Slow to Summon
REMINGTON GRAVES
Sing to me O death
Lines of choking neck like alabaster
Caress me O death
Let linger sighs of soft disaster
You beckon and I want to follow
Since childhood your call doth slither
Past marble slabs carved hither
Where is thy sting O death?
Where shall we meet?
How slow to summon honey milk upon your breath
Hell thy heaven hold grip slipping O so
sweet
∞
Satanis
RAY LAURENT
This is a 1970 American documentary film about Anton Szandor LaVey and The Church of Satan. Ray Laurent directed, produced and released on June 17, 2003. The film was shot in San Francisco, California. It is a compilation of ritual footage and interviews with some of LaVey’s family, his neighbors, and a handful of church members. A priest gives his two rusty cents and a couple of Mormons, who looked like they stepped out of a 1950’s family film, babble about their wacky ways. Fun for the entire family.
Imperfect Recall
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
My own acquaintance and relationship with poetry is bound up with acquisition, memorization, and recital. That is: I realized when I was quite young that I could learn poems “by heart,” as the saying goes. This may have something to do with early experience in compulsory religious and scriptural studies. It was no hardship for me to commit hymns and verses of the Bible (though not so many psalms, oddly enough) to memory. Furthermore, I found that this fairly simple attainment could, as well as give me satisfaction, win me praise. This helped make up for my almost dyslexic inability to read music, or to play a note on any instrument. And, when it came to poetry, I would squirm at the embarrassed clumsiness with which my classmates “read” beautiful lines that they obviously felt were effeminate by definition.
Not that there was anything effeminate about the sort of verse upon which I cut my teeth. Originating from a naval family, and brought up in all-boys boarding schools, I was full of Henry Newbolt and Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Babington Macaulay. Even cornier heroic and patriotic poems and songs have a hold on me to this day. (The hymns and Bible verses have lost their grip, without being forgotten.) This helped rather than hindered my later exposure to W. H. Auden and Wilfred Owen, the latter of whose poems had the effect of a swift uppercut to my chin. It wasn’t easy to “learn” all ninety-nine lines of “1 September 1939,” though I can still get through it if I have a prompter, but Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is one of the poems I take with me everywhere and don’t need to look up. By a useful coincidence, Cecil Day-Lewis was an “old boy” of the prep school at which my father worked after he left the Royal Navy, and the first time I ever had a book signed was by this quasi-mythical figure of “The Thirties.” He had come, as he did every year, to judge the school’s “poetry saying” competition. I thought then, and think now, that there was value in that name for it.
At any rate, I suppose that Homer would have approved. And probably Shakespeare, too. I cannot claim much authority for myself, but I think that there is something of the gold standard about the echo and recall of poetry in the conscious mind. For example, I could now argue from various positions that Ezra Pound was a lousy poet as well as a depraved pseudo-intellectual (especially after reading the muscular treatment accorded him, for his classical solecisms alone, by Robert Conquest). But I “knew” this as soon as I opened Pound’s books, and saw the sinister gibberish on the page. I am forced to concede that he must have “had” something as an editor, since I cannot imagine life without some of Eliot’s Choruses or Yeats’s “An Irish Airman Forsees His Death,” and since both men acknowledged his help and advice. Poetry, to put it another way, is also a good training in the ironic.
Book-signings and encounters to one side (I heard Auden read “On the Circuit” in Great St. Mary’s Church in Cambridge in its year of publication), the first true poet I ever met was James Fenton, who was my contemporary at Oxford. He had won early fame and a prize for a sonnet sequence, but he was forever composing bits of blues, along with parodies and what he sometimes called “rude songs.” This proved to be equally true, as I got older and got to know them, of Robert Conquest and Kingsley Amis. A preferred form was the limerick, of which I still have a hundred or so hard-wired into my cortex in case of need (or opportunity). Not all these need be filthy—I have a special reserve of clean ones, some without even a double entendre—but all of them do need to follow a certain simple but exacting scheme. It depresses me beyond measure that most people I meet cannot even recite, much less compose, this gem-like form. Nor can any student in any of my English classes produce a single sonnet of Shakespeare: not even to get themselves laid (the original purpose of the project).
I worry that by phrasing things in this way I may myself be adding to the general coarsening and deafness. Of course my test isn’t the one true test: who can safely say that they have memorized Don Juan, for instance? But then who could you count as reliable who could not manage a stave or two of The Waste Land? The word “Koran” means “the recitation,” and it seems that in Arabic its incantation can induce trance by sheer power and beauty. (Auden was wrong, in his valediction for Yeats, to say that “poetry makes nothing happen.”) At least this restores the idea of a relationship to the theoretically divine, and to the audience. (Auden also wrote of Yeats that “mad Ireland hurt you into poetry,” which at any rate implies the possibility of a reciprocal relationship between poetry and the reality of which Eliot believed that “human kind” could not bear too much.)
Yet very often, late at night, when I am not tired enough for sleep but too tired to carry on with absorbing or apprehending anything “serious” or new, I will walk over to the appropriate shelf and pull out the tried and the true: the ones that never fail me. And then I will always stay up even later than I had intended. And sometimes, in the morning, I really can “do” the whole of “Spain 1937” or “The Road to Mandalay,” and can appreciate that writing is not just done by hand.
Originally Published: October 30th, 2005
∞
From De Rerum Natura
LUCRETIUS
Book 1
2
Now, for the rest, lend ears unstopped, and the intellect’s keen edge; Severed from cares, attend to a true philosophical system; Lest it should hap that my gifts which I zealously set forth before you, Scorned, you abandon untouched before they can be comprehended. For ’tis high lore of heaven and of gods that I shall endeavour Clearly to speak as I tell of the primary atoms of matter Out of which Nature forms things: ’tis “things” she increases and fosters; Then back to atoms again she resolves them and makes them to vanish. “Things,” for argument’s sake, my wont is to speak of as “matter”; Also the “seeds” of those things to name the small parts which beget them: Further, those infinitesimal parts, (an alternative figure) Primary “atoms” to call, whereof matter was all first created.
3
When in full view on the earth man’s life lay rotting and loathsome, Crushed ’neath the ponderous load of Religion’s cruel burdensome shackles, Who out of heaven displayed her forehead of withering aspect, Lowering over the heads of mortals with hideous menace, Upraising mortal eyes ’twas a Greek who first, daring, defied her; ’Gainst man’s relentless foe ’twas Man first framed to do battle. Him could nor tales of the gods nor heaven’s fierce thunderbolts’ crashes Curb; nay rather they inflamed his spirit’s keen courage to covet. His it should first be to shiver the close-bolted portals of Nature. Therefore his soul’s live energy triumphed, and far and wide compassedWorld’s walls’ blazing lights, and the boundless Universe traversed Thought-winged; from realms of space he comes back victorious and tells us What we may, what we must not perceive; what law universal Limits the ken of each, what deep-set boundary landmark: Then how in turn underfoot Religion is hurled down and trampled, Then how that victory lifts mankind to high level of heaven.
4
One apprehension assails me here, that haply you reckon Godless the pathway you tread which leads to the Science of Nature As to the highroad of sin. But rather how much more often Has that same vaunted Religion brought forth deeds sinful and godless. Thus the chosen Greek chiefs, the first of their heroes, at Aulis, Trivia’s altar befouled with the blood of Iphianassa. For when the equal-trimmed ribbons, her virgin tresses encircling, Unfurled from each fair cheek so bravely, so gallantly fluttered; Soon as she saw her sorrowing sire in front of the altar Standing, with serving-men near, their gleaming knives vainly concealing, And, at the sight of her plight, her countrymen bitter tears shedding; Dumb with fear, her knees giving way, to earth she fell sinking. Nor in her woe could it be of avail to the hapless maiden That it was she first gave to the king the title of father. For, by men’s hands upborne, she was, quivering, led to the altar; Not, forsooth, to the end that, sacred rites duly completed, With ringing clarion song of marriage she might be escorted; But, pure maid foully slain in wedlock’s appropriate season, That she a victim might fall ’neath the slaughter stroke of her father, So that a happy and lucky dispatch to the fleet might be granted!Such are the darksome deeds brought to pass by Religion’s fell promptings!
6
Now this terror and darkness of mind must surely be scattered, Not by rays of the sun, nor by gleaming arrows of daylight, But by the outward display and unseen workings of Nature. And her first rule for us from this premiss shall take its beginning; “Never did will of gods bring anything forth out of nothing.” For, in good sooth, it is thus that fear restraineth all mortals, Since both in earth and sky they see that many things happen Whereof they cannot by any known law determine the causes; So their occurrence they ascribe to supernatural power. Therefore when we have seen that naught can be made out of nothing, Afterwards we shall more rightly discern the thing which we search for:— Both out of what it is that everything can be created, And in what way all came, without help of gods, into being.
7
If out of nothing things sprang into life, then every species From all alike could be born, and none would need any seed-germ. First, mature men might rise from the sea, and scale-bearing fishes Out of the earth; or again, fledged birds burst full-grown from heaven. Cattle and other beasts, and the whole tribe of wild herds, ungoverned By any fixed law of birth, would of desert and tilth take possession. Nor would each fruit be wont to remain to its own tree peculiar, But all would change about, so that all could bear all kinds of produce. How, if for each distinct kind there were no producing corpuscles,Could any matrix for matter exist that is fixed and unchanging? But, as it is, since all from definite seeds are created, Therefore each is born and comes into regions of daylight From out the place where dwells its substance, the primary atoms. Thus each cannot spring from all in promiscuous fashion, Since a peculiar power indwells each fixed kind of matter. Secondly, why do we see spring flowers, see golden grain waving Ripe in the sun, see grape clusters swell at the urge of the autumn, If not because when, in their own time, the fixed seeds of matter Have coalesced, then each creation comes forth into full view When the recurrent seasons for each are propitious, and safely Quickening Earth brings forth to the light her delicate offspring? But if from nothing they came, then each would spring up unexpected At undetermined times and in unfavouring seasons, Seeing that there would then not be any primary atoms Which from untimely creative conjunction could be kept asunder. Nor, again, thirdly, would time be needed for growing of matter When the seeds unite, if things can grow out of nothing; For in a trice little children would reach the fulness of manhood: Trees, again, would spring up by surprise, from earth sheer outleaping. But ’tis apparent that none of this happens, since all things grow slowly, As is but normal when each from a fixed seed in a fixed season Grows, and growing, preserves its kind: thus telling us clearly That from appropriate atoms each creature grows great and is nourished.
From Book II
5
But do not think that the gods condescend to consider such matters, Or that they mark the careers of individual atoms So as to study the laws of Nature whereunto they conform. Nevertheless there are some, unaware of the fixed laws of matter, Who think that Nature cannot, without supernatural power, Thus nicely fit to manners of men the sequence of seasons, Bringing forth corn, yea, all earth’s fruits, which heavenly Pleasure, Pilot of life, prompts men to approach, herself them escorting, As by Venus’ wiles she beguiles them their race to continue So that humanity may not fail. When therefore they settle That for the sake of man the gods designed all things, most widely In all respects do they seem to have strayed from the path of true reason. For even if I knew nothing concerning the nature of atoms, Yet from heaven’s very lore and legend’s diversified story I would make bold to aver and maintain that the order of Nature Never by will of the gods for us mortals was ever created . . .
From Book III
15
Now then, in order that you may learn that the minds of live creatures And their imponderable souls are to birth and death alike subject, I will proceed to compose such verse as shall earn your attention, By long study amassed, and devised by delightful endeavour. Please comprise these natures twain ’neath one appellation: When I pass on, for example, to speak of the soul, how ’tis mortal, Know that I speak of the mind as well, inasmuch as together Both one single entity form, one composite substance. Firstly, then, since I have shewn that ’tis rare, and composed of small bodies; Shaped from much smaller atoms than fashion a liquid like water, Atoms far smaller than those which constitute mizzling and smoke-clouds— For it is nimbler by far, and a far feebler blow sets it moving, Stirred as it is by the films which mist and smoke shed around them, As for example when steeped in sleep we seem to see altars Breathing forth flames of fire, and exalting their smoke to the heavens; Doubtless from objects like these such films as I speak of are gendered. Since too, when vessels are shattered, you see how in every direction Gushes the liquid flood, and the contents utterly vanish; Since once again the mists and the smoke are dispersed by the breezes; Know that the soul, too, is scattered abroad, and dies much more quickly, And is the sooner resolved back into its primary atoms, Once it has quitted the limbs of a man and abandoned his body. For when the body, which forms its receptacle, cannot contain it, Being from any cause crushed, or by issue of life-blood enfeebled, How can you think that the soul can by fluid air be encompassed? How can the air, than our body more rare, be able to hold it?
From Book V
39
Next, having gotten them huts and skins and fire; and when woman Mated with man shared a man’s abode; and when family duties Therein were learnt; and as soon as they saw their own offspring arising; Then ’twas that mankind first began to lose power of endurance. Fire made their gelid frames less able to bear the cold weather Out ’neath the open sky; their virility Venus exhausted: Childrens’ caresses too easily sapped the proud spirit of parents. Neighbours in those days, too, began to form friendly agreements Neither to inflict nor receive any hurt, and asked for indulgence Towards their women and bairns, as with cries and gesticulations And in their stammering speech they tried to explain to each other That it is meet and right that all should pity the helpless. And although harmony could not be won in every instance, Yet did the greater part observe the conventions uprightly; Else long since would the human race have been wholly abolished, Nor could their seed till this present day have continued the species.
∞