Another in a long line of Delmore
Schwartz Dream Song elegies. The man’s death had an effect on Mr. B., clearly.
It’s a pretty good representation of what depression can do to one’s focus. Losing
interest in projects under way, lying lazy in the sun, sketching out other
projects (even in depression some minds never stop), finally a statement of
regret to everyone just arriving here in life or on the way: Sorry. It’s not as
great as you might think. There’s death and woe in the world. A depressed,
depressing statement. The “glimmerings” are of suicide, I’m afraid.
But rather that wallow in that
kind of stuff, since this is a bright, early summer day full of sun and promise,
and I don’t feel depressed at all (sorry, Henry), let’s look into a Delmore
Schwartz poem and see what all the fuss is about.
“The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me”
is a philosophical exploration of the relationship between body and self, and
there’s a clear separation between the two. The self speaks, the self
perceives, and alongside stumbles this lumbering, wallowing, drooling bruin
appetite that goes wherever the speaker goes. Here’s the key: “Trembles to
think that his quivering meat / Must finally wince to nothing at all.” Doesn’t quite
seem fair, does it? I’m separate from my body, but when it finally winces to nothing at all, so do I—as far as I can tell. In
that thought right there is the genesis of all the world’s afterlife myths,
from heaven and hell, to reincarnation: The body may die, but I sure as hell
won’t. Not me. Nosirree. I got plans.
Of course, maybe the spirit does
live on after death, and in that case, I’m being a bit of a smart aleck. More
people believe that than not, and who am I to question it? This poem, and the
orientation that separates mind from body, has to be spiritual in nature from
the beginning: There is my matter, here is my spirit. Therefore, there is
spirit somehow within creation. I think this is where Schwartz is coming from. René
“I Think Therefore I Am” Descartes would approve. I don’t find it satisfying.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s understanding of matter and spirit broadens things
a bit: Matter has spirit inherent in it, that’s part of what makes it matter,
and as we move up the ladder of complexity from crystal to petunia to elk to
poet, that spirit focuses more and more, and more and more finely, finally into
perception and awareness. For Teilhard, the Jesuit priest, spirit inherent in
matter is God’s presence in the universe. And what that means is that if I see
my body as lumbering alongside me like a drooling, sex-starved and ravenously
hungry grizzly bear, on one hand I’m missing something in that I don’t see that
bear as fundamentally an aspect God’s presence and God’s love, but on the other
hand the fact that I can think and experience at all, attached to a body or
not, is not just the me of me perceiving, it’s the God in me that’s perceiving.
We are one. He’s part of me. To perceive—even to perceive one’s body stumbling
along over there—is to participate in universal holiness. I think that’s a
fundamental tenant of Christian belief. Teilhard sees my awareness as an
inevitable result of the universe’s God-filled substance.
God is a bear.
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