Misery Loves Poetry

Van Gogh, "Old Man in Sorrow"

Van Gogh, "Old Man in Sorrow"

Yesterday a New York Times blog addressed an issue I have been wrestling with as well: whether literature is up to the string of disasters we are encountering.  (See for instance my posts on the Haitian earthquake and the Japanese tsunami.)  Sam Tanenhaus asserts that “one of the enduring paradoxes of great apocalyptic writing is that it consoles even as it alarms.”

To my mind, Tanenhaus’s most interesting point is about why poetry seems to be better at responding to catastrophe than narrative prose.  He writes,

narrative implies continuity and order — events that flow forth in comprehensible sequence, driven by motive forces of cause and effect. To tell a “story,” whether real or invented, is to presume at least the possibility of rational understanding.

But catastrophe defies logic. It faces us with disruption and discontinuity, with the breakdown of order. The same can often be said of poetry itself. It operates outside the realm of “logic.” Rather, it obeys the logic of dreams, of the unconscious. This is especially the case with lyric poetry, with its suggestion of vision and prophecy.


Tanenhous mentions some poems that I’ve written about, such as Yeats’s dire prediction in “Second Coming” (although I pooh-poohed the poet’s apocalyptic claims) and Lear’s “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” rant (which I’ll have to remember next time we have a catastrophic hurricane).  He points to Greek tragedy, “with its blood-crimes and murderous revenges.”

In my recent post on the Japanese tsunami, I noted that, just by addressing catastrophe, poetry provides some consolation.  As I put it, “Language, inadequate though it may be, still rises up to register a protest.”

Tanenhaus says it even better.  While admitting that “to name the catastrophic demon won’t slay it,” he adds, “But it can help chase our fears out of the shadows and into the sunlight.”

So let’s end this post with a test case.  The situation in Japan reminds me of King Lear because the disasters keep piling up.  The earthquake was followed by the tsunami which was followed by fires that burned down the rest of the towns which were followed by meltdowns in three nuclear power plants which will be followed by . . . well, we don’t know because the crisis isn’t over yet.  Likewise in King Lear, Edgar never knows when he has hit rock bottom.

Fleeing for his life because of the duplicity of his brother, he disguises himself as a madman.  Miserable though he is, he thinks he is experiencing the worst and that, as a result, he need not live in fear.  After all, hasn’t the stage been clear for “esperance.”  What worse could happen?

Immediately upon saying this, he runs into his penitent father with his eyes gouged out.

So is this the worst?  It looks like it, but Edgar is no longer sure.  In fact, maybe we have hit the worst only when we can no longer express our misery.  Or as Edgar puts it, “And worse I may be yet: the worst is not/So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.'”

And indeed things get even worse in the play: a kind soul is hanged and her father, who has been allowed to hope again, dies of a broken heart.  Before expiring, Lear delivers what is one of literature’s darkest lines: “Never, never, never, never, never.”

Or maybe the darkest line occurs earlier when Gloucester summarizes the situation: “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods,
/They kill us for their sport.”  This is the passage that Thomas Hardy may have in mind in his poem “Hap,” which I included in the recent post on the Japanese tsunami.

Those of you who have suffered, do you find any consolation in the fact that Shakespeare puts some of the experience into words?  How much does it help having poets let you know that we are all in this together?

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

5 Comments

  1. WordPress › Error

    There has been a critical error on this website.

    Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.