Theodor Fontane is the German writer best known as the author of novels which are considered “the most completely achieved of any writer between Goethe and Thomas Mann.” He possessed a clear and vivid sense of “factuality.” He sought in his work to transfigure everyday facts into something imbued with Rätsel and Halbdunkel, ‘mystery‘ and ‘twilight.’ Ordinary facts have to be converted into memorable art. “A piece of bread ….is poetry”, he wrote.
That is the aim of poetry – to transform ordinary facts and ordinary experiences into memorable art. The task and craft of the poet is to achieve this. It is not often done well.
One of the reasons I like the Australian poet Les Murray so much is because of his ability to evoke the universal ineveryday encounters. Here are the delights of being a big name in the literary world.
Fame
We were at dinner in Soho
and the couple at the next table
rose to go. The woman paused to say
to me: I just wanted you to know
I have got all your cook books
and I swear by them!
I managed
to answer her: Ma’am
they’ve done you nothing but good!
which was perhaps immodest
of whoever I am.
And I like very much how Les Murray, a collector of the arcane, combines eccentric facts into a picture of the astonishments which continuously connect us to history’s ever-green, never-ending narrative.
The Conversations
The glass king of France feared he’d
shatter
Chinese eunuchs kept their testes in
spirit
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Your brain can bleed from a
sneeze-breath
A full moon always rises at sunset
and a person is taller when prone.
Donald Duck was one banned in
Finland
because he didn’t wear trousers
The heart of a groomed horse slows
down.
A fact is a small compact faith.
There is a poem I like to look up when the facts of the world reek of disaster, hatred, cold-hearted slaughter and the shock of repeated terror and destruction as they do now – and those facts are likely to get much worse. It is a poem by Adam Zagajewski, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanaugh.
Try To Praise the Mutilated World
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world.
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
I think of Theodore Fontane’s desire for “factuality” to be imbued with “mystery” and “twilight” and there comes into my mind one of those haunting late poems written by Mahadai Das in her tragic illness not long before she died young at 47. This is one of that late blossoming of poems which are as memorable and extraordinary as any written by any Guyanese or West Indian poet:
Switch Off The Darkness
Switch off the darkness, sweet.
Direct your smile with its rosedrawn
chariots across my dark clouds.
I need your light, young one –
not a small star, some dim moon
nightly sliced in my sky,
but your whole golden coin
so I may freely spend it
across love’s counter in your eyes.
