Einstein and Apple Pi

“Pure mathematics is in its way the poetry of logical ideas.” Albert Einstein (born this day in 1879)

Hope everyone had a nice Pi Day … 3.14

Existentialist, Karl Jaspers: A Quote

“To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.”

Karl Theodor Jaspers (1883 – 1969)

Born 137 years ago on this day, I first came to know Jaspers after having read his cross analysis of Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus. I remember delighting in the fact that he was a sort of existential psychologist, and one who was willing to embrace theological considerations within his philosophical worldview.

Jaspers helped reinforced in me the idea that existentialism was by no means the philosophical endeavor of atheists (a claim latently implied by some of the French existentialists); and that, as Aristotle might say, it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Our Past as a Dream: Edgar Allan Poe

“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.” 

I cannot agree more with Poe’s statement here. Even within the stream of a single lifespan our distant past presents itself often as if it were a dream. One wonders: Is the life of the caterpillar a dream to the butterfly?

Let us entertain the thought that life persists after death (for myself, I believe it does). Just what will we remember of this existence? Will we remember the taste of the foods we enjoyed while we were here? Will we remember the cold sensation of winter breezes, the ancient auburn hue hovering over falling autumn leaves, the perfumed smell of loam-drenched trees after a summer thunderstorm, or the distant melodies of tiny birds greeting spring’s sunny advent?

One thing is certain, if life does persist after the death of our bodies, then Poe—at this very moment, wherever he is out there—knows the answer to our inquiry, and the truth of the above quote of his.

Edgar Allan Poe: January 19, 1809 — October 7, 1849 Happy 211th, dear poet

Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev

I could detect an accent that was deeply Slavic in the very last patient I brought back yesterday- an elderly lady who was confined to a wheelchair. I couldn't resist and asked her if she would mind my asking its origin. Turns out, as I suspected, it was Russian.

I asked her if she knew who FyodorTyutchev was and she looked at me with a sort of crazed astonishment- how the hell does this 'kid' know who Tyutchev is? I explained that I discovered his works about five years ago through translations rendered by VladimirNabokov, to which she smiled.

She said to me, “Listen”, and without missing a beat recited one of his poems in its entirety, in Russian!

Люблю грозу в начале мая,
Когда весенний, первый гром,
Как бы резвяся и играя,
Грохочет в небе голубом.

Гремят раскаты молодые!
Вот дождик брызнул, пыль летит…
Повисли перлы дождевые,
И солнце нити золотит…

С горы бежит поток проворный,
В лесу не молкнет птичий гам,
И гам лесной, и шум нагорный —
Все вторит весело громам…

Ты скажешь: ветреная Геба,
Кормя Зевесова орла,
Громокипящий кубок с неба,
Смеясь, на землю пролила!

I looked at her with crazed astonishment! I told her how beautiful her delivery of it was, and she told me that in English the poem is called, Spring Storm (ВЕСЕННЯЯ ГРОЗА). I've read it, and Nabokov translation of it is gorgeous- I couldn't imagine how much better it must be in its native language.

With that said, and considering that on this very day in 1803 our poet, Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, was born, I thought it would be awesome to post this poem as a tribute to his legacy and contribution to Russian literature and the realm of poetry itself. Happy birthday, Tyutchev.


Spring Storm

I love a storm in early May
When springtime's boisterous, firstborn thunder
Over the sky will gaily wander
And growl and roar as though in play.

A peal, another - gleeful, cheering...
Rain, raindust... On the trees, behold!-
The drops hang, each a long pearl earring;
Bright sunshine paints the thin threads gold.

A stream downhill goes rushing reckless,
And in the woods the birds rejoice.
Din. Clamour. Noise. All nature echoes
The thunder's youthful, merry voice.

You'll say: 'Tis laughing, carefree Hebe -
She fed her father's eagle, and
The Storm Cup brimming with a seething
And bubbling wine dropped from her hand. 

 

La Piana & Bei Dao

La Piana: In 1989 you were exiled from China and you have been barred from returning since then. How has the experience of exile changed your relation to China and to the Chinese language?


Bei Dao: At first I thought I was being exiled only for a short time. But it got longer and longer. As a writer, the most important thing for me is to continue to write, no matter where I am. The last five years have in some sense been the most difficult of my life, although materially I am okay. But the sense of solitude is very difficult, so I feel that I have to continue to write. Writing is the thing that sustains me and keeps me going. It is a form of self-preservation for me. People have asked about my being cut off from the Chinese language. But writing is always a challenge anyway, whether you are writing in China or outside. The question is how are you going to respond to that challenge.

Of the Misty Poets: Bei Dao

From roughly 1979 to 1989, a group of poets called the Misty Poets (Ménglóng Shi Rén) arose in post-Maoist China.

Disillusioned by the Maoist regime, its propaganda, and its political subjugation of both art and ideology, many Chinese poets and writers gathered secretly together to read literature that was condemned by the government, to write and exchange their works, and to promote ideas of freedom and individual expression- for which many were arrested and sentenced to long durations in prison. Others didn't fare so well.

Zhao Zhengkai- better known by his nom de plume, Bei Dao- was one such poet.

It was in 1969, after having served as a member of the paramilitary RedGuard during the Cultural Revolution, that Bei Dao's political views radically changed as he was sent to do labor work in the squalid, impoverished countryside of his homeland. The conditions were so deplorable that he lost all enthusiasm for the revolution. This is when he began, in secret, to study and read and write poetry.

Over a period of time many small underground groups that shared Bei Dao's sentiments, and his artistic means of expressing those sentiments, began to form. By 1978 Bei Dao- along with fellow poet and friend, Mang Ke- founded an underground literary journal called Jintian (Today). After two years of intense surveillance, harassment, and arrests, the Chinese government had the underground journal shut down.

Over the years Bei Dao traveled abroad and connected with literary groups in several countries. He happened to be in Germany when the massacre of Tiananmen Square occurred in 1989. Thought to have had a hand in those protests, or to have influenced them somehow, the Chinese government forced exile on our poet by denying his reentry into the country. Bei Dao, along with several other Misty Poets, have not been allowed back since. 
 

*****

I first learned about these poets in 2010 and immediately fell in love with the works of Bei Dao, Shu Ting, and Gu Cheng. It was on this particular day in 1949 that Bei Dao was born, and so I thought I'd take it upon myself to honor our poet by posting on him briefly. That said, I'd like to share a poem written by him, called The Boundary.

The Boundary

I want to go to the other bank

The river water alters the sky's colour

and alters me

I am in the current

my shadow stands by the river bank

like a tree struck by lightning

I want to go to the other bank

In the trees on the other bank

a solitary startled wood pigeon

flies towards me

Beautiful, right? The poem was published in Bei Dao's TheAugust Sleepwalker (1990), and translated by Bonnie S. McDougall. The poems in that collection are said to be “all of the poems Bei Dao published between 1970 and 1986”, works that were therefore prior to his being exiled. Strangely, though, when I first read the poem the imagery therein lead me to believe that the poem was, in fact, about exile. Allow me to explain, and please let me know what you think.

The 'boundary' is obviously the river water that's dividing two river banks. The poet desires to be on the other river bank, but his desires are painfully thwarted by the river and its current- the river water (or boundary) representing his exile; the other bank the poet's homeland, China.

That the river water alters the colour of the sky, which in turn alters our poet, signifies that this exile is an imposition on our poet's freedom (represented by the sky), and that this imposition deeply pains (or alters) our poet, as we'll soon see.

The narrator desperately desires to reach the other bank, so much so that he stands there at the river's edge and sees his shadow 'like a tree struck by lightning', indicating the poet's depth of pain. He again, and almost mournfully, reiterates his desire: I want to go to the other bank … but the river and its current (his exile) prevents him.

Finally, in the last stanza, the poet sees the trees on the other river bank. Just as the tree struck by lightning (line 6) represented the poet and his depth of pain, so too the trees on the other bank represent people- and because the other bank represents China, the trees represent his countrymen from whom he's exiled.

But what of the wood pigeon? Note that it's startled, indicating a state of trepidation, and that it's in the trees (plural). I take this to indicate a general trepidation that still persists in the heart of his countrymen, just as it did in Tiananmen Square in 1989. That the wood pigeon flies toward our beloved poet can only indicate for me a sympathetic reaching out of his countrymen.

And there you have it, my interpretation of Bei Dao's poem, The Boundary. That this is what the poet intend I am highly doubtful- as I mentioned, the poem is said to have been written between 1970 and 1986, prior to him being exiled in '89. Nevertheless, this was the first impression I derived from it, and so I remain faithful to it. I would so love to know your interpretation of it.

Thank you for stopping by. And Bei Dao, happy birthday, my friend ...

I Walk Alone

"I walk alone, absorbed in my fantastic play, —
Fencing with rhymes, which, parrying nimbly, back away;
Tripping on words, as on rough paving in the street,
Or bumping into verses I long had dreamed to meet."

Charles Baudelaire

Daffodils

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (my favorite of the two) ushered in the English period of the Romantic movement in poetry and literature with their publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798.

The simplicity of their poetic diction, the enduring imagery and vividness that permeates their works, along with the mystical and sometimes ominous subjects their musings revolve around, has made their poetry both incredible and incredibly accessible and relatable to the layperson. These two poets have produced works that are not only beautiful and mesmerizing, but also honest and bold enough so as to reach out and touched gently on the Woeful and Dreadful in ways that are, in literary terms, beyond reproach. These poets are, in short, Homeric monuments.

Wordsworth, who was born on this day in 1770, was the first poet of the Romantic period in England that I read, and I was drawn to him immediately! His Lucy poems are eerily intriguing, steeped in total mystery and riddled with an acute sense of melancholy and lament (far from the mere pastoral musings of a naturalist poet that many have predicated upon him). His poem, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, which describes the beauty of a serene London morning from the quite perspective of the Westminster Bridge, is one of my favorite poems of all time- and probably one of his more popular ones.

Of his more popular works, I find it remarkable (and very embarrassing the more I contemplate it) that though I'm a fan of the works of Wordsworth, I only recently became acquainted with what's deemed one of his finest poems, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, also simply known as Daffodils.

To commemorate his date of birth, I'd like to share that poem with you. The rhyme scheme is simple: ababcc per stanza; the meter, a smooth eight syllables per line (iambic tetrameter); and the imagery, sublime. Trust me, you'll dig it. Let me know what you think.


Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:-
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Publius Ovidius Naso

“When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven.”

Ovid, born this day in 43 BC

"Had they but courage equal to desire ..."

I cannot begin to articulate the depth of influence that this particular poet has had on my life.

To express internal realities that transcend the mundane through mythological and eschatological writings that defy prose; to deliberately interweave those expressions so as to bring to mind brutal historical events revolving around the loss of love; to be brazenly mystical and a champion of truth via verse, is for me- in light of authenticity and the bravery of creativity- the mark of a poet worthy of historical recognition.

Happy birthday, Yeats (1865-1939). "Had they but courage equal to desire ..."

Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam 1891 - 1938

Born in January, 1891, in Warsaw, Poland, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was raised in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a prominent leather merchant and his mother a teacher of music. Mandelstam attended the renowned Tenishev School and later studied at the Sorbonne, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of St. Petersburg, though he left off his studies to pursue writing. He published his first collection, Kamen, or Stone (1913), when Russian Symbolism was the dominant persuasion. Like Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, who cleared the ground for Russian Futurism, Mandelstam departed from this old mode of expression in favor of a more direct treatment of thoughts, feelings, and observations under the aegis of Acmeism, a programme that included Nikolay Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova. As translator Clarence Brown observes, Mandelstam's variant of Acmeism was a mixture of poetics and moral doctrine, the former based on an "intuitive and purely verbal logic of inner association" and the latter on a kind of "democratic humanism." His second book, Tristia (1922), secured his reputation, and both it and Stone were released a year later in new editions.

Yet the Bolsheviks had begun to exert an ever increasing amount of control over Russian artists, and Mandelstam, though he had initially supported the Revolution, was absolutuely unwilling to yield to the political doctrine of a regime that had executed Gumilev in 1921. The poet published three more books in 1928—Poems, a collection of criticism entitled On Poetry, and The Egyptian Stamp, a book of prose—as the state closed in on him. Mandelstam spent his later years in exile, serving sentences for counter-revolutionary activities in various work camps, until his death on December 27, 1938, in the Gulag Archipelago.

Bio from Poets.org

None with Eden Can Strive

John Milton (1608-1674), a total genius, was the very first poet I began to study deliberately. I often wonder if my interest and dedication to poetry would have been different had I not come across, what I believe to be, one of the most awesome references to the Garden of Eden. It was while reading a book written by Edward O. Wilson titled, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Within just 8 lines of verse Milton captured my attention permanently. Concerning those lines, I wrote in a blog post a few years back that ...

"There were no extravagant words employed, and as far as I can remember, Milton almost never even mentioned the Garden. But within 8 lines, and by means of images taken from mythology, Milton expresses what in other words would simply require pages to attain."

Here are those 8 lines below (what do you think):

Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive...

Paradise Lost, Book IV 268 - 275

If it were not for Milton I sometimes wonder whether I would have ever engaged poetry at all. I'm in utter debt to him.

Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev

I first learned of the Russian Symbolist/Romantic poet Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev and of his incredible works this previous June.

The imagery he employs is vivid, intense, full of vitality, and ruthlessly mesmerizing- very much the same way that Hilda Doolittle's works are. I love how he toys with and fills traditional forms (ballads, metronomes, rhyme schemes, etc) with these incredibly powerful and incredibly wooing images. The scope and depth of Tyutchev’s talent as a writer and a poet are remarkable.

If you haven’t read his works, especially if you enjoy poetry and good writing, you seriously don’t know the state of deprivation you’re in.

Along with another awesome poet, Christina Rossetti, Tyutchev was born on this day (Rossetti in 1830, Tyutchev in 1803).

This work of Tyutchev’s, translated by Vladimir Nabokov, is a little dark, but impressive to say the least. Please, let me know what you think of it …

Dusk 

Now the ashen shadows mingle,

tints faded, sounds remote.

Life has dwindled to a single

vague reverberating note.

In the dusk I hear the humming

of a moth I cannot see.

Whence is this oppression coming?

I’m in all, and all’s in me.

Gloom so dreamy, so lulling,

flow into my deepest deep,

flow, ambrosial and dulling,

steeping everything in sleep.

With oblivion’s obscuration

fill my senses to the brim,

make me taste obliteration,

in this dimness let me dim.

  

Please, for the love of God ... let me know what you think.

Rilke's 9th Elegy

Unthinkingly, as I’m leaving for work this morning, I grab a book: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke. What I forgot, until just a few seconds ago, was that he was born on this day (1875).

I’ve known this poet for a long time, and appreciate the sincere depth of his melancholic insight. His works wreak of existential despair, and bare the same oppressive mark of despondency that plagued Confessional poets such as Plath and Sexton and Berryman.

I would warn anyone who would read Rilke’s works to do so in small doses. His poetic darkness isn’t the kind of darkness we see reflected in works such as Bauldelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil). No … Rilke’s darkness is dangerously close to suicidal reflection and flirts with despair’s menacing onslaught (Baudelaire’s darkness is merely that of audacity).

With that said, I will say that I love this poet. In July I composed a list of my top 20 favorite poets, Rilke was my fifth. The poem below (Duino Elegy #9) I carry in my wallet …



Duino Elegy #9

Why, when this span of life might be fleeted away

as laurel, a little darker than all

the surrounding green, with tiny waves on the border

of every leaf (like the smile of a wind): - oh, why

have to be human, and shunning Destiny,

long for Destiny?...

                      Not because happiness really

exists, that precipitate profit of imminent loss.

Not out of curiosity, not just to practise the heart,

that could still be there in laurel...

But because being here is much, and because all this

that's here, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely

concerns us. Us the most fleeting of all. Just once,

everything, only for once. Once and no more. And we, too,

once. And never again. But this

having been once on earth - can it ever be cancelled?

And so we keep pressing on and trying to perform it,

trying to contain it within our simple hands,

in the more and more crowded gaze, in the speechless heart.

Trying to become it. To give it to whom? We'd rather

hold on to it all for ever... But into the other relation,

what, alas! do we carry across? Not the beholding we've here

slowly acquired, and no here occurrence. Not one.

Sufferings, then. Above all, the hardness of life,

the long experience of love; in fact,

purely untellable things. But later,

under the stars, what use? the more deeply untellable stars?

Yet the wanderer too doesn't bring from mountain to valley

a handful of earth; of for all untellable earth, but only

a word he has won, pure, the yellow and blue

gentian. Are we, perhaps, here just for saying: House,

Bridge, Fountain, Gate, Jug, Fruit tree, Window, -

possibly: Pillar, Tower?... but for saying, remember,

oh, for such saying as never the things themselves

hoped so intensely to be. Is not the secret purpose

of this sly Earth, in urging a pair of lovers,

just to make everything leap with ecstasy in them?

Threshold: what does it mean

to a pair of lovers, that they should be wearing their own

worn threshold a little, they too, after the many before,

before the many to come,... as a matter of course!

Here is the time for the Tellable, here is its home.

Speak and proclaim. More than ever

things we can live with are falling away, for that

which is oustingly taking their place is an imageless act.

Act under crusts, that will readily split as soon

as the doing within outgrows them and takes a new outline.

Between the hammers lives on

our heart, as between the teeth

the tongue, which, in spite of all,

still continues to praise.

Praise this world to the Angel, not the untellable: you

can't impress him with the splendour you've felt; in the cosmos

where he more feelingly feels you're only a novice. So show him

some simple thing, refashioned by age after age,

till it lives in our hands and eyes as a part of ourselves.

Tell him things. He'll stand more astonished: as you did

beside the roper in Rome or the potter in Egypt.

Show him how happy a thing can be, how guileless and ours;

how even the moaning of grief purely determines on form,

serves as a thing, or dies into a thing, - to escape

to a bliss beyond the fiddle. These things that live on departure

understand when you praise them: fleeting, they look for

rescue through something in us, the most fleeting of all.

Want us to change them entirely, within our invisible hearts

into - oh, endlessly - into ourselves! Whosoever we are.

Earth, is it not just this that you want: to arise

invisibly in us? Is not your dream

to be one day invisible? Earth! invisible!

What is your urgent command, if not transformation?

Earth, you darling, I will! Oh, believe me, you need

no more of your spring-times to win me over: a single one,

ah, one, is already more than my blood can endure.

Beyond all names I am yours, and have been for ages.

You were always right, and your holiest inspiration

is Death, that friendly Death.

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future

are growing less.... Supernumerous existence

wells up in my heart.

Blok on the Muse

I mentioned recently how impressive a breed of poets these Russian symbolists were, and named a few. Among those named was Aleksandr Blok, a poet that I’ve now known for some time, and the first Russian symbolist I came to study.

Now although I consider Tyutchev the best of these symbolists- indeed, one of the best poets ever- Blok and his incredibly imaginative works hold a high and privileged place with me. His poetry seems, at times, irrationally defiant and recklessly counterintuitive (To the Muse); and yet at other times his poems gleam of loftiness and holiness and divinity (I Seek Salvation).

Take the poem below … it’s about the Muse- that mythological deity who inspires within the human spirit passionate movements of creativity and the apperception of the sublime and beautiful. This poem depicts her as an irresistible addiction that, once consumed by, causes one to trample on and desecrate sacred traditions and holy things (not at all the idea of her that the Greeks held).

Check it …

 

To the Muse 

In your hidden memories
There are fatal tidings of doom...
A curse on sacred traditions,
A desecration of happiness;

And a power so alluring
That I am ready to repeat the rumour
That you have brought angels down from heaven,
Enticing them with your beauty...

And when you mock at faith,
That pale, greyish-purple halo
Which I once saw before
Suddenly begins to shine above you.

Are you evil or good? You are altogether from another world
They say strange things about you
For some you are the Muse and a miracle.
For me you are torment and hell.

I do not know why in the hour of dawn,
When no strength was left to me,
I did not perish, but caught sight of your face
And begged you to comfort me.

I wanted us to be enemies;
Why then did you make me a present
Of a flowery meadow and of the starry firmament --
The whole curse of your beauty?

Your fearful caresses were more treacherous
Than the northern night,
More intoxicating than the golden champagne of Aï,
Briefer than a gypsy woman's love...

And there was a fatal pleasure
In trampling on cherished and holy things;
And this passion, bitter as wormwood,
Was a frenzied delight for the heart!

Beautiful Anne Sexton

Beautiful Anne Sexton … incredible poet, tragic soul. Happy date of birth, lady …
(Nov. 9th 1928 – Oct. 4th 1974)