Man was made for joy and woe

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Thinking more about goodness, I probably need to qualify my earlier thoughts. A careful distinction needs to be drawn between true comedy, which involves restoration of good and a happy ending after sorrow, and narratives which are merely saccharine, in which no restoration is needed. Unmitigated goodness in fiction feels false.  Unshaded sunshine has no contours.  Even in children's books, there is something eery about stories with no shadow, no threat to happiness, nothing to be overcome; Pollyanna, that avatar of the bright side, exercised her trademark optimism in the face of unusual misfortune and distress.  I'm thus brought back to Hopkins' glory in dappled things, and (to change the metaphor) to William Blake's famous song of “Innocence”:

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

A character in All's well that ends well has the line: “The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together.” According to Blake, not only truth but safe passage rests in this knowledge. Not only a better reflection of the way life is, but the secret of a way to live. In this sense, comedy is more instructive than tragedy, less spectacle than physic. The silver-lined cloud has become a tawdry image of wishful thinking, but the silken twine that runs under every grief is a lifeline, a saving grace. The title of Shakespeare's comedy might seem a toothless truism in the face of real sorrow, but it is in fact a great truth. All's well that ends well. The happy ending works backwards, not to erase suffering, but (to change the metaphor back) to illuminate it. Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, all's well.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each

A conversation with friends last night about memorable coffee experiences made me think of Prufrock: “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.” J. Alfred Prufrock is the archetypal tragic modern: the small man whose woes are the greater for being small. Neurotic, unromantic, entangled in social minutiae - one can imagine him being played by Paul Giamatti or Steve Buscemi. In his “Love Song,” women pass him by and mermaids don't sing for him. The poem itself, 131 lines of it, is an exposition of his unfitness for poetry. Yet somehow it manages to be one of the greatest poems of the last century; another conundrum for the mind grappling with greatness. It's awfully long - testament to Prufrock's ironic egotism - so I'll just post a couple of extracts, picking up the thread a good way through.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

[...]

I grow old … I grow old …       

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown      
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Your mind is a wild monkey, swinging from branch to branch

This morning I met Ommwriter. Taking minimalism to a new extreme, Ommwriter is a text processor that replaces the multitude of boxes, bars, tools and icons with an atmospheric space and a few simple commands. Gentle music plays as your text floats above snow and the silhouettes of distant trees. (It feels Scandinavian, but it's actually Spanish). According to its creators, Ommwriter is “a humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away from us today: our capacity to concentrate.” It “believes in making writing a pleasure once again.” 

It's elegant and inspiring, but at the same time it makes me reflect gloomily on our increasing feebleness of mind. The more our tools and technology proliferate, the more we seem paralysed by them. Now we have a tool that helps us forget how many tools we are using, that tries to coax us, via our senses, into a state of creativity. Of course this is refreshing next to the babel of garbage the web also purveys, but at the same time it seems a high watermark of artifice, making our creativity increasingly that of cyborgs. In looking for pleasure, comfort, usability, and sensory experience to help us create, we might easily forget that many of the greatest works of literature were written with feathers.

Heir to my affection

It was a treat last month to record an interview with ABC Radio National's Florence Spurling for an Encounter program that aired this morning, called “Heir to My Affection: the drama and poetry of William Shakespeare, John Donne and George Herbert.” You can listen to it here. We talked mostly about George Herbert, but Florence also spoke with Richard Strier and Peter Holbrook about The Winter's Tale (whence the line “heir to my affection”) and some Donne poetry. Recording it was fun, but listening was even better. There's something very special about hearing this poetry read and spoken of affectionately on air.