a pragmatist at heart

Ok, i'm getting a bit obsessive about Louise Glück's poetry. It's so merciless.

With thanks to C for the intro.


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Circe's Power

I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
look like pigs.

I'm sick of your world
that lets the outside disguise the inside.

Your men weren't bad men;
undisciplined life
did that to them. As pigs,

under the care of
me and my ladies, they
sweetened right up.

Then I reversed the spell,
showing you my goodness
as well as my power. I saw

we could be happy here,
as men and women are
when their needs are simple. In the same breath,

I foresaw your departure,
your men with my help braving
the crying and pounding sea. You think

a few tears upset me? My friend,
every sorceress is
a pragmatist at heart; nobody

sees essence who can't
face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you

I could hold you prisoner.


- Louise Glück

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falling from love

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Parable of the Dove

A dove lived in a village.
When it opened its mouth
sweetness came out, sound
like a silver light around
the cherry bough. But
the dove wasn't satisfied.

It saw the villagers
gathered to listen under
the blossoming tree.
It didn't think: I
am higher than they are.
It wanted to walk among them,
to experience the violence of human feeling,
in part for its song's sake.

So it became human.
It found passion, it found violence,
first conflated, then
as separate emotions
and these were not
contained by music. Thus
its song changed,
the sweet notes of its longing to be human
soured and flattened. Then

the world drew back; the mutant
fell from love
as from the cherry branch,
it fell stained with the bloody
fruit of the tree.

So it is true after all, not merely
a rule of art:
change your form and you change your nature.
And time does this to us.


- Louise Glück
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i like...

from Wilbur, Richard. 'An Introductory Note.' Collected Poems: 1943 - 2004.


'I once asked Wallace Stevens whether he liked such-and-such a poem of his, and he heartily replied, "I like all my poems." Every poet has moments of feeling that way, moved by gratitude for all the times when he got something decently said, or hoped to have done so, and could in conscience add another poem to his manuscript. That, I think, is the mood in which a collected poems - as opposed to a stern winnowed selected - should be assembled.'


Well, since the man himself has already declared his affections, who am i to scorn any published poem of his, however slight it may appear?


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from Ceremony and Other Poems (1950)


Parable

I read how Quixote in his random ride
Came to a crossing once, and lest he lose
The purity of chance, would not decide

Whither to fare, but wished his horse to choose.
For glory lay wherever he might turn.
His head was light with pride, his horse's shoes

Were heavy, and he headed for the barn.



Epistemology

..................I

Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

..................II

We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, "You are not true."


[Geeky editorial note: 'Epistemology' reminds me of this time when i asked a student of mine, easily the brightest student in her cohort, why she was not doing the new 'A' Level subject for the creme de la creme of Singaporean JC students known as 'Knowledge & Inquiry', aka Philosophy 101. Her answer? "Because I didn't want to have to keep asking myself whether the chair I'm sitting on is real."]



from Advice to a Prophet and Other Poems (1961)


Two Voices in a Meadow

......A Milkweed

Anonymous as cherubs,
Over the crib of God,
White seeds are floating
Out of my burst pod.
What power had I
Before I learned to yield?
Shatter me, great wind:
I shall possess the field.

.....A Stone

As casual as cow-dung
Under the crib of God,
I lie where chance would have me,
Up to the ears in sod.
Why should I move? To move
Befits a light desire.
The sill of Heaven would founder
Did such as I aspire.



from 'Poems For Children and Others': Opposites

..................12

What is the opposite of two?
A lonely me, a lonely you.


..................17

There's more than one way to be right
About the opposite of white,
And those who merely answer black
Are very, very single-track.
They make one want to scream, "I beg
Your pardon, but within an egg
(A fact known to the simplest folk)
The opposite of white is yolk!"


...................18

The opposite of doughnut? Wait
A minute while I meditate.

This isn't easy. Ah, I've found it!
A cookie with a hole around it.


....................22

The opposite of a cloud would be
A white reflection in the sea,

Or a huge blueness in the air,
Caused by a cloud's not being there.


...................39

The opposite of opposite?
That's much too difficult. I quit.



from More Opposites

....................9

What is the opposite of road?
I'd say the answer is abode.
"What's an abode?" you ask. I'd say
It's ground that doesn't lead away -
Some patch of earth where you abide
Because it makes you satisfied.

Abodes don't take you anywhere,
Because you are already there.


....................14

The opposite of robber? Come,
You know the answer. Don't be dumb!
While robbers take things for a living,
Philanthropists are fond of giving.
"And yet," you say, "that's not quite true;
Philanthropists are takers, too,
And often have been very greedy
Before they thought to help the needy.

Well, let's be obvious, then: the op-
Posite of robber is cop.
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za bor poetry (2)

I never thought to find myself saying this, but I think I need to read some women poets. Let's hope that the trip to Borders later today proves helpful.
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afterword

"I thought it was a good concert, but when I heard the results... [makes face, sticks out tongue] I find things disturbing. I'm talking about life in general, not music."

- Sviatoslav Richter


Ok, this fandom has to stop. How many times can one keep watching a video featuring mostly video clips of piano recitals for crying out loud?

I need a job.
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you just gotta love him...

On playing at Stalin's funeral:

"All sorts of nonsense were written about me. Absurd things! Supposedly, I played deliberately to protest against Stalin... I played at Stalin's funeral. Indeed, I did play there. I chose to play a long fugue by Bach. The audience hissed. What audience could hiss at Stalin's funeral??? That's completely ludicrous! The police tore me away from the piano!"

- Sviatoslav Richter


Poor man - prevented from playing for the Fatherland, just because his philistine audience couldn't appreciate Bach and had no concert etiquette... :)

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to baldly go where no man has gone before

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The fact that I'm reading and enjoying Foucault's Discipline and Punish is starting to feel vaguely disturbing. This may just be the start of a slippery slope leading to a lifetime in academia...

I wonder if a Foucauldian-Christian (??!!) reading of the crucifixion would even be possible...

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from Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. 47 - 49.

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"The public execution is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a political ritual. It belongs, even in minor casses, to the ceremonies by which power is manifested.

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An offence, according to the law of the classical age, quite apart from the damage it may produce, apart even from the rule that it breaks, offends the rectitude of those who abide by the law: 'If one commits something that the law forbids, even if there is neither harm nor injury to the individual, it is an offence that demands reparation, because the right of the superior man is violated and because it offends the dignity of his character' (Risi, 9). Besides its immediate victim, the crime attacks the sovereign: it attacks him personally, since the law represents the will of the sovereign; it attacks him physically, since the force of the law is the force of the prince. 'For a law to be in force in this kingdom, it must necessarily have emanated directly from the sovereign, or at least have been confirmed by the seal of his authority' (Muyart de Vouglans, xxxiv). The intervention of the sovereign is not, therefore, an arbitration between two adversaries; it is much more, even, than an action to enforce respect for the rights of the individual; it is a direct reply to the person who has offended him. There can be no doubt that 'the exercise of the sovereign power in the punishment of crime is one of the essential parts of the administration of justice' (Jousse, vii). Punishment, therefore, cannot be identified with or even measured by the redress of the injury; in punishment, there must always be a portion that belongs to the prince, and, even when it is combined with the redress laid down, it constitutes the most important element in the penal liquidation of the crime. Now, this portion belonging to the prince is not in itself simple: on the one hand, it requires redress for the injury that has been done to his kingdom (as an element of disorder and as an example given to others, this considerable injury is out of all proportion to that which has been committed upon a private individual); but it also requires that the king take revenge for an affront to his very person.

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The right to punish, therefore, is an aspect of the sovereign's right to make war on his enemies: to punish belongs to 'that absolute power of life and death which Roman law calls merum imperium, a right by virtue of which the prince sees that his law is respected by ordering the punishment of crime' (Muyart de Vouglans, xxxiv). But punishment is also a way of exacting retribution that is both personal and public, since the physico-political force of the sovereign is in a sense present in the law: 'One sees by the very definition of the law that it tends not only to prohibit, but also to avenge contempt for its authority by the punishment of those who violate its prohibitions' (Muyart de Vouglans, xxxiv). In the execution of the most ordinary penalty, in the most punctilious respect of legal forms, reign the active forces of revenge.

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The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed and restored (coronation, entry of the king into a conquered city, the submission of rebellious subjects); over and above the crime that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyes an invincible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength. Although redress of the private injury occasioned by the offence must be proportionate, although the sentence must be equitable, the punishment is carried out in such a way as to give a spectacle not of measure, but of imbalance and excess; in this liturgy of punishment, there must be an emphatic affirmation of power and of its intrinsic superiority. And this superiority is not simply that of right, but that of the physical strength of the sovereign beating down upon the body of his adversary and mastering it: by breaking the law, the offender has touched the very person of the prince; and it is the prince - or at least those to whom he has delegated his force - who seizes upon the body of the condemned man and displays it marked, beaten, broken. The ceremony of punishment, then, is an exercise of 'terror'."

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Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat major, D.960

My first encounter with this piece (specifically, the second movement) was in the desolate opening scenes of Richter: The Enigma, Bruno Monsaingeon's documentary on pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Once again, the dynamic i identified in the earlier post about Ribena Man has kicked in - how can any other recording ever match up to Richter's dark, passionate clarity?

Schubert is one of the (many) composers whose music I haven't really paid much attention to in the past. For some reason, I had the mistaken notion that everything he'd written was as cheerfully bubbly as the 'Trout' Quintet - where I got that notion from, I have no idea, since I'd listened to so little of his work in the first place. Now, thanks to Naxos and the NUS library website, I'm happily exploring Schubert's repertoire and making up for lost time and past ignorance. Now to find me a full recording of Richter playing that last sonata...

Speaking of Richter - I was looking at his recordings on the online record stores a couple of months back, and was flabbergasted to find that the out-of-print Richter / Beethoven CD I gave away so casually almost 2 years ago (wanting to free up precious space on my CD shelf) is selling for at least US$25 (and, on Amazon.co.uk - a staggering 51 pounds!!!) on the internet marketplace. I had no idea it was worth that much. I'm now wondering if I would have kept it, if I had known. I think not - the fact remains that I didn't like the music in the album (Beethoven's 1st Piano Concerto, and his Piano Sonata in A flat major, 'Funeral March', that I had to play for my Diploma exam - oohh... not-good memories...). But I might have had more awareness of the value of the gift, and might thus have taken more pleasure in the giving. As it was, I thought the person I gave it to was doing me a big favour by allowing me to make space for other, better (haha!) recordings on my CD shelf. Ah the ignorance of youth!
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octet

Mendelssohn has always struck me as one of those unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how you look at it) artists who never reached the heights of greatness simply because they were too happy. (Yes, I subscribe, shamelessly, to the 'great art comes out of great suffering' school of thought. So sue me.) So while I may enjoy his music, it's not often that it touches me at any deeper level. But I do like, very much, his Octet for Strings, Op 20. (With thanks to L for introducing this to me, even though she doesn't read this blog. I think.) It's such an exuberant, youthful, happy piece of music - the violins and violas rushing headlong into the sunlight, hats flying in the wind, and the cellos following behind, carrying the picnic baskets with the patient resignation of gruff, barely-concealed affection. The piece is a joy to watch in performance as well - I saw it played by some of the faculty members from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory a few months back, and was struck by the energy and synergy of their collaborative effort, and by how much they enjoyed the music. Everyone needs to attend a performance like that once in a while, just to remind ourselves of what it means to take pleasure in the things we love.
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