Wednesday, September 16, 2015

#258




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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