{"id":10551,"date":"2018-05-24T07:03:04","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T14:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=10551"},"modified":"2018-05-24T07:03:04","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T14:03:04","slug":"what-it-takes-a-different-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=10551","title":{"rendered":"What it takes: a different perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I was sent a famous poem yesterday that was entirely new to me. Nor was I particularly familiar with the poet other than plain name recognition. I’ll get to the poem in a minute. I was much more interested in my friend’s writing that accompanied his introduction to Delmore Schwartz: “Our bodies are such strange and astonishing and sometimes burdensome companions.”<\/p>\n

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To view one’s body as a companion rather than integral part of self creates a glorious distance. It relegates responsibility for unfriendly or destructive behavior by that very body when it refuses to function properly, to an entity that can be dealt with like all other external entities – with irritation, anger, dismay or fearfulness. Once you define “companion” as a separate other, y<\/em>ou \u00a0no longer have to retreat to that horrid place where you feel a part of you is betraying all other parts of you and you are fighting yourself if you rage against that betrayal.<\/p>\n

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Of course, you then run into the next problem: if body is companion, is soul as well? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander and so forth? (Distracting aside: that proverb always struck me as a weird gender reversal – if the idea is that women should have the same privileges as men shouldn’t be the gander named first? Oh well.) If both of these basic constituents of what we perceive to be\u00a0self<\/em> are external components, then where is the very core? \u00a0Of course variants of that question have remained unanswered through millennia of philosophical searches, psychological research and now neuroscience’s attempts to join the chorus of seekers. We won’t solve that mystery today.<\/p>\n

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Here is the poem:<\/p>\n

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The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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BY DELMORE SCHWARTZ<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cthe withness of the body\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The heavy bear who goes with me,<\/div>\n
A manifold honey to smear his face,<\/div>\n
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,<\/div>\n
The central ton of every place,<\/div>\n
The hungry beating brutish one<\/div>\n
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,<\/div>\n
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,<\/div>\n
Climbs the building, kicks the football,<\/div>\n
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.<\/div>\n
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,<\/div>\n
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,<\/div>\n
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,<\/div>\n
A sweetness intimate as the water\u2019s clasp,<\/div>\n
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope<\/div>\n
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.<\/div>\n
\u2014The strutting show-off is terrified,<\/div>\n
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,<\/div>\n
Trembles to think that his quivering meat<\/div>\n
Must finally wince to nothing at all.<\/div>\n
That inescapable animal walks with me,<\/div>\n
Has followed me since the black womb held,<\/div>\n
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,<\/div>\n
A caricature, a swollen shadow,<\/div>\n
A stupid clown of the spirit\u2019s motive,<\/div>\n
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,<\/div>\n
The secret life of belly and bone,<\/div>\n
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,<\/div>\n
Stretches to embrace the very dear<\/div>\n
With whom I would walk without him near,<\/div>\n
Touches her grossly, although a word<\/div>\n
Would bare my heart and make me clear,<\/div>\n
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed<\/div>\n
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,<\/div>\n
Amid the hundred million of his kind,<\/div>\n
The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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And here is a fascinating review article that explains numerous different perspectives to be intuited from the verses above, beyond the issue of the “withness of the body.” In addition to giving a short overview of Schwartz’s life – too bitter, too needy, too self-destructive, too pre-occupied with seeking fame, too short – it explains how poems can stand in for the poet’s demands, the audience’s complicity, the writer’s self justification, his somewhat hidden plea for forgiveness and our power to provide it, or our gullibility of being lured into it by simply being hooked on the beauty of the language. It’s a worthwhile read.<\/div>\n
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That Inescapable Animal<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n