Auden and Behaviourism

W.H. Auden has different collections of short statements conveniently called "Shorts." This one is from "Shorts II" in his Collected Poems edited by Mendelson.

"If all our acts are conditioned behaviour, then so are our theories:
yet your behaviourist claims his is objectively true."

Rather than offer my own commentary at the moment I will allow whoever reads this to think it over and respond if you like. I would simply like to add that it would be necessary to ascertain whether or not this is an accurate representation of Behaviourism.

Advice from Rainer Maria Rilke

I read Rainer Maria Rilke's book Letters to a Young Poet last summer and forgot that I had taken some notes in a word document. I think there are many important points here but I think that number 2 has had the biggest impact on my own views toward writing; motivation is extremely important and when there is an exhaustible motivation the desire to write will fade. "Must I write?" is a question each writer must ask him/herself.

1. Writing must have individual quality

2. Go inside yourself

Discover the motive that bids you to write

Ask “must I write?”

“A work of art is good if it is grown out of necessity.”

“Go into yourself and explore the depths whence your life wells forth; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create.”

3. Draw near to nature

4. Avoid familiar and usual forms

“For great and fully matured strength is needed to make an individual contribution where good and in part brilliant traditions exist in plenty.”

5. Turn from common themes to those themes of your personal life

6. Depict your sorrows, desires, passing thoughts, and belief in beauty with heartfelt sincerity through images that surround yourself.

7. Turn your attention to childhood memories.

8. Do not be governed by irony

At the depths of things irony never descends

Use it if it springs from a necessity of your being

9. “Patience is all!”

10. Live with the questions in yourself

11. Love your solitude

12. Be near things which will not desert you

13. Hold to the difficult

14. “Only those sorrows are dangerous and bad which we carry about among fellows in order to drown them.”

15. Concentrate on the object rather than personal feelings about the object.

Purchase the book at Amazon.

Solitude or Blank Desertion? Wordsworth and Sufjan

The spring time always provides me with motivation for spending some time with the Romantic poets. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of my favorites, sorry Percy. I recently had the opportunity to visit the beautiful Lake District, the area in Northwestern England where he lived, and it has deepened my interest in his poetry.

A common misconception of the Romantic period and possibly all poetry, and I would say this comes from a person completely unfamiliar with poetry, is that poetry is simply emotions run rampant. True Wordsworth says that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings," but he also adds that no good poems are created with out a person of a "more than usual organic sensibility" who "has also thought long and deeply" (Preface to Lyrical Ballads); thought is not supposed to restrict the composition of the piece but it certainly plays an essential role. Thinking, poetic skill, and emotions are at least three of Wordsworth's necessary conditions for good poetry.

The selection I chose to share comes from Book First (lines 357-400) in "The Prelude: or the Growth of a Poet's Mind, An Autobiographical Poem." At the bottom is this poem turned into a song by Sufjan Stevens (the video isn't great but you can still listen to the song). The song does not address the last section of the speaker leaving "in grave and serious mood," but how many combinations of music and great poets are there? If you enjoy this you might also like lines 425-463--Wordsworth ice skating.

One summer evening (led by her) I found
A little Boat tied to a Willow-tree
Within a rocky cave, its usual home.
Straight I unloosed her chain, and, stepping in,
Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my Boat move on,
Leaving behind her still, on either side,
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparking light. but now, like one who rows
(Proud of his skill) to reach a chosen point
With an unswerving line, I fixed my view
Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon's utmost boundary; for above
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin Pinnace; lustlily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake;
And, as i rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving though the Water like a swan:
When, from behind that craggy Steep, till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head.--I struck, and struck again,
And, growing still in stature, the grim Shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measure motion, like a living Thing
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the Covert of the Willow-tree;
There, in her mooring-place, I left my Bark,--
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar Shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or Sky, no colours of green fields,
But huge and mighty Forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.

Let Us Not Mock God With Metaphor

Head on over to this site to read John Updike's poem "Seven Stanzas At Easter." In 1960, Updike entered a religious art festival with this poem and won the first place prize of $100; he gave the money back to the congregation.

The first stanza echoes St. Paul's own words about the importance of the Resurrection. Overall, I appreciate Updike's insistence to not "water-down" what the gospel says and be "embarassed by the miracle."

The Dream of the Rood

(Photo of the crucifix inside the Church of the Gesu, Rome.)

This poem is called "The Dream of the Rood" (ca. 750). The author is unknown. Like Herbert's "The Sacrifice" below, this poem offers another perspective from the Crucifixion--the cross itself (Rood is the old English word for cross). Once again I am going to post a link to the poem since the link offers commentary, but here is a sample.

"On shoulders men bore me there, then fixed me on hill;
fiends enough fastened me. Then saw I mankind's Lord
come with great courage when he would mount on me.
Then dared I not against the Lord's word
bend or break, when I saw earth's
fields shake. All fiends
I could have felled, but I stood fast.
The young hero stripped himself--he, God Almighty--
strong and stout-minded. He mounted high gallows,
bold before many, when he would loose mankind.
I shook when that Man clasped me. I dared, still, not bow to earth,
fall to earth's fields, but had to stand fast.
Rood was I reared. I lifted a mighty King,
Lord of the heavens, dared not to bend.
With dark nails they drove me through: on me those sores are seen,
open malice-wounds. I dared not scathe anyone.
They mocked us both, we two together. All wet with blood I was,
poured out from that Man's side, after ghost he gave up."

Read the entire poem here.

That spectacle of too much weight for me

GOOD-FRIDAY, 1613, RIDING WESTWARD by John Donne

LET man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is ;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey ;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes ?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us ? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul's, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn ?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us ?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them ; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.

Good Friday

For Holy Week, rather than write posts myself, I will post different art (visual, literature, music) by people much more brilliant than myself. This first poem is from Jesuit priest, innovative poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899).

New Readings

Although the letter said
On thistles that men look not grapes to gather,
I read the story rather
How soldiers platting thorns around CHRIST'S Head
Grapes grew and drops of wine were shed.

Though when the sower sowed
The winged fowls took part, part fell in thorn
And never turned to corn,
Part found no root upon the flinty road,-
CHRIST at all hazards fruit hath shewed.

From wastes of rock He brings
Food for five thousand: on the thorns He shed
Grains from His drooping Head;
And would not have that legion of winged things
Bear Him to heaven on easeful wings.


Friend and poet of Hopkin's, Robert Bridges, indicated that this poem had similarities with George Herbert's poem The Sacrifice. I apologize for the unnecessary music that is on the following page, either turn off your sound or turn the volume down and hit pause. Read "The Sacrifice" here.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

(Photo taken by me at the Glendalough monastic site near Dublin, Ireland)

This Celtic hymn, "The Deer's Cry," or also known as "St. Patrick's Breastplate" is traditionally attributed to St. Patrick. The name for the hymn comes from a legend where St. Patrick and his followers escaped a persecuting king by calling upon God; God then turned them into deer to evade the king. The connection of natural imagery with God would have been significant to a pagan culture that worshiped nature, which is the same thing the Celtic Cross tries to accomplish. Here is the hymn, translated by Cecil Alexander (1889):

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this today to me forever
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river,
His death on Cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward;
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.
By Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.