Deviation Actions
Literature Text
V: We can still part, if you think it would be better.
E: It’s not worthwhile now.
I
On overweight chairs, the basket-woven men
recognise me, hail me
an old man with womanly hands,
an old man with beautiful manners,
and an aged wife
to whom I must return the nights.
Hist!
I mean to say no more than what I mean,
what meaning mingles in my words;–
I would not have marri’d my muse,
unless I meant to kill mine art:–
“Art come again with vain
bibble-babble, pantaloon?”
“Again…”
– tantamount to death; only old men
sleep softly to dreams of suicide.
Endeavour to sleep,–
follow thy course in safety
as though the sacred laurels pave thy way…
II
Adulterous are my paints; mine eyes, diminish’d
by mine age, remain
yet prone to listless wand’rings
here amongst the faces that I chance to meet,–
such faces that I chance to meet…
my wife awaits me; I must away
soon,–
time yet to linger, count my brushstrokes,
paltry losses, petty loves
that come with pity on their lips…
such pity when they gesture
at my paintings, these remainders
of a world no longer come.
Solicited:–
she comes to me again;
this shy girl that I painted once,–
curtsies; bids good morning; asks my health
politest, though I were some lord of old,
some majesty return’d;–
and all at once I am once more a man!
III
Do I know her truly, know her
in herself; in herself all that she is…
and all things that I have seen, in themselves?
I must seem a senseless thing… but can there be
knowledge without a thing that knows?–
and should I be forgiv’n for making all things
philosophy?
Distancing this doubt does nothing:
like a pillar between heaven and earth
neither affirms, denies
both heaven and earth!–
tolls must be levi’d before passage is given.
Only heroes may cross the frost-veil’d bridge…
“Amen!”
For doubtless, saints will make their rounds,
while church bells ring out choric songs:
sweet music here that softer falls,
amidst the fugues of Maestro Hugues…
but tell me: wherefore should I care, when I
am stood here at the end of all my cares?
IV
This shy girl,– with such beautiful manners,–
listens more than speaks; she watches
as my brush returns the colours to the world:
handsome bridges o’er the river,
well-dress’d walkers on the banks,
horses, cabs and gothic lamps
alight,–
illumin’d by the moon…
there is a wonder in the world,
when all is calm and all is still,
and civil, courteous, manner’d, fair;
the ladies in their hats and vair,
beyond reproach, beyond compare…
Hush,–
a word regains me, and I am but sham’d.
What needs be fear’d of old and feeble men,
save harsh infirmity, their sudden passing?
Would that she avert her eyes!
She looks at me as though all things
were well and should be well once more.
V
An old man, unseasonable; dry days and nights;
a latter-year painter
in the low’ring light of life;
beside this vestal girl a-watching;–
some days lunching on some morsel
fish’d from her bag.
“Ahimé!–”
that I have not holy bread to break,–
nor gold that all my fellows hoard and waste;
nor silver words to flatter; nor beauty brazen;
nor such iron sinews to hold her strong;–
nothing, save canvas, cold fingers,
wet paints…
Patience
hath taught men impotence;
and render’d battlements mere air;
and ancient giants into incoherent towers;
and the will of one who once was mighty
meek,–
nor would I have chanc’d!
VI
“Sullen and incontinent, Geronzio?”
All is mock and gull
in this late hour.
Age insults me…
Youth insults me, also,
and neither art nor nature
liberate;–
not even when the sunsets
arc their vaulted shafts above me,
countless and incarnadine,
is there liberation
from this grey circle
for this grey soul!
How
should man desire to live
in such a state for long?–
and why should I be held
contemptuous for craving relief
that comes by courteous hands
and manners, beautiful, shy, polite?
VII
I have come to the sum of a life’s long history;
neuter’d by life’s long history,–
yet unmuzzl’d
as it was when
la figura di Nembrot
first enter’d discourse with the world.
Alike
in noise, if not in meaning…
the Porte of all that is to come
is clos’d to me;
blind to that which lies beyond,–
experience hath prov’d
a comfort
inadequate.
Painted effigies of little substance;
by a man become of little substance;
and whose truth is little and demean’d
by what he hath become:
‘I make a mock of all
that once I held was true.’
VIII
To have liv’d as nothing in a rented house;
far from a home I lov’d;
with passionless
concitations, advocations
on fraudulent prophecies;
gifted from dry loins;–
behold!–
but virtue is not abash’d by sin;
is not abas’d
by this house of flesh; immur’d,
is a piteous thing,
that she thus indulges.
“…sanza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.”
Hear!
I am so much abus’d by such charity,
and such comfort
beneath
the many-branchéd, malé-branchéd trees.
Ask me not to suffer a peace without honour,
or compassion without love!
XI
Unfinished shapes; shameless hands;
and eyes all-wet with want,–
betray what tongues cannot utter?
If not to one…
nor would we either mourn if one
were soon to go, my wife and I!
Repeat:
“Summae Deus clementiae,
mundique factor machinae…”
…and the wait consumes;
these altar-offerings,
doom’d to be divided, devour’d:
this rag-meat, these bones!
Benedetta!
Why come to me now? I am
infirm, and forgetful, and alone,–
myself, myself no more:
and will I see you when I lie awake
the nights,–
the sun amidst the stars?
Space
Reign of Night
Where the Light Goes
The decision to use this epigram was because it most echoed the spirit of the speaker to me,– Vladimir and Estragon are trapped, essentially, by their desire to wait for Godot. Why they are waiting for Godot is unknown, but all that they do within the confines of the play amount to various attempts to kill time and fill the void that idleness has left them in until such time that Godot arrives. The speaker of the poem exists in a similar state, awaiting death, but stuck in the impotent limbo of old age, where all that he would like to experience is forever beyond his grasp. All that he has left to do is to paint and think and pass the days in frustration until such time that death should take him away.
The mode of the poem is where T.S. Eliot’s influence can be most seen. The Modernist dramatic monologue, in contrast to the highly focused Victorian dramatic monologue as formulated by Browning and Tennyson, is consumed by the aesthetic of literary montage, wherein the use of free verse, allusion, fragmentation, etc. are used to enrich the narrative or spoken voice of the poem while simultaneously overwhelming the reader-listener with the resulting linguistic panoply.
The nine stanzas of this poem are intended to, firstly, mimic the nine circles of hell that Dante traverses in Inferno, and to suggest that the speaker is currently experiencing his own proverbial hell in the poem, namely being trapped in the state of old age. The girl who he sees, by contrast, represents everything that he cannot have or has lost,– vigour, innocence, youth, and beauty,– and can only imagine by being in the grip of intense memory or else by lusting for this girl despite his physical frailty and impotence (suggested by the language of drought and being ‘unseasonable’). Of the damned though, he is one who is keenly aware of his suffering, but also too proud to suffer the pity of others, hence why his inner monologue is dominated by powerful yet self-destructive impulses (self-hatred, frustrated lust, denial, self-isolation, scorn for others, etc.). The most he can do is look forward to the moment he will cease to be, and dream the nights of all that he would but can no longer have,– something with most tellingly culminates in the image of the ‘sun amidst the stars’ which echoes Dante directly, who describes God’s eternal radiance, beauty and compassion in such a manner.