The Heart of Hinduism

Having early cast off the Midwest Protestantism in which I was baptized and confirmed, I, like others of my generation, I found much to admire and accept in philosophical Daoism and Ch’an Buddhism. I marveled at the marvelous symbolic webs of Hindu mythology but could, at the time, accept them no more than the metaphoric figures of the ancient Greeks or the Bible. Through neo-Vedanta, Isherwood and Huxley, then Watts and Ginsberg, but even more through reading the Upanishads, I believe I have glimpsed some significant peaks of Hindu thought. I am aware of the criticism by some of the tradition descending from Ramakrishna as Westernized. Perhaps it is, and perhaps that need not be a criticism.

I quote from Robert Ernest Hume’s The Thirteen Principal Upanishads (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1921).



     For me the heart of Hinduism is expressed in the Upanishads. I recognize that very likely most Indians would prefer the passionate devotion, magnificent poetry, and ethical authority of the Bhagavad Gita, but for those seeking philosophy the Upanishads must be preeminent. I am innocent of Sanskrit and no expert on even European philosophy, but to me the essential insights of the forest sages are sublime.
     The definition of Hinduism can be elusive. Its own self-images tend to suggest a very accommodating tent. Buddha is commonly considered an incarnation of Vishnu . Much to their chagrin, Sikhs are treated as a subgroup of Hindus by the Indian constitution. Even tribal groups whose traditions have nothing in common with Hinduism are labeled “scheduled castes” and enrolled in the Hindu world order, albeit at the very bottom.
     Hinduism’s extraordinary breadth of inclusiveness is suggested by a survey of its accepted theological schools. Among the six orthodox traditions that generally accept the authority of the Vedas are reckoned [1] the Mimāṃsās who continue to focus on the ancient Vedic rituals dedicated to a range of deities and the generally monist Vedantists. There are also the dualist Samkhyas with little interest in gods, and the Nyayas whose central focus was the refinement of logic and who were originally atheist, though some of their later authors were theists. The Vaiśeṣikas engaged in atomist and scientific speculation with little reference to the supernatural. Finally, there are practitioners of the various forms of yoga. Thus among these lineages alone only the first could be considered really fundamentalist. Some may use religious rhetoric because that vocabulary was the only one available for intellectual speculation. One may be a Hindu while believing in no god, one god, many gods, or some more nuanced formulation between these options; one may accept or reject the divine revelation and hence the infallibility of certain ancient texts. One may practice puja daily in any of a bewildering variety of forms or use none at all.
     Hinduism, however, is willing to go further yet and to embrace even those who reject the ancient scriptures: the essentially godless Buddhists and Jains as well as the uncompromisingly atheist and materialist Cārvākas, the deterministic atheists associated with the Ājīvika school, and the utterly skeptical and hence agnostic Ajñana philosophers.
     The observer may also sort the countless “denominations” of Hinduism according the favored deity: most commonly Vishnu or Shiva, while the Bhakti practitioners generally honor some form of the goddess Devi such as Kali or Durga. Smartas avoid the choice by declaring that all the deities are in the end alike. Add to these factors the immense land area and varied historical experiences of different parts of India, and it will be no surprise that Hinduism is so resistant to definition.
     Surely one reason for the elasticity of the term Hindu is that the word was originally not an ideological but a geographical or ethnic term, indicating the people of the Indus area. Though it is possible for foreigners to convert to Hinduism, in the eyes of many Indians, a true Hindu must be an Indian. [2] Those from other countries are necessarily outcaste.
     It is no surprise that the Upanishads which provide the philosophic theory to accompany the ritual practice laid out in the earlier Vedas are the portion more accessible to Western readers. Though Indian philosophy is capable of exceeding subtlety and Sanskrit has an immense and erudite tradition of scholarship and hermeneutics, for me the heart of Hinduism is adequately suggested by what are perhaps the best known phrases from these two and a half millennia old texts.
     The author of the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad allows himself a lyric flight before declaring his apophatic intuition of the divine Brahma. “The form of this Person is like a saffron-colored robe, like white wool, like the [red] Indrapropa beetle, like a flame of fire, like the [white] lotus-flower, like a sudden flash of lightning . . . Hence, now, there is the teaching ‘Not thus! Not so!’ (neti, neti), for there is nothing higher than this, that he is thus.” [3] This is a cautionary corrective, warning against idolatrous error, reminding the listener in the oral tradition or the reader of the written word that perhaps the most adequate definition if deity is “that which one does not know.” The same insight is recorded in traditions around the world and through the centuries, particularly by mystical poets, but it is dramatic here paired as it is in Hindu tradition with the Vedic texts with their plethora of supernatural beings, their advocacy of the psychedelic soma, and their obsession with ritual. [4]
     Simply reading, or even being convinced by the principle of neti, neti is insufficient. For liberation the truth of the formula must be experienced. The system of guru/disciple relationships serves this necessarily experiential enlightenment. The use of entheogens, practice of sacrifice, and visualizations of a world of symbolic deities may, however, be considered as aids to the critical alteration of consciousness that alone can free the individual from suffering.
     There is a dialectic counterpart to this via negativa, though it, too, may be elusive, though omnipresent. Most people seek Ultimate Reality in cultivating a relationship with specific deities, but in the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad when questioned about the number of the gods, Yajnavalkya provides first a scriptural response “As many as are mentioned in the Nivid of the Hymn to All the Gods, namely, three hundred and three, and three thousand and three.” Upon repeated questioning, he eventually declares there to be a single god, Brahma. [5]
     The monad, variably named Atman, Brahma, or Ishvara, may be too immense to wrap the mind around. Beginning, as Descartes did (following Aristotle and others) with the self-evident certainty of their own consciousnesses, the ancient forest sages made the bold leap from subjectivity to a plenum. [6] To them one’s own perceived reality, partial and even distorted as it might be, is identified with Reality in the formula “tat tvam asi” (often translated “that art thou”). Recognized as one of the Mahavakyas or great sayings of the Upanishad in the Advaita tradition [7], this simple intuitive assertion, rests on neither ratiocination nor revelation. Further, the experience of the whole is identified with pleasure. [8] These claims arise not from authority but through experience, the practice, already ancient, of meditation and ascetic practices that produced a myriad ecstatic philosophers.
     In the Katha Upanishad which specifically addresses mortality in Naciketas’ questioning of Yama “tat tvam asi” occurs thirteen times, each a hammer blow to ignorance and fear. [9] When the ego dissolves, where is unease to be found?
     These visionary insights are repeated in many different ways in the Upanishads and are then affirmed by later authors -- Adi Shankara, Dattatreya, and others. For the apprentice sannyasi it may have been at the thousandth iteration that the realization arrived.
     Hinduism will remain multifarious with as many faces as a Khajuraho temple. One can only wish the best to people placing hibiscus petals before Kali or Mallomars for Ganesh. Those performing works of dana (caritas) are surely meritworthy as well. All humanity can sympathize with those who swoon with devotional love (bhakti). For those of an intellectual or mystical sensibility, though, the paradoxical insights of the Upanishads can provide a route to liberation from suffering and a whiff of the exhilaration of the sublime. Realizing in one’s back-brain that the divine cannot be described and yet that it is everything allows the very certainty of one’s own existence that might inspire anxiety or despair to be transformed into a consciousness of the holy.
     These concepts are simple and clear, yet it remains true that the path to their full realization is “a sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse,/ A difficult path is this – poets declare!”



1. These are called astika (“there is,” “there exists”) in distinction to the five nastika (“there is not”) schools.

2. I am reminded of how well-meaning people have long insisted “Judaism is a religion, not a race” yet many atheists identify themselves as Jews, and, of course, to the orthodox, the child of a Jewish mother is Jewish willy-nilly.

3. See Brihad-Arayaka Upanishad 2.3.6. The phrase is repeated at 3.9.26, 4.2.2, and 4.5.15.

4. In the Kena Upanishad even the great Vedic gods such as Agni, Vayu, and Indra are said to be ignorant of Brahma (14 ff.).

5. 3.9.1-3.9.9.

6. After his convincing demonstration of skepticism, Descartes made a far feebler attempt to rebuild the intellectual universe familiar to him including Catholic orthodoxy, though he was insufficiently orthodox still for the Roman Church which banned his books in 1663.

7. The other three Mahavakyas are similar in meaning. They are prajñānam brahma ("Prajñāna is Brahman" from the Aitareya Upanishad 3.3, ayam ātmā brahma ("This Self is Brahman" from the Mandukya Upanishad 1.2, and aham brahmāsmi ("I am Brahman", Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10.

8. Chandogya Upanishad 7.23-4.

9. From 4.3 through 5.8. The author is not averse to figurative half-truths as well, though, describing the soul as a chariot with the intellect as driver (3.3 ff.) and the executive in the mind as a homunculus “the measure of a thumb” (4.13).

10. Katha Upanishad, 3.14.

This and That 2

If these brief pieces were called flash essays would they seem more au courant?


     For many years I have wondered how it can be that the rotation of the moon is so precisely coincidental with its revolutions that we on earth see only a single side. It seemed to me implausible that the correspondence could be so precise that there would be no change even over thousands of years. Only recently did I read the simple explanation. It seems the earth’s gravitational pull is exerted on the surface of the moon. While the moon’s lesser pull is manifested on earth in the tides, the more powerful earthly pull on the moon caused one lunar side to bulge out such that that side was permanently locked into the earth’s attraction.
     I retain, though a scientific curiosity about a biological point. While I can understand the function of our human bodily hair, I do not see how the hair on the head can have evolved to grow indefinitely. Surely hair on the top of the head will become inconvenient to any individual after a short time. It is worse than a peacock’s tail. Hunter gatherers without control of fire must still cut their hair. But there is no animal (though some come close) who, without artificial breeding, has developed such troublesome hair. How can this have happened?



     One might think that the idea of a philosophia perennis is a modern convenience, picking from belief patterns which were a portion of the web of culture in a given time and place only those tenets that appeal to our own age. Out of original context and juxtaposed instead to practices from far different environments, can the ideas they imply retain meaning? Does not such a selection inevitably speak more of the modern synthesizer than the ancient devotee?
     On the other hand gathering the elements of faith and belief that are most widespread must infallibly indicate those which are most essential for our species. Elements that are less meaningful, more accidental fall away, revealing more clearly what is significant. I, at any rate, accept the idea of a psycho-spiritual unity of our species transcending the admittedly powerful and myriad differences that separate us and impede understanding.



     In these belated days, when modern higher education has virtually vanished having given way to vocational school, and money has displaced knowledge as the goal of a university education, the etymology of the word school is worth remembering. It is derived from the Greek scholē, meaning leisure, or the activities of leisure such as learned research or disputation. Thus the disinterested and playful use of our most highly developed capabilities is removed from banal job training.
     Similarly, the liberal arts are those studies that cultivate intellectual growth without regard for making a living. Their study is characteristic of free people which is to say those who are unemployed. Liberal arts are opposed to the servile or mechanical arts which may be quite necessary to one’s comfort but boring when examined for their own sake. Though the term “liberal arts” was not used until late in the Middle Ages, it indicated the verbal and philosophic skills which according to the ancient Greeks were essential not only for citizenship but, more importantly, for the fulfilment of human potential.
     In this age, when technology has advanced to the point that work merely to support ourselves need take very little of anyone’s day, we fin d that many are working far longer hours than their Stone Age ancestors. Of course, most people today must perforce make a living, but that fact need not lead to the abandonment of true education and pure research, directed at no application whatever, self-justifying, the highest end of humankind. How absurd to see mortuary science and turf management as college subjects, but they are little worse than business schools and degrees in communication. When universities made a place for the so-called learned professions of law, medicine, and divinity, they little knew that these guests in the home of higher education would, like invading barbarians, seize entire institutions and take over.



     I am amused as I watch words turn into their own opposites like minute Derridean yang-yin fireworks. A number of such so-called contronyms have long existed in the language: apology, bolt, cleave, dust, garnish, peer, sanguine, strike, and the like. I feel I see several others transforming before my eyes.
     Everyone has heard “literally” used to mean figuratively; “cordial” to mean coldly polite, and “nonplussed” to mean indifferent or unaffected. Such objections are time-limited. One need only open Henry Watson Fowler to find his distaste for the use of “meticulous” to mean what it does to everyone today.

 


     Many homosexuals today make a polemical point of their sexual orientation as a fundamental identity. It is important for them to assert gayness as an element of their nature. Yet it is clear from ancient Greek and Roman history and a good many Islamic courts, medieval and more recent, that a considerable number, though not all, men will engage in same-sex activities if such liaisons are approved or tolerated by society. Surely the fact must be that people – men and women – occupy a variety of places along a spectrum from very strongly heterosexual to equally strongly homosexual in preference. Given taboos and sanctions, many more mildly attracted to same-sex relationships will fail to act on such impulses, while those with more intensely defined tastes will find them impossible to resist.
     Further complicating factors exist. In animals homosexual behavior is commonly observed, but may usually be regarded as a simple error, since individuals virtually never display a consistent proclivity for homosexual partners. Even this is not an absolute rule, though. Ten per cent of rams among domestic sheep refuse to mate with ewes while readily having sex with other males. Finally, it is little surprising is social and psychological factors are powerful in directing even such elemental behavior. Our genitals, of course, cannot tell what may be stimulating them. We know only in the mind.

 


     I have read many explanations of medieval courtly love conventions. To some they imply social norms that accept adultery, while to others the poetry was always part of a sophisticated game involving strictly circumscribed ritual flirtation. To some they are a sign of the influence of Arabic poetry such as Ibn Hazm’s The Ring of the Dove, to others a reflection of Catharism or Mariolatry. To some courtly love is merely an apparition which does not in fact exist. Why has nobody suggested the simplest and most likely element in what is surely a phenomenon with multiple causes: the attitude of vassalage before the feminine is nothing but an accurate representation of the male’s total subjection to sexual allure? Who among men has not felt very like the wolf in the 1940s cartoon whose jaw drops to the floor as his eyes bug out at the sight of a lovely female figure? The poems seem to me to exaggerate not one bit.



     In this area the word town is used to mean a subdivision of a county, the political unit elsewhere called a township. In some instances such as where I live in Goshen the town has the same name as one of its municipalities. Thus, as one departs Goshen, a sign declares “entering town of Goshen” when in fact the driver is leaving the village of Goshen, what in common usage is called a “town,” and entering the countryside. This usage applies throughout New England.
     In much of the United States townships (as they are more generally called) are a sort of phantom political division without independent governance. As a child I relished knowing that I loved in Milton Township largely because one never heard the name.
     Townships under that name are thickly populated and, in popular usage, non-white in South Africa (and colonial Rhodesia), or simply thinly populated as in Scotland, Australia, and Canada,

"Rot" by Johannes Becher

This poem first appeared in Kurt Pinthus’ influential 1920 anthology titled Menschheits Dämmerung (The Twilight of Humanity) with a subtitle “Symphonie jüngster Dichtung” (a “symphony of the youngest poets”). The collection opens with Jakob Van Hoddis’ “Weltende” (“The End of the World”) and includes work by Georg Heym, Georg Trakl, Iwan Goll, Franz Werfel, Gottfried Benn, and others.

The career of Johannes R. Becher traces many of the most significant artistic and political developments of the first half of the twentieth century. At the age of nineteen he participated in a last gasp of German Romanticism by entering a suicide pact (he did admire Kleist) with his lover whom he killed with a bullet though he only wounded himself. His first book Die Gnade eines Frühlings (“The Grace of Springtime”; 1912) contains thoroughly Romantic poems. While coping with morphine addiction he associated with Futurist and Expressionist groupings in the art world and with revolutionary organizations such as the Spartacist League and then the Communist Party in politics. His pacifist novel, (CHCI=CH)3As (Levisite) oder Der einzig gerechte Krieg was banned in 1925 and he was indicted for "literarischer Hochverrat" or "literary high treason.” And that was under Weimar. When the Nazi regime took over, he escaped arrest by going into hiding, then making his way to the Soviet Union where he likely found he had little choice and eventually declared his adherence to the socialist realism of Zhdanov. Implicated in the purges of suspected Trotskyites, he informed on others, then suffered depression and attempted suicide again. After the war he returned to the eastern zone of Germany to accolades as the great poet of the new era. He was made Minister of Culture in 1954. His business had become the suppression of young dissidents such as he himself had once been. He wrote the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic. In his memoirs, unpublished until thirty years after his death, he renounced not just his service to the East German Stalinist government but to socialism itself as the great mistake of his life.

In “Verfall” (“Rot”) Becher expresses a real punk sensibility, insisting that the most appropriate images for the age are ugly, even disgusting. For all Becher’s leftist activism, his taste resembles that of the fascist anti-Semite Céline.


Our bodies already rotten,
let us dig while singing
these intoxicated evenings,
awash in night storms and the sea,
our hot blood dried up,
an abscess of pus trickles away
mouth ear eye in disguise
sleep dream earth the wind.

Yellowish carrier worms
on a narrow-wounded passage,
throbbing rolling storms,
our eyelashes, blood red and long.
“Am I a crumbling wall,
a silent pillar by the roadside?
or a tree in mourning
that leans over the abyss?”
Ah, the sweet smell of decadence
filling the room, the house, the head!
In the flowers, the waving grasses,
in the birds, in their songs!

”Yes, the trunk is rotten.”
Mold. Groans. Moans.
Flight under a teeming sky!
A frightful clamor ensues.
Kettle-drums! Tuba grunts.
Thunder and wild flames of light!
Cymbals. A sound of percussion.
A drum-roll. It’s breaking up!

I gave myself to you,
wide world, ah! too easily trusting,
see how the poor flesh fails
yet my mind looks still homeward.
Oh, night, your sleep’s a solace
The mouth rests deep and poor.
Bright day, you dissolve me
in total and harmless unease.

There’s no way out,
Oh, I’m torn in two!
Blinkered, soon, soon blind and bandaged.
No kiss can heal me!
That I find no way out,
I'm the only one to blame:
A wild current, wind of blood and fire.
Shame, impatience.

The day brings sharp bitterness!
May night bring dreams and wisdom!
Shit, contortion, cut and tear!
A cool resting place –
everything must be far off –
far, oh so far from me –
blooming aloft in the shine of the stars –
my home, there! above!

One day I will stand by the road,
pensive, gazing at a metropolis.
Light falls through the dull clouds’ course.
Enchanted forms, wrapped in white,
My hands make the move
toward heaven, filled with gold,
instantly opening doors of wonder!

The fields and the forests rise,
Waters roll on. Bridges.
A roof. Endless streams are running.
Grey mountain ridge.
Red and dreadful thunder rises.
A dragon. Earth spews.
Torn throat. The sun roars.
Disgust. Laughing. Cries.


Fade to black. The taste of dirt and blood.
A ball. A huge bloodbath . . .
. . . “oh, timeless day, when will you dawn?
Is there still time?
When will you blow, oh sounding horn,
are you screaming the tide’s time?
Out of the underbrush, the moorlands, tomb and thorns,
Calling the sleepers here”

The Cutty Wren

     Certainly in general literary analysis must rest primarily upon the words of the text under discussion, but all readers welcome footnotes at times, and, for some poems, the greater part of understanding must arise from sources outside the text. A poem may in some cases rely upon its original audience’s familiarity with data that, for later readers, can only be supplied by historians or anthropologists. This is especially true of work with mythological elements. Mythic stories also exist in multiple texts. Myth might be considered as the narrative of a culture, rather than the invention of an individual. Poems retell or refer to the myth, but the myth itself is not limited to any single telling.
     The interpreter of the old British folk song “The Cutty Wren” [1] must first recognize that the title refers to dozens of different variants and related verses, no one of which is definitive. The casual hearer of most of these versions would be likely to draw the conclusion from its repetitions and silly names that it is a nonsense poem, appealing mainly to children, while in fact the poem is associated with some of the most profound and archaic beliefs of humankind.
     The historically sociological focus of many folklore enthusiasts has fueled speculative historical readings which lack supporting evidence. The most popular single recording of “The Cutty Wren” in recent times by the British anarchist punk band Chumbawumba in 2003 included liner notes dating the song to the fourteenth century and associating it with the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381, implying that the bird to be eaten for the benefit of all was the ruling class. [2] Other historical explanations for the hostility to the wren include the bird’s betrayal by singing of either British defenders against the Vikings in the eighth century or seventeenth century soldiers, variously thought to be Irish, Manx, or British. [3]
     Rather than kings or soldiers, though, most commentary on “The Cutty Wren” has centered on use of the song in many variants in a wintertime ritual surviving into modern times, the hunting of the wren. In Ireland, England, and parts of Spain, Canada, and France around the time of Christmas, commonly the day after, young men hunt and kill a wren, fasten its body to the end of a pole and parade through town, stopping in front of homes to ask for handouts. This is precisely the pattern central to Frazer’s The Golden Bough and, in fact, Frazer includes a detailed description of such wren hunts. [4] The song seems to have originated in association with wren-hunting, and investigations of that activity by folklorists and anthropologists provide further important clues to its significance (as well as a number of red herrings).
     Frazer describes the ritual as a “form of communion in which the sacred animal is taken from house to house, all that may enjoy a share of its divine influence,” thus ensuring life and the potential for prosperity in the year to come. [5] The wren-sacrifice illustrates his general thesis, that religion arose largely from fertility cults that sought to regenerate the earth and assure human well-being through the worship and periodic sacrifice of a divine king who might be a person or an animal. For time to move forward properly, that “king” must, like the crops of the field and the generations of livestock and game, die, though, in a miracle constantly recurring, the divine energy returns again to life. Frazer’s discussion of the wren follows his description of similar customs among the “Snake tribe” of the “Punjaub” where villagers take round a snake made of dough, promising prosperity to all who “obey the snake” and give them gifts. After dealing with wren-hunting, Frazer goes on to treatment of the Hogmanay custom in Scotland in which a man wrapped in a cow-hide goes house to house to perform circumambulations about each the aim of which is to assure the community have “plenty of meat” in the coming year. Frazer’s data make it quite clear than such practices are found around the world focusing on a wide variety of animal, human, and symbolic figures.
     Though little is known about the pre-Christian beliefs of oral European cultures the significance of the wren is widespread enough to imply Indo-European roots. Aesop told how the trickster bird defeated the eagle become king, and the bird’s status is signaled by its name in many European languages, such as roitelet in French, winterkoninkje in Dutch, and Zaunkönig in German. In Celtic languages the bird is identified with the pre-Christian scholar/rulers: dryw means both wren and druid in Welsh, and close parallels exist in Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx. [6] While once a year the bird is hunted and killed in ceremonial fashion, the remainder of the year its kingship among the animals, its divinity in fact, is indicated by widespread protective taboos.
     Why do people perform such rituals? Of course, one motive is the vulgar instrumental magic that considers such activities essential for the progression of time and the seasons, and, in particular, for the renewal of fertility which must occur with every generation to ensure the survival of all living things. The wren-boys hope to bring prosperity to all. The utter ineffectiveness of such attempts to seize control of fate is a poignant expression of human desire, gesturing toward wants that never can be satisfied.
     There is, after all, a more profound symbolic meaning of all the dying and reborn gods, whose drama appears in countless myths, including the Christian one. [7] The killing of the wren is also of a piece with the portrayal of tragic heroes in ancient Greek drama, the enactment of gladiatorial contests in Roman times, and countless other dramatic presentations, including the much-deplored violence of today’s films and video games.
     All these cultural artifacts serve fundamentally the same role as an ancient Near Eastern sculpture representing a lion taking down its prey. The viewer may pause and contemplate the artist’s representation of the animal’s power over his victim’s life and death. [8] Surely such a theme, whatever else it may be, is a momento mori, reminding the viewer not merely of the inevitability of death, but its dialectical relationship to life. One cannot exist without the other, and their duality is, in the end, deceptive. Death is the conclusion of every life and life lives on life: one can live only by destroying other life, by consuming living things, be they plants or animals. What the hunting of the wren enacts is the inescapable fact that death is the necessary complement of life, the precondition, one might say, of sex and nourishment.
     People have often worried about mortality. Among the symbolic techniques for coping with this anxiety is indeed the wish fulfilment of such fantasies as the magical assurance of health and safety or the promise of life after death. Yet the hunting of the wren, like the skull depicted on St. Jerome’s desk, is also a symbolic rehearsal for the moment of death everyone knows will come. Thus people reassure themselves with a comfortable lie while simultaneously preparing through visualization for the inevitable. In the same way the viewer of tragedy feels both pity for the unfortunate suffering on stage and with the satisfaction that, for the moment, the sacrificial victim is someone else and fear, since every member of the audience knows that each will inevitably confront the abyss.
     If this important mental programming may be accomplished together with the good fellowship of a party of one’s own kind, and accompanied with fun and food, the result may be not only catharsis but also a kind of exhilaration. Singing nonsense is entertaining, but it also reflects an engagement with a world that must often seem absurd, meaningless, and indifferent to the plaintive cries of human desire. The entire practice of the wren hunt – the date near the winter solstice, the songs accompanying it, the responses of the villagers – constitute a supra-individual work of art as profound and beautiful as a work of an individual genius.




1. I append first the version first published in David Herd's Scots Songs. Walter Scott used some of the material Herd had collected in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Following this are a number of other texts representing a small selection of the many “versions of “The Cutty Wren.” In the United States and Australia, variations called “Billy Barlow” proliferated. These and more are available online. What I have included is chosen nearly at random; their sources, indeed, any of their particular characteristics are insignificant for my purposes here.

2. This unsupported notion, of a song first recorded in the eighteenth century, may arise from a comment by the influential A. L. Lloyd in the 1940s. See A. L. Lloyd, The Singing Englishman, p. 7. Lloyd, a central figure in the British folk revival, while an important singer and collector (and a Communist), was no scholar. In fact, rather than suggesting the song was composed with a political import, he says “Pretty certainly this was originally a magical song, a totem song, which about this time took a strong revolutionary meaning.”  The slogan “eat the rich,” popular during anti-gentrification agitation in the Lower East Side during the 1980s, became the title of a British film and an Aerosmith tune, and more recently reached an epigone as the name of posh restaurants in Washington, D. C. and Munich.

3., “The Irish Wren Tales and Ritual. To Pay or Not to Pay the Debt of Nature,” Sylvie Muller, Béaloideas (journal of An Cumann Le Béaloideas Éireann/The Folklore of Ireland Society), 131-169 1996/1997.

4. Frazer, The Golden Bough (two volume edition), 620.  A vestige of the practice survived until late Victorian times in the form of Christmas and New Year cards featuring dead birds, a motif that people found unaccuntbe only a generation or two later.

5. For two reasons I continue to value Frazer and use him as a reference though I am, of course, aware of the strictures on his conclusions by Edmond Leach and others. First, I think that customs such as the carrying about of the wren and similar practices are the very closest to Frazer’s paradigm. Though he may have overgeneralized as Tylor did about sun myths, that does not prove him wrong in every instance. Second, I read and use Frazer as a literary critic, not as an anthropologist. The standards of aesthetic hermeneutics are not the same as those of science.

6. The proto-Celtic *druwits (literally “oak-knower”), from Proto-Indo-European *dóru (“tree”) and *weyd- (“to see”). The wren is, of course, at home in the oak.  Considering an archaic bird deity, one thinks inevitably of the many bird-headed goddesses that fill the works of Marija Gimbutas.

7. Christian objections to Frazer’s treatment of Christ’s story as a myth led him first to move its treatment to an appendix and, in the abridged edition which I used, to excise it altogether.

8. Many variations are possible. There are also many sculptures of lion hunts in which the majestic animal is bent, pierced with spears and arrow, as if to imply the king’s hegemony even over even such a fearsome beast. Yet other images include conflations of king and lion in divine part-human, part-animal beings. All are meant to offer the hapless humans some sense of power over their environment while also reinforcing the social order.



1776 version from David Herd's Scots Songs


Will ze go to the wood? quo' FOZIE MOZIE;
Will ze go to the wood? quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE;
Will ze go to the wood? quo' FOSLIN' ene;
Will ze go to the wood? quo' brither and kin.
What to do there? quo' FOZIE MOZIE;
What to do there? quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE;
What to do there? quo' FOSLIN' ene;
What to do there? quo' brither and kin.
To slay the WREN, quo' FOZIE MOZIE:
To slay the WREN, quo' JOHNIE REDNOSIE:
To slay the WREN, quo' FOSLIN' ene:
To slay the WREN, quo' brither and kin.
What way will ze get her hame? quo' FOZIE MOSIE;
What way will ze get her hame? quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE;
What way will ze get her hame? quo' FOSLIN' ene;
What way will ze get her hame? quo' brither and kin.
We'll hyre carts and horse, quo' FOZIE MOZIE:
We'll hyre carts and horse, quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE:
We'll hyre carts and horse, quo' FOSLIN' ene:
We'll hyre carts and horse, quo' brither and kin.
What way will we get her in? quo' FOZIE MOZIE;
What way will we get her in? quo' FOZIE MOZIE;
What way will we get her in? quo' FOOSLIN' ene;
What way will we get her in? quo' brither and kin.
We'll drive down the door-cheeks, quo' FOZIE MOZIE:
We'll drive down the door-cheeks, quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE:
We'll drive down the door-cheeks, quo' FOSLIN' ene:
We'll drive down the door-cheeks, quo' brither and kin.
I'll hae a wing, quo' FOZIE MOZIE:
I'll hae another, quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE:
I'll hae a leg, quo' FOSLIN' ene:
An I'll hae anither, quo' brither and kin.



Chumbawunba version:


Oh where are you going? said Milder to Moulder
Oh we may not tell you! said Festel to Fose
We're off to the wood! said John the Red Nose
We're off to the wood! said John the Red Nose
And what will you do there? said Milder to Moulder
Oh we may not tell you! said Festel to Fose
We'll shoot the cutty wren! said John the Red Nose
We'll shoot the cutty wren! said John the Red Nose
Oh how will you cut him up? said Milder to Moulder
Oh we may not tell you! said Festel to Fose
With knives and with forks! said John the Red Nose
With knives and with forks! said John the Red Nose
And who´ll get the spare ribs? said Milder to Moulder
Oh we may not tell you! said Festel to Fose
We'll give them all to the poor! said John the Red Nose
We'll give them all to the poor! said John the Red Nose



Les Barker’s version, described as “made popular by the late Percy 'Stupid' Sedgwick, last of the very thin Baroldswick wren hunters”


Where are you going said Millda to Molda,
Where are you going oh where do you go?
I'm off to the forest said Molda to Millda,
I'm off to the forest all in the deep south. (emended to snow)

Why are you going says Millda to Molda,
Why are you going with all of these men?
You nosy old bleeder said Molda to Millda,
You nosy old bleeder we're hunting the wren.

Two dozen hunters says Millda to Molda,
Yet you never catch one won't you tell me how?
Its a bloody small target said Molda to Millda,
Its a bloody small target you stupid old cow.

Then why do you do it says Millda to Molda,
Why do you do it says the wining old voice.
I know it sound silly said Molda to Millda,
Its an old a pagan custom and we got no choice.

Would you walk in the forest says Millda to Molda,
Would you walk in the forest like an old pagan man?
We'll go in my motor said Molda to Millda,
I've got a Toyota its a four wheel drive van.

Where have you been says Millda to Molda,
Where have you been won't you tell me?
Hunting the wren said Molda to Millda,
Hunting the wren has your memory gone?

Pray have you got one says Millda to Molda,
Pray have you got one please tell I'm all ears.
Yes we're enraptured said Molda to Millda,
Its the first one we've captured for two thousand years,

Where did you catch it says Millda to Molda,
Where did you catch it pray tell to me.
We got it at Safeway said Molda to Millda,
We got it at Safeway for 55 p.

Its not very big though says Millda to Molda,
We won't need much stuffing I don't see the sense.
Of course its not big though said Molda to Millda,
Its one of the salient features of wrens.

You should have got a chicken says Millda to Molda,
A chicken or a turkey or maybe a joint.
We should have got a chicken said Molda to Millda,
You silly old woman you're missing the point.

So why hunt the wren then says Millda to Molda,
Why hunt the wren then if its such a small thing?
Its and old pagan custom said Molda to Millda,
And hunting the sausage don't have the same ring .

Where are you going says Millda to Molda,
Where are you going says Millda again.
Off to the Arndale said Molda to Millda,
To open a shop called Kentucky fried wren.



From Sam Henry, Songs of the People, collected in Armagh, 1937


"Where are you goin'?" says Arty Art,
"Where are you goin'?" says Dandrum Dart
"Where are you goin'?" says Brothers-In-Three
"I'm goin' to the fair." says Crickety Wee.

"What will you do there?"
I'll buy a wee pony."

"But what will you do with it?"
"It's for my wife to ride on."

"When will ye get married?"
"The day before the morrow."

"Will there be any drink?"
"A glass and a half."

"It'll not be all drunk."
"I could drink it myself."

"What'll you have to eat?"
"A loaf and a half."

"It'll not get all ate."
"I'll put it under my hat."

"The mice will get at it."
"I'll keep a good cat."

Will ye have any children?"
"Two, and two cripples."

"I doubt they'll not work."
"They'll work for death."



from Gammer Gurton's Garland, and English book of rhymes (published at Stockport, approximately 1760)

We'll go a shooting, says Robin to Bobbin
We'll go a shooting, says Richard to Robin
We'll go a shooting, says John all alone
We'll go a shooting, says everyone
What shall we kill, says Robin to Bobbin
What shall we kill, says Richard to Robin
What shall we kill, says John all alone
What shall we kill, says everyone
We'll shoot at the wren, says Robin to Bobbin
We'll shoot at the wren, says Richard to Robin
We'll shoot at the wren, says John all alone
We'll shoot at the wren, says everyone
She's down, she's down, says Robin to Bobbin
She's down, she's down, says Richard to Robin
She's down, she's down, says John all alone
She's down, she's down, says everyone
How shall we get her home, says Robin to Bobbin
How shall we get her home, says Richard to Robin
How shall we get her home, says John all alone
How shall we get her home, says everyone
We'll hire a cart, says Robin to Bobbin
We'll hire a cart, says Richard to Robin
We'll hire a cart, says John all alone
We'll hire a cart, says everyone
The hoist boys hoist, says Robin to Bobbin
The hoist boys hoist, says Richard to Robin
The hoist boys hoist, says John all alone
The hoist boys hoist, says everyone
So the brought her away after each pluck'd a feather
And when they got home, shar'd the booty together

Shakuntala

     When I was hired as an adjunct to teach a course called World Drama at a large and respectable university, I found that the anthology that had been in use, though indeed titled World Drama, contained nothing but European plays. I added a paperback of Chinese works from the Yuan Dynasty, and cautioned the students that I was not pretending to cover the territory promised by the course title, but only aimed to remind them of what was omitted.
     Such compromises are unavoidable. The reader who wishes truly to know literature, unrestricted by a single national tradition, must accept the impossibility of wholly realizing such an ambition. Though some scholars have achieved dazzling breadth in linguistic study, one can learn only a limited number of languages, especially considering the depth of knowledge required to handle aesthetic texts. Exploring the literary expanse, the curious will repeatedly encounter vistas startling and grand that reveal vast and previously unknown regions. [1]
     Without knowledge of Sanskrit or expertise in Indian literature in any language, I make bold to present a few comments on the comparison of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala, generally considered one of the finest plays of ancient Sanskrit drama. I beg the same indulgence from the well-disposed reader offered by a professor who finds that the necessarily fresh readings of inexperienced students, while generally repeating the dullest old errors, occasionally offer a window to an illuminating insight.
     A striking contrast with European drama is the insistence of Indian playwrights on a happy ending. This contrast is particularly problematic for Westerners since a naïve prejudice favors tragedy as more serious. [2] This may be due to the fact that the drama in India remained under religious auspices while it was secularized in the European Renaissance. Optimistic conclusions may be an implied consequence of the deities’ mastery of human affairs, though such considerations did not ameliorate the Greeks sense of tragic horror or Christian claims of tragedy in the fall of Satan or the passion of Christ. One expects similarly positive outcomes from popular and mass culture, reassuring the audience that all is fundamentally right in their assumptions about the world, but Kalidasa’s theater was courtly.
     Though action does occur in the story, the primary focus of the play is clearly lyrical. Poems succeed poems, some of them almost set pieces that could stand alone. The work’s courtly character is clear from the fact that Kalidasa displays erudition in his familiarity not only with the great Indian epics – the plot is drawn from a passage in the Mahabharata – but also by his adherence to the conventions set forth in such theoretical authorities as the third century Natya Shastra attributed to Bharata Muni..
     The courtly performance setting, the artificiality of the form and the concentration on highly conventional forms of aesthetic refinement suggest affinities to the masque, though there are critical differences. The allegorical figures typical of the masque offer even less plot and character, substituting an extravagant fondness for spectacle. The slow pageantry of the masque inspires first of all the appreciation of beauty and secondly seeks to enact general truths, while in both theory and practice ancient Sanskrit drama is centered around emotional affect, called rasa. Though the word in older texts may be defined as “juice,” “essence,” or “taste,” by the time of the Natya Shastra, it means the “flavor” of a scene, conceived as eight or nine possibilities: love, hilarity, pathos (or disgust), anger, compassion, bravery, horror, and astonishment. [3] Later writers added the serenity of enlightenment.
     In the context of the Hindu (and Buddhist) philosophic system the intentional excitation of passion may seem incongruous. Yet according to the Natya Shastra drama arose as a fifth Veda with the same goals as the first four: to teach truth (I.14-16) for people in some measure seduced by their senses. (I.12, 108-9) Though in a sense the gods have nothing to do with drama (I.22), which occurs not in the divine realm but in “the three worlds” (I.106), its sacred character is affirmed by the fact that the first play was presented at a festival for Indra (I. 55) and that puja must be offered before performances. (I.125)
     Though plays are a mimicry of human actions (I. 111 ff.), plausibility is inconsequential. The author’s goal is to evoke from the audience a series of related “flavors,” [4] or emotions. Initially, the Western reader may wonder why, in a meditative system aimed at freeing individuals from passion and attachment, the intentional generation of such feelings would be desirable. Fiction in general and plays in particular may be considered a form of upaya or “skillful means” by which the consciousness tricks itself into greater enlightenment. [5]
     The dramatist seeks to involve the viewer in an encyclopedic range of the varieties of a given human passion, for Shakuntala the erotic, not simply to experience the emotions for their own sake, but as the basis for meditation. If one feels every variety of love in a wholly artificial situation, only to be returned in the end from the setting of the drama to the real world of the playhouse, the result should be a certain detachment from the erotic.
     In a comparable conflict between the claims of art and religion, St. Augustine laments his youthful attachment to reading fiction and watching tragedies, thus immersing himself in “false” suffering while ignoring his own sin and indeed the entire suffering world. To him such taste came to seem perverse. [6] For Augustine verbal beauty is justified only when it has the object of furthering salvation. In a similar way, the Indian sages admitted drama as a route to enlightenment.
     Even the specific mechanism in which plays serve wisdom differs little from India to Europe. Of course, in the first instance, the play should have some instructive theme. Beyond that however, plays are said to perform a sort of alchemical metamorphosis of human emotion, transmuting potentially destructive feelings into something redemptive.
     In Aristotelean tragedy, the viewer will experience the emotions of pity and fear, leading to a salutary catharsis. Critics have differed over whether this describes a purgation in the sense of clearing away the troublesome passions altogether, a sort of flushing out of feelings better done without, or some sort of heightening that replaces the limiting emotions of everyday life with a profounder, nobler, and wiser version that allows the play-goer to sustain life in a more enlightened manner after leaving the world of the stage.
     The same dilemma is present in ancient Sanskrit drama. If such entertainments are to serve as a “fifth Veda,” is the mechanism through the elimination of passion or its objectification? Is such emotional expense present in all humans? In what way does consciousness of one’s own emotional susceptibility lead toward enlightenment? The rasas have a long critical history of analysis by learned pandits, so I do not doubt that such questions have been investigated, but I am here concerned only with the most immediate comparisons.
     In any event it is clear that both Western and South Asian dramatic systems rely on emotions, the determining factor in human decision-making, often occluded by the desire to consider ourselves rational, as the dynamo for generating changes in consciousness. Both employ recognizable (if unlikely) “imitations” of human action, but operate in a world of assumed universals rather than the incidental particularities of an individual’s fate. Both make use of legendary material couched in rhetorically elaborate language to indicate the gap between their truth and that of mere everyday life.
     Kalidasa’s Shakuntala opens with a prologue with what seems like modern self-referentiality. After a pious Shaivite benediction the stage manager interrupts with a blustery “Enough of that!” to introduce a singer. Her song transports him with its beauty to the extent that he forgets the night’s production. In an analogous way the author hopes his audience will be transported by the imagined emotions of the play. The last lines of the prologue provide a transition to the action of the play with the reference to the deer leading the king to his destiny unawares. Thus, the song, the play as a whole, and, within the play, the deer all provide the “cunning means,” or upaya that abstracts the season individual from the mundane and allows access to a more sublime realization of reality. The audience is drawn by the beauty of the play as King Dushyanta is by Shakuntala’s. Through the paradoxical operation of art, the fictional, the artful, and the imaginative allows the consciousness to focus not on the inconsequential details that absorb our daily attention, but on the longer view, of which the horizon is liberation, enlightenment, or, as Kālidāsa would say, moksha.


1. For instance, oral literature, which dominated human culture for most of the history of our species, is still largely neglected or ceded to anthropologists, whose concern is not with the beauty of the texts they collect.

2. Thus Hollywood movies for decades adapted literary classics, both novels and plays, by making their ambiguous or unhappy endings into happy ones. Popular culture tends to affirm received ideas.

3. This system is further rationalized in the Natya Shastra which, with an almost scientific impulse toward economy, maintains that the comic rasa arises from erotic, the pathetic from the furious, the marvelous from the heroic, and the terrible from the odious. (I.39)

4. The rasas are specifically likened to tastes in cooking in I.31.

5. The term (and kaushalya “cleverness”) is more commonly associated with Buddhism, it is used in Hinduism as well and is relevant here.

6. See his Confessions (III, 1-4). Augustine argues that a fondness for tragedy cultivated an absurd “love of suffering.” Elaborating this idea Augustine uses the language of bondage and masochism, recalling tragic stories that "scratched" his soul and became "inflamed spots, pus, and repulsive sores" according to God's justice ("you beat me with heavy punishments"). The bishop did not apparently see any similar sado-masochistic aspect to meditation on the passion of Christ or ascetic practices.
Augustine did find a place for art if it could aid a soul toward salvation. In On Christian Doctrine, Bk. IV, ch 12 to engage the faculty of eloquence on the side of truth to combat those who employ it to further error.

7. Satya Shastra, I.108-9.

Notes on Recent Reading 35 (Scott, Norris, Jacobs)

Ivanhoe (Scott)

     Scott like Trollope is a popular and conventional writer I consistently enjoy. The reader must accept that his narratives are romances rather than realistic novels. For this reason their predictability, their reinforcement of received ideas, and the bipolar simplicity of their heroes and villains are rather generic characteristics than faults. One might well quibble, as critics did in Scott’s own time, about the improbable revival of Athelstane or the errancy of the novel’s historical premise, but I for one would prefer to swallow it all. In Scott the formal tightness and exacting plot design make him seem almost a late Neo-classicist, while his regionalism and celebration of fine feelings would suggest a Romantic. Though once thought the equal of Byron, his poetry is little read today. The novels enjoyed a lively second life in Hollywood films, but even these are too corny to attract contemporary attention.
     The fact is that literature may equally attack, interrogate, and affirm readers’ ideas. I would argue that the development of a critical attitude toward conventions and conventional beliefs is a phenomenon of the last few hundred years, and that not only such modern works as this one or, say, a musical like Oklahoma (or Gold Diggers of 1933), but also virtually all oral, folk, and, popular art are highly conventional and similarly bear themes that reassure the consumer of the rightness of his pre-existing attitudes. Still, I cannot deny that Scott richly deserved Thackery ‘s satirical sequel Rebecca and Rowena and Mark Twain’s comment in Life on the Mississippi that Scott was “in great measure responsible for the war.” Later, in his “Disappearance of Literature” speech, Twain said Ivanhoe could be read only at the ages of eighteen or ninety but not between. I would dispute the latter number with him.


McTeague (Norris)

     Norris’ novel brings old San Francisco to life, describing the McTeague’s Polk Street neighborhood with precision. But while Norris the naturalist, a conscious disciple of Zola, thought he was tracing the deterministic course of an individual’s fate with cool objectivity, the reader is more likely to be impressed with the pregnant dream-like symbols, though one might easily object that Norris goes altogether as mad as his characters with gold the symbolic significance of which mounts far beyond verisimilitude: the giant tooth, Maria’s imaginary gold dining service, Trina’s cache of double eagles, the canary, the sudden rich vein in the earth he discovers before fleeing.
     We are without doubt in Frye’s low-mimetic mode. Was there ever such a lurid anti-Semitic character as Zerkow? For that matter, Norris insists upon McTeague’s stupidity to the point of constantly representing him as wondering what is going on. It is sometimes a bit hard to take. The final confrontation between Marcus and McTeague is anything but realistic; indeed, it is utterly unlikely, but nonetheless perfectly right. Their possibilities vanish one by one as the alkali sands of Death Valley get the better of them in an artificial but elegant ending with a theme and scene that recalls the denouement of B. Traven’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Though Norris also conceived of himself as an artist engagé, society is assigned little blame here. If Uncle Oelbermann is thoughtless, that is merely because the rich so often are. Poverty’s suffering is here portrayed, but with no suggestion of a practical alternative. The novel is, of course, the source of Von Stroheim’s great film Greed.


Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs)

     Once, in a university library with open stacks, I recall stumbling upon the reminiscences of one-time slaves collected by workers in the Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA. I was staggered simply by the reflection that, during the 1930s, many people were still alive who had experienced the full rigors of America’s peculiar institution. Such narratives provided powerful propaganda prior to the Civil War when slave autobiographies fueled support for the abolitionist movement – at least sixty-five were published before 1860. These texts, along with Native American autobiographies, provided the first relatively authentic voices from these oppressed American minorities. (Indeed, as in this work, the distortions and inaccuracies are themselves meaningful.)
     While far less rhetorically grand than Frederick Douglass’ Narrative, Harriet A. Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl possesses considerable power based on the story it records. Jacobs as a woman personally suffered the sexual exploitation inherent in the system. The mixed-race complexions of so many Americans socially considered black testify to how very commonplace such brutality had been. Before she was able to make her way northward, she hid out under her master’s nose for almost seven years, an ordeal that would have sounded barely credible were it not for similar stories from fascist Spain and Nazi Europe. Her experiences make it plain as well how unfree the non-slave-holding North was, especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.
     The Harvard Press edition is edited thoroughly and expertly by Jean Fagan Yellin.

Efflorescences of Female Poets

This sketchy essay aims at little beyond description. Perhaps other readers will be intrigued with these poets, or the phenomenon of their appearing when they did. Further, these authors provide data for testing whether women’s writing differs in general from men’s.


     Upon being told of a female Quaker preacher, Dr. Johnson reacted, "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." His attitude was, like most of Johnson’s opinions, as reactionary as it was witty, but his asperity was doubtless due in part to the fact that in his own time that the issue of female speakers, writers, and intellectuals became contested. By the eighteenth century not only did female preachers appear; women writers were proliferating. Women made up a good percentage of both the authors and consumers of fiction, and they were just making their way into the list of the period’s poets.
     Yet, surveying the globe through all the centuries of literacy, in the written records of our species the voices of half the species are all but absent. Were there no other evidence of human culture, the record of literature would itself be sufficient to trace the patriarchal bias of civilization since the Bronze Age. Apart from the sporadic appearance of extraordinary individuals, there have been as well as some fascinating efflorescences of groups of female poets, blossoming out of societies that seem otherwise as male chauvinist as their geographical and chronological neighbors.
     In the Western tradition, doubtless the most celebrated female poet is Sappho whose reputation, though not much of her poetry, has survived the centuries. A towering figure very close to the beginning of European literature, she was called “the poetess” just as Homer was “the poet” (or, in more modern times, “the bard” means Shakespeare“). She was celebrated with statues and coins and called by at least three ancient poets “the tenth muse.” One of her most celebrated poems describes the physical manifestations of passion.
     

The man's all but a god
who sits with you and pays such heed
to your sweet talk
and lovely laugh --

listening excites me --
my heart's at odds, unsettled.
And when I look at you my mouth
can't form a word.

My tongue stopped, I'm filled
with thin flames -- vision fades,
and my ears hear the beating
of my blood.

Cold sweat on my side, I'm taken
with trembling and blanch like straw.
Little short of death,
I must last it out,

without you . .

     Her once substantial collected works have dwindled over time to a few scattered fragments with one single whole poem, standing almost miraculous amid the ruins. Indeed, the greater part of ancient Greek lyrical poetry as a whole has been lost, but nonetheless, Sappho was hardly a unique figure in her own day. Other female poets from the time are known, though some by little more than name and a few hints of reputation.
     Kleobulina (6th century BCE) is associated in legend with philosophers. She enjoyed sufficient celebrity that two comedies, one by Kratinos and one by Alexis, featured choruses of “Kleobulinas.” All that survives of her work are portions of three riddles. She seems to have specialized in these gnomic formulations which lie at the foundation of metaphor and poetry as a whole. Whether hers were profound or trivial or simply mysterious must be judged by a few examples. The solution to “a dead ass boxed my ear with his horned shin-bone” is a Phrygian flute. More ambitious and universal , though perhaps little more profound is a version of the year riddle, familiar from many sources including the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata: “There is one father and twelve children; of these each Has twice thirty daughters of different appearance: Some are white to look at and the others black in turn; They are immortal and yet they all fade away.” [1]
     Even in D. L. Page’s prose translation the reader hears an eloquent and natural voice in Erinna’s sixth century “Distaff,” written in memory of her childhood friend Baucis.

These traces of you, dear maid, lie still glowing in my heart : all that we once enjoyed, is embers now. We clung to our dolls in our chambers when we were girls, playing Young Wives, without a care. And towards dawn your Mother, who allotted wool to her attendant workwomen, came and called you to help with the salted meat. Oh, what a trembling the Bogy brought us then, when we were little ones! - On its head were huge ears, and it walked on all fours, and changed from one face to another!

      Among the others female poets who flourished in archaic and early Classical Greek times were Korinna, who according to Aelian and Suidas defeated Pindar five times in competitions. Her choral lyrics were performed by troupes of girls in partheneia; Megalostrata from the 7th century BCE, whom Alkman called a "golden-haired maiden enjoying the gift of the Muses", and Myrtis of the 6th century, first of a line of female Boeotian poets.
     These writers flourished and were not only accepted but celebrated by coinage and statuary as well as by critics. Though their culture was highly patriarchal, goddess-worship provided some occasion for female poetic agency. Thus Sappho’s lines are in a ritual as well as a psychological sense an offering to Aphrodite. Yet it would be a millennium and a half before Europe would see another such flowering of female poets.
     Among the written records of the remarkably luxuriant poetic growth of the south of France in the later Middle Ages are the names of twenty female troubadours or trobairitz. [2] The development of fin’ amors -- what came to be called courtly love in English – doubtless was influenced by Arabic poetry [3], Mariolatry, and the absence of men during the Crusades. Eventually romantic and artistic skills came to be included among the accomplishments required of a courtier.
     Five poems are extant attributed to the Comtessa de Dia, four cansos and a tenson. For one canso, “A chantar m’er de so qu’eu no volria,” music has survived as well. The poem is a complaint of an unsatisfied lover who feels that her beloved behaves toward her in a “proud,” standoffish manner (“orguoill”) while being “open-hearted“ (“franc”) with everyone else. Still, she remains steadfast in her own dedicated love, preserving her nobility and virtue while he betrays his own “great worth” (“rics pretz”) by failing to return her affection.

I must sing of that which I would rather not:
I am so aggrieved by him of whom I am the friend.
For I love him more than anything that be,
But pity and courtliness do not avail me with him,
Nor my beauty, nor my worth, nor my wits:
For I am thus tricked and betrayed
As I should be if I were ugly.

     The canso by Bieiris de Romans "Na Maria, pretz e fina valors" provides a dramatic example of the complex hermeneutic challenges these texts can present. The poem, clearly attributed to Bieiris de Romans, contains a suite of recognizable courtly love conventions, yet is addressed to a woman named Maria. Her peerless excellences, the poet says, elicit true love and a “pure heart” (“cor truan”). She begs for some sign that her love-service will be accepted. In the beloved the poet finds “gaiety and happiness” (“gajess’ e alegranssa”). [4] Scholars, puzzling over what to make of this poem, have sometimes attributed it to a male author or at any rate to a male persona. Some regard the poem as a straightforward expression of lesbianism, while others prefer to view it as an expression of intense but non-sexual friendship. Inevitably, the beloved has also been identified with the Virgin Mary. [5] To some the words of the poem seem a sincere heart’s overflowing, while to others they are ironic or a purely aesthetic game with little relation to lived experience.
     In Heian Japan (794-1185) two of the greatest writers were women. Murasaki Shikibu wrote the lyric-filled Tale of Genji of which Kenneth Rexroth says “most people who have read it agree that it is probably the world’s greatest novel.” [6] This masterful work combines the most intensely self-conscious aestheticism with a highly wrought eroticism and a mystical Buddhism, all from an almost painfully sensitive point of view, as refined as any page of Proust. The lovers, indeed most of the characters, exchange subtly significant verses, often heavily allusive; indeed, the entire book, long as it is, has a lyric sensibility.

Murasaki:
The troubled waters
are frozen fast.
Under clear heaven
moonlight and shadow
ebb and flow.

Answered by Prince Genji:
The memories of long love
gather like drifting snow,
poignant as the mandarin ducks
who float side by side in sleep. [7]

     Genji was so successful that it became itself the source of countless later references and works of visual art. Murasaki (the name is both the author’s pseudonym and the name of the heroine in the novel) also wrote a journal and a book of waka.
     In her diary, Murasaki says waspishly of one of her contemporaries: "Sei Shonagon is very arrogant. She thinks herself so clever and litters her writings with Chinese characters, but when you look at them carefully you will find many errors. Those who want to behave as if they were superior to others will lower their reputation. Will their future be brighter?" [8]
     Though Shonagon’s lyrics are included in contemporary anthologies, her Pillow Book, a sort of informal journal belonging to the Japanese genre zuhitsu, is her most well-known work. Her super-cultivated sensibility and the extraordinary refinement of the Heian court, are evident on every page. She compiles lists of “things that should be large” “Nothing annoys me so much,” she says as “someone who arrives at a ceremony in a shabby, poorly decorated carriage.” After including “rice starch that has become mixed with water” in a list of “things without merit,” she apologizes at length for mentioning such a vulgar item, saying “I never thought these notes would be read by anyone else.”
     Though she also wrote waka, the prose of the Pillow Book is highly poetic. The books opens with this passage.

In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.
In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines, but on the dark nights too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is. [9]

     In an example of a curious dialectic potential within sexist custom, women were not considered appropriate for the study of Chinese and the composition of prestigious Chinese poetry or kanshi, (though some acquired Chinese anyway). One result was that women writers concentrated on waka, in Japanese, and were thus likely to write more apparently natural and sincere verses than the practitioners of a learned and artificial tradition.  The breadth of participation  by women in the literary life of the time may be suggested by the title of Akazome Emon’s volume Thirty-Six Female Poetic Sages. Among the many other poets writing during the Heian era were Lady Ise who became concubine to Emperor Uda, the Princess Shikisi, and Izumi Shikibu considered by many the greatest poet of the time. [10]
     Though I claim no professional expertise in any of the three cultures in which these poets lived, I will nonetheless venture a few suggestions toward an explanation of their popularity. Ancient Greek, Heian Japan, and the Languedoc during the high Renaissance were all societies which placed an unusual value on the aesthetic. The refined cultivation of the pursuit of beauty is evident in such phenomena as the well-organized program of pleasures at ancient Greek symposia, the courts of love under Eleanor of Acquitaine, the Countess of Champagne, and others during the High Middle Ages, and the moon-viewing and poetry parties that originated in Heian era. These practices all imply a certain space for hedonism, though all include intellectual or artistic as well as corporeal pleasures.
     Undeniably each culture also has individual characteristics that may have been influential in making space for female poets: tolerance for homosexuality in archaic Greece, Buddhist aesthetics in Japan, Mariolatry and chivalry in the Western European Middle Ages. Critics have argued is whether certain of these texts represent authentic women’s voices or merely women who have gained acceptance by learning to compose patriarchal poetry. What cannot be disputed is that, in spite of their comparative silence through much of history, women have figured conspicuously in certain great eras of poetry. The phenomenon of these efflorescences of female poets and their individual works themselves deserve greater attention.




1. Both may be found on p. 165 Greek Elegy and Iambus I, J. M. Edmonds (Loeb Library).

2. The accessible text is Meg Bogin’s The Women Troubadours (W. W. Norton: New York and London, 1980). I acknowledge the substantial service she provided in assembling this volume, though I find her unreliable both as to facts and interpretations. She relied for texts on Oscar Schultz’s Die Provenzalischer Dichterinnen (Leipzig : G. Fock, 1888).

3. See Alois Nykl ‘s convincing Hispano-Arabic Poetry And Its Relations With The Old Provencal Troubadours.

4. The Consistori del Gay Saber "Consistory of the Gay Science") was a poetic institution founded at Toulouse in 1323 to foster the revival of Old Occitan verse.

5. Proponents of male authorship include François Zufferey, Oskar Schultz-Gora, Gianfranco Folena, Jean-Baptiste de Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye and Elizabeth W. Poe. Those who consider the work lesbian include Pierre Bec, Magda Bogin, Renat Nelli, and John Boswell, which an advocate of affection is Angelica Rieger.

6. “Tale of Genji” in Classics Revisited.

7. Kenneth Rexroth, Translations from the Japanese.

8. The Diary of Lady Murasaki, translated by Richard Bowring, 1996, Penguin, p. 54.

9. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, translated by Ivan Morris (Penguin), p. 201, 159, and 21.

10. Asian poetry was highly influential for European and American Imagism in the early twentieth century. Amy Lowell introduced a collection titled Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, translated by Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi, with an introduction by Amy Lowell. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920.