ART-ZINE REFLECT
REFLECT... КУАДУСЕШЩТ # 16 ::: ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ
Klaudia RUMIN’SKA. ELIOTTIMESPACEDEATH
aвтор визуальной работы - A.Tat
Настоящий текст является попыткой исследования наиболее значимостных семантических полей в “Поэмах Ариэля” Т. С. Элиота. Исследование опиралось на составленный автором частотный словарь стихотворений, входящих в состав “Поэм”, на основании которого были выделены самые обширные и значимостные семантические поля.
Aвтор.
TIME
Time-space determinants belong to a group of the most important characteristics of literature because they make it possible to construct a general view of the artist’s world. In principle, they should be considered as a whole. However, in the case of T. S. Eliot’s Ariel Poems, where the semantic fields “Time” and “Space” are vast, it seems reasonable to treat each of them separately, especially when the time category is not only a structural element of the image, but also becomes the subject of the reflection itself. What is more, these two semantic fields are also inseparably connected with Eliot’s own system of values.
Placing the category of Time in the central position of the hierarchy of depicting the world corresponds with Simone Weil’s thinking – Weil claims that the contemplation of man’s life is an irreduciable to anything secret . Therefore, what better tool could there be to unveil the secrets of time than poetry or mysticism? In his contemplation of Time, the author of the Ariel Poems joined these two branches. Discovering of his secret is based on the conviction that the poet’s material is the intuitionally and fully sincerely chosen word in its concrete meaning and in its relation to the other words in the poems. Statistical analysis will produce the most complete picture possible of the poet’s approach to the category of Time, and will also indicate more accurately all his attempts to find the sense and boudaries of human existence. The dictionary of frequency of the Ariel Poems shows
a kind of regularity in treating the Time category, namely the division of Time into sacral time and linear time (non-sacral, human).
Keeping in mind all of the above, it seems reasonable to use the terminology used by Mircea Eliade in his book Sacrum, myth and history in the defuck off cool hackerion of the semantic field “TIME” in Ariel Poems.
Eliade claims that sacral time is infinite and endlessly repeatbl, thanks to periodical holidays, which actualize it and create the possibility of its returning. Sacral time is stagnant time, - without movement; the saying “time flies” does not relate to it. Sacral time can be illustrated as a spinning circle, on the circumfrence of which are particular points of cyclical holidays. These holidays repeat the mystery of gods’ creation: the intervals between them introduce a pause – the anticipation and preparation for the coming holiday, for the realization and repetition of the mystery of eternity.
Non-sacral time isn’t cyclical. Although holidays appear in it, they are different for each man living out of sacrum, therefore you cannot specify them. Because of this lack of specificity, you cannot predict when and how long they will last. Thus, non-sacral holidays cannot organize this time, they cannot repeat it. The non-sacral time of the irreligious man has a linear form, a beginning and an end, there is no place in it for God’s existence.
Sacral time and the presence of holidays is connected with space locating the centre of the world, with the aim of crossing the sacral space of gods and joining them in sacral points of time. Crossing the sacral space of gods allows one to enter the sacral, eternal and stagnant time because man becomes the contemporary of the gods. Time devoid of sacrum brings imminence, you cannot foresee it, it always leads towards death. The man who lives in sacral time has the possibility to visit the islands of eternity (holidays) and of entering the order to the non-sacral linear time. This makes linear time sensible and significant and thus repeatbl and concentric. And, because of it there is the possibility of attaining eternity and infinity of the human life in time .
Yet the first, the most superficial view on the semantic field “TIME” shows us that in the Ariel Poems there is a division between infinite time (stagnant, and unchangeable), in other words, sacral time, and that which is placed beyond the sacrum sphere – the linear time of human existence, threatening and leading to death.
In the poem Journey of the Magi we are witnesses of the monologue-recollection delivered by one of the Magi (the old man), to whose time was infuck off cool hackered the division between sacral and linear time. Linear time – the time of his life isn’t given exactly, we only know that he lives in a certain kingdom which is placed far from the center of the world and that he is waiting for death. He recalls the journey made to the sacral space (the center of the world), during which there was a crossing of the boundary between the sacral and the linear time. At the beginning of these recollections, we have the determination of the time boundary: the journey took place in winter and lasted very long:
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter’ .
This journey was filled with inconvieniences: the cities hostile, the towns unfriendly, the villages dirty and charging high prices, the camel ,en cursing and grumbling, and lasted so long that The Magi began to regret that they had ever started. But this journey, like the artistic process of creation had an ulterior aim: to find the sacrum sphere, cross the linear time and come into stagnant, linear time.To shorten the linear time, they decided to travel by night, so as not to have time for those considerations that bring despair:
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Eventually the night which seemed to be endless changes into dawn, bringing another space, another landscape, a lot different from the one described previously:
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
This valley appears to be beyond time, despite having some of time’s attributes: running stream, water-mill beating the darkness. Thanks to the use of gerunds time looks as it has stopped; we feel that the activities are done continuosly, and that time has been changed from linear to concentric, eternal. The confirmation of the exit from human time and entering God’s time is found in images-symbols of biblical origin:
Three trees on the low sky – symbol of the Calvary mountain ,
An old white horse – St. John’s Apocalypse ,
Six hands (. . .) dicing for the piece of silver – two images: Judas, and the second one -the soldiers, dicing for the Christ’s clothes (John 19: 24)
Feet kicking the empty wine-skins – wedding at Cana (John 2: 1-10)
By showing these images in one area we can feel the effect of the periodicity of the time – the historic, linear time is being “cut to pieces” and put within a hierarchy – certain holy symbols stay one next to the other in the eternal time which they define. Magus doesn’t realize that he has just entered eternal time, his journey (which depicts also the process of artistic creation) causes the opening of the boundaries of the human time and the entering into festive time, but he isn’t aware of it, he remains in his human linear time:
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
The wanderer seems not to recognize the obvious miracle: by finding the place exactly at the moment when Christ is born, their journey has already been set and completed in sacral time. It has become another sacral holiday. Both the poet and the reader know this, but Magus remains unaware.
This causes him to go out from sacral time again, (although, according to God’s plan he all the time remains in it, unconsciously) and re-enter the time of his existence, moving again into his world, far from the center, out of the sacral sphere. Still, being in sacral, stagnant time he cannot come back unchanged, having approached (even if uncosciously) the mystery and having become part of it.
By being part of the sacral calendar of holidays he becomes “hanged” between linear and sacral time. He no longer belongs only to linear time, having crossed the time boundary:
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation
With an alien people clutching their gods.
The people and gods of linear time have become alien to him. Though he left sacral time, it is now known to him and he will always be part of it. For this reason death (the end of the linear time) appears, as a form of redemption for him. This is reiterated by the entering into sacral time by the law of believer, whom, without doubt, the Magus is.
We find a similar feeling of sacral time in the second poem, A Song for Symeon, in which, like in the Journey of the Magi we are faced with the monologue of an old man, this time Symeon, who, as was the Magus, is inscribed between two times: linear and eternal, Old Testament and New Testament, pagan and Christian.
The similarity of themes of Journey of the Magi and A Song for Symeon has been noticed by many critics, and it seems reasonable to quote their ideas, which correspond to ideas proposed in this work.
M. C. Bradbrook in his work on Eliot’s poetry points out, that:
“The Journey of the Magi” and “A Song for Symeon” may be compared with “Gerontion” as dramatic lyrics presenting a picture of a whole life, seen from the end by an old man looking back and meditating upon its significance; with the difference that the significance is now found in the Incarnation .
Symeon has a gift: he can go into sacral time, while still living in linear time, and because of this he is able to find elements of stagnant time in linear time:
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
Symeon describes his life in the linear time; this defuck off cool hackerion is a kind of self-examination made before death, of which he has a presentiment.
Moreover, he anticipates death, because he believes in God’s promise.The old man can foresee the future: he knows what will happen to his descendants, his land; what is more, he has a knowledge much bigger than that of Christ’s parents, his words to Mary testify to it: And a sword shall pierce thy heart, Thine also. Such existence in suspension, between the biological and sacral time is felt as painful by Symeon. Because linear time, its momentary feeling, its subordination to nature, seasons, the changing of night into day, its static in changeability incessantly recall death, cause chaos and hopelessness. It is the reason why Symeon begs God for peace, for taking back the gift of foreseeing the horrifying future, full of pain and suffering:
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of though and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace. (. . .)
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying with my own death and deaths of those after me.
Symeon is scared, because he thinks he has been caught in the trap of time hung between the linear and the sacral (like Sybill from the Waste Land), from which there is no exit. In this way, it seems, his faith has been put to the test, and this is why he pleads for death, as it is the proof of the existence of God, a warranty of entering the sacrum sphere, going into the sacral time. When it has been accomplished and he has seen the Deliverer, he cries to God to fulfil His promise and move him into the sacrum:
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.
The third poem, joined with the previous two by the theme of recollection and by the presence of the verb “remember” and having a similar perception of time is Marina. Its protagonist is a “mixture” of two persons: Hercules and Pericles, both living in the ancient world .
The protagonist of Marina doesn’t know where he is, the images which he saw before are coming back to him, he mentions succeeding sins which lead to death, he describes reality, which becomes “ unsubstantial, reduced by a wind”, his images are submerged in the fog, he cannot find the time coordinates, he contradicts himself, saying at the same time “I have forgotten and remember”. That the time flies we can feel because the things wear out: “the garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking”. Space attributes show that he is in the sea, but the space isn’t stated accurately, undefined is also the time, because all is happening, according to words of the protagonist, “in a world of time beyond me”. We don’t know beyond which time the man is, it seems, that he is beyond time at all, even the linear time, characteristic for every being, is undetermined, because we don’t know if what the man says is reality or it is a dream. The time coordinates, although they seem to be quite exact:
I made this (. . .)
Between one June and another September
are meaningless, as the protagonist claims that he:
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
Here the explanation can be quite trivial: because the protagonist doesn’t belong to the sacrum sphere (we, at any rate, know nothing about it), he is devoid of time, he is, although half-way, conscious about his existence, but his existence is not determined, submerged in the fog, aimless, with no coordinates, its direction is determined by the undetermined “woodtrush calling through the fog”. The man, deprived of, or rejecting the sacrum sphere is committed to existence beyond time, flayed from sense, it is a kind of half-conscious felt hell, hung somewhere, in outer space, beyond dream and reality.
The thesis about the exhaustion that comes from living in the world out of the sacrum finds confirmation in the following poem of the Ariel Poems – Animula.
Here, the birth of a human being is treated as the crossing point from sacral time to linear time, i. e. birth is an exit from holy time. Perhaps thus is why the words “God” and “time” vary in the following stanzas:
“Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul”(...)
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
The exit from sacral time starts the tragedy, because in the linear time there are no directions, and so what is important is unknown, contradictory conceptions are mixed together, there is no hierarchy of good and evil:
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To a light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm.
Life in linear time is chaotic, the following defuck off cool hackerion of soul activities in the world would as well match the defuck off cool hackerion of behaviour of some not fully conscious being, such as an animal, or a child, who treats life as it was a game:
Moving between the legs of tbls and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee (...)
Together with the passage of time, the souls starts “growing up”, i. e. it starts to feel this passage. The linear time seems to be an extreme burden, which carries the feeling of the pain of existence, because in a life devoid of sacral time we can feel how slow the linear time is:
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
Week by week, offends and perplexes more
The dream is the only escape from the linear time, because it carries us into the unreal time. This time has some similarities to the concentric, sacral time:
The pain of living and the drugs of dream
But even this escape causes that the nonsense of the existence in the linear time is felt much more harder, and because of it, the soul (the human being) tries to spend its time in any way, just to make it pass. Nevertheless, this “urging the time forward” is a nonsensical activity. In effect, it extends time:
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”.
“Encyclopaedia Britannica” hints that a man is willing to possess the knowledge about the world he lives in, but this book cannot give him true knowledge, and since man is unable to build a hierarchy of good and evil, he cannot find himself in this lonely life in a new time:
Irresolute and selfish, mishappen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood, (...)
Eliot expresses a very pessimistic diagnosis of human condition, devoid of sacral time, tossed into linear time, unable to take and employ the divine hierarchy of good. Thus, it’s impossible to agree with the opinion of Hugh Kenner, who in his book about Eliot claims that:
The next Ariel poem, “Animula”, traces the career of a soul: not any soul, but one whose life is both unexciting (like Simeon’s) and static (like Prufrock’s) .
The opinion of Grover Smith is much more convincing, because he points exactly to generality of Eliot’s view on human life:
“Animula”, on the other hand , makes so general a pronouncement, not about a single spiritual dilemma but about the helplessness of the whole human condition, that it contrives to be more dismal and more personal at the same time. In “Animula” the soul, despite its natural appetite for good, can do nothing whatever. By resistance and inertia, it misses an “offered good” and ignores the grace extended .
The use of freely chosen names (Guiterriez, Boudin, Floret), and also the end of the poem: Pray for us, points to something purely opposite to Kenner’s opinion; these struggles with time and life on earth are applicable to everyone, because in the life of each of us we can feel the weight of linear time, the impossibility to be precise about good and evil, unsuitbl to a moral hierarchy, created by people the same as us. Because of this, Eliot exchanges the word “death” for the word “birth”, because this “birth” carries us to the profanum sphere, and, exactly, during our life we need so badly the providence:
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.
Eliot’s researcher, Thomas R. Rees seems to confirm the opinion about the words “death” and “birth” changing places. In his book on Eliot’s poetry he writes with reference to Animula:
The concluding stanza of the poem is in abrupt contrast to the quiet imagery of preceeding lines. Images of death and destruction are incorporated into the poet’s final prayer – (“Pray for Guiterreiez ...”). Here Eliot dramatizes the contrast between the soul’s quiet beginning and its violent ending. By changing “death” to “birth” in his quotation from the Ave Maria, he focuses our attention on the need to direct soul’s growth from its very beginnings. He prays fervently that the innocent soul of childhood will not become contaminated by its prolonged residence in an ugly, disfigured world.
The thesis about the passage from the sacral time into the linear seems to confirm the way of human soul described by Dante which Eliot has used in his poem:
Issues the simple soul, that nothing knows,
Save that, proceeding from a joyous Maker,
Gladly it turns to that which gives it pleasure.
Of trivial good at first it tastes the savour;
Is cheated by it, and runs after it,
If guide or rein turn not aside its love.
Hence it behoved laws for a rein to place,
Behoved a king to have, who at the least
Of the true city should discern the tower .
Human’s death, like in three previous poems, is being treated as a phenomenon of regaining the sacrum sphere, and, what is inevitably connected with the fact, going again from linear time to sacral, stagnant time.
In all four poems of the Ariel it is clearly noticeable that the division of the linear (human) time, belongs to the profanum sphere, while stagnant, concentric time (divine), is characteristic for the sacrum sphere.
In the poems, sacral time and present time are mingled, which gives a possibility of living in two dimensions: in history and in the present. The historical time is mixed with the present (e. g. in Journey of the Magi), and even with the future (A Song for Symeon). Eternity exists in the sacrum, coming into its boundaries we cross the sphere of the divine time – from the present to infinity. The sacrum deletes death, it gives the opportunity of eternal life in the standing sacral time. The victory of sacral eternity over the transitoriness of human life is a praise, a paean included in the Ariel Poems, a praise of spiritual superiority of a believer, a Christian. It happens that time is slowed down, that reality is seen in a very detailed manner, (as, e. g. in Animula), the elements which weren’t meaningful become meaningful, slowed down time fills the space and the man. Because of it, “the journey into the past” becomes possible.
To sum up the results of the semantic analysis of time characteristics, it can be said, that a special emphasis was put on the topological characteristics. Perception of time is realized through a close junction with space characteristics, and, as the material of semantic fields shows, the characteristics are less physical and more spiritual and cultural. The next chapter of the work is devoted to the space characteristics.
SPACE
In the poem the Journey of the Magi the space is open at first, it doesn’t have any boundaries, there are no geographical data, either. We can guess in which part of the world the activities described are happening thanks to the presence of camels and camel men. The space develops linearly, the Magi have on their way cities, towns and villages, the linear position of which is generated by repetition of conjunction “and”:
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices.
All that is placed in the open space has negative features, is unpleasant, dishonest and vulgar (camels – galled, sore-footed, refractory; camel men – cursing and grumbling; cities – hostile; towns – unfriendly; villages – dirty and charging high prices), together with nasty weather (“the worst time of the year”) and a much too long lasting journey (“such a long journey”) – all create an unfavourable impression through accumulation of inconveniences and obstacles. Magus recalls some far away space, in which he probably lives, which is in opposition to the hostile one he is in now. The attributes of this other space are associated with pleasure, pleasant time, convenience, and summer; it also has a vertical orientation:
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
The dawn brings an exit from this open, chaotic, threatening space to another dimension: the closed space (valley), having some order, having also the orientation of: up and down, a symbol of fertility, in which the seasons of the year change: the valley is placed “below the snow line” (and, possibly, also, below the death line):
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Vet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,
With a running stream and water-mill beating the darkness
At this point the space isn’t fully stated, and we aren’t yet fully sure, of the connotations concerning it, but the following stanzas give us essential information:
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
The biblical motives are determinants that this space is the holy one, it belongs to the sacrum, it constitutes the centre of the world. In this space there are no activities transferred in time, it joins the past, the present and the future. Unfortunately, Magus, living in the periphery, cannot fully realize in which space he is. He belongs to the other space (profanum), and, also, to the other time. Thus, he cannot comprehend the information given in the attributes of this space; nevertheless, he goes on with his searchings, which ends successfully: he finds the place (of the Christ’s birth), but, again, he is not able to evaluate the significance of this fact:
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
And this is the reason why he leaves the sacrum space and goes back to his kingdom, from the center of the world (sacrum) he moves into the peripheria (profanum), but the space, which had been pleasant and friendly in the past, loses its positive attributes:
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here (. . .)
It should be interesting to compare the ideas of Grover Smith about the division of Magus’ world and his impossibility of understanding the significance of death and birth, as well as the spaces that he is between:
The arrival of the Magi at the place of Nativity, whose symbolism has been anticipated by the fresh vegetation and the mill “beating the darkness” , is only a “satisfactory” experience. The narrator has seen and yet he does not fully understand; he accepts the fact of Birth but is perplexed by its similarity to a death, and to death which he has seen before(. . .) Were they led there by Birth or Death? Or, perhaps, for neither? Or to make choice between Birth and Death? And whose Birth or Death was it? Their own, or Anothr’s?Uncertainity leaves him mystifiedwhere (. . .)they linger not yet free to receive “the dispensation of the grace of God. The speaker has reached the end of one world, but despite his acceptance of the revelation as valid, he cannot gaze into a world beyond his own .
Likewise unpleasant is the snow space we see in the next poem,A Song for Symeon. The space given here is bordered by the space of the town, we don’t exactly know, what town it is. Perhaps, it is part of the Roman Empire, as is suggested by the use of the adjective “Roman” in the defuck off cool hackerion of hiacynths. The town isn’t described at all, it appears only as a point in the space, and is contrasted with another space, existing out of this point, the space into which the Symeon
Fleeding from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.
This defuck off cool hackerion of Symeon’s prophecy and treating the space of Jerusalem as dangerous we find in Rees:
Yet he (Symeon) knows that his old life of justice and comfort must give way to a time of “cords and scoirges and lamentations...”. He predicts the “glory and derision” to be suffered by those who will live and die by the Cross. In a vision he sees the destruction of Jerusalem, the scattering of his tribe, and the disappearance of all that he had revered in the old way of life .
For now on, the town seems to be quite a safe space, but Symeon’s prophecy causes that it becomes the space of pain and danger:
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Here also appears the vertical orientation, the opposition town/hill, in which the town (belonging to the Roman Empire) becomes the profanum sphere, whereas the hill gains the sacral attributes, because it is described as it was Golgotha, the place of Christ’s death:
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow, (...)
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
The confirmation of this opposition up/down (sacrum/profanum) is also the theme of mounting the saints’ stairs. But even that space, placed on the hill, despite having the attributes of sainthood, doesn’t seem to be safe. It isn’t the space which Symeon wants to enter, maybe because it is the saint space imagined by people, to enter which one has to suffer and meditate:
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Symeon realizes that the real holy space exists beyond the human time; this space you can enter only after death, and through death, and he begs God to transfer him to there:
Let thy servant depart
Having seen the salvation.
Although the Salvation hasn’t been accomplished in linear time yet, Symeon has already seen it in the divine time, and because of this he has experienced the salvation having thus experienced sacral time, he could be transferred to the sacral space.
In Animula we face an opposite space image. From the sacral sphere, the divine space, the soul goes out to human space, the profanum:
“Isues from the hand of God, the simple soul”
to a flat world of changing lights and noise,
the world gains the adjective “flat”, which means that from the beginning it is devoid of the opposition up/down. The human world doesn’t have any common points with the divine world; the soul is described in its movement “by the ground”:
Moving between the legs of tbls and of chairs,
The whole world of the soul is placed in a room, there appear the attributes characteristic for the house: toys, Christmas tree, sunlit pattern on the floor, silver tray, playing cards, servants. Even, if thye attributes of open space are mentioned, they are unreal, seem to be known only from postcards or pictures, because they are mentioned together with the elements placed in the room:
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea;
Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor
Even the image of running deer isn’t real – it’s only a picture decorating a silver tray:
And running stags around a silver tray.
The stags are closed in the world of the silver tray, in the similar way as the soul is closed in the human world, their position in the trap of time and space is similar.
In this room, the closed profanum sphere, far from the center of the world, referred to as the sacrum sphere, but being only the center of the flat human world, the soul is ageing, not even having experienced the exit from:
The pain of living and the drugs of dreams
which
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
and not having known anything which is out of the room:
Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
The earthly life is a particular type of prison, the exit from the open divine space, which isn’t stated in this poem directly but we can assume that it is an opposition to the earthly world, to closing more and more space of the room (at first, a certain movement is described: “moving”, “raising”, “falling”, gradually it becomes more and more static, ending with “curl up”). The world in which the soul lives is frightening in its duality (“light”/”dark”, “dry”/”damp”, “chilly”/”warm”, “faring forward”/”retreating”); it is hard to assess what is good, moral; one cannot be sure if the real things are indeed, what they seem to be; thus, despite their connotation, they threaten the soul:
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
In this closed world, the soul cannot find itself, it is lost, because it didn’t get used to living in such space:
Irresolute and selfish, mishappen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Therefore, the request said in the last stanza doesn’t sound strange The most fearful thing is the life which is the consequence of leaving the sacral space and being in an undefined, closed, full of contradiction flat human space.
In the poem Marina, the division between the sacrum and the profanum space is vanishing. The protagonist is in an undefined space, which is rather a dream space than the reality; it is a mythic space which doesn’t have any boundaries, any coordinates, any names, which only contains the elements of the primaval landscape of Creation: sea, shore, rocks, islands, fog:
What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands,
What water lapping the bow
The protagonist is on some ship, but we don’t know anything exact about it. We can see only fog, there is the scent of pine is in the air and the woodtrush is heard:
And scent of pine and the woodtrush singing through the fog
Closed in this space, devoid of directions and any coordinates, the protagonist recollects the sins leading to death; suddenly from the space the face emerges, it seems to be both closer, and at the same time, extremely far from him:
What is this face, less clear and clearer (...)
(...) more distant than stars and nearer than the eye (...)
In this strange space of dream you cannot estimate the distance, the space is trappy, different from the human and divine spaces. The feelings and sensations are also mixed, at the same time the heat and the frost appear:
Bowsprit crackced with ice and paint cracked with heat.
The protagonist doesn’t know if what is happening happens in the dream or in the reality, he doesn’t know where he is, he wants to get out from this unknown space:
(...) let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
Lost in the fog, scared, not knowing a direction of his roaming, the man follows the woodtrush, but he doesn’t know if the calling will help him out to a different space, or if it is only a tricky voice, created by the hope of a man living out of time and space:
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodtrush calling through the fog.
The protagonist is void of the consciousness of the existence of the sacrum sphere, therefore, he is lost, and has no reference to God. In the same way, in human space, he remains in suspense, submerged into an undefined space, on an unknown ship, out of time.
The study of the meaning, defining the time-space coordinates, as well as the hints found in the dictionary of frequency clearly show, that the main question, the dominant theme of the Ariel Poems is the question about the sense of human being in religion and outside, – the eternal mystery built in the human existence – what the death is? The attempt to answer the question, the defuck off cool hackerion and definition of the phenomena beginning and ending human life -–birth and death are dominants of these poems and constitute the the topic of the third part of the present work.
DEATH
In the Journey of the Magi, Magus, leaving the sacrum sphere and going into the profanum asks about the sense of what he has witnessed – he hasn’t yet found out the significance of those events:
(...) but set down
This set down
This: were we led all the way for
Birth or Death? (...)
Undoubtedly, he was the witness of birth, but this birth introduced another time, the time in which the human life outside religion (in this case out of Christianity) becomes impossible. Magus has his “old faith”, his “old gods”, who, after the experience of the journey to the place of Christ’s birth will be worshipped no more. They become the “alien gods”. He witnessed the birth and death, but he didn’t fully realize what they mean. The birth of Christ means the death of the old world, the old faith; it causes that Magus, living in the old time becomes “inscribed” in its death. This death which he faces while his life is still lasting means hanging between the old time to which he belonged, and the new, divine time to which he belongs. He made the journey, and trusted the new God, becoming in that way part of the sacral world. After this event he doesn’t feel any bond with his old kingdom, its people and gods:
(...)There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us,like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
Hung between the linear and sacral time, Magus believes that only death can transfer him again to the divine time, and in this way he will gain the victory over death in the linear time. Thus, his death will mean birth for the eternity and this is the reason why he finally claims:
I should be glad of another death.
And this is the proof that he belongs to sacral time and he believes that this death is not the end of his life but the beginning of life in the sacrum. It is impossible to agree with the opinion of Rajnath, who denies Magus’s awarness of belonging to the sacrum sphere:
They realize their journey was to see “the birth of Christ”, but not that it would cause a painful death to their old ways. They fail to realize that Death which was so painful to them is the prerequisite of birth, the spiritual rebirth .
Rajnath doesn’t take into account the phenomenon of faith, which is very important in Magus’s system of values.
Although Magus doesn’t realize the weight of the event, he is given the grace of faith, which changes his unconsciousness into the will to enter the divine space. Of course, it must be faith, because no human, even a non-believer, would ask for death. And it is rather hard to agree with Brian Barbour who claims, with reference to Magus, that:
The Birth he saw began the death of his world, old life, but did not, with the same certainity, give him anything new .
The interpretation of another critic, Grover Smith, appears to be more precise and closer to the text:
“Journey of the Magi” is the monologue of a man who has made his own choice, who has achieved belief in the Incarnation, but who is still part of that life which the Redeemer came to sweep away. Like Gerontion, he cannot break loose from the past. Oppressed by a sense of death-in-life (Tiresias’ anguish “between two lives”), he is content to submit to “another death” for his final deliverance from the world of old desires and gods, the world of “the silken girls”
A similar request is found in another voice, that of Symeon. As opposed to Magus, he is conscious about the existence of two worlds: sacral (Christianity) and human. Symeon has a prophetic gift. He is waiting for death because his existence in the linear time is devoid of sense. He feels the slowing down of time. It is more painful to wait for your death:
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Symeon isn’t eager to watch the Deliverer’ s death, he has already experienced it in sacral time; Christ’s birth is simultaneously the birth of the time which is death, of this time in which the previous protagonist, Magus, cannot live. It is the time of change, martyrdom and suffering:
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.
The suffering, prayer and martyrdom are reserved for those who haven’t experienced the new faith, for those who will have to or want to accept it and come into the sacrum. Symeon realizes how they will suffer, and because of it he doesn’t experience his own death only. He also feels the death of those people, death of Christ. It is a painful experience for him, so he wants to get rid of it by leaving the profanum world, so he asks God to fulfil his promise:
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.
A similar opinion about Symeon’s awareness of the meaning of “Death” in the “old dispensation” was pronounced by Thomas R. Rees, who claims:
The scattered quotations and echoes from Christian liturgy, including prayer “Grant us thy peace”, reproduce the cadences of the Bible and emphasize the old man’s awareness of the approach to the new dispensation. The closing lines “Let thy servant depart/Having seen thy salvation” echo the “Nunc Dimittis”, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. . .”. Simeon now knows that through his death and the death of the old order he will be spiritually reborn to the new order of Christ .
The next poem, Animula, treats birth as an exit from the sacral, divine space and, symultaneously, entering the human space, which is a death of its kind:
“Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul”
To a flat world (...)
On the Earth the soul will experience suffering, pain of existence, lack of moral coordinates allowing it to differentiate good from evil, temptations of material goods, the hunting of them, as they seem to be vital to existence, however, in the reality, they aren’t. The pain of existence in the profanum space can be, on the surface, alleviated by a dream; the desire of discovering the world cannot be satisfied, the man living out of the divine time commits the sin, and because of this, life becomes so horrifying. Death is the return to the sacrum sphere, crossing of the boundaries again, but this time in the opposite direction: from the profanum to the sacrum. The prayer which is a connection with the sacrum sphere, is necessary for a human being during his entire life, in the hour of birth especially, but not necesarilly in the hour of death. And this is the reason why the words of the prayer don’t seem to be strange:
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.
In Marina, where there is lack of division into sacrum/profanum, or, to be more precise, the protagonist doesn’t know such division because he belongs to the antic pagan world, there is no anthitesis of death and birth. Death is shown here not as the entering of the divine happy world, but as a punishment for one’s sins: anger, vanity, pride and impurity. These sins cause the most severe punishment: death:
Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death
Death is not entering eternity, it is vanishing, the end of being. It is different from the image of death shown in previous poems:
Are become unsubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace disolved in place.
The vision of the world without God is becoming dreary – the life on Earth is the only incarnation of a being, after its death there is nothing. The protagonit asks for changing of his life. It will enable him to live in a different way, he asks for hope, which, if there is not faith, is the main “engine” of life:
(...) let me
Resign my life for this life (...)
(...) the hope, the new ships.
But, because he is a man living out of religion, the answer to his request is only “the woodtrush calling through the fog” – the prediction of continuous suffering.
The Ariel Poems give a clear answer to the question about the sense of existence – human life has a deep sense only when it is based on Christianity. Performed by Christ the miracle of Resurrection is attainable by every religious person – no matter how horrifying his life was; if he believes, he will go out from the profanum full of suffering to the sacrum sphere such is God’s promise. Birth is a much sadder phenomenon than death because it is the beginning of a hard way throughout the earthly, human life, the way full of false beacons, tiring and lasting very long. Death is a catharsis, the aim in its own. It is not a punishment: it is grace because it leads to the sacrum. For people who don’t know Christianity, and who remain in the “old dispensation” death is the end of their world. Afterwards there is nothing. Rejection or lack of God in life cause that sins are punished by taking away hope -–the end of the linear time. Death is the final act, carrying nothing. The gods, or the god of the “old dispensation” is not a human – god, he is the severe god who punishes. He is different from Christ, who loves and understands.
In all poems death is felt in the psychical realm, it isn’t given physical feelings, we have no defuck off cool hackerion of pain, dying, suffering. This death has a philosophical and not a sensual dimension.
следующая Elvina ZELTSMAN, Rafael LEVCHIN. FILMS & MOVIES.
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