The Austrian composer, Franz
Schubert, died at age 31 from a combination of the ravages of an advanced case
of syphilis, and mercury poisoning, commonly used at the time to treat
syphilis. So, that was a tragic and painful way to go for the young Herr
Schubert. He had been recognized as a boy genius, though he only met middling
success as a composer and teacher while he lived. He’s regarded as one of the
greatest-ever classical composers now of course. What matters to Henry in
invoking Schubert is only partly his artistic greatness. It also matters that
he suffered. Schubert wore out too young, and created his best work in spite of
his truly dire suffering. As far as a life goes, there wasn’t much to recommend
Schubert’s example, but his legacy has persisted as one of the greatest ever.
Hmm…sounds familiar.
Schubert’s suffering didn’t
hinder great music. But for B., it spurts across his brain, like stomping on a
tomato. Just an annoying stain. “So much for art.” B. is suffering, and he
can’t open to Great Art because his suffering has the upper hand. His father
being killed was a terrible blow, but it’s still easy to get impatient with his
suffering overall, since so much of it was self-inflicted—that is if you
withhold that alcoholics don’t have quite the choice we non-alcoholics assume
they do. The siren call of the substance for the substance abuser is a brutally
compulsive one. For whatever reason, given that he suffered—often in physical
pain, often overcome with shame and guilt, in and out of hospitals and rehab,
one nervous breakdown after another—it’s reasonable for him to want to make
something of that. Suffering, so the myth goes, enhances creativity. Billie
Holiday, deaf Beethoven, mentally anguished van Gogh. Flannery O’Connor
suffered from lupus and wrote her most incredible stories with that hanging
over her. I’ve written here before about how so many 20th century
poets were hard, hard drinkers, who died from hard, hard drinking. Janis Joplin
and Jimi Hendrix didn’t have happy lives, with bad family histories and drugs
and alcohol. William Burroughs was a heroin addict. So was Charlie Parker. It’s
a long list, and I could triple it off the top of my head. John Berryman is one
of their number.
He needed to see himself as part
of that contingent, and it’s understandable. Does it matter, though, in the end?
His kind of artist needs to say it
matters. But B. seems to be aware in this poem that life, like a burbling
fountain in some Roman piazza, keeps on burbling once we’re gone. We step in,
make a ripple maybe, maybe dive in and splash some, but we move on eventually
and the fountain keeps gurgling like we’ve never been there. So what does that
last line, “Henry put his foot down: free”, mean? If life is splashing in the
fountain, then Henry putting his foot down is his first step out of it. Free of
it. All the agony and creativity? Ripples. Subsumed immediately in a thousand
other ripples, so that you can’t tell them apart. To think that your particular
ripple stands out is pure vanity. The fountain keeps on going, with an overall
pleasant sound and pattern of falling, splashing, rippling. Even if you taking
a flying leap and do a cannonball, the wave subsides, the splash on the
pavement dries in the hot Italian sun, and life goes on without you. The only
way to come to peace is to value the pattern of a million ripples. The part
yours plays in the overall pattern matters only when you’re subsumed in the
community of ripples. Individual achievement is a figment of the vain ego. So,
now, is the pain, leading to all that amazing creativity, worth the splash? I
think that Henry right here just wants it over with. He’s made his splash.
He’ll be free of the terrible grasping water shortly, the maddening community
of splashes. This poem is a subtle and gentle longing for, finally, a still,
quiet, and easeful death, I think.
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