That They Were -- A Meditation On Poetic Fullness

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It Was A Great Marvel That They Were In The Father Without Knowing

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THE FALL

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She was in great agony, and would have been swallowed up by the sweetness, had she not reached a limit and stopped.
But the passion went on without her, and passed beyond the limit...
He wanted to say "strengthless and female fruit".

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IN his book, The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom discussed poetic influences. He examined poets ranging from Shakespeare to Wilde to Wallace Stevens, and dissected how these strong poets rebel against influence, until at last they yield to its ineluctability, and finally move way past it, into a darkness where they will be swallowed up. This darkness, he said, is the ultimate test of a true poet--for only true poets emerge from it, refined, purified, made new and whole.

This is not a review or analysis or explication of Bloom's theory. Though that might come another day.

What I want to talk about in this post is a little bit more limited in scope. It is a particular passage from AOF; not a very long passage, but, like all of Bloom's passages, pregnant with a variety of meaning.

Ironically this is not even Bloom's. The passage is originally Valentinus'. Valentinus was a 2nd century gnostic philosopher, based in Alexandria, Egypt. The beauty of the passage, however, as I have found it, is that you don't have to be gnostic, or have any knowledge of gnosticism, to enjoy the beauty of it. It is a beauty in itself; poetry in itself.

Peripatetic Valentinus, at the time, went all over the kingdom, teaching The Pleroma --the fullness of thirty aeons, the utmost manifold of divinity.

Okay don't get bored yet. The good part is coming (ish).

Like me Bloom quotes:

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It Was A Great Marvel That They Were In The Father Without Knowing Him

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After he knew that he had fallen, outwards and downwards, away from the Fullness he tried to remember what the Fullness had been.
He did remember, but found he was silent, and could not tell the others.
He wanted to tell them that she leapt farthest forward and fell into a passion apart from his embrace.
She was in great agony, and would have been swallowed up by the sweetness had she not reached a limit, and stopped.
But the passion went on without her, and passed beyond the limit.
Sometimes he thought he was about to speak but the silence continued.
He wanted to say "strengthless and female fruit".

The last line is the hardest, and the most fruitful for the contemplative. I choose always to treat it as a sort of zen koan, because like all other sort of koans, I find it really hard to meditate upon. I guess I'm not up to that level yet.

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A monk asked Jōshū, "Can a dog possess Buddha-nature?"
Jōshū answered, "Mu".
-- The Gateless Gate

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Now I love to mediate upon passages, verses from poetry, even lines from novels. And for that Valentinus's passage is more than perfect. It reads brilliantly and can easily pass as a verse from T.S Eliot's Four Quartets.

The first line

After he knew that he had fallen

Is the most relatable of all. Someone once said the true creation of man was The Fall. I couldn't agree more. But in Valentinus's passage, the fall was not only downwards, but outwards, away from one self. It can read--and I sometimes choose to read it--as a fall away from the Self, wherein the Self is equated to the Fullness. In such a way that Atman is equated to Brahman in Hindu philosophy.

So the "he" in this passage--which Bloom uses to represent THE POET AS POET --has not only fallen downwards from his self, he has fallen away, outwards, from the fullness, from The Self. (The Fullness is always pictured as a circle.) So I put myself in his shoes, falling not only downwards but outwards, into

...a passion apart from his own

He tried to remember what the Fullness had been

But of course he couldn't! Which brings me always to the "Purpose Contemplation".

What is the purpose of an event? Do events happen for event's sake? Or are they part of a string? Are they striving for a higher Fullness? The implication of the first stance would be to live a sort of care-free lifestyle; taking events as they come, not ascribing any higher significance; consequently you don't linger too much on happenings. The latter however means you treat every happenings around you with utmost importance. The littlest occurrence; a fly buzzing in your ear; an itch; a cup of glass falling, breaking; everything has its part to play in a string. Everything must be remembered.

DARKNESS

Italo Calvino once wrote a story about a photographer who was too busy trying to capture moments; trying to preserve moments, instead of living in those moments! I guess most of us are like that now! Everything must be remembered.

Memories betray, though. I, for one, don't seem to remember a lot. Sometimes things happen to me; things that elicit so much emotion, good or bad. And I promise myself I'd never forget. But of course I do. Time passes and I do.

Sometimes when I feel so strong about an event or a thing, and I want to remember so much how I feel or felt, I just choose to focus on the finality of it, and ignore the axioms or whatever that lead to the emotion. I just focus on the acerbity of the emotion itself! But this, I found, is very cruel. And very bitter. There's a reason you forget. It's nature's free catharsis.

Have you forgotten yet? Swear! Swear by the blue of the skies you'll never forget!
--Siegfried Sassoon

He tried to remember what the Fullness had been!

I love to picture him as a person who had jilted his lover only to find he couldn't possibly live without her; now trying to remember what the Love had been. And lucky for him

he did remember

To remember, in my opinion, is to have a taste; to relieve the moment and have the joy or pain of whatever the moment held. But in his situation, it is pure torture! He had fallen out of the Fullness. He was not falling. He had fallen! It's gone.

[he] found he was silent, and could not tell the others

Of course he couldn't! But why? Was it the agony? Was it so numbing he couldn't possibly open his mouth to speak? Or was the truth he beheld; the Fullness, was It so transcendent it defied any utterance?

Anyway he could not tell the others, even though sometimes he opened his mouth and felt he was about to speak.

Here's the best part, though. Valentinus knows! And can tell--at least to the best of his ability.

Valentinus knows because he has been there. He has experienced the Fullness. He also grasped it better, and was better suited to relate it. But even he had obstacles. He had to work with instruments, which, according to T.S Eliot, is shabby and always deteriorating--words!

Like I like to repeat all the time time--words are just symbols! Mere symbols! T.S Eliot called them shabby and always deteriorating because, according to him, one only gets the better of words for the things one no longer have to say. Or things that aren't really important. The deeper things; the more profound things, are almost always unspeakable.

Robert Louis Stevenson said--and because I don't really feel like searching for the quote, I will paraphrase:

The thought that prompted and was expressed in a caress would only lose to be set down in words!

So Valentinus, even though he not only knew what the Fullness is, but could remember and tell it, he also had to, like any other person, work with these shabby instruments. So what are the things the fallen wanted to say but couldn't? Valentinus said he wanted to tell them, and us, about--WAIT FOR IT--a lady! Yes, a lady, Sophia by name. No, I'm serious.

This post has a second part. I have not yet written it. Although I expect you've been bored and jumped this far. I'll advise you to read this post to know why you don't have the right to be mad at me.

Thanks for reading--or skimming--anyway.

Disclaimers:

I'm not gnostic.
I'm not to blame.
I'm not related to Valentinus or Harold Bloom or T.S Eliot.