Yesterday marked the 222nd birthday of Beethoven- an event this blog can't justifiably skate over. So here's the gorgeous introduction of the Emperor's slow movement, set over one of the more mysteriously magical passages of Winnie the Pooh, complete with illustrations. They both suggest, for me, as fantastic as it may sound, the simple magic of childhood, and the uniqueness of its wonderful discoveries, in that they are always accompanied by a strange contentedness.
Ivan Moravec's otherworldly* gift for legato suits very well Janáček's haunting In The Mists. It's an arresting little miniature- simple but hauntingly lyrical, now and then rearing to fierier heights which Moravec moulds with trademark restraint.
*I kid not, strangers to Moravec, when I say the man conjures silk. Check out his Chopin Berceuse or Nocturne recordings
I discovered a brilliant poem by the twentieth-century poet Eduard Muir, It speaks of the moment in the Bible where Jesus, at the top of a mountain with three disciples, is suddenly transformed (his clothes becoming 'dazzlingly white,' as Matthew tells us), and Moses and Elijah appear at his side. Interestingly, Muir's descriptions focus not on the transfiguration of Christ himself, but on how that transforms those watching and his surroundings. The poem is beautifully crafted. The language is clear, no-frills (though strewn here and there with alliteration for lyrical effect), giving a sense of purity; this is added to by the abundant natural imagery. Broad-stroke observations of (e.g.) the 'earth and light and water) are carefully weighed against striking microscopic detail, such as the changing 'veins' and 'wrists' of the spectators, and 'the refuse heaps... grained with that fine dust that made the world.'
The highlights of this poem are two, and deeply evocative. The lesser of the two- though still fantastic- is the stirring image of the uninhabited earth Muir conjurs up at the end of the first verse, where he writes:
'But the world
Rolled back into its place, and we are here,
And all that radiant kingdom lies forlorn,
As if it had never stirred; no human voice
Is heard among its meadows, but it speaks
To itself alone, alone it flowers and shines
And blossoms for itself while time runs on.'
The last verse, however, is magnificent, a kind of peroration. The proclamation has a sonorous confidence, and dazzles with its sheer scope, sweeping up 'the field, and woods, and rocks, and seas,/And all mankind' in its prophecy. But what really makes this verse is its keen description of the undoing, the rewinding of time, the resetting of wrongs as though they had never been committed. The above verse does that, but on a grander scale; here Muir zooms in on two, striking images. He uses the image of the cross as 'tormented wood,' (which may seem unusual to modern readers, but is, if I remember currently, a common idea in medieval literature) which 'will cure its hurt and grow into a tree' of Eden. But it is the backpedalling in final lines which is the most moving- those which speak of what is to befall Judas, and almost seem to address him directly, as a kind of sublime consolation, :
'And Judas damned take his long journey backward
From darkness into light and be a child
Beside his mother’s knee, and the betrayal
Be quite undone and never more be done.'
The Transfiguration
So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists
As fresh and pure as water from a well,
Our hands made new to handle holy things,
The source of all our seeing rinsed and cleansed
Till earth and light and water entering there
Gave back to us the clear unfallen world.
We would have thrown our clothes away for lightness,
But that even they, though sour and travel stained,
Seemed, like our flesh, made of immortal substance,
And the soiled flax and wool lay light upon us
Like friendly wonders, flower and flock entwined
As in a morning field. Was it a vision?
Or did we see that day the unseeable
One glory of the everlasting world
Perpetually at work, though never seen
Since Eden locked the gate that’s everywhere
And nowhere? Was the change in us alone,
And the enormous earth still left forlorn,
An exile or a prisoner? Yet the world
We saw that day made this unreal, for all
Was in its place. The painted animal
Assembled there in gentle congregations,
Or sought apart their leafy oratories,
Or walked in peace, the wild and tame together,
As if, also for them, the day had come.
The shepherds’ hovels shone, for underneath
The soot we saw the stone clean at the heart
As on the starting-day. The refuse heaps
Were grained with that fine dust that made the world;
For he had said, ‘To the pure all things are pure.’
And when we went into the town, he with us,
The lurkers under doorways, murderers,
With rags tied round their feet for silence, came
Out of themselves to us and were with us,
And those who hide within the labyrinth
Of their own loneliness and greatness came,
And those entangled in their own devices,
The silent and the garrulous liars, all
Stepped out of their dungeons and were free.
Reality or vision, this we have seen.
If it had lasted but another moment
It might have held for ever! But the world
Rolled back into its place, and we are here,
And all that radiant kingdom lies forlorn,
As if it had never stirred; no human voice
Is heard among its meadows, but it speaks
To itself alone, alone it flowers and shines
And blossoms for itself while time runs on.
But he will come again, it’s said, though not
Unwanted and unsummoned; for all things,
Beasts of the field, and woods, and rocks, and seas,
And all mankind from end to end of the earth
Will call him with one voice. In our own time,
Some say, or at a time when time is ripe.
Then he will come, Christ the uncrucified,
Christ the discrucified, his death undone,
His agony unmade, his cross dismantled—
Glad to be so—and the tormented wood
Will cure its hurt and grow into a tree
In a green springing corner of young Eden,
And Judas damned take his long journey backward
From darkness into light and be a child
Beside his mother’s knee, and the betrayal
Be quite undone and never more be done.
On the subject of religious poetry, I've also been reading some poems by the Metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw, and found this gem from his collection of 'Divine Epigrams', On the Miracle of the Multiplied Loaves. This really needs no commentary. The last line in particular speaks for itself.
See here an easy feast that knows no wound,
That under hunger’s teeth will needs be sound;
A subtle harvest of unbounded bread,
What would ye more? Here food itself is fed.
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