R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 8

Billy Budd

Long ago an honest scholar my senior, said to me in reference to one who like himself is now no more, a man so unimpeachably respectable that against him nothing was ever openly said though among the few something was whispered, 'Yes, X--- is a nut not be cracked by the tap of a lady's fan. You are aware that I am the adherent of no organized religion much less of any philosophy built into a system. Well, for all that, I think that to try and get into X---, enter his labyrinth and get out again, without a clue derived from some source other than what is known as "knowledge of the world" — that were hardly possible, at least for me." "Why," said I, "X---, however singular a study to some, is yet human, and knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human nature, and in most of its varieties." "Yes, but a superficial knowledge of it, serving ordinary purposes. But for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which while they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or nothing of the other. Nay, in an average man of the world, his constant rubbing with it blunts that fine spiritual insight indispensable to the understanding of the essential in certain exceptional characters, whether evil ones or good. In a matter of some importance I have seen a girl wind an old lawyer about her little finger. Nor was it the dotage of senile love. Nothing of the sort. But he knew law better than he knew the girl's heart. Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light into obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets. And who were they? Mostly recluses." 

At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift of all this. It may be that I see it now. And, indeed, if that lexicon which is based on Holy Writ were any longer popular, one might with less difficulty define and denominate certain phenomenal men. As it is, one must turn to some authority not liable to the charge of being tinctured with the Biblical element. I

Melville's Billy Budd

In this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch interferer, the envious marplot of Eden, still has more or less to do with every human consignment to this planet of earth. In every case, one way or another he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind us- I too have a hand here. The avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be evidence not alone that he is not presented as a conventional hero, but also that the story in which he is the main figure is no romance.

Hesiod: Works and Days

And now I will tell a fable for princes who themselves understand. Thus said the hawk to the nightingale with speckled neck, while he carried her high up among the clouds, gripped fast in his talons, and she, pierced by his crooked talons, cried pitifully. To her he spoke disdainfully: "Miserable thing, why do you cry out? One far stronger than you now holds you fast, and you must go wherever I take you, songstress as you are. And if I please I will make my meal of you, or let you go. He is a fool who tries to withstand the stronger, for he does not get the mastery and suffers pain besides his shame." So said the swiftly flying hawk, the long-winged bird.

Nuttall's Woodpecker

Nuttall's Woodpecker @ Huntington Central Park on a Sunday Morning. I was there for the young Green Herons but this cutie insisted on his time.;)💕

Have a Great Weekend!!!

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#poetry

#alwayssunday

#readmorepoetry2025💗

Green Heinrich

It was not until after midnight that my turn came again to take over the death watch now that we had strangely enough instituted it. This time I stayed in the room until morning; the hours passed by me quickly, like a moment of time, and I had no idea what I really was thinking and feeling. It was so quiet that through the stillness I seemed to be able to hear the murmur of Eternity; the pale and lifeless girl continued to lie motionless, but in the dim light, the coloured flowers of the rug appeared to be growing. Now the morning star rose and was reflected in the lake; I extinguished the lamp in its honour, so that it alone might be Anna’s funeral candle, then I sat in the dark, in my corner, and watched the room grow gradually light. With the dawn, which passed into the purest golden-red of morning, there seemed to be a stirring of life around the quiet figure until it lay there, clear in the bright daylight. I had got up and placed myself in front of the bed, and when her features became distinguishable, I pronounced her name, but soundlessly, breathing it only; the deathly quiet continued, and when I timidly touched her hand, I drew back my own, appalled, as if I had come into contact with red-hot iron; for the hand was cold, like a little lump of clay.

Green Henry

I remembered Goethe’s Italian Journey which I had read, and Römer told me a great deal about the people and customs, and the past of Italy. He hardly ever read a book except for the German translation of Homer and an Italian edition of Ariosto. He asked me to read the Homer and I did not wait to be asked twice. To begin with, I could not get on with it; of course I thought it was all very beautiful, but I was too little used to a work of such simplicity and on so grand a scale, and I could not persevere with it for long at a time. But Römer pointed out to me how Homer, in every action and situation, used just what was necessary and appropriate, how every vessel and every article of clothing which he described was also at the same time in the finest taste imaginable, and finally how, with him, every situation and every moral conflict, though of an almost childlike simplicity, was steeped in the choicest poetry. ‘Nowadays people are always longing after what is exquisite, interesting and piquant, and yet are stupid enough not to know that there can be nothing more exquisite, more piquant, more eternally new than a Homeric conception in its simple classicism! I would not wish you, dear Lee, ever to learn from experience exactly the choice and piquant truth in the situation of Odysseus, when he appears, naked and covered with mud, before Nausicaa and her playmates! Do you want to know how this comes about? Let’s keep to this instance, now. Suppose you are wandering about in a strange land, cut off from your native country and from all that is dear to you, and you have seen a great deal and gone through a great deal, are full of care and anxiety, are, in short, utterly wretched and forsaken; then, at night, you will inevitably dream that you are approaching your native land. You see it gleaming and shining in the loveliest colours; beloved shapes, gracious and graceful, advance to meet you; then all at once you discover that you are wandering about ragged, naked, dust-begrimed; an unspeakable shame and anguish seizes you, you try to cover yourself, to hide, and you awake, bathed in sweat. This is, as long as there are human beings, the dream of the miserable man, who has been tossed hither and thither; and thus Homer has drawn this situation from the deepest and most permanent elements in humanity!’

R L Swihart's "Gold Beach"

 

My poem "Gold Beach" just came out in the Meniscus Literary Journal of Australia (Volume 13, Issue 1, 2025). Much thanks to Jenn Webb and everyone else involved in the production. The link is below, and you'll need to navigate to p. 190 to read my poem. But don't stop there: read the whole issue.;)
https://www.meniscus.org.au/_files/ug...

Green Henry

‘Look at this flower,’ said I to the philosopher, ‘it is utterly impossible that this symmetry with its definitely numbered points and indentations, these little white and red streaks, this little golden crown in the middle, should not have been thought out beforehand! And how beautiful and charming it is, a poem, a work of art, a witticism, a bright-coloured, fragrant jest! A thing like that does not make itself!’ ‘It is beautiful in any case,’ said the philosopher, ‘whether it has been made or not! Put a question to it! The flower says nothing, it has no time for talking either, for it has to blossom and cannot bother about your doubts. For all these are doubts, which you are voicing, doubts of God, and contemptible doubts of Nature; and it makes me sick just to listen to a doubter, a sentimental doubter! Oh dear!’ He had heard this played as a trump card in the arguments of older people and he used it against me now, as well as other skirmishing devices of the kind which he had adopted, so that in the end I was beaten. As a final thrust, he always said that I really did not quite understand the matter yet, and did not know how to think properly; this used to make me terribly angry and sometimes we fell to quarrelling furiously.

More From Paul Claudel

This fragment (also apparently from a play) is also a beautiful "clipping" I've culled from the work of Paul Claudel (in translation) at the Poetry Foundation. (Too bad someone doesn't publish a "selected" from this great poet in English, especially a Kindle version.;))

Rose-breasted Grosbeak