Poetry Respite
The mind begins to sweat soon enough when reading Nietzsche. He offers a style of thinking, and angle of view of world and of self which is uncomfortable, at first. Reading such philosophy is comparable to training in order to run a marathon. One does not just run 26.1 miles on a whim. One trains, ideally with a friend. Then insight occurs, – the marathon is anticlimactic. The day to day routine of training was and is the point. Training is a manner of structuring one’s life. To live is never to be done with training, the friction of engagement, foot impacting ground, muscle ache and sweat…
Still one needs variety. And poetry is akin to philosophy, but different. Reading a poem, one thinks about words, about the spectrum of possible meanings, and what is evoked in the readers body by a semantic context, and by memory.
The poem by Ranier Maria Rilke is an anthem sung or hummed by “the Idiot.” Idiot originates from the Greek idiōtēs, ‘own, private’ a person who isolates him/herself from public affairs. The modern equivalent would be a low information citizen sequestered before their iphone screen. They are given over to the conspiracy mongering and speculation of social media.
The Rilke poem is thematically anchored by a rhythmic backbeat, ‘good’, like a 4/4 signature of a drummer. The fantasy notion that reality is unambiguously good because the Holy Spirit is the author of it all. This is of course idiotic, that a happy ending is assured because one is in custody of the Holy Ghost. Never mind, pay no attention to the blood running red… Think Palestinian civilians slaughtered in Gaza by thousands, Ukrainians dying in apartments at night struck by high explosive Russian drones. The blood is a chore. So you think you cannot look at it anymore… “Hey, what about the red ball over here!”
The idiot is distracted by a red ball, reality created for his/her play. The ball (and all things) move at whim of the infantile at play.
The Song of the Idiot
By Rilke
They do not hinder me. They let me go.
They say, nothing could happen even so.
How good.
Nothing can happen. Everything revolves engrossed
always around the Holy Ghost,
around a certain ghost (you know)—
how good.
No, one should really not suppose
that there is any danger in those.
There’s of course the blood.
The blood is the hardest thing. The blood is a chore,
sometimes I think I can’t any more.
(How good.)
Look at that ball, isn’t it fair—
red and round as an everywhere.
Good you created the ball.
Whether it comes when we call
How oddly all things seem to humor some whim,
they flock together, apart they swim,
friendly and just a little dim;
how good.
One thought on “Poetry Respite”
“ Idiot originates from the Greek idiōtēs, ‘own, private’ a person who isolates him/herself from public affairs.”
Based on this descriptor I would proudly state that I am an idiot. I am in the process of isolating myself from public affairs. I am shrinking my world into that red ball and limiting my knowledge and participation in the politics of pure inanity. The world (at least in my estimation) has gone mad and for self preservation I choose to be myopic. This may be for the long haul though perhaps, if I see any path forward at all, may just be temporary paralysis. Time will tell.