Swa cwæð eardstapa,
earfeþa gemyndig
So spoke the wanderer, mindful of hardships
I’ve been here before, bemoaning the state we’re in. So spoke the wanderer, mindful of hardships. It is an amazing bit of poetry, and way outside my discipline to comment on the poet’s meaning or even, truth be told, to get through it without a parallel text (this is the one I’m using) and a dictionary/thesaurus. As the world gets bleaker, I find my thinking informed by the voices of poets condemning what we might think of as alienation, sin-sickness, the prophetic Leonard Cohen telling us to “say the mea culpa which you probably forgot,” Shirley Collins’ moving images of powerlessness, locked in ice.
And yet today has gone well. Yes, for me at least, friends have made a difference. It shows me how fragile my feelings are, but on the first day back in the Bodleian (and admittedly only getting my new reader’s card) and noting that my last day of “proper” research was up on the Downs on a blowy March day, things have gone well.
Most of them. The desolation of the Wanderer was not really in my brief, but made my own annoyances seem petty – but the actual devastation of England by those with grubby paws, and people’s disquiet (partly exacerbated by the ways in which so much emnity is washing around) made it seem rather apt. Early morning sleeplessness is of no use, nor is a way of thinking that is rough and sorrowful. Physical affection is barred us; we have each become the wineleas guma, friendless man.
Swa þes middangeard
ealra dogra gehwam
dreoseð ond fealleð
So this Middle-earth, a bit each day droops and decays.
And so I felt I was back in a low mood about the state of things at the present: precious and venerable woodland desecrated, MPs snidily threatening that people who help the poor cannot expect help from Government themselves, MPs’ pay rises and subsidised food while children even in this locality go hungry… But the one thing that has always given me a small shred of comfort has been the notion that my response has to be one I own fully: not a bandwagon (however righteous) or sense of despair (however justified). And this is where we need kind-ness, that feeling of people belonging, of my belonging and the duty of care that brings*.
And then Richard Powers, he of The Overstory, had a short essay in the paper yesterday. He is not overly hopeful about the American election and suggests that whatever the outcome
It will take decades to heal the deep wounds.
Richard Powers, How do we become a serious people again?
…but then suggests lines I had not read from Walt Whitman. The poem from which they are taken is a longer plea for a United America, but these lines brought me back to a plea from earlier blogs:
OVER the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not dishearten’d, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet,
Those who love each other shall become invincible,
Walt Whitman, Over the Carnage, Leaves of Grass
and continues
The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly,
The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,
The continuance of Equality shall be comrades
(Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?
Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?
Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)
So Whitman was there before me (this is not really a surprise) in a plea for affection, friendship, fellow-feeling triumphing over institution and when earlier I asked about the human aspect of wholeness, “When This Is All Over” what will wellbeing be like? and maybe more urgently how might we get there, the personal is what we are left with, and knowing one another as of the same kind, kind-ness, compassion, is the place we start.
*I have to acknowledge, especially since I was amazed and delighted to see that this has received a bit more attention than I usually get, the thinking and personal warmth of my colleague Jon Reid whose work around compassion has illuminated so much of my own reflection.
nicktomjoe 