Christ-centered ethos have shown (at least to me) to be pointless exercises in scholarly virtuosity. Tolkien correctly identified this poem as an elegy, a lament for a lost or dying heroic past, written at a time when the weakness of humanity found solace in humility and suffering, as the pathway to heaven, and had abandoned the ancient heroic code of personal excellence and striving for glory. In our own time, we have the outstanding example of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, an epic in an age when epics have been thought gone forever. Harold Bloom, usually an astute critic, made a ridiculous remark when he stated that he had "serious aesthetic reservations" about LOTR. A tale, nay, an epic, in which the unlikeliest of persons become grand heroes; a tale in which good and evil are unabashedly balanced on a razor's edge (to paraphrase Galadriel); a prose poem of striking emotional power ... Such is LOTR. And such is Beowulf. To read either work -- Beowulf or LOTR -- expecting magnificent character development and psychological insight (which is what Bloom apparently expected from the latter) is to miss the point of epic poetry (or prose) entirely. This is not to say that LOTR does not display subtle developments in the characters' personalities. The immature Merry and Pippin, for example, grow into splendid, selfless warriors, while the inward-looking Frodo does not so much develop as blossom, from inward-looking, almost poetical young Hobbit into a quiet moral force. Beowulf, in the great poem, maintains his persona as the archetypal Germanic hero until the very end: such is his moral contribution to the poem. Emotional impact comes from the interaction of characters and events, not from quiet personal development. A moral center is necessary to every great work. In LOTR it is Samwise Gamgee; in Beowulf it is the hero himself, the one who places his entire life at the service of personal glory. While this might be an ethic with which us moderns cannot identify, it is an ethic nonetheless; and to appreciate the poem, one must orient him or herself to this ancient and outmoded ethic.

I am not one to promote literature as a vehicle for personal moral growth, nor for life lessons, etc. Rather, I consider art for art's sake to be the ONLY justification for poetry, literary prose, visual art, music, and any mode of aesthetic expression that the individual sees fit to execute. While I encounter few references to Walter Pater in contemporary literary criticism, I feel that such a lack of pure ENJOYMENT (gasp!) is stifling creativity. Instead of shocking (or attempting, like juveniles, to shock) people, with ever more elaborate torture scenes, or with an homage to a cunt, rather let us strive for beauty: and in Anglo-Saxon poetry the beauty of the person against the world is paramount.

The final stand of Byrtnoth in The Battle of Maldon is an example of an ancient concept of honor that would fit well in our modern world of self-centered, and SELFISH people: such as wives who abandon husbands struggling with addiction, or friends who walk away when one has nothing left to offer ... Byrtnoth gave ground to the invading Danish Vikings, not because he felt sorry for them, but because he knew that his glory would be enhanced by such an heroic, noble gesture. Of course, he lost the batle, but the victory was still his. We read the poem today. Who knows anything about those invading Vikings?

Perhaps a personal note is in order here. I was left alone, in a cruel and unforgiving world by a woman with whom I spent ten years of my life, loving, striving, sharing, bearing joys and sorrows ... only because I love the bottle. Would an Anglo-Saxon hero do such a thing? No. Woman or man, the ancient hero would stick with his or her friend to the bitter end. There is nothing worse than leaving a friend in their direst time of need.

... Bold-tempered chieftain, famed for your deeds, you must defend your life now with all your strength. I shall help you.

(Beowulf, 2665-67, tr. Alexander, my emphasis)

Never have I heard anyone -- ex-wife especially! -- say "I shall help you." No. It was always, "help yourself," "get better," "stop putting us through this." Heroic words those (note bitter sarcasm). The moral weakness of puling moderns is placed in no better contrast when placed along side Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, or LOTR, in which love for one's fellow knows no bounds, and devotion is an attainment, not a sacrifice. One need only read those works attentively to realize that the love is not erotic, nor romantic, but HEROIC. So what do I mean by heroic?

Many times one will qualify the term 'heroic' with 'ideal.' The heroic life is not an ideal; it is a moral choice. When Beowulf decided to travel to the hall of Hrothgar to slay Grendel, it was a choice, not a demand: which made it all the more glorious. When my ex-wife decided to abandon me to prison and homelessness -- that was also a choice, but it was not glorious. It was a mean-spirited, low-minded, hateful SIN against another human being. Those late nights when I read to her passages from Maldon, Beowulf, Wulf and Eadwacer, Deor, and others (a few of which I have translated) the words passed away like fireflies on a summer's eve. Nothing 'sunk in', as it were. And as I have stated, while I do not consider literature a method of moral development, I DO consider it a force for internal change, for CONTEMPLATION. The Greek philosophers called it THEORIA, and it implied a quiet and relaxed mode of thinking, a manner of engaging with one's emotions devoid of the passions that taint our responses and cause us to do things like abandon those we profess to love.

Never with words would I chide you, my friend, For disgrace was never yours. No retreat Have I ever witnessed.

(Waldere, fragment I., my translation)

Somwhere Lord Byron stated that there is nothing more precious in the world than the unconditional love of a woman. He was speaking of his half sister Augusta, to whom he wrote some glorious stanzas, deservedly so (in my opinion). This passage above, from a very ancient Anglo-Saxom poem -- which I took the unrewardable trouble to translate -- are the words of a woman comforting her battle-weary man. How often have I longed for such words! Weary, beaten, sorrowful ... Nothing but the kind words of a woman could possibly drag me from my 'funk.' Such women exist no more. Yet men who suffer and die alone are plentiful. There are far too many of us.

Something about the so-called Age of Chivalry gives us pause; adoration of women is all well and good, but the neuroses that develop from such a 'preoccupation' often outweigh the benefits. The glory of Woman has been the cause, the bane, and the tiresome topic of poetry for centuries. Petrarch immortalized it, Byron made it intensely personal ... But the immense impact of private endeavor -- loss, longing, despair, TRIUMPH! -- held no place in the Germanic epic tradition. Rather, as Tacitus drily observed, the ancient Teutons cared more for gold than the pleasures of sex.

But there is addiction, and it takes many forms. Desire for alcohol is akin to the desire for a female embrace; and if one has a fetish, she need only remove her shoes to make one forget about anything else. This type of desperate adoration of Woman marks the end of the heroic age (of which Anglo-Saxon poetry stands as a final bulwark) and the beginning of the so-called Age of Chivalry. Now I did not feel particularly chivalrous when I groveled at my wife's feet, begging for sweet release. I DID, however, feel a surge of panicky sexuality that is rare; it is the desire for another ... the hope for a pleasure so powerful that it will overtake you. Yes. The weakness that follows -- indeed, the HELPLESSNESS -- is a testimony to the power of the Goddess. So while it is easy to travesty Anglo-Saxon poetry as masculine dominated, testosterone driven expulsion, one would do well to recall one's first sexual experience (and I am speaking to men). Will you ever forget the time you called out her name, and begged her with all your being: PLEASE DON'T STOP!? I remember it well. And so did the Anglo-Saxon poets.

Circumabulation II.

Sight, Flight, the luck of the draw ...

Somewhere a man existed who made an attempt to raise the human person to the optimum height of divinity. Of course, he met a bad end, but that should not cause us to discolor his work. Never mind. Religious people annoy me.

Eliot, when you wrote: Between the conception / And the creation / Between the emotion / And the response / Falls the shadow ('The Hollow Men,' V.) ... Where are these hollow men, and the ones who write about them? That is, to me, the most telling critique of your work. [Now keep in mind that the only and BEST way of critiquing Eliot is to talk to him as though he were still existing.] ... But I've no wish to critique Eliot. Instead ...

A day came when I fancied myself a poet ... Not to be! Yet there was an intriguing banter proffered by our Eliot: 'Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season' (Gerontion).

What thoughts! I think I know, my friend ... : When I get sober, I cease to have thoughts worthy of their season. I know no peace. Eliot has failed. Nothing but torment scrapes the dried flesh of our mortal lives. So fuck off, and listen to Mahler.

It is nearly impossible

Yet it is nearly impossible to languish in sorrow when one still has the ability to surround oneself with artifacts of fine minds ... Botticelli on the wall, Bach on the box, volumes of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, on the shelf ... Some fragments of philosophy: only those parts that still speak to the person of this moment; forget about immutable human nature (no such thing!) and recall only the trials and tribulations of THIS DAY. Such is the locus of the human frame, which frames a bit of the All, and calls it Life. So my time as a willing slave to the most beautiful of women -- Was that time a waste of my perennially rejuvenating self? Not at all. As I sit here by my window, tapping out these words, I am painfully aware of waste. Not of self, but of time. The major terror of strife is not the danger of the strife itself, but the inevitable deflation that occurs when the strife has ended. Empedocles seems to have known this, for he brought in Love as a balancing force against Strife. Another comforting fiction, this. When I seek the warmth of my beloved's embrace, Strife must depart, and Love must shine ... Yeah, yeah, sappy poetical notion ... But it is a true feeling, as much as feeling can ring with the piercing clink of truth.