Supernaturally: Issa's Sunday Service, #140

Photo by Tony Hisgett 

   

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Sunday Service regular, Nick Cave, steps in for another installment with the song "Supernaturally" from his album with the Bad Seeds, entitled Abattoir Blues. There are at least two literary precursors to this one, which I've mentioned on a previous post a few years back. First, a spirited live performance, then the lyrics, followed by something of an explanation

     

"Supernaturally"

Through the windswept coastal trees
Where the dead come rising from the sea
With a teddy-bear clamped between her knees
She says, where can my loverman be?
Well, I'm down here, babe, with the Eskimos
With the polar bears and the Arctic snow
With a party of penguins who do not know flow
How I can get back to thee
Well I'm gonna ask you, babe
Hey! Ho!
Oh baby don't you go
Hey! Ho!
Oh no no no
Hey! Ho!
Oh baby, don't you go
All supernatural on me
Supernaturally

Once I was your hearts desire
Now I am the ape hunkered by the fire
With my knuckles dragging through the mire
You float by so majestically
You're my north, my south, my east, my west
You are the girl that I love best
With an army of tanks bursting from your chest
I wave my little white flag at thee
Can you see it, babe?
Hey! Ho!
Oh baby don't you go
Hey! Ho!
Oh no no no
Hey! Ho!
Oh baby, don't you go
All supernatural on me
Supernaturally

Now I've turned the mirrors to wall
I've emptied out the peopled halls
I've nailed shut the windows and locked the doors
There is no escape, you see
I chase you up and down the stairs
Under tables and over chairs
I reach out and I touch your hair
And it cuts me like a knife
For there is always something
other little thing you gotta do
Hey! Ho!
Oh baby don't you go
Hey! Ho!
Oh baby, no no no
Hey! Ho!
Oh don't you go
All supernatural on me
Supernaturally


What might this have to do with literature? Well, first there is a poem by Auden, popularly known as "Funeral Blues":


(Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)
W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.


Previous to the Auden, however, there was a traditional Irish poem/song, adapted by Lady Gregory, known as "Donal Óg":


Donal Óg

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you that put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me;
you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!


In the later are the lines "You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me"; in the former, it transforms into "He was my North, my South, my East and West" and, lastly, from our humble little litrock number there is "You're my north, my south, my east, my west." Though it might be thought that the connection between "Donal Óg" and "Funeral Blues is tenuous, the link with "Supernaturally", at least in the case of Auden is obvious, hence today's selection.

Though I can't seem to find the recitation of "Donal Óg" (a jumpy version may be found here) from John Huston's wonderful film The Dead, here is a very fine moment, indeed, from an otherwise average film, Four Weddings and a Funeral, that brought Auden's work back into the popular arena, at least for a few months:

     

Lastly, for the first person to answer the following question (and how many even made it this far into the post?) in the comment section, a free six-issue subscription (or choice of two chapbooks or a six-issue extension to a current subscriber) to Lilliput Review:

How is the picture at the top of this post connected to what follows?

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a finger pointing
to the west...
autumn wind

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don 

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A Haiku Moment in James Joyce's The Dead

Note:  In order to give a break to reader's who have patiently followed the first two installments (one and two) of my review of The Little Treasury of Haiku, I've decided to post this take on a very particular aspect of the lyricism of James Joyce's "The Dead."  Next week will be the 3rd and final installment, whether I'm done or not.

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The climactic moments of James Joyce's seminal story "The Dead" are among the most renowned in the history of Western literature. The story is relatively simple though, as with all things Joyce, its unveiling is subtle, precise, and powerful.

Gabriel Conroy and his wife, Greta, attend Christmas festivities in Dublin at the home of his elderly aunts, the story being set around the beginning of the 20th century. In the telling, the story is rich with interior revelation, and what is ultimately discovered is that Greta is pining away for her long dead lover, Michael Furey.

Gabriel finds himself left in the impotent position of being jealous of a dead man. Greta has cried herself to sleep in a fit of sorrow and Gabriel sits by his wife, thinking, and gradually begins to fall asleep himself.  The snow hitting upon the window pane echoes the gravel thrown against Greta's window by dying Michael Furey.

That's all you need to know to read the closing moments of this fine story, which I will quote at length for their beauty alone (if you haven't read the story and wish to, or haven't read it in awhile, you can find it here or download and listen to it here):

She was fast asleep.

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

The last paragraph is really unparalleled in lyric prose, as fine a passage in English as ever written.

So, how did we arrive here, you may ask?  While reading a classic winter haiku the other day, I was suddenly reminded of this scene from "The Dead " and was struck by how very Eastern, in both spirit and execution, the moment is.

Snow falling, falling, gently falling, over all, the living and the dead.  In that thought is the essence of haiku itself, in both philosophy and revelation.  In the narrator's mind, he suddenly envisions how we all, the dead and the living, are unified in nature,  the soft covering of snow enveloping us acting as a reminder of what we often casually repress.  We are one with the earth and with life, its transitory nature and its eternal now.

You may see a cinematic replication of this final scene on youtube: it comes from John Huston's excellent adaptation, which finally found its way to DVD at the end of 2010.

Obviously, the universal quality of this moment crosses cultures and time; it is, simply put, the human condition.  But whenever evoked by an artist of the quality of a Joyce or Buson, an Austen or a Bashō, that very simplicity is revealed in a richness and texture which makes everything worthwhile.

Another great master, R. H. Blyth, was fond of finding haiku in Western art so, though it is seemingly odd, it is also interesting that Mr. Joyce makes two appearances at the Hut in the same week.

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This week's Lilliput Review archive poems shared the same page from issue #137, May 2004.  Here they electronically replicate that feat.  Enjoy.



Cemetery gate
swinging back and forth
meeting shadows of maples

Rebecca Lily

two years since your death ...
in this September sky
a contrail

Pamela Miller Ness

First Month--
at the cat's grave too
plum blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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