Christmas card

from "The Snow Queen" in The Snow Queen
and Other stories--an oversize Golden Book
with illustrations by Adrienne Segur

I pored over my copy of The Snow Queen and Other Stories when I was a small child as blonde and blue-eyed as an Adrienne Segur character. Later little gold crowns ringed my pupils and my eyes turned green. My hair would darken. Back then I had a deep love for Segur's illustration that I now find was not uncommon among women writers around my age. Many of us had one (or two--the lucky ones!) of the big story collections Segur illustrated for Golden Books. I bought the second one some years ago and wished that I could send it through time to the child-me. Instead, I shall send you a little card from child-me and current-me: Young Crone-me.

Segur, "The Little Lamb"

The Year of the Blue Christmas Tree
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5


Here’s Snow Day in the Writing Room.

And a childhood favorite at Christmas.


Here’s a poem for Christmas Day.


***** 

Maybe a little William Blake (1757-1827) to accompany that illustration?

The Lamb 

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o'er the mead; 
Gave thee clothing of delight, 
Softest clothing wooly bright; 
Gave thee such a tender voice, 
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee, 
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name, 
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

One of my favorite books as a child. Segur illustrations.

Segur, "Melito and his Soul"

Segur illustration, "La Rose de Noël"

The New-year's Gift

Let others look for pearl and gold,

Tissues, or tabbies manifold:

One only lock of that sweet hay

Whereon the blessed Baby lay,

Or one poor swaddling-clout, shall be

The richest New-year's gift to me.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Segur. I'm not sure what this one is from...

Segur, for "The Legend of the Rossignol"

Segur detail, "The Little Girl Made of Snow"

Christmas-Eve, Another Ceremony

Come guard this night the Christmas-Pie,

That the thief, though ne'er so sly,

With his flesh-hooks, don't come nigh

                  To catch it

From him, who all alone sits there,

Having his eyes still in his ear,

And a deal of nightly fear

                  To watch it.

                --Herrick

Three kind Segurian dwarves assisting a poor child
shoved out in the snow by her
cruel stepmother!

Borges, Blake, Christ, and art

Public domain image; see Wikipedia citation.
Best reproduction is here. www.blakearchive.org

Here's a post for a Sunday, a post for Lent... Reading a Borges interview made me think of that singular visionary, William Blake, sitting with his wife in the garden at Felpham, or glimpsing angels among haymakers, and or spying them up in a tree, the bright wings spangling the branches like stars.

Borges on Christ as artist

Jorge Luis Borges to Denis Dutton:

 ...I don’t know who said that, was it Bernard Shaw? — he said, arguments convince nobody. No, Emerson. He said, arguments convince nobody. And I suppose he was right, even if you think of proofs for the existence of God, for example — no? In that case, if arguments convince nobody, a man may be convinced by parables or fables or what? Or fictions. Those are far more convincing than the syllogism — and they are, I suppose. Well, of course, when I think of something in terms of Jesus Christ. As far as I remember, he never used arguments; he used style, he used certain metaphors. It’s very strange — yes, and he always used very striking sentences. He would not say, I don’t come to bring peace but war — “I do not come to bring peace but a sword.” The Christ, he thought in parables. Well, according to — I think that it was Blake who said that a man should be — I mean, if he is a Christian — should be not only just but he should be intelligent ... he should also be an artist, since Christ had been teaching art through his own way of preaching, because every one of the sentences of Christ, if not every single utterance of Christ, has a literary value, and may be thought of as a metaphor or as a parable.

Christ the Word and art

Borges called himself an agnostic. His description of Christ as working through style, metaphor, and parable seems highly appropriate for a savior called the Word. (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. John 1:1.) That comment about every sentence of Christ being of literary value certainly sounds like Blake. In fact, "every sentence" being of literary value fulfills Blake's ideas about unceasing praise, which is art.

Blake, the Laocoön, and art as the Tree of Life

Borges's reference reminds me of the inscriptions circling Blake's depiction (etched and engraved in intaglio) of the famous Laocoön and his sons group (circa 200 B. C. - 70 A. D.), which he perceives as portraying God with Adam and Satan. Blake's copy-work dates from around 1815, but the winding, colorful inscriptions were added more than a decade later. These lines are fascinating, and many of them pronounce on the intersection of Christ and art.

A selection of William Blake's art-related inscriptions around the Laocoön, Copy B (Essick collection):*

Prayer is the Study of Art. 

Praise is the Practise of Art. 

The Eternal Body of Man is Imagination, that is God himself. 

It manifests itself in his Works of Art (in Eternity All is Vision) 

The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Man

Art is the Tree of Life   God is Jesus 

The Whole Business of Man is the Arts 

Jesus His Apostles and Disciples were all Artists 

Christianity is Art and not Money    Money is its Curse 

Israel delivered from Egypt is Art delivered from Nature and Imitation 

You must leave Fathers and Mothers and Houses and Lands
if they stand in the way of Art

Without Unceasing Practise, nothing can be done   Practise is Art

*Ampersands signified by "and"

It's interesting how these interrelate. Evidently unceasing "practise" means unceasing praise, since praise is the "practise" of art. All of life, then, becomes praise that expresses itself as art. And art is visonary, flourishing, and apparent in lives that might not, on the surface, appear to be devoted to art as we now think of it.

Don't follow your bliss--

William Blake, "The Genius of Shakespeare"

The idea of "following your bliss" seems to have successfully invaded all precincts of our world. I seem to meet it everywhere online, but I don't approve of its sentimentality, smarminess, and false illusions. No doubt I have mentioned it before. But my mentioning it hasn't stopped the flood of bliss-advocators. I'm like the little boy with his thumb in the dike, except that I'm not going to freeze to death (unless I go and stand in my Yankee back yard for an hour or so and tell the birds about the need to ignore the popular version of Joseph Campbell. But since they're making music with joy without any worry, I probably don't need to make that sacrifice.) Here are some stray quotes celebrated by friends and snitched from social media:

Find your passion, say 'no' to anything that is a waste of time and keep on going. Focus on what you love. --Rebeca Plantier 

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. --Joseph Campbell 

I have quite mixed thoughts about this sort of recommendation. On one hand, I had an overweening, intense passion to read and then read and write as a child--fine, I've followed it, made lots of large sacrifices because of it. I gave up achieved tenure and promotion, dropped out of the helpful-to-a-writer academic machine, and in general slept less and had less of what people call fun than others because I wanted to pursue the glimmering goal of art. And I don't regret any of that because I still have a fire to make stories and poems. That's my kind of fun, a deeper and more curious pleasure than most. I'm grateful that I've been able to have so much of it, thanks to my own obsessive nature and a husband who likes to cook.

Did a black swan land on my head as a result of my fire to create? No. Do I expect to hear the whirring of wings at my back? No, not unless it's the whirring of Marvell's "time's wingèd chariot." Yes, that could be what I hear... Would I be glad if a black swan dropped in for a visit? Sure. I love readers, and a work is completed each time it is read.

(Missed the black swan theory? In the words of Wikipedia, "The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight." A theory laid out by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, it was picked up and refined for writers by the Grumpy Old Bookman, whose writings on the scalding truth about the role of luck in the writing world had been an inspiration to Taleb. In literary terms, what happens when a book is anointed as lead book by a publisher and then shoved into the public's face is a bit of a black swan. The amazing success that overtook Jo Rowling's Potter books is a gigantic, morbidly-obese black swan. Black swan literary success, then, comes as a surprise, may have a huge effect, and is rationalized by people afterward.)

I know a lot of people who just don't fit that popularized, overly-sweet image of the hero following his bliss. (Here I should note that I have found Campbell's ideas about the hero's journey to be interesting, particularly when I am thinking about stories, which have a lot to say about human life but are not the same. If they were, they would be human life.) Some of the people who don't fit the pattern are people without a passion. And some of them are people who did or do have a passion.

Take the people I know who did not have a passion, who fell into something and became very good at it. I don't think that's a problem. In fact, I think it's great. We don't all have to chase a muse through hollow lands and hilly lands. I believe that becoming very good at something is plain old satisfying. A simple goal of becoming good at something is a better goal for a lot of people. It's not a little goal, either; it's a large, worthy one. The satisfaction that comes from slow accomplishment and a degree of mastery is highly underrated.

Here's a dramatic example: I have a friend who was a successful concert pianist, touring nationally. At some point, he felt that he would never be of the very highest rank, and that he simply didn't like the loneliness of the life. He dropped out and went back to school and eventually became a physician at a teaching hospital, where he is a different, more familiar sort of success and has plenty of people contact that eliminates the solitude of the single life. A smart man, he had been following his bliss and doing quite well in worldly terms. But bliss turned out to be less satisfying than the original advertisement. It didn't fit his life well. So he went through new training and became good at something else, something very different. I admire the strength of mind that made him quit one pursuit and set out on another path--a path that was not his bliss.

The popular "follow your bliss" goal is a sentimental mirage that has harmed others I know, particularly in the arts. The concept is supposed to lead the hero upward to heroic success. It's intended to be more than an internal journey. Anyway, people tend to be unsatisfied by being Hawthorne's secret artist of the beautiful. It's that pesky old human nature, never content! I know people who were unable to handle their lack of worldly success in the whimsical world of the arts, unable to come to terms with the way of the world and accept that there's an awful lot of luck in what happens, and that black swans don't plop down on most people's heads. Even though lack of success diminished and in some cases spoiled their affection for a pursuit, they were unable to change course and find another goal. I'm not sure what the answer would have been for these people, aside from an earlier understanding of the ways of the world (hard in an era that forces self-esteem down children's throats) and a clue that "follow your bliss" is an often-delusional path that may lead to a place that does not satisfy a desire to have one's art be known.

Despite what I've said, I don't happen to think that a life in the arts that isn't rewarded with huge success is a disaster, or even a major problem. And I don't say that because many of the writers and artists I admire for various reasons failed to have the kind of success the world admires and never met up with a black swan until after death, when it was a bit too late to enjoy the sound of those beating wings. I say it in part because I think being a part of the building-up of culture is a noble thing. It's a selfless thing, far away from the "self-esteem" school movement of recent years, far away from the me-focus of "follow your bliss" as it is commonly understood. We ought to admire it, though I don't think we do, at least in this country. Without the lives of the sea's tiniest residents, how can there be great whales? Without mice, how can we have eagles?

Entirely aside from success, the process of making art has its own rewards and pleasures, even if the artist is a Dickinson who knows few others involved in the arts or a Herbert, immured in the countryside, or a Melville, forgotten in old age but still not letting go of the thread of narrative. But what is a problem is this pernicious, me-focused "follow your bliss" myth that trips up so many, in and out of the arts. So don't think about following bliss. Think about becoming good at something . . .

Curious and sparkling Traherne--

From a solo show by painter and storyteller Eleanor Allitt,
inspired by the visions of Thomas Traherne

1. Traherne

I must have been around 23 when I first read the meditations of seventeenth-century poet and writer Thomas Traherne. No doubt I am lucky to have read him; much of his work was lost for centuries, and neither his poems nor meditations were published until the twentieth century. Much of what we value in him was found as a handwritten manuscript tucked in a London bookstall or rescued from a fire at an English tip. Five manuscripts have been found in the past eighteen years. Who knows what treasures we have lost, or may yet to be found?

I can't help but feel sorry that a number of past poets missed his beauties, kindred to their own, during their writing years. Blake would have reveled in portions of Traherne's poetry and in the great Centuries (exuberance, joy, curious sight!) The Romantics would have found kindred elements in his treatment of childhood and the beauty of nature. He holds up the lamp of his sight and throws gleams into the natural world: "Since therefore we are born to be a burning and shining light, and whatever men learn of others, they see in the light of others' souls: I will in the light of my soul show you the Universe." In innocence, he is the owner and steward of all the world, and all things and people and pieces of nature live in the bright light of his seeing.

If you have a taste for the better-known Metaphysical poets like Donne and Herbert but have not read Traherne, well, you ought to try him. When discovered in the early twentieth century, Traherne's metaphysical poetry and meditations were first mistaken for the work of that marvelous poet, Henry Vaughan ("I saw eternity the other night / Like a great ring of pure and endless light.")

From JOYS, passages from the works of Thomas Traherne, 
The Old Stile Press, 2004.Wood-engraving, hand coloured. 
See at: Angela Lemaire, Printmaker and Painter

2. Child sight

As a young writer, I was bowled over by his often curious phrasing and the freshness of his way of seeing the world. Certain phrases from the passage below and elsewhere lingered in my mind, and linger there still: the "orient and immortal wheat," "seraphic pieces of life," "moving jewels." The exuberant rhythms and ecstatic immersion into child sight--"the Estate of Innocence"--moved my imagination.

Traherne could "enter in" so easily to a time in childhood when all the world seemed fresh and magical, new-minted in the heavenly realms. In fact, he seems to have maintained infant sight well into the years when most of our eyes have lost the ability to see the freshness and beauty of the world. Although this idea clearly connects to his vocation as priest and the love of God, even here he seems strikingly unusual in his ability to "become like a little child" and "enter the Kingdom of Heaven" that is right next to him. In fact, he sees glory everywhere.

The Traherne windows at Hereford Cathedral. Source here.

3. Passage from "The Third Century" of Centuries of Mediation

The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things: The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling Angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; But all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it. I knew no churlish proprieties, nor bounds, nor divisions: but all proprieties* and divisions were mine: all treasures and the possessors of them. So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the dirty devices of this world. Which now I unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.

News from the Nest

M. IN HER BURROW

Lately I have been: very busy; excessively busy; even ridiculously busy. Today was an elevenses day, an important birthday, and in less than a month I shall be buried by much in the way of graduation frolics. Overnight company to the tune of twelve... So I have been chopping and hoeing my yard and drudging and scrubbing my nest in order not to be shamed at various set-at-home events. I long for a gardener and a maid, but I long in vain. If you would like to be my gardener and maid, please inform me by the nearest fast-flying kestrel or any other winged thing—even a grackle would be acceptable.

Thank you for not abandoning me in the midst of my toils, all you note-leavers and email-senders and wafters-by… I have stayed in my burrow and worked, and I have not gone visiting or been much in evidence. Perhaps that is the way things should be. I’m not sure. I’m still thinking about it.

One of the reasons I have been busy is that I paused in the writing of stories and immediately was swept away by a spring spate of poems that has lasted for a pleasing-and-unusual length of time. They are very green, full of leaves and blossomings and mystery and muse. Much form, much narrative, much of a muchness…

Meanwhile I have read several rather stupid books, alas. I seem to have been reading the wrong novels. But I have also been reading Yeats and Charles Causley again, as well as some medieval and Anglo-Saxon poems. Most are re-reads, but I have also read the Robin Hood poems for the first time. It’s hard to say how old they are, as most of the existing copies seem to be rather late. X
BY HEART
x
June-bug resolution: memorize or revive the memory of one poem per week. We’ll see how long that lasts! This week: re-learned “Margaret, are you grieving.”

FROM KEANE, YEATS’S INTERACTIONS WITH TRADITION

Yeats and Blake

For Yeats, who agreed with his mentor Blake that “the thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest,” “works of art are always begotten by previous works of art” and “supreme art is a traditional statement of heroic and religious truths passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.”

Nietzsche

In the “arts just as in ethics . . . all there is or has been on earth of freedom” and “masterly sureness” has developed only because of sustained “obedience” to what the undisciplined resent as “the tyranny . . . of capricious laws.”

The “most natural” state of the artist, “giving form in the moment of inspiration,” is “far from any letting himself go”; strictly and subtly” the artist “obeys thousandfold laws precisely then.”

Nietzsche and Yeats

This paradoxical fusion of autonomy and obedience, of gaiety under self-imposed constraint, is shared by Yeats, who eschews “free verse” in favor of those “traditional meters . . . I compel myself to accept” and without which “I would lose myself, become joyless” (E&I 522).

PHOTOGRAPH courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/ and Crystal Leigh Shearin of Rocky Mount, North Carolina--a place where I once accidentally left all my nice new clothes in a hotel closet. I remember being a little girl and waking up on the train and seeing a neon sign for Rocky Mount and being happy because I was back home in the South and on my way to see my Aunt Sara in Savannah.