Mandatum novum do vobis

Today is “Maundy” Thursday. Maundy is a fifteenth-century English word that (probably) comes, via Old French, from the Latin “Mandatum” - commandment. Mandatum novum: a new commandment.  While celebrating the passover, Jesus gave his twelve followers what he called “a new commandment”: “Love one another. By this all men will know that you are my followers.”

Later that night, one of them betrayed him to the authorities that wanted him dead; all but one fled from him when the army turned up, and before the next dawn that one had three times denied that he ever knew him. With his new commandment, Jesus instituted a new order, a new way of being, and of being known. Within twenty-four hours he was dead, his followers scattered. Instead of love, lies, fear, and betrayal.  

But it was not the only new commandment he gave. Another, and much more contested, was that spoken over the unleavened passover bread he was tearing up to share with them: “Hoc est corpus meum.” This is my body. With this simple metaphor he writes himself into sacred history, past and future. He accepts the death that follows hard upon this feast, and founds with these frail men a new order in which love and death are one.

I have not been as others were

A gloomy Friday afternoon is drawing to a close, and somehow that rack of clouds mounting in the northwest made me think of Poe. I'm not that familiar with anything other than “The Raven” with its croaking refrain of “nevermore,” but I thought this poem “Alone,” with its diabolic cloud, was suitably dour and askew. It touches on the threads of this week's conversation, and touches a chord with anyone who never quite felt they fitted in.

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were – I have not seen
As others saw – I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov’d, I loved alone.
Then – in my childhood – in the dawn
Of a most stormy life – was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold –
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by –
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Accidental poetry

Amid the usual trash and guff, this headline caught my eye today:

Slain father kind, brave.

The journalist's truncation here becomes poetry.  An epic note is sounded and an almost Sophoclean cadence falls. These four words are each rich; together they hold volumes. All the vowels are long, and the comma slows the pace still further to make the last word toll in a little silence. There is quasi-rhyme between the second and fourth words, and still stronger rhyme between the first and the fourth, giving the phrase a circular quality, a solemn echo, the sacredness of verse. The beginning and the end share a cognitive rhyme too: his bravery connects to his slaying in a way his kindness doesn't.  His kindness is an aspect of his fatherhood, as much in its suggestion of gentleness, as in its link to “kin,” and both are encircled by the more dramatic assertions of his courage and death. The absence of verbs makes the phrase more like direct speech, an address to a “bleeding piece of earth...ruins of the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times.” Yet there is a narrative here. That he was kind makes his slaying the more tragic, makes him the weaker victim. That he was brave gives nobility, dignity to his death, redeems it from the anguish of simple loss and makes us think “here cracks a noble heart.” It's a headline, not an epitaph, but it has an unintended beauty. It both demands and creates a moment. It's a window in the quotidian through which light breaks.  

Man was made for joy and woe

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.