Another meditation on Randall Jarrell, really a discussion
with his ghost. The whole poem is a meditation on suicide. While there may have
been doubt about whether Jarrell’s death was really a suicide, B. certainly understood
it as such. He knew what had been going on with Jarrell and where Jarrell’s
head was at. That’s what’s behind “You went like Pier to another fate,” which is
a reference to Pier della Vigna, in Dante’s Inferno,
who appears to Dante and Virgil in the circle of Hell where the suicides are
imprisoned, immobile, as gnarled, thorny trees. Harpies come along fairly often
and break their limbs off. The limbs grow back just so the Harpies can break
them off again. A rough way to spend eternity. Pier della Vigna was a real
person, and in life was falsely accused of trying to poison the king, so he was
imprisoned for a year, chained like a dog, and his eyes were gouged out. He
killed himself in front of the king himself, who had finally come to face him
after the year of softening up, to accuse him in person and find out for
himself what really went down, but Della Vigna was so humiliated by his accusation
and the state he had been tormented into that he committed suicide by bashing
his own head against the stone pavement until he broke his skull open. I don’t
know, maybe I’m just a sentimentalist, but it seems kind of unfair to me for
Dante to consign della Vigna to Hell with all the other suicides on that basis
alone. But rules are rules. Under absolutely no circumstances are you to commit
suicide under the rule of Medieval theocracy, and if you do, there is hell to
pay. I’m fairly certain that della Vigna’s first-hand understanding of what was
waiting for him in the days and possibly years to come, chained up in that
dungeon, was way worse than anything Dante was able to dish out in his
imagining of Hell. But I don’t mean to make a joke out of the torment the poor
guy really did suffer some 850 years ago. Unlike Dante, I do not for a second believe
he’s in hell. Rest in peace is what I’m saying. Poor Pier della Vigna at least deserves
that much.
Pier della Vigna is chosen purposely. Torment somebody far
enough and they’re gonna want out. Torture them and they’ll beg for the comfort
of death. It’s a horrifying thought, but of course it makes sense under extreme
circumstances. This is what is behind the whole physician-assisted suicide
movement that is slowly gaining traction as some Medieval ideas about death,
suffering and suicide finally are just now being put to rest. Well, enough of
torment. We all know what it is, and it’s permissible to thank your lucky stars
if you’ve escaped it. It still goes on, unfortunately, even in the baddest and
most Medieval of terms, but more commonly now, suffering takes on alternate
modern guises that we need not go into.
The real point, is that Jarrell suffered pretty much, and I
guess I’m not going to accuse B. of dramatizing his own suffering. They were
simpatico in that, and they wrote through it anyway, hoping that something of
eternal artistic value might redeem it all. B.’s on the verge of joining
Jarrell, and filled with the understandable, normal questions. Is it time? What
if Dante was right? Is there anything of beauty, love, peace, and comfort left
to cling to? I wish someone who knew could come tell me it’s all right, Randall
Jarrell, because living is getting hard now, poetry and fame aside, and I’m
gonna need to make a decision here eventually.
One more thought about Berryman and this project: Suicide,
torment, suffering, fame and a tenuous legacy, doubt about wanting to live on:
Nothing could possibly be more alien to me. I bellyache about very real
outrages in the messed up world I inhabit, and I also bellyache about smaller
things in my life because there are annoyances, setbacks and frustrations, and
there is some age coming on which I can’t deny. But my life is still rich, and
there is love, respect, good sleep, adventures yet to come, and health enough
to enjoy small beauties like jewelwing damselflies living along summer creeks,
and the pawpaw fruits I picked, growing wild in the forests hereabouts. They’re
so delicious! But every day, I open my book or track down the day’s poem
online, and I go with it. If I’m not in sync, that’s okay. I adjust my mental and
emotional flow and go with it for awhile, learn something, respect the
challenge to myself I laid down, and when I post the blog, as down as this
crazy work might have pulled me, I spring upright again. I’m just observing one
artist’s life, in all its darkness and shame, and I had no conception of what I
was in for when it started. But that’s the amazement of it. Here it is! Are you
kidding me? In the end, it will change me, having done all this, but not in
obvious ways. It will change me like any journey does: Now I’ve seen something.
There’s no going back. I will say this. I did know enough not to expect all
wisdom and wonders day in and day out. We’re all basket cases. Famous poets are
no different. I’m not learning everything I expected, and I am learning from
angles I couldn’t have seen coming. That’s the point. For example, I now know
what a terrible end Pier della Vigna met, who I hadn’t thought of since I read Inferno over thirty years ago, and who
hadn’t left any impression on me after our fleeting literary encounter
whatsoever. But I know now, and now that his torment is over, I think he would
bless this momentary engagement with his life, and especially the empathy I
feel for him, which having grown, I’ll now extend in any direction I can. I
like to think he knows that, if his soul still has any coherence capable of
that kind of coherent thought. It might not, not in the way Dante would
understand. In thinking about him, though, like B. is thinking of Jarrell, we
create their ghosts. The effect on us is actual, not ghostly. It’s quietly
amazing.
Nice.
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