So / Josep Brovsky hard not to hurt anyone—because the main thing 1 not literature but the ability not to cause pain to anyone; but Instead of owning upto this, I babble something about Kan- listen with an temir, Derzhavin, and the like, while they © were something ese in the workd open mouth, as i the besides despair, neurosis, and the fear of going up ia smoke any second. But perhaps even official messengers of Russian re way, par culture—of certain age especally—feel thes ticularly when they drag their bones scros all kinds of Mo- sadishus and Ivory Coasts, Because everywhere there ie dust, rusty soi, twisted chunks of decaying metal, unfinished buildings, the swarthy multitudes of the local population for ‘whom you mean nothing, just like for your own, Sometines, far away, you ean see the blue shine of the sea [No matter which way journeys begin, they always end ‘entcally: im one's ovm comer, in one’s own bed, falling Into which you forget what bas alseady become the pat. It is unlikely Iwill ever find myself again in that country and In that hemisphere, but at least, upon my return, my bed is even more “mine,” and for « person who buys furniture Instead of inheriting i, this is enough to detect a sense of purpose in the most pointless meanderings 1978 (Pram, th Raion, by Asner Sear en het) Altra Ego ‘The idea of the poet as an inveterate Don Giovannl is of relatively recent coinage. Like many concepts enjoying great currency in the popular imagination, it appears to be a by product of the Industrial Revolution, which, through tts ‘quantum leaps in human accumulation aud literacy, gave birth to the very phenomenon ofthe populae imagination ‘To put it diferently, this image ofthe poet appears to owe ‘more to the public suecess of Lord Byron's Don Juan than toits author’ own romantic record —awe-insplrng perhaps, but unavailable tothe public at the time. Besides, for every Byron we always get « Wordsworth, As the last period of social coherence and its attendant philstinism, the nineteenth eentury i responsible for the bulk of notions and attitudes we entertain or are guided by: today. In poetry, that contury squarely belongs to France, and perhaps the expansive gesturing and exotiealfnities of the French Romantis and Symbolist conteibuted to the dim view of the poet no les than the general lowbrow notion af the French as certified immoralists, On the whole, und neath this bad-mouthing of poets les the instinctive desire82 / Josep BaovsKy of every social order~-be it a democracy, autocray, theoe racy, ideocracy, or bureaucracy—to compromise or belittle the authority of poetry, which, apart from rivaling tht of the state, hosts a question mark over th individual himself, cover is achievements and mental security, over his very significance, In that respect the nineteenth century simply joined tho club: when it comes to pootry, every bourgeots fs a Pato, Antiquity’s attitude toward a poet was, however, by and lange both more exalted and more sensible. That had to do as uch with polytheism as with the fact that the public had to rely on poets for entertainment. Save for mutual snipe ing—usual in the literary trade of any age—disparaging treatment of poots in antiquity is rare. On the contrary, poets were revered as figures of divine proximity: in the public Imagination they stood somewhere between soothsayers and demigods. Indeed, deities themselves were often their au- dience, as is evidenced by the myth of Orpheus Nothing could be further from Plato than this myth, which is also particulary illuminating about antiquity’ view of « poot's sentimental integrity. Orpheus is no Don Gio ‘anni. So distaught is he by the death of is wile, Eurydice, that his lamentations rend the ears of the Olympians, who ‘grant him permission to go down into the netherworld to bring her back, That nothing comes ofthis trip (fllowed in poetry by similar descents in Homer, Virgl, and, above all In Dante} only proves the intensity ofthe poet’ feeling for his beloved, as well, of course, as the ancients! grasp ofthe nitty-gritty of gull, 8 J Altra Ego AAs much as the subsequent fate of Orpheus (he was torn apart by a crowed of angry macnad’ for his refusal —because ot his vow of chastity, made in mouraing for Eurydice—t0 submit himself to their bared charms), this intensity points up the monogamous nature of at least this poet's pasion. Although, unlike the monotheists of later periods, the an- ‘ents dia't put much ofa premium on monogamy, it should be noted that they did nto the opposite extreme either, and reserved fidelity asthe particular vitwe of their premier poet. In general, apart from the beloved, the only feminine presence ona poet's agenda in antiquity was that of his Muse. The two would overlap in the modern siagination; in antiquity they didn't hecause the Muse was hardly corporeal ‘The daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne (the goddess of mem ‘ory, she had nothing palpable about her; the only way she would reveal herself to a mortal, particularly a poet, was though her voice: by dictating to him this or tht line. In ‘other words, she was the voice of the language; and what a poet actually listens to, what really does dictate to him the next line isthe language. And tis presumably the language's ‘own gender in Greek (glsia) that acounts for the Muse's femininity. With the same allusive consequences the noun for an guage is feminine In Latin, French, Talia, Spanish, and German, In English, however, language isan “it”; in Russian {ts “he.” Yet whatever language's gender happens to be, a poet’ attachment to itis monogamous, for a poet, by trade at least, isa monoglot It could even be argued that all one’s ‘capacity for delity gets spent on one's Muse, a implied in the Byronic version of the poet's romantic program —but that would be tre only iTone’s language were indeed one's84 / Josern Bropsxy choice. As it is, language Is the given, and knowledge of ‘which hemisphere of the brain pertains to the Muse would be of value only if one could control thet part of one's anatomy Ww The Muse, therefore, is not an alternative to the beloved but precedes her. Io fact, as an “older woman,” the Muse, re language, plays « decisive part in the sentimental de- velopment of a poet. She is responsible not only for his ‘emotional makeup but often forthe very choiee of his object of passion and the manner of is pursuit. Its she who makes bin fanatcally single-minded, turninghis love into an equ alent of hee own monologue. What amounts in sentimental ‘matters to obstinacy and obsession is essentially the dictate of the Muse, whose choice is always of anaesthetic origin and discards alteratives, In # manner of speaking, love is lays monotheistic experience Christianity, of course, hasnt fle to capitalize on this Yet what relly binds a religious mystic ta pagan sensualist, Gerard Manley Hopkins to Sextus Propertiu, is emotional absolutism, The intensity ofthat emotional absolutism is such that at times it overshoots anything that les near, and often fne’s very target, As rule, the naiing, idiosyncratic, sel referential, persistent voice ofthe Muse takes a poet beyond imperfect and perfoct unions alike, beyond utter disasters and paroxysins of happiness—at the expense of reality, with or without « real, reciprocating gil in i. In other words, the pitch gets higher for its own sake, as ifthe language propels poet, especially a romantic, whence itcame, where fn the beginning there was @ word, oF a discernible sound Hence many a broken marrige, hence many a lengthy poem, hence poetry's metaphysical afte, for every word is / Altra Ego ants to return to where it came from, W only as an echo, which isthe mother of rhyme. Hence, too, the reputation, tthe poet asa rake, ‘Among the many agents ofthe publi’ spiritual debltation, itis the voyeuristic gente of biography that takes the cake “That there are far more suined maidens than immortal Iris seemis to give pause to nobody. The lst bastion of realism, biography is based on the breathtaking peemise that art can bbe explained by life. To follow this logie, The Song of Roland should have been penned by Bluebeard (well, by Gilles de is, at least) and Faust by Frederick of Prussia—or, Ifyou like im better, Humboldt. ‘What a poot has in common with his less articulate fellows is tht his life is hostage to his unétier, not the other ‘way around. And is nat ust that he gets pad fr his words (Geldom and meagerly): the point is that he also pays for them (often horrfcaly). tis the latter that ereates confusion td spawns biographies, because this payment takes the form tot only of indifference; ostracism, imprisonment, exile, ob= livion, selF-disgust, uncertainty, remorse, madness a variety of additions is also acceptable curreney. These things are obviously deseribable. They are, however, not the cause of fue's peninanship but its ellect. To put i easly, in order to make his work sell, as well as to avoid cliché, our poot ‘continually has to get where nobody has ever been before mentally, psychologically, o lexically. Once he gets there, he discovers that indeed there's nobody about, save perhaps the word's o veaningor that iil discernible sound, ‘This takes its toll. The longer he is at it—at uttering something hithetto unutterable—the more idiosyncratic his conduct becomes. Hevelations and insights obtained by him86) Joseeu BRonsxy fn the process may lead his either to ati upsurge of hubris for—more likely—to a deepening of his humility before the force that he surmises behind those insights and revelations, He may also be aflited by a belief that, older and more Viable than anything, language imparts to im, its mouth piece, is widow and the knowledge ofthe future alike, No ‘matter how gregarious of humnble he is by nature, this sot of thing boxes him even further out of the social context hich desperately tries to reclaim him by euuning its con ‘mon denominator through his groin, wit of the Muse's alleged Femininity feven when the poet happens to be a woman). The real “This is dome on ace feason, though, is that at suavives Iie, and this wpalatable realization les bebinl the funyien desire to suburdisate the former to the later. The fuite always mistakes the peema nent forthe infiite andl nurtures designs upon it. That, of ‘course, isthe permanent’s own fault, for it eanaut help at times behaving lke the Finite. Even the most misogynistic ‘oF misanthropic poet produces 4 spate of ve Ives, only as token of allegiance to the gui, or as an exercise, This fs enough to veeasion research, textual exegesis, peychoan lytical interpretation, and whatnot. The general scheme toes like this: the Femininity of the Muse presupposes the masculinity ofthe poet. The masculinity ofthe poet presup poses the fernininity ofthe lover. Ergo: the lover i the Muse, ‘or eould be called that. Another ergo: a poem is the subl mation of the author's erotic unges snd should be tretted a8 such, Simple “That Homer must have beer rly Fail by the time: he wrote the Odyssey and that Goethe, when he got to the second part of Faust, defintely was, is of no consequence 5p I Altra Ego ‘What, on the whole, should we do with epi poets? And how ‘a one sublimating 30 much remain a rake? Since we seem to be saddled with the term, pethap it would be civilized to assume that both artistic and erotic activities are expres sons of one's ereative enerfy, that both are sublimation, Asfor the Muse, tht angel of lnguage, that “older woman, it would be best biographers and the public left her alone, and if they cant they should atleast remember that she i older than any lover or mother, and that her voice is more limpliable than the mother tongue. She's going to dictate twa poet no matter where, how, oF when he lives, and if rot to this poet, then to the next one—partly becanse living and writing are diferent occupations (that’s what the to Aiferent verbs are for) and to equate thems is tore abstr than to separte them, for iterature has a richer past thas ny individual, whatever his pedigree. “To a man, a i's visage is of course a visage of his soul ‘wrote a Russian poet, and that's what hes behind the exploits of Theseus or St- George, the quests of Orpheus and Dante ‘The sheer cumbersomeness of those undertakings bespeks 1 motive other than lust alone. Tn other words, love f « metaphysical afar whose goal i either accomplishing or liberating one’s soul: winnowing it from the chaff of exis fence. That is and always has been the core of Ivrc poetry ‘A maiden, in short, is one’s souls stand in, and one zeroes in on her precisely because one is not given an al temative, save perhaps in a mirror. In the era we call mod en, both a poet and his public have grown, accustomed to short takes. Sul, even in this century there have been ‘enough exceptions whase thoroughness in treating the sub: Ieot rivals that of Petearch. One can cite Alhnnatovs, one can85) Joseen Buopsxy 8 J Altra Ego cite Montae, one ca cite the “dark pastorals” of Robert Frost or Thomas Hardy. These are quests for the sou), in the form of lyri poetry, Hence the singularity of the ad dressee and the stability of the manner, or style. Often the career of a poet, ihe lives long enough, emerges asa genre variation on a single theme, helping us to distinguish the dancer from the dance--in this ase, alove poem from love assuch, Ifa poet dies young, the dancer and the dance tend ge. This leads to an avful terminological confusion of spiritual consequences, For ultimately a love lyric, by ecessity, is a narcissistic alle. Its a statement, however inaginative, of the author's own feeling, and as such it inounts to seliportrait rather than to one of his beloved fr her world, Were it not for sketches, oll, miniatures, o Snapshots, having read a poem, we often woulda't have known what-—or more tothe point, whom—it was all about -Bven provided with them, we don't learn much about the beauties they depict, save that they looked diferent from their bards and that not all of them qualify in our eyes as ‘beaties, But then a pietute seldom complements words, or sce versa. Besides, images of souls and magazine covers are ound to have diferent standards. For Dante, at least, the tion of beauty was contingent on the beholder’ ability to discern in the human face's oval just seven letters comprising the term Homo Det. and bad presé for the partilpants, not to mention their purpose only beeause love poem is more often than aot an applied art (ce, i's written to get the gil), i takes an author to an motional and, quite ikely, a Kinguistio extreme. As a result he emerges from such @ poem knowing himself—his psy- ‘chological aad stylistic parameters—better than before, which explains the popularity ofthe genre among its prac titioners, Alo, sometimes the author gets the gi Practical application notwithstanding, what makes love Ipries abound is simply that they ar a product of sentimental ‘The erux of the mater is that their actual appearances are Irrelevant and were not supposed to be registered. What was supposed to be registered isthe spiritual accomplish tment which isthe ultimate proof ofthe poet’ existence. A pleture is a bonus only to him, perhaps to her; to a reader itis practically « minus, fori subtracts from the imagination. For a poem is a mental afar for its reader as much as for Atsauthor. “Her” portraits the poet's state conveyed through his tune and choice of words; a reader would be a foo to settle for less. What matters about “her” is not her partic: ‘larity but her university. Don't try to find her snapshot find position yourself next to its It won't work, Plain and s soul set fm motion. IF good necessity. Triggered by a particular addressoe, this necessity nay stay proportionate to that adresse, oF develop an at: tonomous dynamic and volume, prompted by the centrifugal nature of language. ‘The consequence ofthe latter may be either a eycle of love poems addressed tothe same pesson ‘or & number of poems fining out, as i were, in di directions, The choice here—if one can speak of choice ‘where necossit iat work-—Is not so much moral or spiritual ts stylisti, and depends on a poets longevity. And here's ‘where a stylistic choice —if one can speak of choice where chance and the passage of tine are at play—starts co smell simply, a love yee is on it may do the same to you. Te is otherness, therefore, that provides the metaphys90 / Joseew BaonsKy ‘cal opportunity. love Iyrie may be good or bad but it alers ts writer an extension of himself—or, if'a Tyre is excep. tionally good, or an afar long, self-negation. What is the Muse up to while this i going on? Not much, since «love lyric is dictated by existential necessity and necessity doesn’t ‘care much about the quality of articulation. As @ rule, love Iyrics are tne fst and don't andeygo much revision. But ‘once « metaphysical dimension is attained, or atleast once self:negation is attained, one indeed ean ell the dancer from the dance: a love Tyrie from Jove and, thus, from a poem about, or informed by, love realty and eon employs the word" I about what poet ist aot what he peecves as diferent fom him Sel F118 «mio, ii small oe, and paced oo far Say. to coe oes in requiem he Between observing and ing mesmerized. & poem at vec ve i jay thing ths fates. bina In her hat the landscape, Dein het cbjet ty have thing do with thei can dese sn etc to rh hare 3 thous, wl kn they oe teint Pern Steed by lve tha othe tte of atenton ald to so that deal of the universe. For love isan atte toward realty—usilly ofsorrone fit toward suet inte, Teco, the intensity cae by the sense of the proven or f Altra Bgo ‘one’s own, Aud in walls the Muse, that older woman, me: tieulous about possessions Pasternak’ famous exclamation “Great god aflove, great god fetal!” is poignant precisely because of the utter ins: fificance of the sum ofthese details. ratio could no doubt tie established between the smallness of the detail and the intensity of attention paid toi, as well as between the latter tnd one's spiritual accomplishment, beeause a poem —any poem, regardless of its subject-—Is i itself an act of love, ft so nich of an author for his subject as of language for 3 piece of reality. Iti often tinged with an elegie air, with the timbre of pity, this is so because i is the love of the treater forthe lesser, ofthe permanent for the transitory ‘This surely doesn't aet « poet's comantic conduct, since hh a physical entity, identifies himself more readily ith the provisional than with the eternal. All he may know is that when it comes to lave, art is a more adequate form of texpression than any other; ehat on paper one cam reach & higher degree af Iriism than on bedroom linen ‘Were it otherwise, we would have far less art on ue hands. The way martyrdom or sainthood prove not so much the substance of @ creed as the human potential for belie, so love poetry speaks for art’ ability to overshoot realty ‘or to eseape it entirely, Perhaps the trae measure of this Kind of poetry is precisely its inappleabilty to reality, the Impossibility of translating its sentiment Into action for want of physical equivalence to abstract insight. The physical ‘world must take offense at this kind of erterion. But, then, has photugraphy-—not quite an art yet, but capable of evesting the abstesct in fight, ora least in progres.J Joseeu BuowsKy ‘And a while ago, in a small garrison town (the north of Maly, L chanced on an attempt to do precisely this to dpi poetry’ reality by means of the camera Iwas a sinal exhib tion consisting of photographs of thirty or so great twentieth century poets’ beloveds—wives, mistresses, concubines, ‘boys, men. It started infact with Baudelaire and ended with Pessoa and Montale; next to each beloved, a famous Iyig was attached, in its original language and in translation. A fortunate idea, 1 thought, shuling past the glass-covered stands that contained the black-and-white fal faces, profile, and three-quarter profiles of hards and of what amounted to their own or thei languages’ destinies, There they were— 4 flock of rare birds caught im the net of that gallery, and fone could indeed! regard them as ar’s points of departure fiom reality, or better still, as reality’s means of transpor tation toward that higher degree of lyricism, toward a poem (Afterall, for one’s fading and generally moribund features, art fs another kind of future.) Not that the women (aad some mun) depicted there lacked the psychological, visual, or erotic qualities required to forge poet's happiness: on the contrary, they appeared suficiently f variously endowed. Some wete wives, others mistresses and foves, stil others hngered ina poot’s mind While their appearance in his quarters say have been rather Alecting. OF course, given the mind-boggling vavety of what ature ean paint into a human oval, one's choice ofa beloved appears arbitrary. The usual fctors—genetic, historia, 3 fal, aesthetio—narrow the range, for Uwe poet as for every. ‘one else. Yet perhaps the particular prerequisite fora poet's choice isthe presence in that oval of «eettain nonfunctional sr, a air of ambivalence snd open-endedness, echoing, as ‘were, in flesh and blood the essence of his endeavor 93 / Altra Ego ‘That’ what such epithets as “enigmatic,” “dreamy,” oF “otherworldly” normally struggle to denote, and what se counts forthe preponderance in that gallery of visually ala toric blondes over the excessive precision of brunettes. By laige, at any rate, this characteristic, vague as iti, did ‘apply to the birds of passage caught in that particular net ‘Conscious ofthe camera or taken unawares, those faces ap- peared to carry in one way or another a common expression of being elsewhere, or having their mental focus somewhat blurred. The next moment, of course, they would be en: tergetc, alert, supine, lasiviows, bearing a child or elop: {ng with 2 friend, bloody-minded or suffering bard's infidelity—in short, more definite, For an instant of expo: sure, though, they were thelr tentative, indefinite selves, which, like a poem in progress, didn't yet have a next line tr, very often, «subject. Also like poems, they were never finished: they wero only abandoned. In short, they were drat, His mutability, then, that animates a face fora poet, that roverberates almost palpably in Yeats's famous lines: How many oved your moments of lad rate And loved your beauty with lve false or tue Bat one man loved the pilgrim soul i you, And loved the sorrows of your changing fice ‘That a reader can empathize with these lines proves him to be as susceptible to the appeal of mutability as the poet More exactly, the degree of his Iyreal appreciation here is the degree to which he is removed from that very mab the degree to which he is confined to the definite: features ‘or circumstances or both. With the poot, he discerns in that, changing oval lar more than just the seven letters of Homo ek; he diseorns there the entire alphabet, in all its com94 { JoserH BRopsKy binations, ic. the language, ‘That i how in the end the “Muse perhaps indeed becomes feminine, how she gets pho tographed. The Yeats quatrain sounds like a moment of ree- ‘ognition of one form of If in another: of the poet's own vocal cords’ tremolo in his beloved's mortal features, oF w- certainty in uncertainty, To a vibrating volee, in other words, everything tentative aud faltering isan echo, promoted at times to an alter ego oF, as gender would have it, tan altra ego, Gender imperatives notwithstanding, lets keep in mind that an altra ego is uo Muse, Whatever solipsstic depths a carmal his voice for ts ‘union may aval him, ao poet ever mista ‘echo, the ianer for the outer. "The prerequisite of love is the autonomy ofits abject, preferably within arm's reach. The same goes for an echo that defines the range of one's vole ‘Those depicted in the exhibition—women and, moreover, rmen—were not themselves Muses, but their good stand ins, inhabiting this sie of reality and sharing with the older ‘women their hnguage. They were (or ended up being) other people's wives; actresses and dancers, schcolteachers, di voroées, nurses; they had a social station and thus eould bo defined, while the Muse's main trait—let me repeat it that she is undefinable. They were neurotic o serene, pro imiscuous or strict, religious or eynical, great dressers or slov- cnly, highly sophisticated or barely Iterate. Some of them couldn't care less for poetry and would embrace a common cad more eagerly than an ardent admirer. On top ofthat they lived in diferent lands, though at about the sume time, spoke diferent tongues, and didn't know of each other. In short, nothing bound them together save that something they said or did ata certuin moment triggeced and set in 95 / Altra Ego motion the machinery oflanguage, and trolled along, leav- ing behind on paper “the best words in the best possible ‘order. "They were not Muses, because they made the Muse, the oder woman, speak ‘Gaught in the gallery’s net, 1 thought, these birds of bards” paradise had at least got their proper identification, if aot actual rings. Like their bards, most of them were gone nov, and gone were their quity secrets, moments of te: ‘mph, substantial wardrobes, protracted malaiss, and pe cular antes. What remained was a song owing to the birds’ capacity to futter off no less than to the bards’ to chirp, yet outlastng both —the way i wil outlast its readers, ‘who, for the moment of reading at least, share i a songs serif xiv Herein lies the ultimate distinction hetween the beloved and the Muse: the latter daesn’t die. The same goes for the “Muse andthe poet: when he's gone, she finds herself nother ‘mouthpiece in the next generation. Tp put it another way, she always hangs around a language and doesn't seem to rind being mistaken fr a plain girl. Amused by this sort of certo, she tries to correct it by dictating to her charge now pages of Paradiso, now Thomas Hardy's poems of 1913-25; that is, those where the voice of human passion yields to that of linguistic necessity—but apparently to no avai. So let's leave her with a flute and a wreath of wildflowers, This way a least she might eseape a biographer. 1990