Evolution
Out of the dark, a shadow,
Then, a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then, a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then, a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.
-- John Banister Tabb --
(March 22, 1845--November 19, 1909)
A Poem A Day: editors: Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery
Notes:
"Tabb was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and ordained in 1884 two years after his first book of poetry was brought out through private publication. Born in Virginia and a blockade runner for the Confederacy, Tabb called himself an 'unreconstructed Rebel,' though he taught English at St. Charles College in Maryland until he was made to retire in1907, probably due to the loss of his eyesight."
I can see this as being the story of a person emerging from some deep personal sorrow, perhaps the loss of a loved one--especially the last two lines: Out of the dead, cold ashes,/ Life again. He has now reached the point where he can, once again, feel pain, for the numbness of grief is gone. This one grows on me. I think I shall do a bit of digging about John Banister Tabb.
Let there be light,
Let there be sound,
Let there be feelings,
Let there be life.
Showing posts with label change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label change. Show all posts
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Kenko: inevitable change
No. 26
"When I recall the months and years I spent as the intimate of someone whose affections have now faded like cherry blossoms scattering even before a wind blew, I still remember every word of hers that once so moved me; and when I realize that she, as happens in such cases, is steadily slipping away from my world, I feel a sadness greater even than that of a separation from the dead. That is why, I am sure, a man once grieved that white thread should be dyed in different colors, and why another lamented that roads inevitably fork. Among the hundred verses presented to the Retired Emperor Horikawa one runs:
mukashi mishi The fence round her house,
imo ga kakine wa The woman I loved long ago,
arenikeri Is ravaged and fallen;
tsubana majiri no Only violets remain
sumire no mi shite Mingled with the spring weeds.
What a lovely picture--the poem must describe something that really occurred."
-- Kenko --
Essays in Idleness
trans. Donald Keene
When I first began reading this essay, I thought it was a traditional essay about a loved one who no longer loved him. That is there, of course, but as I read further, it seemed as though something else was going on. He mentioned several examples that didn't seem to fit: his grief that is stronger than if she had died, the white thread that is dyed, and the road that must "inevitably fork." And the poem, just how strong are the references to his lost love?
The underlying theme, I think, is that of the inevitability of change. The following quotation is a note provided by Keene to the references to the silk thread and the road:
"The passage comes from the Huai-an Tzu: 'Yang-tzu saw a forked road and grieved that ti would branch south and north. Mo-Tzu saw raw silk and wept at the thought the some would be dyed yellow and some black. Kao Yu said, "They were sad because what originally had been the same would now be different."'"
Those which at one time were similar now change and become different. Nothing is permanent; all must change and become other than they were. He feels a greater sadness now than if the separation happened because of death. This seems strange unless this drifting apart was just one example of a greater issue--that all things change and that which had been similar now becomes dissimilar. The poem contained in the essay speaks more, I think, of the change of the house and grounds than of his lost love.
In a past essay, Kenko had said that everything in the past was better. This again, I see, as a lament against the fundamental law of this world--all things change--which is the main point here, I think.
"When I recall the months and years I spent as the intimate of someone whose affections have now faded like cherry blossoms scattering even before a wind blew, I still remember every word of hers that once so moved me; and when I realize that she, as happens in such cases, is steadily slipping away from my world, I feel a sadness greater even than that of a separation from the dead. That is why, I am sure, a man once grieved that white thread should be dyed in different colors, and why another lamented that roads inevitably fork. Among the hundred verses presented to the Retired Emperor Horikawa one runs:
mukashi mishi The fence round her house,
imo ga kakine wa The woman I loved long ago,
arenikeri Is ravaged and fallen;
tsubana majiri no Only violets remain
sumire no mi shite Mingled with the spring weeds.
What a lovely picture--the poem must describe something that really occurred."
-- Kenko --
Essays in Idleness
trans. Donald Keene
When I first began reading this essay, I thought it was a traditional essay about a loved one who no longer loved him. That is there, of course, but as I read further, it seemed as though something else was going on. He mentioned several examples that didn't seem to fit: his grief that is stronger than if she had died, the white thread that is dyed, and the road that must "inevitably fork." And the poem, just how strong are the references to his lost love?
The underlying theme, I think, is that of the inevitability of change. The following quotation is a note provided by Keene to the references to the silk thread and the road:
"The passage comes from the Huai-an Tzu: 'Yang-tzu saw a forked road and grieved that ti would branch south and north. Mo-Tzu saw raw silk and wept at the thought the some would be dyed yellow and some black. Kao Yu said, "They were sad because what originally had been the same would now be different."'"
Those which at one time were similar now change and become different. Nothing is permanent; all must change and become other than they were. He feels a greater sadness now than if the separation happened because of death. This seems strange unless this drifting apart was just one example of a greater issue--that all things change and that which had been similar now becomes dissimilar. The poem contained in the essay speaks more, I think, of the change of the house and grounds than of his lost love.
In a past essay, Kenko had said that everything in the past was better. This again, I see, as a lament against the fundamental law of this world--all things change--which is the main point here, I think.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Loren Eiseley: on stability
"Life is never fixed and stable. It is always mercurial, rolling and splitting, disappearing and re-emerging in a most unpredictable fashion. I never make a journey to a wood or a mountain without experiencing the temptation to explode a puffball in a new clearing or stopping to encourage some sleepy monster that is just cracking out of the earth mold. This is, of course, an irresponsible attitude, since I cannot tell what will come of it, but if the world hangs on such matters it may be well to act boldly and realize all immanent possibilities at once. Shake the seeds out of their pods, I say, launch the milkweed down, and set the lizards scuttling. We are in a creative universe. Let us then create. After all, man himself is the unlikely consequence of such forces. In the spring when a breath of wind sets the propellers of the maple seeds to whirring, I always say to myself hopefully, "After us the dragons.
To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore. Otherwise everything becomes stale, commonplace, and observed. I suspect that it is this unimaginative boredom that leads to the vulgar comment that evolution may be all very well as a theory but you can never really see anything in the process of change. There is also the even more obtuse and less defensible attitude of those who speak of the world's creative energies as being exhausted, the animals small and showing no significant signs of advance. 'Everything is specialized in blind channels,' some observers contend. 'Life is now locked permanently in little roadside pools, or perching dolefully on television aerials.'
Such men never pause to think how they might have looked gasping fishily through mats of green algae in the Devonian swamps, but that is where the homunculus who preceded them had his abode. I have never lost a reverent and profound respect for swamps, even individually induced ones. I remember too well what, on occasion, has come out of them. Only a purblind concern with the present can so limit men's views, and it is my contention that sympathetic observer, even at this moment, can witness such marvels of transitional behavior, such hoverings between the then and the now, as to lay forever to rest the notion that evolution belongs somewhere the witch world of the past."
-- Loren Eiseley --
from The Night Country
Loren Eiseley is not the first to talk about unending change in the world: Taoists, Heraclitus, and Montaigne among many others had also noted this, but we forget and we need to be reminded of this regularly. In textbooks that discuss evolution, how many end the exposition with the present day and never go on to talk about future evolutionary modifications.
The same is true of human affairs. I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Iron Curtain came down in the early '90s. The wise ones talked about peace, the end of the arms race, the reduction of military forces now that the Cold War had ended. The money spent on weaponry could now be put to peaceful uses to benefit humanity. And now. . .
To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore. Otherwise everything becomes stale, commonplace, and observed. I suspect that it is this unimaginative boredom that leads to the vulgar comment that evolution may be all very well as a theory but you can never really see anything in the process of change. There is also the even more obtuse and less defensible attitude of those who speak of the world's creative energies as being exhausted, the animals small and showing no significant signs of advance. 'Everything is specialized in blind channels,' some observers contend. 'Life is now locked permanently in little roadside pools, or perching dolefully on television aerials.'
Such men never pause to think how they might have looked gasping fishily through mats of green algae in the Devonian swamps, but that is where the homunculus who preceded them had his abode. I have never lost a reverent and profound respect for swamps, even individually induced ones. I remember too well what, on occasion, has come out of them. Only a purblind concern with the present can so limit men's views, and it is my contention that sympathetic observer, even at this moment, can witness such marvels of transitional behavior, such hoverings between the then and the now, as to lay forever to rest the notion that evolution belongs somewhere the witch world of the past."
-- Loren Eiseley --
from The Night Country
Loren Eiseley is not the first to talk about unending change in the world: Taoists, Heraclitus, and Montaigne among many others had also noted this, but we forget and we need to be reminded of this regularly. In textbooks that discuss evolution, how many end the exposition with the present day and never go on to talk about future evolutionary modifications.
The same is true of human affairs. I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Iron Curtain came down in the early '90s. The wise ones talked about peace, the end of the arms race, the reduction of military forces now that the Cold War had ended. The money spent on weaponry could now be put to peaceful uses to benefit humanity. And now. . .
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Robert Grudin: An image of change
I've read a number of attempts to describe the way change happens or at least the way we perceive it, and I think Robert Grudin's is one of the best.
I.12
"In late November of 1968, I spent a few days in a hotel just off the Piazza San Marco in Venice. At 6 one morning, hearing the loud warning bells, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera and rushed out to see the famous Venetian flood. I stood in the empty and as yet dry Piazza and looked out toward he Gulf, for I expected the flood tides to come in from the open water. Many minutes passed before I turned to see that the Piazza was flooding, not directly from the Gulf, but up through its own sewers. The indented gratings in the pavement had all but disappeared under calm, flat silver puddles, which grew slowly and silently until their peripheries touched and the Piazza had become a lake. That morning I experienced vividly, if almost subliminally , the reality of change itself: how it fools our sentinels and undermines our defenses, how careful we are to look for it in the wrong places, how it does not reveal itself until it is beyond redress, how vainly we search for it around us and find too late that it has occurred within us."
-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living
My experience has always been that the changes I talk about are always the ones that have already occurred. Perhaps others are more perceptive than I am. Unfortunately I've never met them.
I.12
"In late November of 1968, I spent a few days in a hotel just off the Piazza San Marco in Venice. At 6 one morning, hearing the loud warning bells, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera and rushed out to see the famous Venetian flood. I stood in the empty and as yet dry Piazza and looked out toward he Gulf, for I expected the flood tides to come in from the open water. Many minutes passed before I turned to see that the Piazza was flooding, not directly from the Gulf, but up through its own sewers. The indented gratings in the pavement had all but disappeared under calm, flat silver puddles, which grew slowly and silently until their peripheries touched and the Piazza had become a lake. That morning I experienced vividly, if almost subliminally , the reality of change itself: how it fools our sentinels and undermines our defenses, how careful we are to look for it in the wrong places, how it does not reveal itself until it is beyond redress, how vainly we search for it around us and find too late that it has occurred within us."
-- Robert Grudin --
from Time and the Art of Living
My experience has always been that the changes I talk about are always the ones that have already occurred. Perhaps others are more perceptive than I am. Unfortunately I've never met them.
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