Papier final
Français 303
« Essayer des mots? » Points vus sur la poésie d’Aimé Césaire
Dans l’année 1971, Aimé Césaire a été interviewé par l’écrivain Hattien René Depestre. En réponse à une question sur la sens changeante de la mot «négritude,» une mot que Césaire a créé quand-même, il a dit que chaque personne a une version différente de la négritude. Pour Césaire, c’est «une réussite d’une concrete sur un abstraite», c’est « la conscience d’une situation.» C’est une situation qui est très difficile à comprendre sans avoir les expériences qui l’ont créés elle-même; la situation post-coloniale des pays qui ont été occupé, ou des gens a été partie de l’esclavage.
Sans la poésie d’Aimé Césaire, moi, un américain avec une expérience très différente que Césaire, ne peut pas comprendre ce qu’il veut dire par l’idée de Négritude. Apres avoir lu ses poèmes, je vois la négritude comme une conscience d’un manque, un manque de l’identité et un manque de pouvoir. Colonialisme et l’esclavage a cassé la continuité culturelle de tous les pays qu’ils ont dévoré. Dans la place de l’identité locale les colonisateurs a donne une faux identité : l’identité d’un animal, d’une brute qui n’a jamais vu une civilisation. C’est une partie terrible de racisme, qu’il vole l’humanité comme ça.
Personne ne peut voir cette fausse identité comme un cadeau ; la plupart des gens ne l’acceptent pas. Mais la tort est fait : ils n’ont pas une autre définition. Alors, il y a un vrai manque d’identité qu’on peut voir dans les poèmes de Césaire. C’est poignant que Césaire ne donne jamais l’impression d’avoir perdu l’espoir. Dans son poème, « Blanc à remplir sur la carte voyageuse du pollen » il décrit une forme de la négritude.
« N’y eût-il dans le désert
qu’une seule goutte d’eau qui rêve tout bas,
dans le désert n’y eût-il
qu’une graine volante qui rêve tout haut
c’est assez
roilleure des armes, fissure des pierres, vrac des ténèbres
désert, désert, j’endure ton défi
blanc à remplir sur la carte voyageuse du pollen. »
Dans cette poème le désert est un symbole pour cette manque, la manque d’identité qui tous les victimes de colonialisme partage. Peut-être la blanc à remplir c’est la nom de famille, pour un enfant les ancêtres de qui ont été volé par l’esclavage et déplacé. En comment peut-il retracé de qui ou où il est descendu? C’est ça le manque de l’identité. Quand Césaire parle d’ « une graine volante qui rêve tout haut » il parle de la vraie ascendance des peuples déplacés par le colonialisme. Césaire endure la défi de la désert : il voit cette manque d’identité dans une mode un peu chinoise. La lettre chinoise pour une « crise » combine les deux lettres pour les mots « danger » et « opportunité :» pour Césaire, la Négritude c’est une chance a créé une nouvelle identité. Ici reste l’espoir indestructible de Césaire, et c’est son espoir qui je trouve poignant et universel.
Un autre thème de la poésie de Césaire c’est une crise sociale qu’il décrit comme une catastrophe naturelle. C’est une crise qui a deux parties : un c’est de la politique, et l’autre est de la culture. La crise sociale de la culture il décrit dans la poème « Séisme : »
« tant des grands pans de rêve
de parties d’intimes patries
effondrées
tombées vides et le sillage sali rescapée de l’ideé
et nous deux ? quoi nous deux ? … »
Ici Césaire décrit la manque d’identité, une partie de qu’il s’appelle « négritude, » comme des ruines ou « grands pans de rêve…effondrées. » Et puis il décrit la difficulté dans celui on essaye a trouver un nouvelle identité.
« …Essayer des mots ? Leur frottement pour conjurer l’informe
comme les insectes de nuit leur élytres de démence ?
Pris pris pris hors mensonge pris
pris pris pris
rôles précipités
selon rien
sinon l’abrupte persistance mal lue
de nos vrai noms, nos noms miraculeux
jusqu’ici dans la réserve d’un oubli
gîtant. »
L’identité perdu c’est « nos vrai noms, nos noms miraculeux :» pour Césaire, ils sont des graines d’une séisme, cache dans la terre, qui attend leur moment à venir. C’est la nouvelle identité à venir, pour remplacer la négritude, et faire un nouveau point vu. L’espoir de Césaire reste dans une idée de l’identité cache africaine, qu’il identifie avec la venir d’une crise sociale dans celui peut être les gens qui ont été colonisé peut retrouver qu’il y a été volé.
L’autre partie de cette crise sociale Césaire décrit comme une tornade. C’est la crise des politiques ; c'est-à-dire qu’une révolution contre la misère de la poste coloniale troisième monde, qui va changer la vie.
« Le temps que
le sénateur s’aperçut que la tornade était assise
dans son assiette
et la tornade était dans l’air fourrageant dans Kansas-City…
et la tornade fut dehors faisant apparaître à tous sa large face
puant comme dix mille nègres entassés d’un train… »
Dans ces lignes Césaire présente la crise sociale comme une grande surprise (« …dans son assiette ») qui va changer le visage des politiques. Pour décrire il donne la description « puant comme dix mille nègres entassés d’un train » parce qu’il pense que la crise sociopolitique va apporter tous le mal qui l’as créé.
« Le temps pour Dieu de s’apercevoir
qu’il avait bu de trop cent verres de sang de bourreau
et la ville fut une fraternité de taches blanches et noires… »
Ici on peut voir la pouvoir de la poésie d’Aimé Césaire, ou même Dieu doit s’apercevoir sa racisme et racheter. Et dans ce poème la vérité des races est dit : que tous, « blanches et noires, » fait une fraternité des mêmes espoirs, esprits, et origines. J’étais inspiré après avoir lu ces poèmes. C’est possible que Césaire a créé cette « graine volante » dans la négritude et commence à crée une nouvelle identité pour tous peuples qui ont besoin.
“Séisme” p.92-93 Non Vicious Circle: Twenty Poems of Aimé Céesaire t: Davis, Gregson Stanford, California Stanford University Press 1984
“Blanc à remplir sur la carte voyageuse du pollen” p. 52-53 93 Non Vicious Circle: Twenty Poems of Aimé Céesaire t: Davis, Gregson Stanford, Californie Stanford University Press 1984
“Séisme” p.92-93 Non Vicious Circle: Twenty Poems of Aimé Césaire t: Davis, Gregson Stanford, California Stanford University Press 1984
“”
“La Tornade” p.138-139 Non Vicious Circle: Twenty Poems of Aimé Césaire t: Davis, Gregson Stanford, California Stanford University Press 1984
“”
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Conversation with Society about the Place of the Poet
“World of Poetry”
Final Paper
Conversation with Society about the Place of the Poet
“I want to be a baker* when I grow up;” this sentence puts a definite image into the head of it’s reader. We can see the hat, the poufs of flour in the air, the display case out in front of the bakery – maybe we can even smell the croissants. Perhaps not the most ambitious destiny for little Jimmy, but imagine another situation: “I want to be a poet when I grow up.” What image does that put into your head of the speaker? What image does that put into your head of the speaker in ten years? Surely the day of Shakespeare has passed and taken with it the minstrel rooster idea, a man pacing in chambers in tights and frilly frocks madly waving a quill around. When was the last time we saw a poet on the cover of Time Magazine? What does one look like?
A picture does emerge, though, when we try and put ourselves in the would-be poet’s shoes- a picture of an empty pair of shoes. “Who am I?” the poet asks; and who answers? The classics have only words for a response; perhaps a poet is nothing in particular, after all. Perhaps he is only words on a page. Here is a reason why poets seem to have so much trouble with society – even when they are doing poetry well they’re not likely to be convinced of it. Some see them as useless non-producing citizens- unlike the baker, whose worldly work we can smell from around the block. The problem with the poet is that his work is indefinite.
In his poem “Cortege,” Guillaume Apollinaire describes a procession which passed him. In the poem, he searches thoroughly for some sort of identity in the others he watches, but doesn’t find himself in the parade.
“One day
One day I waited for myself
I said to myself Guillaume it’s time you came
So I could know just who I am
I who know others…”
Despite the examples of life set out for him by everyone else who lives in the city, Guillaume has trouble seeing himself. He is not any of these people, though he loves them; who is he then? “…With a lyric step all those that I love came forward/ And I was not among them;” it isn’t that Guillaume doesn’t love himself, it’s that he can’t define himself. By the end of the poem, however, he does have an idea of himself, as something which was slowly built by the people of his procession.
Another problem posed by the indefinateness of the poet’s work is survival: food, water, shelter. The baker can sell his bread to the many hungry people; who hungers for words in that way? The poet has to bake up a whole new incredible baguette of words to sell it in the first place and even then has trouble finding a buyer. In 1926, Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote a poem describing the economic troubles of being a poet in the Soviet Union called “Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry.” In it he describes his situation:
“Citizen tax collector! Forgive my bothering you…
Thank you… don’t worry… I’ll stand…
My business is of a delicate nature:
about the place of the poet in the worker’s ranks.
Along with owners of stores and property,
I’m made subject to taxes and penalties…”
Put in the situation of economic stress, Mayakovsky defends his work as a valid and productive facet of society. The problem seems to stem from the fact that the system doesn’t recognize the job of “poet” to be a real one. Perhaps it is a hobby to society, but not a job. He describes the work of writing poems in terms of the items on the tax form: production cost, materials cost, travel expenses, etc:
“Now my work is like any other work.
Look here- how much I’ve lost,
what expense I have in my production
and how much I spend on materials.
You know of course about rhyme…
…Citizen tax collecter, honestly,
The poet spends a fortune on words…
Citizen! Consider my traveling expenses.
-Poetry- -all of it- is a journey into the unknown.”
This approach to the problem is humorous and causes the reader to see things from the perspective of the poet. The sarcasm about the indefinite quality of poetry comes through, and we take Mayakovsky’s point, that art can’t be quantified valuationally the way that other human endeavors can. But he doesn’t undersell its value: instead he defends it, saying “These words will move millions of hearts for thousands of years,” and challenging the tax collector to “take a ticket to immortality and, reckoning the effect of my verse, stagger my earnings over three hundred years!” “Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry” is Mayakovsky taking a strong stand against society, and telling it what it can and can’t do to it’s members. “I demand as my right an inch of ground among the poorest workers and peasants,” he says, and he deserves it.
Thirty years later in America another poet was having trouble fitting into society: he wrote a poem called “America” that describes this problem. “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing./ America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17th, 1956./ I can’t stand my own mind...” Allen Ginsberg also speaks of the intangibility; the fact that art can’t be assessed for value the same way as other traded goods. He expresses the situation in terms of capitalism, by contrast to Mayakovsky: “When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?” Ginsberg’s sarcasm is familiar: good looks are as intangible as poems and as subjective: with only $2.27, how will the poet feed himself?
Ginsberg gives us his answer a bit later: auction off the poetry. He describes his poetry as though it were the Henry Ford company and offers to sell off the originals. “I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes/ America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe” Again the use of humor brings the reader into the poet’s shoes, to illustrate accurately the problem of getting by on your verse alone.
At the end of the poem, there is the suggestion that maybe the place of the poet in society is that of the misfit. Perhaps it is the poet’s place to point out the seams and cracks in society by standing separate from his surroundings. It’s a goal Ginsberg thinks is very important: he even calls it his “job:” “America this is quite serious…/I’d better get right down to the job./It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway./ America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.”
While “Conversation with a Tax Collecter…” and “America” both work to fight the image of the poet as a lazy “free rider,” or a person who takes advantage of the benefits of living in society without contributing anything, Apollinaire approaches this caricature of the poet from an entirely different angle. In his poem, “Hotel,” he embraces, albeit sarcastically, this personality”:
“My room has the shape of a cage
The sun passes her arms in at the window
But I who want to smoke to make mirages
I light in the day’s fire my cigarette
I don’t want to work I want to smoke.”
Perhaps some still see the poet in these terms: as someone who sits around daydreaming in a hotel somewhere smoking cigarettes. A big self-absorbed do-nothing, if you will. Hopefully more and more will come to see the poet in Mayakovsky’s terms, as “simultaneously a leader and a servant of the people.” As a youth today who would love to make a living writing poetry, I can say that I shall continue to write no matter if I am paid, and I will do so for two reasons: because partly a big self-absorbed do-nothing (often within reach of a pen), and because I wish to create: to be “simultaneous leader and servant” of the people around me.
insert: farmer, fireman, astronaut, taxi driver, teacher etc… all produce concrete images in one’s head
“Cortege” The Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire, p.75
“Cortege” Apollinaire, p.77
p.191 “The Bedbug & Selected Poetry” Translated: Hayward, Max and Reavey, George
p.197 “”
p.197 “”
p.205 “”
p.207 “”
p.31 Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco City Lights Books
p.31 “”
p.33 “”
p.34 Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco City Lights Books
p.201“The Bedbug & Selected Poetry” Translated: Hayward, Max and Reavey, George
Final Paper
Conversation with Society about the Place of the Poet
“I want to be a baker* when I grow up;” this sentence puts a definite image into the head of it’s reader. We can see the hat, the poufs of flour in the air, the display case out in front of the bakery – maybe we can even smell the croissants. Perhaps not the most ambitious destiny for little Jimmy, but imagine another situation: “I want to be a poet when I grow up.” What image does that put into your head of the speaker? What image does that put into your head of the speaker in ten years? Surely the day of Shakespeare has passed and taken with it the minstrel rooster idea, a man pacing in chambers in tights and frilly frocks madly waving a quill around. When was the last time we saw a poet on the cover of Time Magazine? What does one look like?
A picture does emerge, though, when we try and put ourselves in the would-be poet’s shoes- a picture of an empty pair of shoes. “Who am I?” the poet asks; and who answers? The classics have only words for a response; perhaps a poet is nothing in particular, after all. Perhaps he is only words on a page. Here is a reason why poets seem to have so much trouble with society – even when they are doing poetry well they’re not likely to be convinced of it. Some see them as useless non-producing citizens- unlike the baker, whose worldly work we can smell from around the block. The problem with the poet is that his work is indefinite.
In his poem “Cortege,” Guillaume Apollinaire describes a procession which passed him. In the poem, he searches thoroughly for some sort of identity in the others he watches, but doesn’t find himself in the parade.
“One day
One day I waited for myself
I said to myself Guillaume it’s time you came
So I could know just who I am
I who know others…”
Despite the examples of life set out for him by everyone else who lives in the city, Guillaume has trouble seeing himself. He is not any of these people, though he loves them; who is he then? “…With a lyric step all those that I love came forward/ And I was not among them;” it isn’t that Guillaume doesn’t love himself, it’s that he can’t define himself. By the end of the poem, however, he does have an idea of himself, as something which was slowly built by the people of his procession.
Another problem posed by the indefinateness of the poet’s work is survival: food, water, shelter. The baker can sell his bread to the many hungry people; who hungers for words in that way? The poet has to bake up a whole new incredible baguette of words to sell it in the first place and even then has trouble finding a buyer. In 1926, Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote a poem describing the economic troubles of being a poet in the Soviet Union called “Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry.” In it he describes his situation:
“Citizen tax collector! Forgive my bothering you…
Thank you… don’t worry… I’ll stand…
My business is of a delicate nature:
about the place of the poet in the worker’s ranks.
Along with owners of stores and property,
I’m made subject to taxes and penalties…”
Put in the situation of economic stress, Mayakovsky defends his work as a valid and productive facet of society. The problem seems to stem from the fact that the system doesn’t recognize the job of “poet” to be a real one. Perhaps it is a hobby to society, but not a job. He describes the work of writing poems in terms of the items on the tax form: production cost, materials cost, travel expenses, etc:
“Now my work is like any other work.
Look here- how much I’ve lost,
what expense I have in my production
and how much I spend on materials.
You know of course about rhyme…
…Citizen tax collecter, honestly,
The poet spends a fortune on words…
Citizen! Consider my traveling expenses.
-Poetry- -all of it- is a journey into the unknown.”
This approach to the problem is humorous and causes the reader to see things from the perspective of the poet. The sarcasm about the indefinite quality of poetry comes through, and we take Mayakovsky’s point, that art can’t be quantified valuationally the way that other human endeavors can. But he doesn’t undersell its value: instead he defends it, saying “These words will move millions of hearts for thousands of years,” and challenging the tax collector to “take a ticket to immortality and, reckoning the effect of my verse, stagger my earnings over three hundred years!” “Conversation with a Tax Collector about Poetry” is Mayakovsky taking a strong stand against society, and telling it what it can and can’t do to it’s members. “I demand as my right an inch of ground among the poorest workers and peasants,” he says, and he deserves it.
Thirty years later in America another poet was having trouble fitting into society: he wrote a poem called “America” that describes this problem. “America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing./ America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17th, 1956./ I can’t stand my own mind...” Allen Ginsberg also speaks of the intangibility; the fact that art can’t be assessed for value the same way as other traded goods. He expresses the situation in terms of capitalism, by contrast to Mayakovsky: “When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?” Ginsberg’s sarcasm is familiar: good looks are as intangible as poems and as subjective: with only $2.27, how will the poet feed himself?
Ginsberg gives us his answer a bit later: auction off the poetry. He describes his poetry as though it were the Henry Ford company and offers to sell off the originals. “I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes/ America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe” Again the use of humor brings the reader into the poet’s shoes, to illustrate accurately the problem of getting by on your verse alone.
At the end of the poem, there is the suggestion that maybe the place of the poet in society is that of the misfit. Perhaps it is the poet’s place to point out the seams and cracks in society by standing separate from his surroundings. It’s a goal Ginsberg thinks is very important: he even calls it his “job:” “America this is quite serious…/I’d better get right down to the job./It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway./ America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.”
While “Conversation with a Tax Collecter…” and “America” both work to fight the image of the poet as a lazy “free rider,” or a person who takes advantage of the benefits of living in society without contributing anything, Apollinaire approaches this caricature of the poet from an entirely different angle. In his poem, “Hotel,” he embraces, albeit sarcastically, this personality”:
“My room has the shape of a cage
The sun passes her arms in at the window
But I who want to smoke to make mirages
I light in the day’s fire my cigarette
I don’t want to work I want to smoke.”
Perhaps some still see the poet in these terms: as someone who sits around daydreaming in a hotel somewhere smoking cigarettes. A big self-absorbed do-nothing, if you will. Hopefully more and more will come to see the poet in Mayakovsky’s terms, as “simultaneously a leader and a servant of the people.” As a youth today who would love to make a living writing poetry, I can say that I shall continue to write no matter if I am paid, and I will do so for two reasons: because partly a big self-absorbed do-nothing (often within reach of a pen), and because I wish to create: to be “simultaneous leader and servant” of the people around me.
insert: farmer, fireman, astronaut, taxi driver, teacher etc… all produce concrete images in one’s head
“Cortege” The Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire, p.75
“Cortege” Apollinaire, p.77
p.191 “The Bedbug & Selected Poetry” Translated: Hayward, Max and Reavey, George
p.197 “”
p.197 “”
p.205 “”
p.207 “”
p.31 Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco City Lights Books
p.31 “”
p.33 “”
p.34 Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco City Lights Books
p.201“The Bedbug & Selected Poetry” Translated: Hayward, Max and Reavey, George
Saturday, July 26, 2008
A Paper About Poets and Port
"Cheers!",
"À ta santé"[to your health],
or
"Что у трезвого на уме, то у пьяного на языке."
[What a sober man has on his mind, a drunk one has on his tongue.]:
A paper about poets and port
by Thomas C. Andrews
We all drink for different reasons. Celebration, depression, freedom, release. Some even drink for poetry. Or wax poetic over drink. Poets across many eras and languages have recorded their ideas, so to speak, on their bar-napkins; perhaps the drink puts one in an easier state as a medium for such things. As is common with such shortcuts, any pleasure or benefit one derives come at a price. Of course, poets aren't the only people who've heard the saying: " en vino, veritas" [in wine, truth]. Perhaps the truths are painful. Even if they aren't, the hangover is.
Arthur Rimbaud's "Le Bateau Ivre" [The Drunken Boat] is a poem about coming to age: it is both about the author in this respect and the societies of man birthing at the time of it's writing. The poem is rich in synesthesia: the author combines the sensations of seafaring with the sensations of a reeling drunk. Rimbaud is overwhelmed with the ocean's scenery: "bathed in the Poem of the Sea," [1] a Sea which is dangerous and churns as well as hides wondrous beauty. This Sea is the world in which mankind progresses, particularly this young French poet.
The progression of the poem takes in this beauty much like a night of heavy drinking. First things are calm and Rimbaud "float[s] down unconcerned rivers," [2] but eventually he is sick and overwhelmed. The images slowly change toward ones of chaos, and perhaps, a storm. "I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings," Rimbaud describes: Europe, his home, was going through some tumultuous times around the writing of this poem, in 1871. Civilizations were rearranging themselves and new technology was everywhere.
The ocean becomes a place instead where "a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down." [3] Finally even describes himself as wreckage. "I, whose wreck, dead drunk and sodden for water" longs for the simpler time: the image he conjures is one of childhood:
"If I want a water of Europe, it's the pool
Black and cold where into the fragrant dusk
A child squatting full of sadnesses launches
A boat fragile as a butterfly in may" [4]
It is in these lines that one finds Rimbaud's rosy spectacles, his reason for drinking, and a tender image of a human being as a something always set out alone against the weather. The boat this sad child launches is his life, and at the same time it is everyone's life. We just hope for good sailing weather, and so does Rimbaud.
Another poem called "The Stranger" by Alexandre Blok, invokes a different sort of situation. The first stanzas of this poem describe the bar scene in St. Petersburg: we see all sorts of drunken images of a negative connotation: "…shouts drift from the drunken haunts/ On the putrid breath of spring" and even "the moon leers down like a drunkard." [5] before finally finding our speaker in the midst of all of it, drinking with a close friend. "Each evening my one and only friend/ Reflected at my glass's brink/ Like me is fuddled and constrained/ By thick, mysterious drink." [6]
In fact, Mr. Blok is getting sloppy all alone: his "one and only friend" is his reflection. Soon we see why: "each night at the appointed moment" a girl appears in the shadows, and no ordinary girl. "…a breath of ancient legends gathers/ About her dress as it swing / About her hat with it's mourning feathers/ And her hand with it's rings." Blok doesn't go up to talk to this girl, even though he is drunk and feeling forward, even as "vague confidences in [his] ear are loosed;" he does not go up to talk to her because she represents an ideal. If he were to talk to her, she would become a real, flawed person: one gets the sense that it could really shatter the guy. It is unclear whether this stranger is real or "in a dream;" but still, we see Blok's reason for drinking. The lonely poet reflected in his glass wonders if perhaps someone here, in this bar, were right for him: if someone here in this bar, tonight, would satisfy him. He can't but hope.
Thousands of years before these two men, an Islamic Sufi mystic named Jelaluddin Rumi also wrote about drink- a whole series of poems, even. It is difficult to draw distinctions: Rumi's work was written untitled upon tile plates. "Don't hand me another glass of wine," Rumi writes, "Pour it in my mouth. I've lost the way to my mouth."[7] His poetry is a whirling insistence on life, intent on squeezing every drop out.
In his poem "Who says words with my mouth?" there is an implicit comparison drawn between the life of a human person and an excursion drinking. "This drunkenness began in some other tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be completely sober…" the analogy brings to question an afterlife. "I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home;" [8] in Rumi's time, there weren't designated drivers. One's best bet was to hang onto the neighbor's elbow-crook and walk home.
For Rumi, the experience of drunkenness is an experience of chaos which is closely related to mysticism. The Sufis would spin in circles for hours in order to achieve an altered mystical ecstatic state. In "The New Rule," Rumi compares this mystical ecstasy with drunkenness, love, and chaos: all have the power to bring one out of one's established routines and responses and into the real truth of the living moment.
"It's the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad. He falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks. Everything is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.
Here's the new rule: break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower's breath."[9]
The message of this poem is clear: even drunk, or in love, one does not need "to argue and get into fights." The bowl may break, and everything may fall everywhere, but the new rule is still to embrace, "and fall toward the glassblower's breath." Rumi, if he is drunk, is so in order to communicate his impressions of the world, in celebration, or, in another poem, "because it's spring." [10]
Reasons for drinking are like reasons for writing or reading. They are complicated, subjective, and as diverse as the thousands of different times, wines, and moments that give them birth. Whatever was in the glasses these men lifted, it is the words from their mouths and minds that are permanent. Their poems will be an invitation to another time; to reel on Rimbaud's boat, or get an ale in a St. Petersburg bar in 1906, or to spin in a circle with Rumi. These three poets are only an example of a long and illustrious literature of alcohol. I raise my glass to them: all poets, people, and drunks who find truth by whatever means necessary.
[1]"Le Bateau Ivre" d'Arthur Rimbaud
[2] "Le Bateau Ivre" Rimbaud
[3]« Le Bateau Ivre » Rimbaud
[4] « Le Bateau Ivre » Rimbaud
[5] "The Stranger" by Alexandre Blok: translated by Jon Stallworthy & Peter France
[6] "" Blok. Transl: France, Stallworthy
[7] untitled, p.5-6 The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks
[8] "Who says words with my mouth?" Rumi transl. Coleman Barks
[9] "The New Rule" Rumi transl.: Coleman Barks
[10] "Flutes for Dancing" Rumi transl. Coleman Barks
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