The Light in the Temple

From a scene at the farm in Vermont, this old lamp, hanging from a rusty nail, was originally blue. My younger son Sam, surveying the photos from which I was working, noticed the discrepancy and asked why I had chosen red over the pale blue. I explained that it would be a stronger, more expressive image with a red lamp, and reminded him of our visit to the Rubin Museum of Art (specializing in items from the Himalayas and surrounding regions), where we learned that red is the color of power. I think his eyes glazed over when I started talking about how this simple camp lantern could be analogous to one of the lamps in a Tibetan temple, or even a Christian church. Indeed, my initial thoughts on this theme were drawn from the final scene in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, as Charles Ryder returns to the small family chapel at the Brideshead estate:

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame - a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

Ok, perhaps I'm investing a little too much meaning in a painting of an old lamp. Simply take it as an example of the convoluted ruminations that keep me company most of the time. 9" x 12", watercolor, drybrush, pen and ink, on Fabriano cold-pressed 140 lb. paper.

Sunflowers

Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done:

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from the their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

WILLIAM BLAKE

Staten Island Ferry

This year we bought a ticket package to seven Staten Island Yankees games. They're much cheaper than regular Mets or Yankees tickets, and the A-level minor league teams deliver fun baseball. The players are also young, without the inflated egos and salaries of major league stars, and are thus happy to talk with the kids and sign autographs. Although I love the games, my favorite part of these trips has been the ferry rides to and from Staten Island. First, it's free - one of the best tourist attractions in the city. Plus one gets a view of the harbor, the Manhattan skyline, the Brooklyn Bridge, Governor's Island, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty. After a night game, the late-evening return trip is even better, with the spectacle of Manhattan lit up like a Christmas tree. When I ride the ferry I get a sense of an older New York, like the one I encountered as a teen reading The Stories of John Cheever:

“These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with river light, when you heard Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat. Here is the last of that generation of chain smokers who woke the world in the morning with their coughing, who used to get stoned at cocktail parties and perform obsolete dance steps like ‘the Cleveland Chicken,’ sail for Europe on ships, who were truly nostalgic for love and happiness, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are.”

This was the first New York I encountered - the postwar city with Cheever's fictionalized grittiness and nostalgia for a vanishing way of life. Sitting on one of the older ferries, chugging through the dark, oily waters of the harbor, one gets a sense of Cheever's "river light" - even if much of the city has now been "sanitized for your protection."

"Getting and Spending"

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.


I recently re-read William Wordsworth's sonnet, "The World Is Too Much With Us," an archetypal work of the Romantic movement, and recognized it as a fortuitous encounter having just completed Kathleen Norris's Dakota. Wordsworth, of course, wrote at a time (ca. 1802) when the Industrial Revolution had begun to transform Britain's landscape and make it the greatest economic power of the 19th century. Norris, examining the unique milieu of life in the Dakotas, explores that same dynamic, and the stark contrast between rural and urban life in America, albeit within a religious/autobiographical idiom rather than poetically. But walking through Times Square last night I understood the relevance of both works, particularly in terms of their congruent appeal to the palliative powers of the natural world.

It's easy to forget that environment when one lives in a place like New York City. Central Park certainly provides a handy antidote to the urban cacophony, and periodic vaccinations in its meadows and paths are a necessary part of surviving in the city. Unfortunately, too many people in this town are motivated entirely by the effort of "getting and spending." One sees them prowling through midtown, in the blocks surrounding my office, and in the avenues around Wall Street. With the recent Bear Stearns mess and the promise of crises ahead, many of these figures of the financial sector exhibit a lean, nervous look these days, as if wolves and other terrors actually roamed the streets in search of prey. It's at times like this that I'm glad I didn't take that career path, not that there was ever any danger of choosing that kind of vocation. I'd much rather "stop and smell the roses" - and read the poetry - than worry about annual bonuses, hostile takeovers, and buyouts.

Emily Dickinson

This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies
And lads and girls; Was laughter
and ability and sighing,
And frocks and curls;

This passive place a
summer's nimble mansion,
Where bloom and bees
Fulfilled their oriental circuit,
Then ceased like these.

My friend over at Open Doors reminded me that Monday was the birthday of Emily Dickinson, who entered this world on December 10th, 1830. It's hard to express how I felt the first time I encountered Emily Dickinson, at around age 13. I recall that it was really the first poetry I could appreciate and understand, the first poetry that seemed resonant with my adolescent anxieties and longings. Miss Emily also proved an unknowing catalyst to my own angst-ridden poetry - unless that impulse was her sainted spirit nudging me from the eternity over which she so often puzzled.

As a depressed, death-obsessed teen it was easy to find the appeal in so many of her works. Even her correspondence underscored a curiosity with death and the hereafter. Given her ruminations on the subject, one wonders how she regarded her imminent mortality in 1886. That, of course, we can never know.

In my 20s I set her aside, favoring the edgier voices of Allen Ginsberg and his contemporaries. Just as they railed against the excesses and inequalities of post-war America, I found kindred voices in my own attempts to escape the homogeneity of suburbia and sprawl. More recently, however, I've begun reacquainting myself with the "Belle of Amherst," and I find that in my 40s I tend to approach her with a keener understanding of the emotions from which her verses sprang. Indeed, having spent most of my previous career as a historian immersed in 19th century American culture, I recognize now - which I didn't as a teen - that Dickinson was very much a product of her age, an era in which death punctuated one's years in the way birthdays, holidays, and the seasons demarcated one's passage from month to month. And, having focused a good deal of time on women's correspondence from this period, I realize now that Emily Dickinson's "voice" echoed the feminine experience of her time, with its obvious limitations and rigid expectations.

On the surface, it might seem odd that she lived what most of us would consider a reclusive life. (And one wonders how travel to more distant locales would have affected her poetic voice.) Yet it's obvious from her letters that her intellect and introspective character allowed her to exist in a world not defined by purely physical distance. A small part of me actually longs for that isolation - with the attendant opportunity to engage in the kind of thought and self-examination that doubtless served as a muse for Miss Emily. That realization reminds me that my happiest times as a scholar were spent surrounded by books, delving into a bit of research in the way the anchorite retreats to his cell, accompanied only by his thoughts, prayers, and religious texts. Being no St. Anthony, however, I doubt I'd survive for long as an academic ascetic, connected to the broader world in the way Emily Dickinson's spirit flourished through correspondence.

So happy birthday Emily. I hope your spirit found the answers it so earnestly sought.

Faulkner, Bush, and the Romance of War

I was writing a comment on a friend's blog, responding to a quotation from William Faulkner, and I started to think about my own favorite Faulkner passage. I had included it on this site back in January, during the first weeks of the blog. In that context, I was addressing the continued Southern fascination with the Civil War and the ways in which that conflict played such a central role in the formation of the region's identity. Here it is again:

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.

William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

I should explain that I don't like this passage in the sense that it romanticizes or condones the Southern cause in the Civil War. No, I like it because it explains so much vis-a-vis the South's tragically flawed vision of history and its destiny. Moreover, I'm attracted to this bit of Faulkner because if one knows what happens next - that pivotal event of the war, Pickett's charge - and understands the consequences, one can see this as an exercise by the author in sweeping away romantic notions of war, no less moving than Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" or Wilfred Owens' "Dulce Et Decorum Est" from World War I. Faulkner understood the pathos of the moment and the tragedy of the history that followed.

But I have to wonder, reflecting on these words, do President Bush and his minions understand the lessons of war, or is it still early in the day of July 3rd, 1863, for them? Tragically, I think not. Addressing the Bush administration's sense of divinely guided mission for the U.S., I believe the White House has adopted the same kind of flawed vision for this country and is now leading us up our own Cemetery Ridge. At Gettysburg, Lee was neither ideologue nor apostle for the Confederacy. His primary allegiance was to Virginia, his home state. Bush, unfortunately, is both ideologue and apostle, ready to proselytize around the world with the idea that the U.S. enjoys some divinely sanctioned status as a bearer of democratic ideals. It embodies a chauvinism no less bankrupt than European colonialism in the 19th century.

Now I'm hardly an isolationist. Indeed, I believe the United States has a responsibility to play a prominent role around the world, particularly in the context of the United Nations and its peace-keeping efforts. And naturally we're going to play a global role in terms of commerce. But exporting democracy shouldn't necessarily be on our national "to do" list. And as history has demonstrated time and time again, the imposition of "democracy" in a top down fashion rarely proves successful.

Sadly, Bush and his disciples are soon going to find themselves, figuratively, at the top of Cemetery Ridge, conveyed to the slaughter and this utter waste of human lives by a myopic vision far more tragic than that embodied in Robert E. Lee. Like the 14-year old boys of Faulkner's passage, Bush would rather think about the fantasy rather than the reality of the charge. Having stood for hours at attention in the 19th century-style uniforms of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), I can understand how easy it is to get swept up in romantic visions of war, with shined shoes, glinting brass and steel, and regimental banners billowing in the breeze of an idyllic parade ground atmosphere. I was that idealistic and naive at 18. Most of us grow up and recognize the inherent flaws in that vision. Perhaps if Bush and Cheney had some personal experience with the horror of warfare, they would proved less reluctant to follow the bugler's call into battle.

"Thanatopsis"

I walked by Bryant Park yesterday afternoon and thought of that much-honored New Yorker, William Cullen Bryant, for whom the park is named. During the winter Bryant Park is often used for public ice skating and is a popular destination for families during the holiday season. Conversely, it's rather sad to think that a space named for this great man of letters could also be used for an event as vacuous as Fashion Week twice a year. Poor Bryant probably rolls in his grave each time a waif-like model trips down the runway in some couture nightmare.

Does anyone remember having to memorize the final lines from Bryant's most famous poem, "Thanatopsis," when they were in school? I remember the poem quite well, including having to stand in front of the class while reciting the final stanza. It was around 12th grade I think, in an AP American Studies course.

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

I recall it seemed rather appropriate at the time because my class at school had suffered the loss of a classmate killed in a car crash not long before we tackled Bryant and some of his Romantic-era American contemporaries. I think for most of us it was our first encounter with death beyond the sphere of family and the elderly. Here was one of our own - gone at 18 - having been thrown out the window of his car during a head-on collision. No seat belt, of course. It was definitely a wake-up call for our senior class, and set the tone for the rest of the year. Now twenty-five years later it's obvious that the event made a lasting impression.

Jane Eyre and early Victorian England

Watched Masterpiece Theatre's production of Jane Eyre last night and it was magnificent . . . definitely worthy of the PBS costume drama tradition. Isn't it amazing that 160+ years later these novels - as well as those by late-Georgian/Regency era Jane Austen - continue to fascinate and garner the attention of film producers? Obviously they form the foundation for the English literary canon . . . altho' I suspect they're likely considered the bane of many high school or college lit students.

It's hard to explain, but this early Victorian period is particularly appealing to me. Sure, as a historian I studied the U.S. experience during this period ad nauseum. And even in an American context, this is an exciting era, punctuated by industrial revolution, intellectual ferment, political maturation, and a growing evangelical/reformist impulse. Yet there's something peculiarly attractive about the world as depicted in the Bronte works.

Although when she wrote Jane Eyre England was already well into its own Industrial Revolution, the world Charlotte Bronte portrays still seems pre-industrial and comfortably agrarian. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, railroads, workhouses, textile mills and the spoils of empire seem hazily distant. It's a literary world obviously borne of the Romantic impulse and relatively free of the appalling conditions detailed by Dickens just a few years later. And like Austen's characters, these are country people, inhabiting a society in which London is a distant, otherworldly place rarely, if ever, glimpsed.

Yes, I'm a fan of the Romantic writers! Yes, I'm ignoring the socio-economic inequities which defined English society during this period. Yes, I find novels of this ilk wonderfully escapist fare. (My wife jokes that one of the reasons I like this period and the projection of its manners and mores in novels is that women were obviously subordinated to the power - economic and political - of men. And absolutely . . . that's the reality of life in Victorian England. But I always remind her that when I read Bronte or Austen and their contemporaries, it's the strong women whom I adore. I'm always a sucker for Elizabeth Bennett, for example. And like Rochester, I would have been far more attracted to Jane than the shallow vessels who inhabit the world of his house party.) As a student of 19th century history I'm well aware of the brutal realities that defined life at every level of society. Even in the world of Bronte and Austen, death is a regular house guest. Sometimes, however, it's nice to step away from that reality and embrace the purely romantic, with all of the angst, family conflict, plot twists and histrionics these authors can throw at us. We can always come back to the Corn Laws, Great Reform Bill and Parliamentary shenanigans later.