Sitaram
kickbox
I recently attended a seminar on these poems:
Four Poems by Baudelaire
Rising Up
Above the pools, above the valleys,
The mountains, the woods, the clouds, the seas,
Beyond the sun, beyond the aether,
Beyond the confines of the starry spheres,
My mind, you move with agility,
And, like a good swimmer that swoons in the wave,
You cheerfully plough the deep immensity
With an ineffable and virile voluptuousness.
Fly far away from these morbid defilements;
Go purify yourself in the upper air,
And drink, like a liquor pure and divine,
The clear fire that fills the limpid spaces.
Behind the boredoms and vast sorrows
That load with their weight foggy existence,
Happy is he who can, with vigorous wing,
Dart through the fields luminous and serene;
Whose thoughts, like larks,
Take a free flight across the skies at morning,
—Who soars above life, and comprehends without effort
The language of flowers and of things that are mute.
Correspondences
Nature is a temple where pillars, alive,
Sometimes emit indistinguishable words;
Man passes in there through forests of symbols
Which observe him with familiar looks.
Like lingering echoes that are mingled far off
In a one-ness tenebrous and profound,
Vast as the night and as the light of day,
Fragrances, colors, and sounds correspond.
There are fragrances fresh like the flesh of children,
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies
—, And others, corrupt, rich and triumphant,
Having the expansion of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, benjamin, and incense.
Which sing of the transports of mind and sense.
Beauty
I am beautiful, O mortals! like a dream of stone,
And my breast, where each batters himself in turn,
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
Eternal and as mute as matter.
I am enthroned in the blue like a sphinx not understood;
I unite a heart of snow with the whiteness of swans;
I hate the movement that displaces my lines,
And never do I weep and never do I smile.
Poets, before my grandiose poses,
Which I have the air of borrowing from the proudest monuments,
Consume their days in austere studies;
For I have, to bewitch these docile lovers,
Pure mirrors which make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my wide eyes with their eternal lights!
Hymn to Beauty
Do you come from deep heaven or go out from the abyss,
O Beauty! Your look, infernal and divine,
Pours out confusedly goodness and crime,
And in this one may compare you to wine.
You contain in your eye the dusk and the dawn,
You emit perfumes like a stormy evening;
Your kisses are a potion and your mouth an amphora
Which make the hero cowardly and the child brave.
Do you come out of the black pit or descend from the stars?
Destiny, charmed, follows your skirts like a dog;
You sow, at random, joy and disaster,
And you govern all and answer to nothing.
You walk on the dead, Beauty, whom you mock;
Of your jewels Horror is not the least charming,
And murder, among your dearest trinkets,
On your proud belly dances amorously.
The mayfly, dazzled, flies to you, candle,
Crackles, goes up in flame and says: Blessed be this torch!
The panting lover bent over his sweetheart
Has the air of a dying man caressing his tomb.
Whether you come from heaven or from hell, what does it matter,
O Beauty! monster enormous, terrifying, naïve!
If your eye, your smile, your foot, open to me the door
Of an infinity that I love and never have known?
From Satan or from God, what does it matter? Angel or Siren,
What does it matter, if you render—fairy with velvet eyes,
Rhythm, perfume, glitter, O my only queen!—
The universe less hideous and moments less dull?
Part of my own, personal, preparation for the seminar was to write the following two poems, to explore my reactions to the above four poems:
Beauty, Bowdlerized as Truth
Understanding is the Sphinx' death,
Bursting mystery's numinous bubble.
Answers kill wonder and awe.
Wisdom slays childhood and innocence.
Sobriety and moderation
Chain the manic frenzy of inspiration,
Where formerly daemon and muse took possession.
Beyond the bronze of being,
The mind's lust fantasizes,
Stripping Draupadi naked
From her infinite attire.
The more we pull and yank,
The more she spins,
A dervish uncontrolled.
Heidegger, that red-eyed elder peeping,
Spies Being, bathing in her garden,
"Preferring not to" is her sweet refrain.
Our minds becomes entangled.
And it is then we know
That thought leads not the way out of this cave.
Our starry, upward gaze is dizzying.
I am an ugly Daedelus, singed
By perfection imagined, out of reach.
This vicious syndrome,
Poems amplified
In Phalerus' infundibulum,
Have deafened me
More than waxen Sirens' antidotes.
Psalms, become sonnets, reverting, again psalmic;
Sonic booms,
As time comes to a
Light-speed's screeching halt,
And galaxies implode,
To singularities.
Can a poem be discussed in prose?
Or is the tuning fork, in sympathy,
Trembling, in vrittic emulation,
The only accord reached?
Anciently there was a tongue, declined
With endings as those languages now dead,
Whose similarity made all speech rhyme,
And prose a difficult and somber deed.
The height of mind is the language of one word,
Which, from it, when once uttered, comes one thought.
And that thought might be every thought;
The tidalness of space,
The birth of stars,
The wandering of suns and planets;
Cool clear jets of thought which might rain down,
Smoothly to one thin current of emotion.
Convections in the winds of reasons,
The vortex of meanings and the flow of words
From the mouth of the mind.
Signatures of the wind, the rain, and time upon the rocks,
'Til they be sands to span the stones and pebbles;
The nature of resistance
In indigestible nuggets.
Words learned become lines,
Lines stanzas,
Stanzas poems,
And poems words again,
As concepts are captured by the general mind.
Tonic and chromatic of emotions,
Sing me a beginning that I may start.
Form for me the modality of thought,
The turn of time,
The line eternal that will rhyme
With itself and itself again in repetition.
Glisten with your voice the light of death,
Decomposing in a swamp a log, a leaf,
Born, now dying, cyclic and serene.
Tell my why a god's first word is "green".
Once, in the nerving shallow of this world,
A someone happened, and I happened too.
And we became each other,
Sinking through the noiseless voice embraced.
And we communicated.
And still there was no trace
Between the airless aethers of the waste
Of our exchange.
And still no change was made
Except within the realms of our recall.
And all around us was the gentle fall
Of sentence fragments,
Dust of old ideas.
And as it drifted past our face,
Upon the force of passions gone extinct
Expressed agos ago
At objects which they missed,
We came apart to find we were the same.
No name was different;
No souvenirs of all that passed between,
No places to revisit,
For there was no place,
Except in the passing time,
No sign remaining, symbol or design
To trace or recreate our path,
When we, so near, no longer had to hear,
For we could touch intention's very lips,
No remnant to explicate at all,
Except for the sound consuming hush
Of displaced sentience,
It's rush and fall,
At the tips of our fingertips.
There may never be another time
When you will meet,
When I will meet,
When we will meet,
And feel as we feel now.
There may never come another place,
Another glance where things seem as they are.
And here is the sadness in our happiness:
That what we are
Has still yet to become.
Sin No More
You cast your pebble
In the placid pool.
It sinks the circle of eternity.
A maelstrom vomits back
Ten thousand more,
At you, now stoned,
Harlot that you are.
After writing the above verse and on the day before the seminar, the following analogy occurred to me:
Four Poems by Baudelaire
Rising Up
Above the pools, above the valleys,
The mountains, the woods, the clouds, the seas,
Beyond the sun, beyond the aether,
Beyond the confines of the starry spheres,
My mind, you move with agility,
And, like a good swimmer that swoons in the wave,
You cheerfully plough the deep immensity
With an ineffable and virile voluptuousness.
Fly far away from these morbid defilements;
Go purify yourself in the upper air,
And drink, like a liquor pure and divine,
The clear fire that fills the limpid spaces.
Behind the boredoms and vast sorrows
That load with their weight foggy existence,
Happy is he who can, with vigorous wing,
Dart through the fields luminous and serene;
Whose thoughts, like larks,
Take a free flight across the skies at morning,
—Who soars above life, and comprehends without effort
The language of flowers and of things that are mute.
Correspondences
Nature is a temple where pillars, alive,
Sometimes emit indistinguishable words;
Man passes in there through forests of symbols
Which observe him with familiar looks.
Like lingering echoes that are mingled far off
In a one-ness tenebrous and profound,
Vast as the night and as the light of day,
Fragrances, colors, and sounds correspond.
There are fragrances fresh like the flesh of children,
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies
—, And others, corrupt, rich and triumphant,
Having the expansion of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, benjamin, and incense.
Which sing of the transports of mind and sense.
Beauty
I am beautiful, O mortals! like a dream of stone,
And my breast, where each batters himself in turn,
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
Eternal and as mute as matter.
I am enthroned in the blue like a sphinx not understood;
I unite a heart of snow with the whiteness of swans;
I hate the movement that displaces my lines,
And never do I weep and never do I smile.
Poets, before my grandiose poses,
Which I have the air of borrowing from the proudest monuments,
Consume their days in austere studies;
For I have, to bewitch these docile lovers,
Pure mirrors which make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my wide eyes with their eternal lights!
Hymn to Beauty
Do you come from deep heaven or go out from the abyss,
O Beauty! Your look, infernal and divine,
Pours out confusedly goodness and crime,
And in this one may compare you to wine.
You contain in your eye the dusk and the dawn,
You emit perfumes like a stormy evening;
Your kisses are a potion and your mouth an amphora
Which make the hero cowardly and the child brave.
Do you come out of the black pit or descend from the stars?
Destiny, charmed, follows your skirts like a dog;
You sow, at random, joy and disaster,
And you govern all and answer to nothing.
You walk on the dead, Beauty, whom you mock;
Of your jewels Horror is not the least charming,
And murder, among your dearest trinkets,
On your proud belly dances amorously.
The mayfly, dazzled, flies to you, candle,
Crackles, goes up in flame and says: Blessed be this torch!
The panting lover bent over his sweetheart
Has the air of a dying man caressing his tomb.
Whether you come from heaven or from hell, what does it matter,
O Beauty! monster enormous, terrifying, naïve!
If your eye, your smile, your foot, open to me the door
Of an infinity that I love and never have known?
From Satan or from God, what does it matter? Angel or Siren,
What does it matter, if you render—fairy with velvet eyes,
Rhythm, perfume, glitter, O my only queen!—
The universe less hideous and moments less dull?
Part of my own, personal, preparation for the seminar was to write the following two poems, to explore my reactions to the above four poems:
Beauty, Bowdlerized as Truth
Understanding is the Sphinx' death,
Bursting mystery's numinous bubble.
Answers kill wonder and awe.
Wisdom slays childhood and innocence.
Sobriety and moderation
Chain the manic frenzy of inspiration,
Where formerly daemon and muse took possession.
Beyond the bronze of being,
The mind's lust fantasizes,
Stripping Draupadi naked
From her infinite attire.
The more we pull and yank,
The more she spins,
A dervish uncontrolled.
Heidegger, that red-eyed elder peeping,
Spies Being, bathing in her garden,
"Preferring not to" is her sweet refrain.
Our minds becomes entangled.
And it is then we know
That thought leads not the way out of this cave.
Our starry, upward gaze is dizzying.
I am an ugly Daedelus, singed
By perfection imagined, out of reach.
This vicious syndrome,
Poems amplified
In Phalerus' infundibulum,
Have deafened me
More than waxen Sirens' antidotes.
Psalms, become sonnets, reverting, again psalmic;
Sonic booms,
As time comes to a
Light-speed's screeching halt,
And galaxies implode,
To singularities.
Can a poem be discussed in prose?
Or is the tuning fork, in sympathy,
Trembling, in vrittic emulation,
The only accord reached?
Anciently there was a tongue, declined
With endings as those languages now dead,
Whose similarity made all speech rhyme,
And prose a difficult and somber deed.
The height of mind is the language of one word,
Which, from it, when once uttered, comes one thought.
And that thought might be every thought;
The tidalness of space,
The birth of stars,
The wandering of suns and planets;
Cool clear jets of thought which might rain down,
Smoothly to one thin current of emotion.
Convections in the winds of reasons,
The vortex of meanings and the flow of words
From the mouth of the mind.
Signatures of the wind, the rain, and time upon the rocks,
'Til they be sands to span the stones and pebbles;
The nature of resistance
In indigestible nuggets.
Words learned become lines,
Lines stanzas,
Stanzas poems,
And poems words again,
As concepts are captured by the general mind.
Tonic and chromatic of emotions,
Sing me a beginning that I may start.
Form for me the modality of thought,
The turn of time,
The line eternal that will rhyme
With itself and itself again in repetition.
Glisten with your voice the light of death,
Decomposing in a swamp a log, a leaf,
Born, now dying, cyclic and serene.
Tell my why a god's first word is "green".
Once, in the nerving shallow of this world,
A someone happened, and I happened too.
And we became each other,
Sinking through the noiseless voice embraced.
And we communicated.
And still there was no trace
Between the airless aethers of the waste
Of our exchange.
And still no change was made
Except within the realms of our recall.
And all around us was the gentle fall
Of sentence fragments,
Dust of old ideas.
And as it drifted past our face,
Upon the force of passions gone extinct
Expressed agos ago
At objects which they missed,
We came apart to find we were the same.
No name was different;
No souvenirs of all that passed between,
No places to revisit,
For there was no place,
Except in the passing time,
No sign remaining, symbol or design
To trace or recreate our path,
When we, so near, no longer had to hear,
For we could touch intention's very lips,
No remnant to explicate at all,
Except for the sound consuming hush
Of displaced sentience,
It's rush and fall,
At the tips of our fingertips.
There may never be another time
When you will meet,
When I will meet,
When we will meet,
And feel as we feel now.
There may never come another place,
Another glance where things seem as they are.
And here is the sadness in our happiness:
That what we are
Has still yet to become.
Sin No More
You cast your pebble
In the placid pool.
It sinks the circle of eternity.
A maelstrom vomits back
Ten thousand more,
At you, now stoned,
Harlot that you are.
After writing the above verse and on the day before the seminar, the following analogy occurred to me:
Poetry, in its attempt to put beauty into words, is like the attempt of mathematics to express reality.
If a single integral is an area under a curve, and a double integral is the volume of a solid, then by analogy and extension, a triple integral must be the volume of some object in four-space.
The symbols and equations represent the reality as a model of that aspect of reality towards which they point, just as the poem points to some aspect of beauty.
We can express mathematically that which we cannot visualize.
We can create a world in which there is a beauty or a love greater than anything we could experience in the flesh, in reality.
Then, we are wounded by our own creation, since we are exiled from the picture of a paradise we have painted.