12/21/2022
Three Poems for the Winter Solstice
Reflections by our host, Professor Robert Harrison. Songs in this episode: “Winter Mind” by Robert Harrison “St. Lucy” by Robert Harrison “Adagio per archi” by Samuel Barber “Annabel Lee” by Glass Wave
12/21/2022
Three Poems for the Winter Solstice
Reflections by our host, Professor Robert Harrison. Songs in this episode: “Winter Mind” by Robert Harrison “St. Lucy” by Robert Harrison “Adagio per archi” by Samuel Barber “Annabel Lee” by Glass Wave
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This is KZSU Stanford. I'm Robert Harrison alongside Vitori Amo Bla, coming to you from the
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underworld of KZSU. It's that time of year which Dante called the Shorten Day and the Great Circle of
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Shade. Namely, the day when the sun travels the shortest path through the sky. In some, we're coming to you as our
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North Pole reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun. The day with the least daylight and the
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longest night, otherwise known as the winter solstice. The winter solstice lasts only an instant,
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yet its most precarious volatile moment in the revolution of our earth around its star. In the
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depths of this longest night of the year, our tilted planet comes to a momentary stand still before
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taking a turn, a discreet yet decisive turn toward the light. Maybe that's why the winter
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solstice is associated with St. Lucie, whose name evokes light, loosensy, from the Latin
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luks. Lucy heralds the light hiding in the ultimate sea of darkness. She is the saint of the planet's
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turn from its maximum tilt away from the sun toward the sun. That's why at this volatile turning point
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in the Great Circle of Shade, we thought to share with you a few poems about Hyburnal Darkness.
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The three poems I've chosen to recite reach us from the somber depths of the human psyche. Yet I
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would ask you as you listen to keep in mind that at the far edge of darkness, a turning toward the
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light can and does take place. It's the earth itself that assures us of this. I'll begin with John
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Duns, an octurnal upon St. Lucie's day. This is one of the great depressive poems of the Western canon.
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It begins with the speaker stating that it's the winter solstice and that the external world is all
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but dead, but not nearly as dead as he is in his soul. He goes on to describe how love transformed
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him into a happy and fulfilled being before changing him into a dead thing. Just after the poems halfway
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point we learned that the speaker's lover has died and we gather that he died along with her,
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if not physically then spiritually. The poem concludes with the speaker wishing a happy summer season
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to other lovers. This poem was most likely written in the aftermath of the death of Duns beloved wife
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Anne who died in 1617 just days after she gave birth to their 12th child.
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Here we go with an octurnal upon St. Lucie's day.
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Tis the days midnight and it is the days, Lucie's who scare seven hours for self unmasks.
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The sun is spent and now his flasks, sun-forth light squibbs, no constant rays.
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The world's whole sap is sunk. The general bomb, the hydropic earth hath drunk.
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Wither as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk. Dead and inter, yet all these seem to laugh
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compared with me who am their epitaph. Study me then, you who shall lovers be at the next world.
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That is at the next spring, for I am every dead thing in whom love brought new alchemy,
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for his art did express a quintessence even from nothingness,
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from dull privations and lean emptiness. He ruined me and I am rebigot of absence, darkness, death, things which are not.
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All others from all things draw all that's good,
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life, soul, form, spirit, when stay being have,
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I by love slimbec and the grave of all that's nothing. Often a flood have we too wept
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and so drowned the whole world us too. Often did we grow to be two chaoses
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when we did show care to ought else and often absences with true our souls and made us carcasses.
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But I am by her death which were wrong, her of the first nothing the elixir grown.
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Where I am and that I were one I need must know I should prefer.
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If I were any beasts some ends, some means, yay plants, yay stones, detest and love,
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all some properties invest. If I, an ordinary nothing were, as shadow, a light and body must be here.
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But I am none nor will my son renew. You lovers for who's sake the lesser son at this time
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to the goat is run, to fetch new lust and give it you. Enjoy your summer all.
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Since she enjoys her long nights festival, let me prepare toward her and let me call this hour
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her vigil and her Eve. Since this both the years and the days deep midnight is.
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"There's a great deal one could say about this majestic palm,
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but the winter solstice is not the time or the mood for commentary. What we need instead is a
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mournful music of the dead season. So I'll move on to a poem by Percy Biss Shelley that was
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never published during his lifetime. It's almost certainly about his first wife Harriet, who had
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committed suicide by drowning in the Serpentine River near London. Nine days before the winter solstice
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on December 12, 1816, the London Times reported, I quote, "A respectable female,
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far advanced in pregnancy was taken out of the Serpentine River and brought to her residence in
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Queen Street, Brompton, having been missing for nearly six weeks. She had a valuable ring on her finger."
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It's hard to say whether this haunting melancholy poem expresses an unavowed remorse for Harriet
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suicide or merely a reminiscence on the past. The poem has plenty of illusions to the suicide
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with a strong presence of rivers and flowing water. What we know for sure is that Harriet left a
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death letter naming Shelley as the cause of her misfortune. Shelley's owed to Harriet is full of
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tenderness and affection. This, despite the fact that a few weeks after Harriet died, Shelley married
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Mary Godwin. The human heart is a deep and strange place. The poem is called "Lines,
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the Cold Earth, Slept Below."
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The cold earth slept below above the cold sky shone and all around with a chilling sound
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from caves of ice and fields of snow. The breath of night like death did flow beneath the sinking moon.
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The wintry hedge was black, the green grass was not seen, the birds did rest on the bare thorns
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breast whose roots beside the pathway track had bound their folds over many a crack which the
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frost had made between. The eyes glowed in the glare of the moon's dying light as a fen fire's beam
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on a sluggish stream gleams dimly, so the moon shone there and it yellowed the strings of
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the entangled hair that shook in the wind of night. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved,
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the wind made thy bosom chill, the night she shed on thy dear head, its frozen dew and
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thou did sly, where the bitter breath of the naked sky might visit thee at will.
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To wrap up this tribute to the winter solstice, I'll read one last poem about the dark,
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so that darkness may grow. It has its origins in a poem by the Italian poet Andre as Anzo,
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who died at a ripe old age about a decade ago. In Italian it's called Percicrisca.
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The original is a gnarly baffling somewhat anagramatical, yet sonarously hypnotic poem,
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like a thicket of twisted trees. Here are the first few lines in Italian.
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Percicrisca, this is a duster of scooter. Percicrisca, this is a duster of scooter.
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Percicrisca, this is a duster of scooter. Percicrisca, this is a duster of scooter.
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Venga pewscooter. Percicrisca, this is a duster of scooter.
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I'll read the story of the duster of scooter.
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I'll read the story of the duster of scooter.
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I'll read the story of the duster of scooter.
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I'll read the story of the duster of scooter.
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I'll read the story of the duster of scooter.
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I'll read the story of the duster of scooter.
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I'll read the story of the duster of scooter.
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What I'm going to read in English is not a translation of Zanzato's poem,
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but rather a free adaptation of it that Matteo Perper and I collaborated on together.
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Matteo Perper is a Sanford undergraduate and a student of mine.
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He has a fine poetic year, and together we adapted Zanzato's poem,
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or imitated if you prefer, for this occasion, so that darkness may grow.
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So that darkness may grow and the darkness be right,
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so that the trees, one by one, leafing in the dark, may birth and branch more radically,
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and the gloom loom more darkly. Let the underworld of the worm rise into the masticating gorge
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of the overhanging night and give Lambency to the shadow fruit of our dreams.
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Come darkness, suck us up into your gradient generations, into your ardent propagations,
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so that the gradients climb steeper,
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may the fallen branches stack higher and collapse in our breastense.
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Here were the darkness darkens. Here were our nook turn ends and begins again.
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Let the sourcing desire ramify into in numerous genders and dark part traditions,
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each with its root of darkness pushing ever more darkly out to take in the stars.
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Nothing is more traditional than the association of life with light and death with darkness,
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but on this winter solstice, which has always been in my favorite day of the year,
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whatever the year. Let's not forget that all of life originates and germinates in the dark,
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be it in the seas, the sand, the soil, the egg, or the womb. We have all come forth from the dark.
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Everything that has an end has a beginning and everything that begins comes to an end.
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Life emerges from the matrix of death and at the extremity of darkness,
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the revolving earth takes a turn toward the light. I'm Robert Harrison for entitled opinions.
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Thanks for listening.
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