The Masks of Erato
by
Roger E. Ball
Delivered to The
October 6, 1997
Copyright 1997 Roger E. Ball
The novelist John Fowles once
told an interviewer that he was often inspired to write a novel by a vivid
image that would enter his mind seemingly from nowhere. He described how he
once saw the clear mental picture of a young woman in eighteenth century dress
standing at the end of a pier looking pensively out to sea. He had to write The
French Lieutenant's Woman to find out who this woman was and what she was
doing. On another occasion, he visualized a group of horsemen riding across a
distant field. He had to write another novel to find out what they were doing.
In my own experience, the impulse to write a poem usually begins, not with an
image, but with a few words, a thought that suddenly enters my mind, stays
there, and will not let me rest.
This happened at
It is a daunting experience to be thrown suddenly into the rather medieval
atmosphere of an
ON LEAVING OXFORD
Across the quad the roses fade abreast
The sunlit stones, grey spackled by the weight
Of patient years, of scholars and their quest
For knowledge deeper than the well of fate.
Here I am stranded on a shelf of time,
Sealed in the moment, stilled with stillness bought
From Oxford's air, from visions, dreams, that line
These ancient walks and speak of mysteries sought.
It cannot last, the wheel of time will start
And starting, take me to another shore
Where I will once again take up my part
And lead my life, part structured as before.
But I have seen enchantment in this place
And I am changed, and brave will changes face.
A similar experience happened
about five years later. I had spent a long weekend at Esalen Institute, soaking
up the magic of that wonderful location spread out along the
The weekend over, I needed a transition back to normal reality, I drove up to
During that dinner it quickly became apparent that we were strongly attracted
to each other. Thinking about it later, I realized that if either of us had
made the least move toward the other, we would have ended by spending the night
together. But the move was not made, the word was not spoken. We parted with a
noncommital kiss and I flew back to
A LOSS
Why was nothing said? We met
Warm welcome buzz of people, tables graced
With flowers. We sat, she smiled, her
Face remembered like a pang. The waiter came,
"The veal Normande with calvados and cream
Is choice." Her eyes deep pools of blue
That drew me down. "Risotto with the veal?"
"Of course." Her breasts moved under flowing silk.
"How goes your life?" Her hand and arm
Tanned, warm, and dusted with her scent
Lay on the table. "Have you read Foucault?"
"I hope to soon." Her hair spilled shoulder deep
To touch the promise of her dress. We shared
The politics and problems of the world
And talked and talked. But why was nothing said?
Of the nine muses, four concern
themselves with poetry. Calliope and Polymnia must be hard pressed to find
poets to inspire. Epic poetry has not been written for years, and although we
are in a period of religious revival, the religious spirit no longer seems to
express itself in poetry. On the other hand, Euterpe and Erato have never been
more busy, though they must often be involved in serious territorial disputes.
The lyrical impulse, which is Euterpe's area, is the form wherein the artist
presents his image in immediate relation to himself, thus distinguishing it
from the epic, where he presents it in relation to himself and others, and the
dramatic where he presents it only in relation to others.
If Erato is concerned with all of the varieties amd manifestations of the
sexual impulse, as I believe she is, this certainly leads her into territorial
disputes with Euterpe.
We can see her hand in my little poem about that inconclusive dinner. We can
feel her influence even more strongly in the anonomous fragment that opens many
anthologies of poetry:
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
This despairing cry of pure sexual need is very touching. But Erato knows the difference between lust and love. She knows that love tempers lust, enlists it in the service of social stability and domestic peace. We hear this transition between love and lust in Robert Herrick's poem to his wife's clothes:
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see
That brave vibration, each way free,
O, how that glittering taketh me!
These are the thoughts of a
married man, or at least a man in a committed relationship.
But Erato is no prude and she wears many masks. She knows that sex comes in
other flavors than vanilla. When needed, she has led poets down dark paths deep
into the pagan wilderness of alternative sexual styles. One that used this help
was Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In his "annus mirabilis" year of 1797-98
he wrote three great and mysterious poems. The first, and probably the best of
these was " Christabel".
Coleridge had planned this as a long poem in several parts. In Part I he
introduces Christabel, the lovely daughter of Sir Leoline, a baron rich. At
midnight, on the eve of her wedding, Christabel leaves her father's castle to
go into the woods and pray at the foot of an old oak tree.
Why would a gently reared young woman go out into the woods at midnight? This
was not a sunny glade peopled by carefree nymphs. It was the dark, archaic
forest of our worst dreams, filled with savage beasts and even more savage men.
The toothless, mastiff bitch, from her kennel beneath the clock, sensed the
threat, stirred in her sleep, and gave short howls. The poet sensed it too: He
wrote:
Hush, beating heart of Christabel! / Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
But Christabel continues on her
way, and we will soon learn what dark, unconscious impulse led her into that
provocative and imprudent act. At the foot of the great oak tree she encounters
Geraldine, a sado-masochistic, lesbian vampire whom she takes back to the
castle and into her bed.
In 140 lines Coleridge takes the pair through gate, court, hall, and chamber -
the successive steps of Christabel's surrender. When they arrive at the chamber
the poem continues:
Quoth Christabel, So let it be!
And as the lady bade, did she
Her gentle limbs did she undress,
And lay down in her loveliness.
And now we see Geraldine:
Like one who shuddered she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast;
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom, and half her side --
A sight to dream of, not to tell
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!
But Christabel was not shielded. Here is Geraldine again, and the end of Part
I:
Then suddenly as one defied,
Collects herself in scorn and pride,
And lay down by the Maiden's side!
And in her arms the Maid she took,
Ah wel-a-day!
This is pretty strong stuff
even today. Camille Paglia has called it blatant, lesbian pornography. We can
imagine how it would be received in 1797. Coleridge was so badly frightened at
what had come from his pen that he laid the poem aside for three years.
In the meanwhile, he circulated the poem in manuscript form to his friends.
When Shelley read it he was so frightened that he screamed and ran from the
room.
Coleridge took up the poem again in 1800, and wrote Part II. It is completely
flat - the competant, routine work of a journeyman poet, but without the
mystery and magic of Part I. Erato's contribution had been spurned. She did not
return.
Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan, a better known poem, during that same magical year
of peak creativity. You all remember the beginning:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense bearing tree.
All of this is very light and lovely, a pleasant land, graced with the whimsey of a benevolent ruler. But suddenly and without warning, the mood changes and the poem becomes frightening.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover.
Next, we hear ancient voices prophesizing war, and then comes the warning:
And all should cry, Beware!
Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
The poem ends here. Coleridge
tells us that a visitor from Porlock interrupted him on a matter of business
and he was never able to finish it.
I do not believe in the man from Porlock, or if there was such a man, I do not
believe that he was the explanation. Coleridge was far too productive and
disciplined in his writing to make this plausible.
Nor do I believe in the critics who see in his opium addiction an explanation
for the character of the poem and for its abandonment.
I think that this theory tells us more about our own attitude toward drugs than
it does about Coleridge.
Coleridge used opium through most of his life, as did many people in England at
that time. It never seriously affected either his work or his social life. He
was a parliamentary reporter and influential journalist, edited and published
two periodicals, dominated and enchanted private gatherings and public
audiences, and had a large circle of friends that he regaled with marvelous stories
and conversation. All this, while maintaining a formidable literary output.
No, I think that he started Kubla Khan remembering the long walks that he took
with his friends William and Dorothy Wordsworth through the beautiful lake
district of England, where there were many gardens bright with sinuous rills
and many an incense bearing tree. But as the poem developed something -was it
Erato? -turned his attention inward toward that dark area of his soul that was
inhabited by a sexually ambiguous demon lover. And again he was terrified. The
visitor from Porlock - if he existed -was a welcome distraction.
Why was Coleridge twice so troubled by this vision that he abandoned his poem?
We will never know, but we do know that, behind an affable exterior, he was a
troubled spirit, hampered by domestic unhappiness, financial anxiety, and
ill-health. He had drifted into a loveless marriage, and never achieved union
with the real love of his life, Sara Huchinson. He was constantly troubled by
nightmares of sexual assault, often by large, frightening women. Here are two
such dreams, from his own notebooks:
I was followed up and down by a
frightful, pale woman who,
I thought, wanted to kiss me.
& again I dreamt that a figure of a woman of a gigantic height, dim and indefinite
appeared smokelike.
This reminds us that to embark
on a work of artistic creativity is to place onesself in the hands of the gods.
You will be led to meet yourself. What you find there may be disturbing or even
frightening.
Or it may only be enlightening. Last year I participated in a course where we
discussed James Joyce's novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. You
will remember that, toward the end of that book Joyce's protagonist and alter
ego, Stephen Dedalus composes a villanelle while discussing aesthetic theory
with his friends. I became intrigued by the challenge of writing in such a
highly structured form. Could I really write a villanelle? When the necessary
first line swam into my consciousness I wrote the following:
VILLANELLE FOR LOST CAUSES
Tell me no more of wasted days.
Burned with the fires of vain regret
The wind of age around me plays.
For wasted chances memory prays
That they may once again be met.
Tell me no more of wasted days.
Lost broken love now past displays
The bitter pangs lost loves beget.
The wind of age around me plays.
The lash of time lost chances flays,
And doors are closed to needs not met.
Tell me no more of wasted days.
To find new paths I shan't delay
Nor cede the field of struggle yet.
The wind of age around me plays.
Tell me no more of wasted days.
The melancholy note of this
poem does not seem very characteristic of me, but I did write it. We can no
more deny our poems than we can deny our dreams.
By now you should have noticed that all of the poetry quoted in this essay
scans, and most of it rhymes. This is not an accident. I believe that when
poets abandoned formal structure for free verse something important went out of
poetry, and that this loss deserves more attention than it has received.
The change to free verse began early in this century, and was part of the
modernist movement that affected all the arts. For poetry, it opened new
opportunities to explore deeper levels of meaning. This was beneficial, but in
the process poetry lost some of its magic.
Poetry developed out of music and dance, both of them arts that link the human
consciousness to the great rhythms of nature. Mickey Hart, the lead drummer for
the Grateful Dead, has written a wonderful book, Drumming at the Edge of
Magic. In this book he traces the history of the drum from neolithic times
to the present, and explains how drumming has been used for religious purposes
and healing, particularly by Siberian shamans and the witch doctors of Western
Africa and the Caribbean.
There is a scientific explanation for this. It goes back to the principle known
as entrainment, discovered by Christian Huygens in the 17th century. He saw
that, if you put two pendulum clocks side by side and let them run, before long
the two pendulums will be swinging together in perfect synchrony. There are
many examples of this principle. Nature seems to prefer coordination.
So if you drum at a frequency close to the normal Beta frequency of the human
brain, the brain locks into the frequency of the drum. Gradually slow down the
frequency and the brain will slow to its Alpha frequency, which is the
beginning of trance. Carry the process further and you may reach the Theta
frequency, where lie dreams and visions. This explains the success of the
shamans, and perhaps what happens at rock concerts.
In a much weaker form, poetry can have the same effect. Prove it to yourself.
Take any long poetic passage, perhaps from Shakespeare. Read it aloud,
concentrating on the music rather than the meaning. Do it again. If you are
like me, you will experience a definite mental shift, a slight movement in the
direction of trance. This is "poetry" at the edge of magic.
When Erato dons another of her masks she inspires poetry that celebrates the
deep love within families, especially the love of parents for their children.
It is probably fitting to close this essay with a poem that I wrote for my
daughter's birthday:
TO MY DAUGHTER ON HER BIRTHDAY
Here with our clan assembled at the bar
Enriched with friends from near and distant past
I wish that I may somehow know at last
What magic made you be as now you are?
The chain of time is crushed and from afar
I look back down the course of crumbled years
At laughter, joy, hope, and hidden tears.
What magic made you be what now you are?
It was not me, nor other than your star.
That led you to the grace that crowns your reign.
We grasp too soon what is not ours to claim.
Your magic made you be what now you are.