SpokenVerse | "I wake and feel the fell of dark" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (poetry reading) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded February 2012 | Updated October 2024, 18 minutes ago.
This is one of Hopkins' "Terrible Sonnets" about self-doubt and self-torture. I'm not at all sure that I understand his dilemma and his anguish but there are many learned essays about it on the web.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
It is things which we create ourselves, that are dearest to us, that bring us the most anxiety and pain. Important things such as our children, or trivial and transitory things such as the poem I just read or, for my wife, the birthday cake she just baked. Nothing we create is ever perfect enough or safe enough from attack or criticism. What we create is the whole of our purpose, just for a time.
To a sane and sensible person the minor slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the proud man's contumely etc., are mere pangs that pass in seconds: gone as soon we rationalise them out of existence. Is the attack a mortal wound or a fleabite? Is it the attacker a loner with idiosyncratic views - or would other people see the same flaws and join in kicking you?
What annoys me are people who mistakenly object to what they thought I said, when they didn't bother to read and understand what I said. They just troll the web looking for something to get upset about. Or somebody to pigeonhole and poke with a stick.
Self-doubt is so commonplace that it seems we all have a reservoir of it, that we try to lessen by doling it out by the bucketful to others. It is well to remember that you can choose not to accept the gift of criticism: you didn't ask for it, so you can refuse it and return it to the sender. I wish I had thought of that but it was Buddha, I think.
I thought I remembered Aldous Huxley using the last line of this poem in an essay on mind-altering drugs, such as mescaline. And, thanks to the wonder of the internet, I found it. He said, "In hell, a great religious poet has written, the punishment of the lost is to be "their sweating selves, but worse." On earth we are not worse than we are: we are merely our sweating selves, period." The essay is called "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds" and you can find it here:
csp.org/practices/entheogens/docs/huxley-drugs.html
The paintings are The Harrowing of Hell by Pieter Huys
And The Damned Cast Into Hell, by Luca Signorelli about 1500
I WAKE and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
This is one of Hopkins' "Terrible Sonnets" about self-doubt and self-torture. I'm not at all sure that I understand his dilemma and his anguish but there are many learned essays about it on the web.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
It is things which we create ourselves, that are dearest to us, that bring us the most anxiety and pain. Important things such as our children, or trivial and transitory things such as the poem I just read or, for my wife, the birthday cake she just baked. Nothing we create is ever perfect enough or safe enough from attack or criticism. What we create is the whole of our purpose, just for a time.
To a sane and sensible person the minor slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the proud man's contumely etc., are mere pangs that pass in seconds: gone as soon we rationalise them out of existence. Is the attack a mortal wound or a fleabite? Is it the attacker a loner with idiosyncratic views - or would other people see the same flaws and join in kicking you?
What annoys me are people who mistakenly object to what they thought I said, when they didn't bother to read and understand what I said. They just troll the web looking for something to get upset about. Or somebody to pigeonhole and poke with a stick.
Self-doubt is so commonplace that it seems we all have a reservoir of it, that we try to lessen by doling it out by the bucketful to others. It is well to remember that you can choose not to accept the gift of criticism: you didn't ask for it, so you can refuse it and return it to the sender. I wish I had thought of that but it was Buddha, I think.
I thought I remembered Aldous Huxley using the last line of this poem in an essay on mind-altering drugs, such as mescaline. And, thanks to the wonder of the internet, I found it. He said, "In hell, a great religious poet has written, the punishment of the lost is to be "their sweating selves, but worse." On earth we are not worse than we are: we are merely our sweating selves, period." The essay is called "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds" and you can find it here:
csp.org/practices/entheogens/docs/huxley-drugs.html
The paintings are The Harrowing of Hell by Pieter Huys
And The Damned Cast Into Hell, by Luca Signorelli about 1500
I WAKE and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
