May 01, 2004
Philip Larkin, James Fenton & The Memorial Obsession
(Note: Poems discussed are "beneath the fold" in the Extended Entry.)
Again, we have a case of four poems by four poets being assigned, and I find myself making an executive decision to focus on two of them. I picked these two because of the connections, as you can possibly tell. In true Forster fashion, we like connections, and these fit quite nicely into some previously addressed topics . . .
Larkin's "Church Going," first of all, was fun for me to read, managing, as it does, to evoke nostalgia over the loss of a locale (churches) that is still quite easily found (perhaps too easily, lest we take it for granted) in the world. The poem makes one feel as if the day of the church is over, or at least as if its day is waning, and I feel nostalgic. The speaker steps inside a church when he knows nothing is going on in there, and shuffles about a bit inside, checking things out, half-reverent, half-idly curious, and never fully knowing why he has decided to stop and pursue this seemingly pointless investigation.
And then he starts to speculate on what will happen to churches when we stop using them, as he feels we inevitably will. When he said that, I couldn't help but leap immediately to the "Hymn to Proserpine." We're speaking of the same thing here: A religion over thrown and falling slowly into disuse and decay, it makes sense to look to it for guidance in helping us imagine how this new scenario will play out. Of course, what would you like to think about your church? That it wouldn't fall into complete disuse, right? That perhaps you'll have "dubious women come to make their children touch a particular stone?" But you and the poet both know quite well that this cannot last, and then what? You've still got an abandoned sanctuary. Who comes to visit it now, and why?
Think of the ruined temples of Ancient Greece, in fact, think even of the ruins where Early Christian church services were once held (in places like Ephesus, Galatia, and Philippi) . . . Do we not have all the types of people he names here visiting such places? Think of LeTourneau students, happily trooping along behind Dr. Hummel as he leads them tromping through a place like this. Which category do they fall into? “The crew that tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?” Do we not know that, in the end, most of the people that show up to gawk will fall into the "bored, uninformed" category? How do we deal with that?
Larkin successfully places us, as Christians, in the position that Swinburne's Roman Poet is in, or rather will be in before he dies, but is not in quite yet. In this new world, the quiet shrines of our religion are, inevitably, fading away in a most pathetic fashion. Not even allowed to rest in solemn and dignified peace but constantly plagued by the irreverent feet of the ignorant or the curious or the morbidly fanatical. That is, of course, not all there is to this poem, but it struck me.
Second, we have "A German Requiem," a very quiet, moving, written tribute to the German Jews who were killed by the Nazis during World War II. The horrible way in which they were taken from the world makes it necessary to remember them, (the poem tells us) not from what is left behind, but rather from what is not. This is how they are remembered, then: Through what is missing, and through people meeting together to remind themselves of where they have gone, for they left so little behind. This is illustrated in a sadly funny . . . a humorously melancholy . . . fashion in the verse concerning the bodies buried with only the little plaques and cards, which they used to direct their visitors in life, to mark where they are now in death. That was all that could be done, if even that much, for the deceased.
And the poet reminds us that: "Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then." (NA 2855) This, too, is part of why they remember. I chose to look at this poem in particular (in addition to the other) for two reasons (not counting the fact that I particularly liked it).
First, because I think it connects in a very small, but important way with the themes I discussed from the Voices of World War I. The poetry that came out of that war showed us a generation and a world that was forever changed by the horrors they encountered on the battlefield. This poem, although it was written in 1981, nevertheless captures the sense of how our world has once again been changed by the shocking discovery of the “inhuman” depths to which humanity is capable of sinking, even now, in what many had thought to call a modern, and a civilized, and especially an enlightened time. Many people came out of World War I with the hope that humanity could learn from its mistakes, even as it was in the process of repeating them, and that led directly to this atrocity, in which all of humanity is somehow implicated. As dark and terrible as World War I was, things could still go downhill, and they did.
Second, because I think in both this poem and the other one I mention we see a certain recognition of a passing or a fading away of memory. Larkin sees this as inevitable, and merely spends his energies conjuring up visions of the future. In what different ways will people respond to the slow decay of the symbols of a major world religion? Fenton, on the other hand, actively dredges up the reasons why we can, will, and should remember, and his poem itself serves as a reminder, lest we forget even as we read it. I suppose this makes Fenton the more responsible poet, and I think I prefer his active response to humanity’s notoriously short attention-span over Larkin’s passive acceptance of it.
"Church Going" by Philip Larkin
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
"A German Requiem" by James Fenton
Posted by Jared at May 1, 2004 06:42 PM | TrackBackIt is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the space between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.
You will find out that you are not alone in the enterprise.
Yesterday the very furniture seemed to reprach you.
Today you take your place in the Widow's Shuttle.The bus is waiting at the southern gate
To take you to the city of your ancestors
Which stands on the hill opposite, with gleaming pediments,
As vivid as this charming square, your home.
Are you shy? You should be. It is almost like a wedding,
The way you clasp your flowers and give a little tug at your veil. Oh,
The hideous bridesmaids, it is natural that you should resent them
Just a little, on this first day.
But that will pass, and the cemetery is not far.
Here comes the driver, flicking a toothpick into the gutter,
His tongue still searching between his teetch.
See, has not noticed you. No one has noticed you.
It will pass, young lady, it will pass.
How comforting it is, once or twice a year,
To get together and forget the old times.
As on those special days, ladies and gentlemen,
When the boiled shirts gather at the graveside
And a leering waistcoat approaches the rostrum.
It is like a solemn pact between the survivors.
The mayor has signed it on behalf of the freemasonry.
The priest has sealed it on behalf of all the rest.
Nothing more need be said, and it is better that way--The better for the widow, that she should not live in fear of surprise,
The better for the young man, that he should move at liberty between the armchairs,
The better that these bent figures who flutter among the graves
Tending the nightlights and replacing the chrysanthemums
Are not ghosts,
That they shall go home.
The bus is waiting, and on the upper terraces
The workmen are dismantling the houses of the dead.But when so many had died, so many and at such speed,
There were no cities waiting for the victims.
They unscrewed the name-plates from the shattered doorways
And carried them away with the coffins.
So the squares and parks were filled with the eloquence of young cemeteries:
The smell of fresh earth, the improvised crosses
And all the impossible directions in brass and enamel."Doctor Gliedschirm, skin specialist, surgeries 14-16 hours or by appointment."
Professor Sargnagel was buried with four degrees, two associate memberships
And instructions to tradesmen to use the back entrance.
Your uncle's grave informed you that he lived on the third floor, left.
You were asked please to ring, and he would come down in the lift
To which one needed a key . . .Would come down, would ever come down
With a smile like thing gruel, and never too much to say.
How he shrank through the years.
How you towered over him in the narrow cage.
How he shrinks now . . .But come. Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then.
And it seems there is no limit to the resourcefulness of recollection.
So that a man might say and think:
When the world was its darkest,
When the black wings passed over the rooftops
(And who can divine His purposes?) even then
There was always, always a fire in this hearth.
You see this cupboard? A priest-hole!
And in that lumber-room whole generations have been housed and fed.
Oh, if I were to begin, if I were to begin to tell you
The half, the quarter, a mere smattering of what we went through!His wife nods, and a secret smile,
Like a breeze with enough strength to carry one dry leaf
Over two pavingstones, passes from chair to chair.
Even the enquirer is charmed.
He forgets to pursue the point.
It is not what he wants to know.
It is what he wants not to know.
It is not what they say.
It is what they do not say.