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Poetry That
Will Survive into the Millennium
by Doug Talley
The question
for writers is not whether they will be read after fifty years,
but rather after five thousand. Will they be read when their native
language is ancient, or close to being lost? One might consider
a line of Ovid now that Latin is largely a lost language:
– vesper
et occiduo quae litora sole tepescunt
– It was
evening, the shores of the sea made lukewarm by a dying sun
I might be altogether
cloistered in a small room, but Ovid will forever introduce his
amber vision and warm an hour otherwise cramped with care and difficulty.
His ancient company is encouraging and uplifting. He makes our joint
purpose grand. He means to root out every dull and common thought.
He suggests I look to the stars, but not to stars that shine merely.
– sidera
coeperunt toto effervescere caelo
– Throughout
the heavens the stars began to effervesce
Such is the
virtue and beauty of great poetry that a single clear and compelling
word, like tepescunt or effervescere, will carry an
entire line and afford a lasting pleasure.
But beyond
issues of clarity and cogency, a more central question determines
whether any work of art survives, and that question involves the
spirit of truth. Does the work advance some truth worth recording
in heaven for angels to look upon and ponder? Well into the Millennium,
after English has decayed into a dead language, whatever literature
survives will not be clear and compelling merely, but will also
be true. It will invite the Spirit of God, because of some true
and righteous and lasting perspective.
I recall an
experience while attending the funeral of Sister Rose Corder. A
good friend, Melinda Turner, sang a hymn at the funeral, Each
Life that Touches Ours for Good, with lyrics by Karen Lynn Davidson.
Sister Turner has a lovely voice, and like many of us in the ward,
she loved Rose Corder. On this occasion as she sang, that love was
transparent, and for one brief moment, because of the influence
of the Spirit of God, she relinquished composure, and succumbed
to the profound emotion of the moment. She spoke a word, instead
of singing it. Of course, this was cardinal sin in the world’s canon
of musical performance. It was not a virtuoso effort by such standards.
Rather, it was something even better. It was a supernal performance
graced throughout by a spirit of Christ-like love. Suddenly, an
entire congregation felt the impact of the scripture – Jesus
wept. The purity of Sister Turner’s heart carried her performance
well beyond the reach of her considerable talent. Her effort invoked
that Spirit called holy, and made the aesthetic experience memorable
even now, years later, and will make it memorable throughout eternity.
A prophet stated once that when a person speaks by the power of
the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit carries the statement
into the hearts of men. Once so carried, the statement lives forever.
Such is the aspiration of poetry.
The apostle
John wrote, “I heard a voice from heaven saying, Blessed are the
dead, which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit,
they will rest from their labours; and their works do follow
them.” By this we understand that the works of the righteous
survive in some fashion. This principle is repeated elsewhere. “For
those that live shall inherit the earth, and those that die shall
rest from all their labors, and their works shall follow them;
and they shall receive a crown in the mansions of my Father, which
I have prepared for them.”
True and lasting
art invites the Spirit of God and brings some quality of heaven
down to our earthly sphere. This alone allows a work of art to follow
the author into the eternities. I like to think that some of Shakespeare’s
plays will follow him there and in some fashion survive, especially
The Tempest, and much of Chaucer, notwithstanding his retraction,
and many of Dante’s visions, and all that was pure in Ovid and Horace
and Virgil, and Mozart’s Die Zauberflote, and just about
every note that Bach ever wrote, and every chiseled stone in The
Temple George Herbert built, and the saintly proverbs of the
Analects, and the Baghavad Gita and above all these
– unquestionably above them all – the lyrics of a simple hymn by
Karen Lynn Davidson, rendered exquisitely by a little known singer,
once upon a time, in a manner both flawed and absolutely perfect.
In this installment
of Meridian’s poetry column you will find just such poetry as may
survive into the Millennium. Included is an excerpt from Dante’s
La Vita Nuova – The New Life. Composed in 13th
century Florence, this intriguing work, written in prose and poetry,
is both a personal history and a statement of poetics. Dante relates
a sublime experience of love – the courtly, spiritual love of the
early Renaissance – in which he first meets his esteemed Lady Beatrice.
In prose he relates the history of this encounter and his subsequent
reactions. In poetry he strives to capture the exquisite sentiments
that course through his mind and heart as he succumbs to the ennobling
qualities of love for the first time. Each poem is followed by a
prose explication, in which Dante discourses briefly on his poetics.
In the following
excerpt, Dante envisions the devastating impact on his life should
Beatrice die. He subsequently calls this “vision” a “vain imagination”,
but there is truth nonetheless in the images he uses to describe
first his grief and then his awe as he witnesses Beatrice conveyed
to heaven by a host of angels.
We hope you
enjoy this excerpt and hope it provokes new thinking. Hopefully,
it will serve also as a call for poems in translation from Meridian’s
readership. Surely, there are at least a few returned missionaries
who have spent some time reading and perhaps even translating poems
from their missionary language. Please feel free to submit.
From La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri:
XXIII
****************
As I considered
how life is all too frail,
How brief
in span, and finally, how vain,
Love wept
within the heart wherein it dwells.
My spirit,
overcome with so much pain,
Whispered
to my thinking with a muted sigh --
“Certain
it is my Lady, too, will die.”
Such bitterness
of spirit then took hold,
To shut
the burden out, I shut my eyes,
But all
the more such cries
Of sorrow
scattered hot and cold
Within me,
void of truth
And knowledge
both,
That my
imagination made appear
Before me
certain women, full of fear,
Who groaned,
“You, too, must die, must die.”
Then passing
by
In the clouded
state of mind so entered
I saw many
a darkened thing,
Many a vain
imagining –
I do not
know what place it was I ventured –
But I saw
disheveled women by the way,
Wild with
grief and wild-eyed desire,
Who sharpened
trouble to a blade, to slay
The heart
with sorrow made of fire.
Then little
by little it seemed the sun turned black,
Stars appeared
and mourned to one another,
And birds
in flight turned suddenly back
And tumbled
from the sky.
The earth
shook terribly
And then
appeared one like a brother,
A drifter
worn and spent,
Who asked,
his voice with anguish rent,
“The news,
have you not heard it cried?
Your Lady,
she who was most fair, has died.”
I raised
my eyes, then bathed in tears, to see
The angels
falling like a rain of manna
And returning
heavenward away from me,
In their
arms bearing a little cloud ahead,
After the
which they then all cried, “Hosanna”--
And nothing
else was said.
So Love
then spoke, “No more, I cannot hide.
Come, see
our Lady where she sleeps.”
Imagination
made me then abide
The sight,
to see the Lady, dead,
And as I
sensed the vigil she now keeps,
Some women
laid a veil upon her head,
Her visage
so full of humble, soft release,
She seemed
at last to say, “I rest in peace”.
****************
XXIII
Mentr’io pensava la mia frale vita,
e vedea ’l suo durar com’ e leggiero,
piansemi Amor nel core, ove dimora;
per che l’anima mia fu si smarrita,
che sospirando dicea nel pensero:
“Ben converra che la mia donna mora.”
Io presi tanto smarrimento allora,
ch’io chiusi li occhi vilmente gravati,
e furon si smagati
li spirti miei, che ciascun giva errando;
e poscia imaginando,
di caunoscenza e di verita fora,
visi di donne
m’apparver crucciati,
che mi dicean
pur: “Morra’ti, morra’ti.”
Poi vidi
cose dubitose molte,
nel vano
imaginare ov’io entrai;
ed esser
mi parea non so in qual loco,
e veder
donne andar per via disciolte,
qual
lagrimando, e qual traendo guai
che di
tristizia saettavan foco.
Poi me
parve vedere a poco a poco
turbar
lo sole e apparir la stella,
e pianger
elli ed ella;
cader
li augelli volando per l’are,
e la terra
tremare;
ed omo
apparve scolorito e fioco,
dicendomi:
“Che fai? Non sai novella?
morta
e la donna tua, ch’era si bella.”
Levava
li occhi miei bagnati in pianti,
e vedea,
che parean pioggia di manna,
li angeli
che tornavan suso in cielo,
e una
nuvoletta avean davanti,
dopo la
qual gridavan tutti, “Osanna.”
E s’altro
avesser detto, a voi dire’lo.
Allor
diceva Amor, “Piu nol ti celo;
vieni
a veder nostra donna che giace.”
Lo imaginar
fallace
mi condusse
a veder madonna morta;
e quand’io
l’avea scorta,
vedea
che donne la covrian d’un velo;
ed avea
seco umilita verace,
che parea
che dicesse, “Io sono in pace.”
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