Thursday Poetry

Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how well, they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The Outlander

By Gil Adamson, Published 2007

I found The Outlander through one of my favorite book sites, Bas Bleu. Gil Adamson is a Canadian poet whose first book went on to win the 2007 Hammett Prize for crime fiction.

Adamson’s poetry background shines through in the darkly atmospheric book. Adamson admits that the book began from the outline of one of her poems and centered on the image of ““a young woman, dressed in black, running like hell.” 

That woman, referred to as “the widow” is 19 year-old Mary Boulton, running for her life after murdering her husband. Mary escapes into the Albertan wilderness in order to escape her vengeful brother-in-laws who have set out to track her down. While trying to elude her trackers, she is also beset by a host of hallucinations which sneak up on her in the deep quiet of the mountains.

The Outlander touches on memory, loss, madness and fear, not of the outside world, but of the darkness in one’s own mind. The memories haunting Mary slowly reveal themselves to the reader: 

“Unpopulated, these memories, but each one nonetheless saturated with human presence, like an unattended meal still steaming. Something was coming, some message—each memory sculpting its own silhouette.” (64) 

Mary eventually encounters other outsiders (or outlanders) during her escape: a dwarf running a mining store, a giant Italian who makes moonshine, the Ridgerunner, who has lived in isolation for thirteen years in the Canadian wilderness, as well as various tribes of Native Americans. All living on the edges of society, “... lucky miscreants, outlanders, errors that should not exist but lived on anyway” (314). 

Fire in the Blood

By Irène Némirovsky, Published 2007

“In the end it all comes down to the same thing, 
the same desire...the same roaring, all-consuming 
tidal wave of love.” 

Fire in the Blood was also published after Némirovsky’s death. Smaller in scale and scope than her masterwork Suite Française, this novel is a brief meditation on passion, youth and old age. Inspired by the notebooks she kept as a teenager, Némirovsky wanted to respect the past and show how youth slowly becomes wisdom.

In the summer of 1938 she reread Proust’s À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur (Within a Budding Grove) and highlighted this specific passage:

“We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.” (133)

The book’s older narrator Sylvestre, returns to the quiet village of his youth hoping for solitude. Némirovsky excels at describing French provincial life, most likely because the village has striking similarities to the one she and her family lived in until her arrest by the Nazis. Her narrator notes: “This region, in the middle of France, is both wild and rich. Everyone lives in his own house, on his own land, distrusts his neighbors, harvests his wheat, counts his money and doesn’t give a thought to the rest of the world” (4).

However, a tragedy awakens in Sylvestre long dormant memories of a passionate love affair from his youth. “It wasn’t just about the pleasures of the flesh. No, it wasn’t that simple. The flesh is easy to satisfy. It’s the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love, to despair, to burn with any kind of fire...That was what we wanted” (127).       

Literary T-shirts!

An fun article at the LA Times. 

 
From Out of Print Clothing

Novel-T makes classic baseball-style shirts.


Kafka Cotton also has some fun shirts, sold on Etsy. 


"All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life." -Captain Ahab, Moby Dick

Suite Française

By Irène Némirovsky


I’ve long been fascinated with the writing methods of novelists and the “story” behind the story. What inspires them? How do they come up with ideas and characters? How do they write? Do they stick to a serious schedule or just do it when they feel like writing?

J.K. Rowling has said in interviews that she outlined all of the Harry Potter books before even writing a single word. She also took two months to work out any plot issues before beginning the next book in the series.

Ian McEwan recently gave an interview stating he keeps a large notebook full of ideas where he sketches out the beginning of novels. He came up with the idea for Atonement with a single character. He said the image came to him, “of a young woman coming into an elegant drawing room holding some wild flowers she's just picked, looking for a vase, aware of a young man outside who's gardening, wanting to talk to him but also wanting to avoid him—and then realizing that I'd started a novel but I didn't know anything about it.”

I think it is partly that reason that I loved Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française so much. The book contains two Appendixes outlining the story behind the half-finished novel, as well as Némirovsky’s own notes and sketches developing themes and characters.

The two novellas that make up Suite Française, “Storm in June” and “Dolce,” are beautifully written and meant to be part of a five-part masterwork that Némirovsky never finished because she was sent to Auschwitz in 1942, dying soon afterwards.

In the first novella, “Storm in June,” Némirovsky describes in vivid detail the exodus of people fleeing Paris as the Nazis approached. Though not a native, she excels at describing the details and minutia of the various social classes clamoring for food and shelter along the clogged roads leading away from the city. Her dedication to in-depth characterization comes through, giving each character and family a unique viewpoint and history, affecting how they deal with the chaos around them.

The second, “Dolce,” takes place in a small town in the French countryside.  Taken over by the Nazis, Némirovsky chronicles the gradual shift in attitudes towards the invaders. While some inhabitants remain vigilant, many develop a casual likeness of the Germans, and many women take up intimate relationships with the soldiers. The story centers on the wealthy, but lonely, Lucile Angellier, who begins to develop feelings for the German officer staying in her family’s home.

Born into a wealthy Russian Jewish family, Némirovsky fled during the Revolution, finally settling in France as a young woman. She quickly became a well-respected author in literary circles, publishing short stories and novels.

She married Michael Epstein and they had two daughters Denise and Elizabeth. As the Nazis invaded Paris Némirovsky and her family fled the city to live in the French countryside. It was there in 1941 that she began Suite Française. It says that she began the writing process “by writing notes on the work in progress and thoughts inspired by the situation in France. She created a list of characters, both major and minor, then checked that she had used them correctly. She dreamed of a book of a thousand pages, constructed like a symphony, but in five sections, according to rhythm and tone. She took Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as a model” (427).

This writing process began at a young age.  Némirovsky would write in a large journal all ideas that come to her. She filled notebooks with thoughts about her characters, describing their appearance, education, childhood, and all the stages of their lives in chronological order. She would then use two pencils, red and blue, to underline the essential characteristics to be retained.

Sections of her journal are published in the Appendix of Suite Française, allowing the reader to see her thoughts about the third novella in the series (which she never completed). It says that, “Everyday, after breakfast, she would go out, sometimes walking for ten kilometres before finding a spot she liked. Then she would start working” (392).

In her notes it is clear she felt her time was short, giving her an urgency to complete as much as possible. She wrote the following passage just a few weeks before she was captured and sent to Auschwitz:

                        To lift such a heavy weight,

                        Sisyphus, you will need all your courage.

                        I do not lack the courage to complete the task

                        But the goal is far and the time is short.

After she was sent to Auschwitz in July, she died only a month later on August 17, 1942. Her husband Michael was then arrested and sent in October of that year where he was sent straight to the gas chamber. Immediately after arresting her father, the police went to Denise’s school to take her as well. Her teacher hid her, and she and her sister spent the rest of the war being hidden across France.

Denise happened to take her mother’s manuscript when she and her sister fled the village. She said that she had often seen her mother writing in tiny script, to save ink, in her large leather-bound notebook.

After the war ended the girls attempted to find their parents, but to no avail. Still carrying the notebook containing Suite Française the girls couldn’t bring themselves to read it, assuming it was a diary.

It was only much later that they decided to give the notebook to the Institute Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine, an organization dedicated to documenting memories of the war. Before giving it over, Denise decided to type it out. Using a large magnifying glass to decipher the tiny handwriting she soon realized it wasn’t just notes or a diary, but a book. She sent the manuscript to a publisher and Suite Française was finally printed 64 years after her mother’s death. 

I'm Thinking of Reading....

Gone Tomorrow, by P.F. Kluge

The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt

The Sea, by John Banville (winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize)

Biology of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Matter And Miracles

By Dr. Bruce Lipton, Published 2005

Over the past year I've become more interested in books dealing with the power of the mind and how our emotions and thoughts can affect our bodies and lives. Thus far I've read and enjoyed, Candice Pert’s Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine and The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart. Even Jill Bolte’s fascinating medical memoir My Stroke of Insight touched on the mind-body connection.

Dr. Bruce Lipton has thrown his hat into the ring with Biology of Belief where he outlines a simple, yet profound idea: “Your beliefs act like filters on a camera, changing how you see the world. And your biology adapts to those beliefs” (143).

Lipton outlines a scientific world that has blindly adopted the Darwinian belief that hereditary factors are passed from parent to child and these factors control the characteristic of the individual’s life. The genes present control the physical characteristics as well as emotional behaviors of the individual.

In the late 1980s the Human Genome Project began to create a catalogue of all genes, and scientists thought they would find a minimum of 120,000 genes. Instead they only found 25,000, not nearly enough to account for the complexity of human life.

Over time Lipton began to reject the Darwinian notion of competition. While he was on sabbatical at a medical school in the Caribbean, he began to focus on life’s harmony, not struggle, and how the world cooperates instead of competes. Lipton does not suggest that competition is not a vital and important part of the natural world, but he begins to realize that perhaps studying the more cooperative way organisms operate might be beneficial.

He points to the first scientist to establish evolution as scientific fact nearly 50 years before Darwin, French biologist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck. His theory suggested an evolution based on instructive, cooperative interaction among organisms and their environment. Lamarck said that organisms acquire and pass on adaptations necessary for survival

After much research Lipton begins to realize that the environment a cell is in plays a huge role in the cell’s development. He points out that when the nucleus (or brain) is removed from the cell, the cell can survive for up two or more months without genes. It continues to ingest/metabolize food and to communicate. This finding leads Lipton to believe that it is the cell membrane that controls cellular life.

Through various tests Lipton finds that a cell’s operations are primarily molded by its interaction with the environment, not its genetic code. It is the job of the membrane in single cell to be aware of the environment and to set in motion an appropriate response to that environment. Smart cells are imbued with intent and purpose; actively seeking environments that support their survival while avoiding hostile, toxic ones.

Lipton takes his concept a step further when he happens to pick up the book The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature by Heinz R. Pagels while waiting at an airport. The quantum perspective reveals the universe as an integration of interdependent energy fields and an entangled in mesh-work of interactions. Lipton begins to see that the flow of information in quantum universe is holistic and cellular constituents are in complex web of crosstalk and feedback.

Lipton uses the example of a breast cancer scan: The diseased tissue appears dark on the scan because it emits a different energy from the healthy cells surrounding it. Energy signatures pass through our bodies and travel through space as invisible waves, and all organisms communicate and read their environment by evaluating energy fields.

He goes on to state that thoughts are the mind’s energy, and they influence how the physical brain controls the body’s physiology. This energy can activate or inhibit a cell’s function-producing proteins. However, Lipton makes it clear he does not believe simply by thinking positive thoughts a person can “cure” themselves of an ailment.

He does point out that the self-conscious mind is reflexive in nature, and it can “learn” perceptions, and those perceptions then become the mind’s “truth.” But what if the learned perceptions are inaccurate?

The idea of the Placebo Effect is then discussed, and Lipton comes up with some interesting observations about medicine and beliefs. He cites a Baylor School of Medicine study published in 2002 in New England Journal of Medicine regarding surgery patients with knee pain. The surgeon conducting the study was attempting to figure out which part of the surgery gives the patient relief. Breaking up the participants into three groups, the people in the third group received no surgery at all, but were given a small incision on the knee. The results were astounding, the third group improved just as much as the other two groups that had received the surgery.

He also cites studies that show placebos (sugar pills) work extremely well for relieving the symptoms of depression.

Lipton then brings up an interesting idea: If placebos can trick people into thinking they’re getting healthier, what about negative thoughts or beliefs, which he refers to as “Nocebos.” He discusses a 2003 Discovery Health program that interviewed Nashville physician Clifton Meador. In 1974 Meador had a patient named Sam Londe who was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, which at the time was considered one-hundred percent fatal.

Londe was treated for the cancer, but everyone “knew that he would eventually die, and it came as no surprise when he passed away a few weeks after his diagnosis. What shocked Meador were Londe’s autopsy results. Londe had cancer, but not enough to kill him, and there was none in his esophagus. Meador expressed his guilt, wondering if his incorrect beliefs about Londe’s disease caused him to give up and die.

Lipton closes by stressing the importance of looking at our own thoughts and beliefs in order to realize we may be harming ourselves. He also feels that energy research is a field that can no longer be ignored for the “magic bullet” of pharmaceuticals. Lipton offers no directions for the reader to improve their mental health, but he gives them much food for thought.