Keats

Restless Words

/ Brian / Leave a comment

Come expecting answers and you’ll be left disappointed, but keep knocking, keep knocking, there are as many doors that will open for you as there are selves, but do not think that anything you do will allow you to be at one with yourself. That will come much later, if it comes at all. I’ve come to bear this wound, to endure these flaming arrows that sing in my pierced heart of all that comes and all that goes under the all-consuming terror of being no more.

“Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

What more is there to say? It may be time to rein it in, to wait for rain to wash away these sins, to sit here as leaves are blown past by the wind. The end is never near, the way is endlessly long, the soul’s been dissembled by sorrow, yet the feet keep pressing on. When I press up against myself, who is it I press against? what am I up against here?

“Majestic shadow, tell me: sure not all
Those melodies sung into the world’s ear
Are useless: sure a poet is a sage;
A humanist, physician to all men.
That I am none I feel, as vultures feel
They are no birds when eagles are abroad.
What am I then? Thou spakest of my tribe:
What tribe?”

I wonder what I am doing here. Mystery overwhelms you when you try to solve it.

“Within you there is almost no space; and it nearly calms you that in this constriction within you it is impossible for something very great to find room.”

Who is the one who became himself when he stopped trying to become himself? Who is the one who struggles to notice himself struggling? I shrug my shoulders, the same shoulders that could not force open the door that closed long ago, shaking me just a little, taking me into the center of my centerless gloom. What gloom! I must conclude this nonsense and move on to other things, things that make more sense, things I cannot touch. Not things.

“Just as the earthly lover fears abandonment and rejection by the beloved and can be possessed by jealousy and hatred, so the soul, in its intense thirst for love, feels forsaken and as dried up as is the lost wanderer in a desert wasteland.”

When I touch the woman I long to touch, why do I still long for her? When I begin to know her, why do I feel I’ve lost her, and myself?

“Besides my numerous circle of acquaintances with whom, by and large, I maintain very superficial relations, I have one close confidant—my melancholy—and in the midst of my rejoicing, in the midst of my work, she waves to me, beckons me to her side and I go to her, even though my physical frame stays in place; she is the most faithful mistress I have known; what wonder then that I, on my part, must be ready to follow her on the instant.”

The self I live beside, as if I am in contact with it, is like the powerful hand of another that goes limp when it touches my hand, is like the limb of a black oak that has broken off from the tree and sits splintered as a bridge before it collapses like a marriage into a dying river, is like the crib of a baby whose crying is not heard, is like the toothache in my heel that seals me from the sky.

“Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’
Carrying a dead man’s shield
Heart burnin’, still yearnin’
Walkin’ with a toothache in my heel”

The hound that hounds me provides no relief but I concede he knows about heartache. He is the heartbroken one, the one who will never find the one, the lone one who finds glory only in that state when he is in fact alone. There is no glory in being the lone one around others. That glory is lost as the true self is found, the glorious self that no imagined glory can match, the unimagined self, the unimaginable self, who is not the tragic self.

“Let us acknowledge our misery. Let us yearn for that place where no one can scorn us. I’m thinking of the words the bride sang in the Song of Songs, and I see that they apply perfectly here. It seems to me that none of the contempt or tribulation we endure in this life can compare to those inner battles. If we find peace where we live, there is no conflict that can disquiet us. But if the cause of our strife is within ourselves, then no matter how much we desire relief from the thousand trials of this world and no matter how much the Beloved desires this tranquility for us, the results will be almost unbearably painful. And so, Beloved, please raise us to the place where the miseries that taunt the soul relent. God will free the soul from suffering when he delivers her into the final dwelling, even in this very lifetime.” 

There is glory in being the tragic self, but it is the kind of glory that kills you finally by driving you off a cliff. I do not wish to be driven in that way. I wish only to hear the undivided silence that rests in my breast like the remembered song of a bird before dawn, heard in the December of the heart.

“While I am writing, I’m far away;
and when I come back, I’ve gone.
I would like to know if others
go through the same things that I do,
have as many selves as I have,
and see themselves similarly.”

Start on this path and you will not ever complete it. Start noticing your contradictions and you will be busy for quite some time.

More On The Solitary: The Search For Self

/ Brian / 10 Comments

Those of you who read the last post will remember that I began with a quote by John Keats. He said that the poet has no identity, that he is the least poetical of creatures. This is the case when he first begins to write poetry. His task is to be what he is not yet but could become. His task is to become the invisible that he can express but cannot yet be. Expression can lead to Being. He must be what he is not now; He must be what he really is. When he is that, there will be no need to express it. The greatest poet does not write a word. Other people take down what he says, for he has lost the need to record that he is and who he is. He only needs to record it when he is not yet it and writes as a means to become it, and to record the distance between how he is at present and who he could become, which is who he truly is.

Some say that who we are can only be discerned in the present. I cannot verify this belief in my experience. Who we are at this moment can only be discerned in the present, of course. But is who we are in this moment who we truly are? The poet, at present, is no one. He has no identity, as Keats makes clear. He strives to have an identity, but only if that identity encompasses his whole person, if it is a complete identity. As one who writes poetry, he must go through everything. He must be divided, he must suffer, undergo all sorts of humiliations, but above all he must not accept the designation of ‘Poet,’ for that would give him an identity, which he does not have. People when they look at him or read his work and think ‘Poet’ would be thinking of their own ideas of ‘Poet’ and so would not see him as he is. If he sees this and continues to allow it, he also will begin to see himself as he is not, as they see him. He is the poet; he writes poetry. That is his identity; that is who he is.

But what does this mean? He does not know who he is. Only those who do not know who they are can write poetry. But now he is a poet; that is who they say he is. That is who he is and he knows it. Bob Dylan, who everyone labeled ‘Poet’ from the very beginning said in an interview, “A poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.”

It makes little sense for someone who writes poetry to have that poetry published, to have his poems critiqued by people who already know, or at least think they know, who they are. A poem can only be read truly by those who truly do not know who they are. Only the ones who do not know are able to understand another who also does not know. A man who does not know who he is does not necessarily write poetry. Writing becomes necessary according to the intensity of suffering that having no identity and not being whole entails. The more suffering, the more dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs, the more necessary it is to write. Colin Wilson writes, “Language is the natural medium for self-analysis; the idea of ‘a way back to himself’ cannot be expressed in any other medium.” Writing is the way back to oneself, to unity, away from self-division. If someone is divided but neither knows nor cares, why should that person be concerned with the search for self and wholeness, a search in which the seeker will remain in a constant state of tension and angst, will feel alienated from others, and will be unable to find peace or rest? But the solitary, the one who knows and cares about his self-division, does not seek peace or rest. He knows that he will find neither as long as he stays divided. Peace may come for a time, but it cannot be sought.

The more the solitary writes, the deeper he goes into the search for self and wholeness, the less present he becomes to the surface. It is almost as if he exists only in solitude. Amongst people he might as well not exist. This is because with others he is especially aware of his lack of identity, since most all communication with others comes from identity, what is called ‘personality.’ For one who knows he has no identity, what can he say? Someone who is perceptive about surfaces may get the distinct impression, “This person does not exist.” Someone who is perceptive to depth may feel there is much more and will be drawn to the unseen in that person.

The unseen in the solitary person is really the whole person, for almost everything about him is unseen. So the one perceptive to depth will intuitively understand the other’s essence, though the personality on the surface appears non-existent. The less false personality, the truer to essence. But there can be a personality type that is proud of its lack of falseness, its lack of false personality. Instead of making a false personality out of his lack of false personality, and having some sort of distorted pride in that, the solitary, the one searching for himself, must undergo the suffering inherent in this non-identified state, the humiliation of having no identity to fall back on. It is most important not to alleviate this tension in any superficial way. The only way out is through.