rilke, heaney, and art

In a class on Poetics last fall, we read Rilke's Duino Elegies. We also read Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" in the context of ekphrasis, ethics, the task of the poet.

Here is Stephen Mitchell's translation:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must change your life.

When first reading this poem, the image of the artwork staring back at the viewer, and consequently at me, the reader, was chilling. The notion that the artwork could judge the reader made issues of the poet's responsibility feel more urgent. I thought of these lines in general terms: you can not escape the gaze of the art object; you can not escape your responsibility in responding to the suffering of the past. I read the last line as a call for the poet to write with an ethical responsibility...

I recently went with Nathan on a trip across Ottawa, to Montreal to visit my sister-in-law, to White River Junction in Vermont to visit my brother, and back home, passing through Chicago on the way.

On one of our days of long driving, we listened to podcasts of the Poetry foundation's "In Conversation" series. In the Seamus Heaney interview, Michael Laskey phrases Rilke's question in the context of the poet's life, a context I hadn't thought of before.

Laskey says: "Alright so, the life of the poet. Rilke says, 'You must change your life.'  Have you changed your life?" (... I like how casually he phrases it!)

Heaney comments, "Well once, certainly." Heaney recalls that at 33, he had published three books and they had been well-received. But he says,  "I didn't feel, however, that I had become a poet, whatever that meant. I had written poems. And I had put together collections [...] But I think to say you are a poet, you have to earn it in some sort of way. That was my feeling anyway. It came to a moment when I thought you should commit yourself."

Heaney resigned from his university job and moved to a cottage to work on his writing full-time and literally "earn" his income as a writer. In this sense, Heaney illuminates a different urgency to Rilke's words and the image of the statue of Apollo... It resonated with something I've been feeling for some time.. The feeling that there have been many distractions in my life, and wondering how many more distractions I can let inside... wondering how much I can dedicate myself to writing, and what I want to pursue. University was so meaningful and important for me.. but it was also a distraction from other ways of thinking, other ways of imagining the world. And now, as I stand at the crossroads of whether to pursue a phd or not... I am forced to confront Rilke's words in a way I have not so far.

"You must change your life."

***

We got into Vermont late at night after crossing the border outside Montreal... White River Junction, where my brother Dakota is pursuing an MFA at the Centre for Cartoon Studies is a tiny town that stands at the junction of many highways and rivers. The town was so tiny that we drove past his apartment, the first on the street, not realizing the giant yellow building was the one we were looking for. Inside, he greeted us and we talked for hours before camping on the floor of his spare bedroom. The next few days were spent sitting around the campfire of our campground, hiking up Mount Ascutney and taking in the panoramic view of the valley below, visiting the Robert Frost museum and gravesite in Shaftsbury, touring the Centre for Cartoon studies, and lazing around the small New England town.

Throughout our time in Vermont, I was constantly surprised by how hard Dakota works on his comics, and his art. It’s not that I imagined he wasn’t working hard; it just helped to see his workspace first hand, to view the cartoon studios, and his desk, the places where he spends working from the early evening until late at night. Driving away from Vermont, I felt inspired to work as hard at my writing as he works on his art. I want to dedicate myself to pushing myself harder than I ever have before. I want to develop a strong work ethic, the discipline, and passion that I saw in my brother.

After leaving Vermont, we headed to Chicago. Neither of us had been to Chicago before but we really wanted to take in at least one art gallery on our trip. In Ottawa, the art gallery was closing just as we walked in the front doors, and in Montreal we were short on time. So, we left our belongings in the hotel and headed down to the Art Institute of Chicago.

We were completely ignorant of the museum’s contents, which I think ending up being a good thing… I’ve never experienced such an emotional response to art. Part of it definitely had to do with “knowing” the paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet since childhood and then finally encountering them firsthand. It felt like my knowledge of these paintings had always been immaterial, or abstract, and I was suddenly confronted with them in a way I had not expected.

It was a physical confrontation. It was a feeling of the universal suddenly becoming so specific, individual, and immediate. Everything was so huge, vibrant, and inescapable. When viewing the ancient Greek artwork, it was almost impossible to make sense of just how old these items were… much of my undergrad was spent reading Greek philosophers. How could I make sense of the reality that I was seeing these sculptures in front of me? I felt confronted by my position in history, in a way that felt inescapable. My own life is finite, but these sculptures were imbued with a sense of the infinite.

I know that the torso that Rilke modelled his poem after is in the Louvre, but I experienced a similar confrontation viewing the Greek and Roman sculptures, and a lot of the artwork in the museum. It was something about being able to SEE the brushstrokes on a Van Gogh painting, or SEE the detail on pottery and drinking cups that men and women actually used more than two thousand years ago… it was my encounter with artwork, with Monet’s bridges or fog of London, with the ancient frescoes and famous works we have all seen since childhood and have been imprinted in our minds as abstract things—it was encountering these things first hand that made Rilke’s words not a suggestion, but a demand. I can no longer distract myself. I must work harder. I must change.