The Write Thing

So the readings went. The suggestion was to be “temperate”, like Shakespeare’s summer’s day, or like a good old Christian interpreting the Bible that nobody wrote. Temperance, that was what 2008 was about.

Edgar Allan Poe became a member of the Sons of Temperance societies in August 1849. Based on the graph above, the meaning of temperance in this case would be sobriety. How else could it be, considering that Poe was an alcoholic? Strangely enough, when the word temperance comes to mind, that meaning in English is almost lost to me. Yes, the word “sober” can also be used as “proper” or “controlled” to some extent. But is a non-alcoholic somebody “controlled” or “proper”, or is (s)he simply a dry drunk?

This brings me back to the question of temperance, and the “no-no” state in the world of alcoholics…what nobody likes to be called: dry drunk. From what I understood, a dry drunk is the person who stops drinking alcohol but remains an alcoholic in behavior and lifestyle. Technically, then, you would stop being an alcoholic when you no longer consume alcohol but…is alcohol the worst of your issues, or only a good cover-up for what you do not want to deal with? If that is the case, we are all technically alcoholics, no matter whether we drink only water, as we all have issues we do not want to face. Now, are we all dry drunks? I guess most of us are, partially, in one way or another.

With the last day of December gone only a week ago, I would officially declare my year of temperance gone. I have now become acquainted with wet and dry drunkenness, and this has opened a new question for 2009. In what way am I a dry drunk?

Good old Poe probably had a poem (nothing better than having your name embedded in the noun denoting your profession to be a master) for this, or more. I dare myself to open that technical recueil on the man that I once rescued from a dusty shelf down near Port Royal RER B station as I fight off sleep and the melancholy of my good ol’ C having flown herself off to Brisbane (even when it would have never worked between us…but what the hell?)

And he has, as poetry always does, an answer:

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow –

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I have not written on this blog for quite a while. It has been a difficult month, full of retrospection and introspection, with some good moments but, basically, lots of inner self questioning, if such a combination of words exists in the English language. There has been pain inside and also outside, in my “circle of trust”, and it has had a very strong impact on me. I hope eventually the whole experience will make me a more insightful human being and a better person.

So, if I had to choose poetry to illustrate the moment — I recall mentioning poetry earlier in this blog as my foie gras in a world of prosaic corned beef, or something of the sort — there should be some Emily Dickinson. Sagittarian, tortured, passionate and suffering goddess of illuminated seclusion, her writing dissects the anatomy of feelings in a methodically simple way. I would say it is the kind of poetry where each word weighs a ton, and there are so few that missing one single element in her compositions results in major loss.

I read on a website the other day that the poem I quote below was allegedly written for her sister in law, with whom the poetess was apparently infatuated. Perhaps associating lonely Dickinson (the typical Puritan spinster, at least in form) with lesbianhood is an oversimplification, but let’s agree that as we read her it is impossible not to perceive that certain component which denotes someone as being really sensitive to the female world. But no more words from me, let’s hear it from Miss Dickinson herself:

What mystery pervades a well!

The water lives so far,

Like neighbor from another world

Residing in a jar.

The grass does not appear afraid;

I often wonder he

Can stand so close and look so bold

At what is dread to me.

Related somehow they may be, –

The sedge stands next the sea,

Where he is floorless, yet of fear

No evidence gives he.

But nature is a stranger yet;

The ones that cite her most

Have never passed her haunted house,

Nor simplified her ghost.

To pity those that know her not

Is helped by the regret

That those who know her, know her less

The nearer her they get.

It appears that the lesbian code can be cracked by replacing the word “nature” in the poem with the name of the undisclosed destinataire, Susan Gilbert. Regardless of whether it was Susan or somebody else the poem was directed to, I cannot but marvel at Dickinson’s deftness in portraying the mystery of others, the hidden self, or selves, of le grand autre. The well (the other) is a mystery, a lonely, perhaps exciting mystery. Sometimes, paradoxically, the nearer we get to it — as to nature itself — the more unfathomable it becomes.

In a previous posting, I referred to my feelings about poetry. I have been doing a lot of thinking about that in recent days, and have been very prone to reading challenging verses in my explorations around town. It struck me that there seem to be some associations we could make between writers, even when they may have never met, or may not even come from the same countries. By this I do not mean “influential writing”, the kind Borges is known to inflict upon incautious readers. I am speaking about connections, similarities in the ways of seeing the world, or suffering it, for that matter.

The case that comes to mind today is that of Sylvia Plath and Alejandra Pizarnik. Plath (1932-1963) was born in Massachusetts, and Pizarnik (1936-1972) in Buenos Aires. I remember reading Pizarnik’s Sala de Psicopatología almost a year ago on a Saturday afternoon in Buenos Aires, as I was sitting in my balcony. Many years before, I had read Plath’s The Bell Jar and, later, one of the best poems ever written: Lady Lazarus*.

It is at some point striking (at least it was to me) how both writers approach the subject of death and suffering as worn-out souls in a world of less sensitive beings. The harshness of Pizarnik’s taboo Spanish, the sharp and cutting sounds of Plath’s monosyllables in her own inverted eulogy to everything and nothing are the meeting points of their synergy, which is particular to each of them and common to both in nature. I have read lengthy discussions on the authors’ death techniques, the repeated suicide attempts and other alleged similarities, but I do not really think those are interesting themselves. Their writing and the distinct communion of chance it holds are far more important to me in drawing a common line. I see these more as Double Vie de Véronique traits than as a mirroring reflection of mutual admiration. I ignore Plath’s or Pizarnik’s actual knowledge of one another, and it is far from relevant. The key element seems to be parallelism instead of imitation, art that emerges unique in the form of two different but resembling realities.

*If you click on the link you will be able to access the BBC website, where Plath’s own reading of the poem is posted. A “must do” if you want to enjoy a blissful moment of perfection.