M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

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 13^th 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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