Personal Aging as Really {Super} Old School: [Homer, Dante, and Petrarch]

Art at its best offers us the durability that became life’s first purpose, the variety that became its second, the appeal to the intelligence and the social emotions hat took so much longer to evolve, and the creativity that keeps adding new possibilities, including religion and science. We do not know a purpose guaranteed from outside life, but we can add enormously  to the creativity of life. We do not know what other purposes life may eventually generate, but creativity offers us our best chance of reaching them ~ ( from Brian Boyd, 2009; On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, an Fiction; p. 414)

In every life, there are chances and opportunities to self-reflect and to self-examine the course of the journey (so far) of life and to perhaps create an accounting of the bricolage, the palimpsest, and the tapestry that has been created – as a human being.

As a gerontologist, I am constantly intrigued by the forces of genetics (ontogeny and phylogeny) and environments (the immediate (proximate) and historical (distal) that shape of our lives as aging individuals. My goal with this blog segment is to share with you my reflections on those more distant influences (historical) that, at least to me, create and transmit a significant amount of importance (“like a bridge over troubled waters”) in terms of guidance, ethics, morality and existential meaning to life. In return, I hope that you reflect and consider similar types of human developmental processes that are transmitted – and as example here – via works of art, music, and literature – from once upon a time – and not necessarily with the origination of “it” in your lifetime.

So I have played the mental game of “what if?” – “If stranded on an island for years, what books [or songs, or art, or a person] would I simply have to have there with me – if I only had the few [or one] – to be stranded with?” – as the benchmark for the major threads that are in textually woven into me. So let me unpack that mental game with books {although I am worried that songs could “get old” listening to … over and over again – and just when you think: Oh, that’s gotta be some music by Bob Marley, on the island I was thinking more of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni); and then with that other person on the island, I had better be very interesting – and very patient, and of course it would help if they were in the mode too – so I was thinking of  Lou Andreas-Salomé [and I would ask her a million questions], but if she is considered “historically dead” – then Laetitia Casta is cordially invited.

      (the island with books + intellectual conversation + whatnot)

Yes, over there in two stacks in the sand (on the beach – on the deserted island) are the complete works of Shakespeare (have as supplement – The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum and Shakespeare – The Thinker by A.D. Nutall) and everything ever written by Jorge Luis Borges. And close by is The Aeneid by Virgil (translation by Robert Fagles) and then Georgics (translation by Janet Lembke). And nearby is Goethe’s Faust (translated by Walter Kaufman).

But there is no doubt that Homer’s – The Odyssey is closer still. It all starts here and this book with it’s monumental and perfectly stated opening lines (as translated from Robert Fagles – 1996 – book):

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course….

But of course – That would be me  - too.

  Odysseus  (didn’t have GPS back then – but…)

And so The Odyssey became my central guidepost, a beacon and compass. It is the classic story of the journey home, but that journey will take many detours – and will take much time to unfold. And long the way, there is distraction, temptation, risk, reward, relationships, characters and symbols, mistakes and music, love and war, and justice – and reconciliation. And to bridge the super old school to the old school, I always ratchet up the volume on Grand Funk Railroad and the classic – I’m Your Captain ~

and I’ve been lost now, days uncounted,
And it’s months since I’ve seen home.  
Can you hear me, can you hear me,
Or am I all alone.…I’m getting closer to my home…  

Still searching …………………

I have a collection going of everything that I get my hands on that is printed about The Odyssey and Odysseus – to the point I am convinced (at least metaphysically) there is the re-enactment of that archetypal journey in everyone’s life. The script and story is our life – on one page or many. From one character – to the whole book cover-to-cover.

                            Circe and Calypso (+ Odysseus)

I have got numerous translations and the even one translated by T.E. Lawrence (as in Lawrence of Arabia). Also crated-up on the beach, there would be Odysseus: A Life by Charles Rowan Beye; Homer’s the Iliad and The Odyssey (A Biography) by Alberto Manguel;  No-Man’s Land: One Man’s Odyssey Through The Odyssey by Scott Huler; and then The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus by Margaret Atwood; Odysseus Unbound: The Search for Homer’s Ithaca by Roger Bittlestone; The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey by Edith Hall.

   Bloomsday !

And speaking of Ulysses, I would naturally have on hand the adventure set in one day (a la Bloomsday) by James Joyce – Ulysses which has its share of “editions” but the point being here that it would be good to follow-up on “old” Stephen Dedalus as when he was “the artist as a young man” (+ the bird girl) that book became an inflection point in my journey (Finnegan’s Wake would be something to have on hand will waiting to get my driver’s license renewed).

But back to Ulysses (the Latinized/Roman Odysseus) which will figure – and be a figure – in Ovid’s work, Virgil’s classic Aeneid, even in Shakespeare’s writings – but the bridge here is the one to Dante and Petrarch.

 Dante

But first, some background in regards to the journey with Dante.

The first book I read by the author Dante was actually La Vita Nuova but the story line of the impact of Dante on my journey went like this: I blame it on Deep Purple (the cover art from their album), the painter Hieronymus Bosch, and Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451.

Hmm, really how does that all fit together?

Well, the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights connected back to the “Hell” panel of Bosch and then back to Deep Purple – and then in a high school English class, our teacher had our class read (and got to watch the reel-to-reel movie too!) Fahrenheit 451 and then consider the interesting proposal –  “If you had to pick one book to represent and carry forth into the world {like Montag} assuming that would all soon be destroyed, and thus no longer exist, which one would you be? Which book you would carry in your head—a walking repository? Before you answer, I want to share with you the importance of books, or better yet, the significance of knowledge, emotion, and experiences in books, not just for you, but everyone.”

And the teacher continued with calm conviction, “So before you consider your choice, I want to read an excerpt from Bradbury’s book and have you hear what he had to say about this. This is toward the end of the book, and Montag has escaped, and he is contemplating about what he has accomplished in his life . . . so far.”

What did you give the city, Montag?
Ashes.
What did the others give to each other?
 Nothingness.
Granger stood looking back with Montag. Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.

So the teacher let those lines sink into the heads of the students. And I thought about several, like Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Or maybe The Brothers Kamarazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Maybe something from Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or even Faulkner, but the primordial images of Bosch were flying around  my head and so it was my choice – “Divine Comedy by Dante” but of course, I had never read it before. It was just the choice.

After many years – of not reading it – I finally went to a library to begin the journey – anew. Unfortunately, the area where the literature on Dante was shelved, I found that books on Dante took up an entire half row.  There was entire industry on this guy! Dante this and Dante that. Dante and Franciscans. Dante and Soap Operas. Dante in all sorts of languages. All I want is the original stuff. What about the damn Inferno? – and so I finally decided on three books out of the many others that were available on the shelves:

  Dante

The Inferno (1977) translated by John Ciardi. And then a very modernistic version titled, Dante’s Inferno (1985), translated and illustrated by Tom Phillips. And when I found the third book, I spoke out too loudly in the library in a non-professional response, “Are you shitting me?” It was a book that he thought would be impossible to be loaned out – at all – but there it was, just waiting for me. It was a larger than average sized book, and it seemed older than Dante himself. The book was covered in a brown cloth with gold gilded page edges. I examined the front cover and saw a large figure of the devil with gold fancy lettering, Dante’s Inferno, Illustrated by Gustave Dore, translated by Cary. I thought the book would be something that could have been found in the monk’s library the Eco’s book In the Name of the Rose. I wondered – What is the date on this thing? On the spine it says 1800. But that can’t be. Can it? Not that old and not right here. This should be in a special collection – shouldn’t it? –

When I opened up the book to the first page he noticed on the left hand side a huge sketch of Dante Alighieri. It was the frontpiece by Dore – Dante looks as serious as a heart attack. That face! It’s like he is pissed off at the world, but the laurel leaves around his head gives him that academic look. I loaded that book up with several others books that begged to pulled down off the shelf as well, The Body of Beatrice by Robert Pogue Harrison, and a new book by J.F. Took, Dante: Lyric Poet and Philosopher and the book that would become one of my favorites, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion by John Freccero and edited by Rachel Jacoff.

   Beatrice and Dante 

And of course, my thinking was as I began to wade through the different versions of The Inferno – Why? Why would Dante write the damn thing to begin with? What was the inspiration? – And in a selfish point of view, I wondered – Is there any message in there for me? A book about a pilgrim on a journey written a long time ago? Why did I choose this book from long ago? I was an idiot. I said that it was the one book I would memorize if I were in the scenario like in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Where did that come from? I was showing off I guess. But why that book? It’s almost like I said it because I knew, or at least felt like, something would be in it that it would be for me. Or something to that effect. I guess that’s the point. I don’t really know. It just happened. But for a reason? Meant to be? Or just coincidence? If it was coincidence, then everything up to this point has been one long string of ‘em, and when you got a string of them, you got a pattern, and from the pattern, then you got a meaningful significance, and that leaves me with one thing – Destiny. Or maybe I have breathing the vapors at Delphi for too long.

Maybe I am wasting my time in all this digging around in books by Dante. A fool looking for fool’s gold. The sign at my door should read – Scott David Wright – Deceive thyself! –

I found that Freccero would interpret Dante’s great work with the central theme of “conversion.” The conversion dynamic would be from old to new, a complete transformation of the self, like in Augustine’s Confessions, from sinner to saint.

Freccero would highlight how the transformation for Dante was accomplished with a defining moment and that moment was connected to the experience of hell itself with absolutely no way of going around it.  Life was a struggle and before one could reach the “Light”, a person one had to accept a certain degree of “descent into humility.”  I had picked up the literary thread that Freccero would emphasize between Augustine and Dante: both tried to reach the ‘truth’ through intellectual and philosophical quests and they both came up short. Yet, the spiritual transformation that they both encountered was the redemptive path toward paradise.

And the connection back to The Odyssey.

I was fascinated that Freccero identified Ulysses as the symbolic figure for one who journeys through life with philosophical presumptions seeking the mountain of truth “the mountain of philosophic pride” only to be denied and left shipwrecked {no way !} in time and space with no transcendent vision to assist the pilgrim to elevate and detach from the earthly plane of existence – Stop! Hold it, hold it. So what Freccero is saying is that we are pilgrims on the journey, but unless there is the transformation, death and then rebirth, to something more significant, – the poet, all of it ends within a finite period of time.

And so the lesson was to be:

From the outset, the poet voice expresses the detached point of view toward which his pilgrim strives, while the journey of the pilgrim is history in the making, a tentative, problematic view constantly subject to revision, approaching certitude as a limit. It is at the last moment that the metamorphosis of the pilgrim’s view if the world is completed, when he himself has become metamorphosed into the poet, capable of writing the story we have read (p.25).


The pilgrim’s view is much like our own view of history and ourselves: partial, perhaps confused, still in the making. But the poets view is far different, for it is global and comprehensive . . . For Dante, however, as for Augustine, there was death which enabled the mind to grasp such totalities {*** my notes here – i.e., the coherence of the whole; the memory of universal history}, not by virtue of linear evolution, but rather by transcendence: a death of detachment (p.26).

And the section of Freccero’s book that I found to be the most enlightening and directly relevant to his interest in human development and aging was Chapter Eight titled Dante’s Ulysses: From Epic to Novel and it was there that he began to appreciate the symbolic templates for the life course: the circle and the straight line. It had its historical roots with Homer’s book The Odyssey, and with St. Augustine’s City of God, and Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Jason also noted that the notion of time in human life varied respectively. With Ulysses, his entire journey was represented by a departure and returning, in circular fashion, of the soul with the man using his “philosophical wisdom” as his guide and inspiration, but Dante changed the outcome of Ulysses’ journey into a “linear reading of human time” with the end point as the shipwreck of death – Why did Dante do that? One of my favorite heroes of all time. That’s not fair. Not at all. We all know that he got back to Penelope, safe and sound, but here is Freccero saying that Dante wanted to send a message – that one cannot return home without death and resurrection. No matter what – period. So Ulysses drowned in the water and Dante is saved by water. How convenient for Mr. Alighieri. And why does he get to pass judgment on Ulysses in such a manner? I am I missing something here? –

            And then I found the key to Dante’s reinterpretation of the fate of Ulysses a few pages later on when Freccero interpreted the role of Ulysses as symbol and as a warning to all of humanity, including Dante himself,

The providential course of history is represented in the Divine Comedy, as it is in the Aeneid, by the trajectory of the sun from east to west. Once it is established that this is the linear course of history, then the proud man who, in his excess, would outstrip history, or grace, dies a shipwreck, even if enfolded in the arms of Penelope (p.145).

- So that’s it? The journey is the poem. And the goal is for the pilgrim to become a poet? And by the sound of it, a poet with humility. It appears that Dante gave us Ulysses as a point in time, in all of our lives, the point in time when we follow excess, pride – fame – fortune – and the pursuit of knowledge. All of it like Faust. So beware of such a path. And what about love? Amore. Love of a woman?

Well, it looks like desire was bad news too. Look at Paolo and Francesca. Rising too high like Icarus and then the fall. But if one accepts humility, and a descent through human disgrace, and fallen, then and only then, can one see and experience a new beginning, with humble grace. Then the pilgrim and the poet will become one, as Frecerro said, ‘the circle is squared’ and he even says that Dante might think of himself as the ‘new Jason – returning with the Golden Fleece of his vision and of the poem that we read’ –

Okay, fine. I get it. Dante is like this wet blanket on human desires and reason. The only path is toward the supernatural level of happiness, toward God above. That’s the Golden Fleece. But where is Beatrice? What’s the deal with her? It’s like Dante transformed her into something else as well. Is she the sun? Is she the moon? Is she all of the stars? A celestial rose? Heaven itself? It’d almost Freudian. Repress the lust and channel that libidinous energy into art. No, better yet, a socially approved idolatry.

That’s it? Am I sure I even want to even get started with The Inferno? I think it’s the last thing I need at this point in my life. Journeying through levels of hell with Virgil. Aren’t there enough levels of hell right here in our jobs? Week to week? I don’t know. Not a good start to have Ulysses shipwrecked and all and then Beatrice turned into some semi-angel, a heavenly deity. Maybe I’ll just start into it and see what happens –

And to the left side was a Dore sketch of Dante in the middle of deep dark forest standing in a thicket of vines, looking over his shoulder, at the reader – Looking right at me, like he’s saying, you too will know what it is like. Follow me and learn –

In the midway of this our mortal life,   
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray…

Damn, what a mess he is in – and at “mid-life” no less (mid-life then about 35 or so) Just halfway though this journey of our life
I reawoke to find myself inside
A dark wood, way off course, the right road lost…

Well, Phillips certainly describes in a more straightforward way. I like that, ‘the right road lost’ – but what is this? – ‘journey of our life’ – Our? I thought this was about Dante’ s journey, but  he makes it sound it like it will ours – or mine as well – Let’s see what Ciardi has to say –

Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray   
From the straight road and woke to find myself
Alone in a dark wood. How shall I say…- Same thing – ‘our life’s journey’ – a lesson for all of us? –

The three beast’s in Dante’s path, the panther of pleasure and luxury, the lion of pride and ambition, and the she-wolf of avarice. Got it all covered don’t you Dante? Greed, power, desire, and then you had to turn back and wait, until Virgil showed up. And he said told Dante that he must go another way. ‘Follow me’ – straight through hell itself and out again, to where Beatrice would take over, for it was Beatrice who sent Virgil, to help Dante get thought it all, and even Virgil was transformed by her presence. Beatrice must be beyond flesh and reason. She is what we hope for –

Her eyes were kindled from the lamps of Heaven.   
Her voice reached though me, tender, sweet, and low.
An angel’s voice, a music of its own:

I decided to stick with Ciardi’s version all the way through and he would use Cary’s version for reviewing Dore’s sketches when needed,– Abandon all hope, All ye who enter there –

So Dante covers the role of passion, but Dante even pokes fun at humans who believe it is all high-minded reason as well. Those who follow the just the mind, the love of earthly philosophy are damned too. Those who follow the craving of the flesh are damned. Way to go Dante, you just blasted ninety percent of being human. That is human be-ing! So here I am again, wanting, craving, desire – And then what? What was it like for you Dante my judgmental friend? You know, the more I think of it, the more I believe that Dante has been here before. Yes, the great poet, has been down this road himself. Sure he has. He speaks of pride, hunger, lust, fame, fortune, the affairs of the human heart. How would he know so much? Maybe the Inferno is his own hell and he throws in the mythology symbols throughout. Minos, the who gets to decide which level one will reside in hell. The Furies, Hecate, Medusa and my old nemesis, The Minotaur, is in there too. And the Centaurs. So what was Dante trying to say here? Half-man, half-beast.

Am I not able to control my own appetites? Was Dante able to control his? I think The Divine Comedy is one big autobiography of sorts, a personal account of his tribulations dealing with the storms within himself and the turbulence all around him. The politics, the papacy, the intrigue, the exile, the friends and the enemies. Sure, it’s an account of his own human development across time, a historical picture of himself embedded in time and place. I think Dante wanted to pursue the Golden Fleece as much as Jason did.

Dante wanted to travel into adventure as much as Ulysses. Dante wanted knowledge, all of it, as much as Faust did and he wanted the love and the touch of his lady – Beatrice. He wanted all of it and it all crashed and burned all around him. And then he realized that it all lead him into a dark wood and the only way to recover from the heartache and the depression was to seek redemption. So he had to start all over again. Make it right, change horses in midstream or else be damned into regret and self-indulgence. He had to beg forgiveness, to be purified of his pride, his lust, his hunger, but again in Purgatory, there is one more lesson, another test of the flesh, and again it involves the story of my old friend from The Odyssey.

There was Dante dreaming in Purgatory and he was visited by The Siren –

I read again – and again – from the selected passage his notebook what Ciardi wrote in Canto XIX,  

I turned Ulysses from his wanderer’s way   
With my charmed song, and few indeed who taste
How well I satisfy would think to stray.

And of course it’s all about the eyes again. The eyes. Over and over again. Even Ciardi would agree. This endnote I wrote down seems to be the hardest lesson of all to learn and to obey. The age old story of the flesh, the mind, and the soul. Which one shall rule the day? –

Canto XXV endnote 119: we must keep a tight rein on our eyes; On the narrative level Virgil means simply, we must watch our dangerous path with great care. On the allegorical level, however, he can certainly be read to mean that lust (the excess of love) is the most readily inviting sin, but that it is as dangerous as a fall off the cliff, and that all men must guard their souls against it and refuse, like the souls of the Carnal how in hell, to “abundant reason to their appetites”. It was a convention of the ‘sweet new style” that love always entered through the eyes (p.340).

            – Okay. Yeah, I got it. The eyes. But still it is obvious Dante had gone astray in a big way. Too much philosophy and science and not enough faith and religion. Too much of the earthly love and not enough of the spiritual love, but again I’m lost. Dante goes to Paradise and sees her emerald eyes again and even in heaven he is still human enough to admit the energy. The sensual feelings between him and Beatrice, Canto XXIII, so that on p. 378 – 

 Tranced by the holy smile that drew me there   
into the old nets, I forgot all else –
my eyes wore blinders, and I could not care.

But then Dante finally caves in. The earthly beauty has been transformed into a divine beauty. How can you top this writing in Canto XXX? And I wondered if could I ever produce such a writing as this? It’s impossible –

The beauty I saw there transcends all measure    of mortal minds. I think only her Maker  

 can wholly comprehend so great a treasure.

As feeblest eyes, struck by the sun, go blind,

 so the resemblance of my lady’s smile

 strikes every recognition from my mind.

From the first day, I looked upon her face

 in this life, to this present sight of her,

 my song has followed her to sing her praise.

But here I must no longer even try

 To walk behind her beauty. Every artist,

 his utmost done, must put his brushes by.

Eyes. Eyes. Dante and his eyes. And then the white rose. Mystic rose. The Name of the Rose – is Beatrice – in which Dante becomes the cosmic wheel that turns independent of time and place –

And I have written down wrote into my notebook,  

Dante – who took the maxim “Know thyself” and rediscovered it through his writing of The Divine Comedy. It was his apology and redemption and transcendence. It was his own account of his journey in time and the sharing of a lifetime of memories, both good and bad. Lessons: Along your way, be careful of distractions the lead you astray and into a dark wood. Use the past to help guide your way, but do not rely on it exclusively for the future is a river of change. There is the way of the mind and the way of the flesh. Try to find the middle way. Emotions, passions, intellect,  mind,  soul,  spirituality, reason, self-reflect, and observe oneself in one’s own time. To know ourselves in history. To discover both worlds during the time we have. The outer voyage upon the seas with Ulysses and the inner one with Dante. It is a comfort and it is good to know that others have struggled with it as well. I am not alone. It is my journey but have I done anything to share what it was like? So many years but they go so quickly. What matters in the end? Love. Yes, love. How did one love? The most difficult journey of them all and that is why I am lost as well. So easy to say and so easy to know, but so hard to practice. I am whirlwind and find myself seeing both sides. I am at this point getting older and still no wiser, just knowing a little bit more stuff, still seeking, still on the journey,  still wanting and craving. When will it calm down? When does the desire for more and more end? More knowledge? More pleasure? Maybe that is why Dante called it ‘The Divine Comedy’  One big joke? Maybe it is. If you don’t know yourself after all these years. Know thyself. *** Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man below.  That about sums it up for me at this point – 


from AN ESSAY ON MAN 
Epistle II. 

…Chaos of thought and passion, all confus’d; 
Still by himself abus’d or disabus’d; 
Created half to rise, and half to fall; 
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; 
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d: 
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! . . .

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail,
 Reason the card, but passion is the gale.

            – What’s it going to be Scott Wright? Which path? Destiny? Free will? Reason? Academics? Passion? Romanticism? Mind? Body? Flesh? Spirit? Know thyself. Ha! I don’t know shit. Know thyself? No –‘Know’ I don’t – No more great adventures like Ulysses. I’ve had my chance, especially at my age. There is no Beatrice. No mysterium coniunctionis. There won’t even be a portrait of the artist as a middle-aged man. Carry on wayward old man. What ever happened to the dreams? And the imagination? And the limitless possibilities? Now there is only the dark wood. The doors are shut. This is the end my beautiful friend. The end of my elaborate plans and end of the soft parade. It started back in ’69, back when I was in high school and I didn’t see the message at that time. All our lives we sweat and save, building for a shallow grave. Must be something else, as Jim would point out. Apocalypse now or never. Only the good die young. Wow, how fast I’ve gone from Epicurean to Stoic in just a few years -

Then came Petrarch ~ But i did not appreciate the generational tension between Petrarch and Dante – sort of Freud/Jung dynamic. And that Petrarch wanted to compete and then transcend the “master.” (see Petrarch & Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition, Ed. by Baranski and Cachery, Jr., 2009). But in effect both were grappling with the Pythagorean “Y” – the fork in the road – the dualities which Hermann Hesse was able to capture so well in Narcissus and Goldmund (flesh vs/and spirit). The reconciliation of eros and claritas is a difficult road to travel (see Octavio Paz) and the battle between the senses and the rational mind, between passions and reason is very much the “ancient flame” alive in almost all of us. The key is how Dante and Petrarch offered their perspectives on the challenges so that we could all benefit – and learn. Thus, Dante and Petrarch with their didactic skills via text.

Petrarch was later “discovered” by me via Part IV in The Renaissance by Will Durant. It was in Chapter One, as I recall, where it all started with the stories of Petrarch and Boccaccio.

When I went to the first chapter, I was pleased to see that Durant had written about Petrarch who was to be known as a troubadour, “like the young Dante a generation before him”, composing verse over the next twenty-one years which added up to over two hundred sonnets to his muse: Laura – Now that’s inspiration! – Over two hundred? – Shakespeare needs to take a back seat. Or at least he needs to take a bow toward the master, Petrarch !–

I also noted an interesting thread as Durant indicated that Laura first appeared to Petrarch the year 1327 on April 6^th and it turned out that she also died on the same day in the year 1348 – Now there is an interesting triple connection, April 6^th – The birth date and death date the same. It’s also my birthday. More threads woven in.

I was thankful that Durant even provided one of Petrarch’s sonnets on page seven:

Who never looked upon her perfect eyes,

The vivid blue orbs burning brilliantly-

He does not know how love yields and denies;

He only knows who knows how sweetly she

Can talk and laugh, the sweetness of her sighs.

And I quickly noted the lines that made me think back to Dante’s homage to Beatrice, “Love is encompassed in my Lady’s eyes” –

It is true, the eyes have it. Something starts there. What is it? The ultimate temptation? The ultimate test?  Dante – and now Petrarch. I just can’t believe they were able to dedicate that much energy and time to writing across their life for just one woman. Beatrice – and then it was Laura. Dante and Petrarch saw their beloved muse and for that instant they are transformed forever.

And for a short while, I though about becoming the next Dante – Petrarch style writer. But don’t want to quit my day job just yet. They ain’t paying money for a modern day Petrarch these days. And so I have no sonnets, no poems, no verse. I’ve been dead to that for a while – a long time –

Then in 2004, I was pleased to see this book published – The Poetry of Petrarch. Translated by David Young (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).


And I was back in the hunt with the old style – translated for us in our contemporary context -

In 1327, at precisely
The day’s first hour, April 6, I entered
This labyrinth and I have found no escape.

And I am still reading Petrarch’s verse and try to weave the meaning 682 years later -

            And here is Petrarch as precursor to Edgar Lee Masters and anticipating “George Gray” in Young’s translation (2004) there is number 80 and number 317 and in number 186; there are old friends to revisit: Homer, Virgil, Aeneas, Achilles, and Ulysses.

And in number 196,

            Time braided up that hair in tighter knots
            and bound my heart as well . . .

And in number 315 there is the wheel of fortune and the spinning out of thread and in number 168, his reaction to aging,

            Well, let it come. I’m not the only one
            who’s aging. My desire doesn’t age,
             But how much time, I wonder, have I left?

And so there it is: my sentiments exactly.

How much time is left? I don’t know, and that is why I must write.

And why? Because there is the muse and my desire doesn’t age and there is love while there is still life, even though love is,

            like snow in the sun, like wax in fire, like clouds before the wind . . .

            Her eyes—opals.  Her hair—gold.

            The muse is there saying: Write!

And it is inspiration, but what to say? How to capture the time and the memories?

It is as though Petrarch would say to me or to you that such a task is like trying to capture the notion of her beauty. It is certainly no easier than ~

            to count the stars and to catch the ocean in a little glass . . .

So now that I am off the island – I still carry with me – but inside the mind, the heart, and the soul – three influences from the really old school of arts – and writers – and even to this day – as an aging individual they all still matter.

Thanks, Scott D. Wright

Remembering and Forgetting in Later Life: Personal Perspectives (Section IVa)

Remembering and Forgetting in Later Life:
The Gift and Curse of Mnemosyne and Lethe

Section IV – Personal Perspectives (a) -

Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale

So, here I am thinking of Thoreau’s answer to the questions posed in his own chapter title and serving as catalyst for his own inquiry from his book Walden “Where I lived and what I lived for” and his words still speak, even to this day -

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish into the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one.

 - Mr. HDT. Mr. Cipher. The American Sphinx.

Okay, so that got me to thinking about this: Our lives as palimpsest or tabula rasa? Or as one big wall of graffiti. Our lives as amor fati? So that, a la Nietzsche, you would want to do it all over again, your life, as in over and over and over again. But still the same? In perpetuity? Or be given a fresh start yet again? A new beginning? Sort of like most of our cells in our body at least according to Hayflick who said that, “Most of your cells do not accompany you from the cradle to the grave, so you are really are not the same person that you were even a few years ago, either figuratively or literally.”  Think about that! When you celebrate your birthday, you are really celebrating only those cells that have not been replaced yet, but the rest of you, how old is that? Well, what parts are you talking about? What parts have been replaced and what parts do you still have from the beginning? Sort of like the identity and change paradox known as Ship of Theseus. Anyway, back to our supposed amor fati. Yes, there is one life and there is also one big catch according to Nietzsche, that is if you buy into his metaphysical perspective.

And it is that you cannot carry over the knowledge, the lessons, the experiences or the wisdom from the past and so the probabilities that emerged and representing your fate is therefore sealed in a Sisyphean loop all without the wisdom of the past and so your future is still determined. Or is it? And what would it matter? I’m right back to the same spot because it all appears to be smoky metaphysics and sticky cow manure. This is this. One shot. This is the fate that we know and the only have. So carpe diem. No more than that, carpe momento! This second, this moment. And in this moment, I reflect back to another time in my life and so many years ago.

As we carry on our business of life, the deep and significant can become lost and postponed so that as our parents, our relatives, our friends die and are no more, we wish that there would have been more time, time for such a word, to have said something meaningful, but alas we are but brief candles after all, and the epiphany shocks us because the petty pace has all crept up on us, day after day it all marches on relentlessly, on our way to a dusty death. In the long run and when put into perspective it has all flashed before us as we think about our one hour upon the stage, and then gone. Perhaps the nuances and the snippets will be gathered up by a novelist – a storyteller – a blogger – and then the script embellished and interspersed with theatrics, full of whopper tales and suspect events, and in the end all of it representing not too much in the grand scale of things.

We realize it was a walking shadow. Was that me that appeared before me in the mirror? And was that me as the I that established so many relationships over time? Who was I to me and to others? What role upon the stage? Did I change? Did I stay the same? And who would record, down to the last syllable, all of this rumination and reminiscence? Hey, we have met the storytellers and they are us.

And so here I am and the months are quickly moving onward. Here it is already into late December and it has been non-stop action on building this blog site and creating numerous HTML documents that are beginning to link and cross-link even though the buttons to move forward and backward through links seem to be a linear process. In other words my linking back and forth moves in geometric lines of related information but yet the subjective feel is all right-brained and contextual and fluid and following infinite possibilities on an ever branching tree. No wonder they use words like explorer and safari to describe the investigative and connective functions of the WWW. It is easy to move through the information – but like Theseus, one needs a thread to find your way out of the labyrinth. In a way, it’s the same process that reminds me of the simple act of going back and establishing a reference point through one’s memories, jumping from various events, sometimes in a random and spontaneous fashion. How to place order on all of it?

In a way, I think of my life as both the chambered nautilus and a large sheet of fabric made of various threads now woven to reveal some patterns, but I suppose the overall material is still being created, but slower and more methodical. The river that was once flowing rapidly is now beyond the mid-way point, and the source of it all – the ocean – seems to be more influential now than the small streams that began the flow many years ago. I remember thinking just a couple of months back how it was going to be strange, a strange trip or surreal party to be involved in creating one’s own narrative of life and that strangeness is no different than let’s say the great question of Leibniz and Heidegger based on the notion that nothing is simpler than nothing, thus -“Why is there something rather than nothing” which makes me think of how one gets started from nothing? Or so it seems when answering the question of where one begins with writing. There is always something to our lives worth recalling but trying to get that something to start it all off is the challenge whatever that original point may be with me or someone else. It is as difficult trying to explain the fact that we are here and we are something and not nothing. But why? How would you go about explaining your presence as it is today? How did you come to be? One must start somewhere at some time along the ontological continuum. So I want to start here where the memories are seen quite clearly, yet emergent, coming out of the gray or some cave or some labyrinth. Well, get going. Write! Create the text and begin the weaving – while there is still time – start the blog – Okay – look back and what do I see?  

I know my stream of consciousness, my soliloquy, may come off fragmented on your computer screen -

Labyrinth {life itself} – Theseus {courage to determine fate} - Ariande {guide and soror mystica} – Augustine {to reflect on the past} – Thomas Aquinas {in a methodical way} - Hieronymus Bosch – {My dreams} – Nautilus {of the many stages} – Bruegel {stark and raw} – Hesse {of the spirit and the flesh} – Joyce {the appreciation of beauty and the way out} – Daedulus {to rise above} – de Chardin {science and religion} – Icarus {to know one’s limits} – The teachers {see the other road} – Threads {to look for patterns} – Threes (3) {to choose among many} – Fates {the end is the same, the way there may differ} – Nymphs {Lord, make me chaste, but not yet} – Graces {to see beauty, to seek peace, to cultivate happiness} – Waterhouse {beauty and mythology} – Homer’s Odyssey {the journey home} – Athena {wise mentor} – Indians {earth centered} – Whitman {dynamically alive} - Emerson {ethics and nature} - Thoreau {nature and human} – Borges {textual labyrinths} -  Neruda {earthly flesh} – Petrarch {to see her as a gift} – Schopenhauer {defiantly synthetical} – Neitzche {defiantly visionary} – D.H. Lawrence {artistic heart and its navigator} - Muses {I am grateful for the sensory awareness . . . a blessing and a curse!} – T.S. Eliot {somber mood} – Hemingway {body grounded}- Rilke {soul aflight} – Goethe {renaissance mind} – Dante’s Divine Comedy {the journey to soul} – Umberto Eco {textual mirrors} – Vico {history matters} - Rimbaud {poetry matters}-  Mnemosyne {to respect the past} – Kronos {to understand the passing of time} – Kairos {to make the most of the opportunity} – Graeae and Senex {wisdom and experience} – Sally + Diana + Lisa + Susan + Kristi + Julia + Celeste + Melissa {I am forever grateful} - So after all that – Where do I stand? – What is my position? – Agnostic? – Gnostic? – Theist? – Scientist? – Buddhist? – Platonist? – Arisotelian? – Rimorrisonbaudian? – Romaniticist? – Am I with Faust? – Am I with Dawkins and Wilson? – Am I with Hawkings? – Am I Abel? – Am I the gamekeeper? – Am I a Glass Bead Player? – Am I with God? – Am I with myself? –Dies irae? – Paradise found or lost? – What is still missing? – The answer was in a book – and a memory – both subjective and universal – First my memory – Flash back to the school days – Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 – and the question posed – “If you had to memorize one book (become the book – you are the book) – which one would it be? – And my pick? – Dante’s The Divine Comedy – which was a pretty good trick – a rabbit out of the hat – But I remember the Czar – His choice stopped the teacher in his tracks – Ulysses by James Joyce – I remember thinking – Can he say that? – Isn’t that book illegal or something? – And of course – if the Czar mentioned it – then the floodgates were opened – the freshmen looked around at each other as though God himself had spoken – If the Czar picked it – it must be read – put that on your list – but of course we had no idea why we should – it’s just that the Czar endorsed it – but then when I snuck in – and found another Joyce book – The Portrait of the Artist as Young Man – which was dynamite – I fell in love with a sea-bird on the shore – my heart flew – and I turned into a hopeless romantic – but I digress – so from the Czar’s pick to the book I found – Joyce’s Book of Memory by Rickard – which – as fate would have it (and always seems to be that way) – an examination of Joyce’s work –“Ulysses” – as a mnemotechnic –{a Mnemosynthetic device} – and from there I think this – it is time – 

Dante – who took the maxim “Know thyself” and rediscovered it through his writing of The Divine Comedy. It was his apology and redemption and transcendence. It was his own account of his journey in time and the sharing of a lifetime of memories, both good and bad. Lessons: Along your way, be careful of distractions the lead you astray and into a dark wood. Use the past to help guide your way, but do not rely on it exclusively for the future is a river of change. There is the way of the mind and the way of the flesh. Try to find the middle way. Emotions, passions, intellect,  mind,  soul,  spirituality, reason, self-reflect, and observe oneself in one’s own time. To know ourselves in history. To discover both worlds during the time we have. The outer voyage upon the seas with Ulysses and the inner one with Dante. It is a comfort and it is good to know that others have struggled with it as well. I am not alone. It is my journey but have I done anything to share what it was like? So many years but they go so quickly. What matters in the end? Love. Yes, love. How did one love? The most difficult journey of them all and that is why I am lost as well. So easy to say and so easy to know, but so hard to practice. I am whirlwind and find myself seeing both sides. I am at this point getting older and still no wiser, just knowing a little bit more stuff, still seeking, still on the journey, still wanting and craving. When will it calm down? When does the desire for more and more end? More knowledge? More pleasure? Maybe that is why Dante called it ‘The Divine Comedy’ One big joke? Maybe it is. I mean – If you don’t know yourself after all these years – but you can’t really know until to create the inventory of your-self…

To be continued… Thanks, Scott D. Wright