Parisian Literary Salon

creating community through reading and discussing literature

a poem and a quote

Filed under: Poetry & Musings — literarysalon at 11:29 pm on Saturday, August 13, 2005

(originally distributed June 17, 2005)

Travel
– by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing,
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.

and the quote…
– From an essay by George Eliot on Wilhelm Riehl’s text, The Natural History of German Life as quoted by A.S. Byatt in Passions of the Mind (whew.)

“… And in the Riehl essay, her (George Eliot’s) arguments for the specificity of natural history are also used for artistic realism: there is a moral obligation to depict peasants as they are, not in a pastoral idealization. “Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the People. Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life.”

My musings (perhaps more accurately a rant):

These two bits set against each other may not have an obvious connection- but here goes: Eliot’s quote seems to me to get at the idea of what is true- and often for me a measure of what is true is that that resonates- for example, reading a poem that in the act of reading, reaches inside you, from your mouth down into the place where memory and impression quiver, and connects with a moment that is sharp for you in your experience. And that this experience happens, not just for those who have studied literature, who feel quite at ease discussing the wisdom in madness in Shakespeare’s King Lear, for example, but for those who have had lived consciously in the world and can use their experience to contemplate the ideas of others.

This week in the International Herald Tribune there was an article titled: In Elite Literary Club, a voice for women for 125 years. I applaud the purpose of the club, but feel a bit of an old anger in some of the terms used in discussing this club. Elite. It is not only people of privilege who can discuss ideas- whether it be the privilege of class, education, or culture. I hope that the act of reading, and the possibility of discussing what one has read, is not kept away from anyone who desires to grow and “extend contact with our fellow man”. That is why I do the Salons- so that anyone who is interested can access works and ideas that may broaden them. The works we chose are difficult- but not, I think to keep people from reading them. Nor is it necessary to spend years preparing for a work like Middlemarch. Simply having the courage to ask questions and through the work and knowledge of others to gain a foothold can be enough to let one in. Shakespeare wrote his plays so that the peasants standing on the floor of the theater would be as riveted as the Queen in her special alcove. The challenge for the contemporary reader is to re-enter the world and language of the writer, so that we can also grasp the ideas he offers. The human experience- love, greed, ambition, struggle- is the common and connecting thread. We all have knowledge from our daily experience that will illuminate a piece of the text.

So why Millay’s poem? I think I first encountered this poem in a children’s book (help- was it The Mixed up files of … ?) when I was quite young. I don’t think I had met my interior wanderlust yet- but reading the poem out loud until it turned into a chant reminded me of the leavings I had experienced. And now I re-meet the poem and hear in it the alternating desires of fellowship (community) and the yearning always for the unknown- the trail that winds away into the distance. Embedded in her language are the images of quotidian experience (night for sleeping, warm heart for friends, day full of voices) up against a wild call that sits in the back of her awareness: red cinders, shrieking whistles, engine steaming. Millay voiced here- in a poem that has the quality of incantation (go on, read it aloud) the tension I recognize of living solidly vs. giving into yearning & chance. If you are interested, I have another Millay poem that considers the struggle between influences of (Christian) faith and wilder forces. If you are interested, e-mail me for The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge and I promise no rant.

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