Roses and wine

From The Rubaiyat

by Omar Khayyam

I
Wake! For the Sun, who scatter’d into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav’n, and strikes
The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.

II
Before the phantom of False morning died,
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
“When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?”

III
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted–”Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”

LXXVII
And this I know: whether the one True Light
Kindle to Love, or Wrath-consume me quite,
One Flash of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.

XCV
And much as Wine has play’d the Infidel,
And robb’d me of my Robe of Honour–Well,
I wonder often what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.

XCVI
Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!

XCVII
Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield
One glimpse–if dimly, yet indeed, reveal’d,
To which the fainting Traveller might spring,
As springs the trampled herbage of the field!

XCVIII
Would but some wing’ed Angel ere too late
Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate!

XCIX
Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits–and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

C
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again–
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden–and for one in vain!

CI
And when like her, oh, Saki, you shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter’d on the Grass,
And in your joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made One–turn down an empty Glass!

(Do have a glass of wine ready for reading the full Rubaiyat here; worth it but long.)

Off your feet and up again

As I was plodding to work this morning I was wondering if I was melancholy. I’m a bit gloomy and pensive; the foliage is turning red already (woe is me, the summer is over!), the wind feels decidedly wintery and there’s a scent of ending in the air. The students are returning, as are members of staff, and the more people are crowding into this building the more I realise how very unconnected I am to my social environment. In itself, that’s not so much a reason to be melancholy than for being sad. I’m not sure I like the isolation that comes with being an academic, the absence of community. I actually enjoy talking to people, and not just for instrumental reasons (‘he is the head of department, I better have a chat with him’, that sort of thing).

Well, the reason I am not purely sad is because I have found out that I can leave this place and go back to my friends and family. I am glad about that – and hence melancholy because melancholy is a mixture of gloominess and enjoyment at the same time. It is actually a very enjoyable state. I’m not saying that because I am morbid. Melancholy has given us splendid works of art and poetry; according to the OED, is it a “tender, sentimental, or reflective sadness; sadness giving rise to or considered as a subject for poetry, sentimental reflection, etc., or as a source of aesthetic pleasure”. It is a ‘delightful’ sensation, according to Jane Austen, especially if it isn’t of long duration; in Northanger Abbey, she speaks of ‘the delightful melancholy which [the] grove inspired’.

If you’re free to glance at the object of melancholy and then leave it behind – wonderful! Contemplate how things begin and end for a while, how every ending is a new beginning (Hesse), how insignificant the individual little feelings and emotions sometimes are, how wonderful each life stage is in its own right (still Hesse). Get your aesthetic kick out of the reflective experience. And then move on. Look, think, learn – and live.

But that’s precisely the problem with melancholy: because it grants a sense of aesthetic pleasure, some people get stuck in it. As Wendy Brown points out in her essay ‘Resisting Left Melancholy’,

The irony of melancholia, of course, is that attachment to the object of one’s sorrowful loss supersedes any desire to recover from this loss, to live free of it in the present, to be unburdened by it. This is what renders melancholia a persistent condition, a state, indeed, a structure of desire, rather than a transient response to death or loss.

It is true, melancholy can become the defining state of one’s self-identity. The emphasis with melancholy must therefore be on it being transient: Don’t wallow in it, move through it. If treated that way, melancholy is nothing to be afraid of, I think. It grants wonderful insights into the nature of being. Caspar David Friedrich, the painter of the moribund and decrepit, must have felt something like this, or how else did he bear the sight of dead trees, icy barren wilderness and ruins of ages long lost in human history? The Romantics believed that states like melancholy granted the individual self-knowledge and understanding; anything really that forces the individual to confront itself would serve that purpose.

Well, there’s certainly nothing like doing a PhD to confront the individual with herself. It’s a lonely task. There’s no community to draw on – that’s actually been my biggest disappointment in doing my PhD. But maybe that’s just a stage of life that one has to go through, a bit of barren wilderness, even an icy-cold one maybe, and then on to richer pastures. The point is, as I said above, not to get stuck in melancholy. Autumn will pass, as will winter, and it will be spring and warm again and all will be thriving and throbbing with life, next year.

***

Wendy Brown (1999) Resisting Left Melancholy. boundary 2 26(3), pp. 19-27.

Mudwoman’s First Encounter with the World of Money and Business

Copyright by Nora Naranjo-Morse

She unwrapped her clay figures,

unfolding the cloth each was nestled in,
carefully, almost with ceremony.
Concerning herself with the specific curves, bends and
idiosyncrasies, that made each piece her own.

Standing these forms upright, displaying them from

one side to the next, Mud Woman
could feel her pride surging upward
from a secret part within her,
translating into a smile that passed her lips.
All of this in front of the gallery owner.

After all the creations were unveiled, Mud Woman held her breath,

The gallery owner, peering
from behind fashionably designed
bifocals, examined each piece
with an awareness Mud Woman
knew very little of.
The owner cleared her throat, asking:
“First of all dear, do you have a résumé? You know,
something written that would identify you to the public.
Who is your family?
Are any of them well known in the Indian art world?”

Mud Woman hesitated, trying desperately to connect

this business woman’s voice with her questions,
like a foreigner trying to comprehend
the innuendos of a new language, unexpected
and somewhat intimidating.

The center of what Mud Woman knew to be real

was shifting with each moment in the gallery.
The format of this exchange was a new dimension
from what was taken for granted at home,
where the clay, moist and smooth,
waited to be rounded and coiled
into sensuous shapes, in a workroom
Mud Woman and her man had built
of earth too.
All this struggled against a blaring radio
with poor reception and noon hour
traffic bustling beyond the frame walls.

Handling each piece, the merchant quickly judged

whether or not Mud Woman’s work would be a profitable venture.
“Well,” she began, “your work is
strangely different, certainly not traditional
Santa Clara pottery and I’m not
sure there is a market for
your particular style, especially
since no one knows who you are.
However, if for some reason you make it big,
I can be the first to say, `I discovered you.’
So, I’ll buy a few pieces and we’ll see how it goes.”
Without looking up, she opened a large, black checkbook,
quickly scribbling the needed information to make
the gallery’s check valuable.
Hesitantly, Mud Woman exchanged her work for the
unexpectedly smaller sum that wholesale prices dictated.

After a few polite, but obviously strained pleasantries

Mud Woman left, leaving behind her
shaped pieces of earth.
Walking against the honks of a harried
lunch crowd, Nan chu Kweejo spoke:
“Navi ayu, ti gin nau na muu,
nai sa aweh kucha?”
“My daughter, is this the way it goes,
this pottery business?”
Hearing this, Mud Woman lowered her head,
walking against the crowd of workers
returning from lunch.

Nan chu Kweejo’s question,
clouded Mud Woman’s vision with a mist
of lost innocence,

as she left the city

and the world of

money and business behind.

Nora Naranjo-Morse (1992) Mud Woman. Poems from the Clay. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.