And Yet We Measure Times

      Believe it or not, I'm not invoking this here because of Mr. Charles' passing, but I've been stewing-- as, frankly, I often do, as I think anyone concerned with poetry does to some extent-- on these thoughts of late. They're from Edward Bouverie Pusey's translation of The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Book XI ("Chapter XVII" in some editions).

Suppose, now, the voice of a body begins to sound, and does sound, and sounds on, and list, it ceases; it is silence now, and that voice is past, and is no more a voice. Before it sounded, it was to come, and could not be measured, because as yet it was not, and now it cannot, because it is no longer. Then therefore while it sounded, it might; because there then was what might be measured. But yet even then it was not at a stay; for it was passing on, and passing away. Could it be measured the rather, for that? For while passing, it was being extended into some space of time, so that it might be measured, since the present hath no space. If therefore then it might, then, to, suppose another voice hath begun to sound, and still soundeth in one continued tenor without any interruption; let us measure it while it sounds; seeing when it hath left sounding, it will then be past, and nothing left to be measured; let us measure it verily, and tell how much it is. But it sounds still, nor can it be measured but from the instant it began in, unto the end it left in. For the very space between is the thing we measure, namely, from some beginning unto some end. Wherefore, a voice that is not yet ended, cannot be measured, so that it may be said how long, or short it is; nor can it be called equal to another, or double to a single, or the like. But when ended, it no longer is. How may it then be measured? And yet we measure times; but yet neither those which are not yet, nor those which no longer are, nor those which are not lengthened out by some pause, nor those which have no bounds. We measure neither times to come, nor past, nor present, nor passing; and yet we do measure times.

Try thinking about such matters without illegal or alcoholic substances. I assure you, it's a formidable task indeed.

      I'm thinking about such matters of late mainly because I've been revisiting a paper that I wrote what now seems an aeon ago on Mark Strand's Dark Harbor. It's a paper I'm more and more convinced I have to do something with eventually, if only because there's gold in them that hills. The paper is cursed with all the qualities I now associate with my Idiot Period-- when I readily invoked all the right theorists and all the right ideas, partially because they were impressed as necessary, but also because they did seem professionalizing, in a way, legitimating my own thoughts within larger current critical trends. I say Idiot Period, though, because I read such stuff now as very forced, very laboured, when I felt I had to trust more in the instruction of others than in my own interpretive insights. (Knowledge, I'm reminded, is not wisdom, and as Northrop Frye suggested, knowledge merely comes before the Law which itself comes before Wisdom.) Anyway, many of the questions the paper struggled with had to do with the Orphic and Marsyan dimensions of poetry -- and the poet proper-- and now I'm thinking there's a lot more I could do with that discussion that would, I think, serve to illuminate the volume very effectively. Leave it to me, however, to stumble into one of those koanish paradoxes that tends more to baffle than to clarify. Sometimes, I think I'm nothing less than fucked: too poetic by nature to be a typical critic, too prosaic, finally, to make a good poet. Regardless, there's something very profound at work in Strand's volume, and in my younger days I was inching towards its discovery, but never quite did. I think I'm closer, much closer, even if I'm sure most of my colleagues would accuse me of obscurantism. Such people, pedants I tend to think them, would also run kicking and screaming from the thought of seeing through a glass darkly. Northrop was right about one more thing, damn him: sometimes, one has to practice and unpractice, and critical labours-- genuinely significant ones-- may need to happen over years rather than weeks or months. Norrie said it took him forty years to write The Great Code. I believe him. It's taken me the plupart of a decade to begin to grasp with even a kind of fullness a volume of a mere 46 poems. It's enough to lead one to depression-- or, worse, a chain of self-complicating thought that paralyzes more than it liberates. The ripeness is all.

      By the way, for my more capital-L Literate readers: if you don't know Pusey, check out this biography of him. Not merely one of the founders of the Oxford Movement, he was also a mentor for the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.