Markings

[poliphilo]

I was watching this gripping TV show about two psychics investigating a real-life cold-case murder in New Zealand (didn't they do well?) and the adverts came on (they last for ever on Living TV) so I reached for the book case and pulled out...

Dag Hammarskjold's Markings.

My copy was discarded from the public library in Elizabethtown, Kentucky in 1973. I picked it out of the bin myself. Apart from having DISCARD stamped on it in a couple of places it's in pretty good shape.

Hammarskjold was Secretary General of the UN from 1953 to 1961, when he was killed (assassinated?) in an air crash. He was obviously a good man. Austere, driven, brilliant. Markings is his private diary or commonplace book.

The translation is by W.H. Auden (which speaks for itself.)

It's a spiritual diary. No "Tonight we dined with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; The Duchess's taste in jewellery is atrocious; the Duke spilled soup all down his shirt front" but breast-beating aphorisms and haiku.

He never speaks directly about his oh-so-important work.

Bracing.

Open it at any page and there's something quotable.

"The lap dog disguised himself as a lamb, but tried to hunt with the wolves."

"Acts of violence- whether on a large or a small scale, the bitter paradox: the meaningfulness of death- and the meaninglessness of killing."

"Courage? On the level where the only thing that counts is a man's loyalty to himself, the word has no meaning. -"Was he brave?"- "No, just logical."

Actually, If I'm honest, half the time I've no idea what he's on about. It crosses my mind that this is a book that my grandfather (a man of Hammnarskjold's generation) would have liked.

They were a serious lot, those post-Victorians.

If there are jokes, they have been lost in translation.

The haiku, which have passed through the mind of a greater poet than Hammarsjkold ever pretended to be, are lovely- and probably better in English than in the original.

"Midges dance. Blast-furnace smoke.
Adder asleep
Near the wild strawberry patch."

One remembers that Hammarskjold was a fellow countryman of Ingmar Bergman's.

He makes me want to be profound. He makes me want to examine my life.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Perfect bedside reading!

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

I'm going to copy and paste the second and third aphorisms for my journal. I have an affinity for maxims and gloomy post-Victorians, and will try to score the book someday. Thanks very much for making me (and many others) aware of its existence.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I chose the aphorisms pretty much at random. The book is packed with good, chewy stuff.

It's in print; I've just checked.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Blake.

Odd, Tony: last night I was thinking about my life, and how dull and useless it is, how I have little to offer and am closed up and selfish.

(Philip Roth just came out with a new book, Everyman, that is mostly about our lives leading toward illness and death. Yuck, but: of his protagonist's relatively healthy middle twenty years, Roth said, "Twenty years went by." That's how I feel about my life right now--everyman, insignificant, marking time.

Maybe I can start getting more profound, but I have my doubts. My brain's no longer agile enough, and--worse--I have lost the spark of caring enough. (I wonder if that spark is what people call "religion"? I think I'll read Blake--he's wonderfully "religious" and reminds me there is that inner life that exists in everyman.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think there's an art to growing old. I think it's about knowing what to let go and what to hold fast. Some people manage it well but others, the majority, I'm afraid, find it baffling.

The spark has more or less deserted me too. I think that's a common experience of the middle years.

I'm not at all sure where I go from here.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

After I wrote you, I went out and worked hard in the garden, hoeing weeds. It helped, but it didn't make me feel useful or sparked.

I hoed up lots of baby Rose of Sharons from underneath the mother tree, and wondered if the mother tree was screaming "NO!" as I hacked away.

Then I thought, well, tough.

That's getting old and hard.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The mother Rose will thank you in the long run.

I've always loved that line from Milton's poem about his blindness. "They also serve who only stand and wait."

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

My sister has the Theory of Life worked out: she says we're like bees, and staying in the hive is our religion.

She says we don't need to worry about being "saved" or being guilty, or feel bad because we are "fallen."

She says her dog barks because he's a dog, and she doesn't get mad at him when he barks, and she's not any god.

She says, just stay in the hive, and you'll be fine.

God. I like Blake better. But Janice's theory fits with Milton's statement in my mind: whatever I do, if I'm human I'm more or less in the hive, and that's all I need to know.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not happy with this hive idea. Bees are such regimented little things.

"Stay in the hive". I don't know what that means.

But it has the effect of making me want to get as far away from the damn hive as I possibly can.

But perhaps she's saying that's not possible- that we can't transcend the limitations of our species.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

But perhaps she's saying that's not possible- that we can't transcend the limitations of our species.

That's it.

She also talks about the Motoboto Indians (I have no idea if I spelled this correctly) who live somewhere in South America, and their life's goal is to be able to kill enemies by whacking them on the head with an axe, taking them by surprise. This is, says Janice, their highest calling.
She uses this example to explain that all our religions are just long lists of directives to keep us in the hive and productive.

I, too, find her bee discussions depressing, but they wear me down. And at the oddest times I remember Carl Sagan's statement that all we humans are is festooned DNA.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Blake's religion wasn't like that. It helped him transcend the Hive.

"The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision's greatest enemy."

Sorry, I seem to be full of apt quotations today.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Ah, very apt.

I bow, a single bow.

Thank you. I do love Blake.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

The mother Rose will thank you in the long run.


I actually thought about the mother Rose being crowded out and stifled by her babies while I was hoeing them out.

It's amazing, really, how I can ferret out things to feel guilty about.

Once, when I was younger and far more romantic about Life, I was driving down the road and noticed an ant crawling (hopelessly, frantically) across my windshield, and I kept driving, feeling like a sadist, and then (with some irritation, but nevertheless) pulled over and turned around, planning to take my ant back to the driveway!

The wind suddenly blew it off into outer space!

Whoops.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're not alone.

I have to school myself not to pick up every sad and drying-out earthworm I pass on the sidewalk.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Tony, I'm sorry, but I don't think you are a misanthrope. I don't think I am, either.

(I feel great when I save bugs. Sometimes I even pray about it: "Oh God if it be thy will, let me show this wasp how to get outside. Amen.")

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think one can be a misanthrope yet tender towards bugs.

I move between loving humanity and despairing of it

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Bugs aren't mean.

I love the idea of people, and can be moved by them, but when they come too close I move back one step. Is that misanthropic?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't know.

If you break the word down to its Latin roots it means hatred of humankind. I don't suppose we're either of us guilty of that.

Scrooge in A Christmas Carol is a model misanthrope.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's a form of mental illness.

Interesting conversation. Thanks!

Nice post!

[(Anonymous)]

thanks much, dude