Book of Mercy #27-28

[Joe Way]

#28

I mentioned Northrop Frye's Axis Mundi earlier, that is "a vertical line running from the top to the bottom of the cosmos." This notion of a human world layered between higher and lower worlds is shared not only in the the Bible, but in mythology and literature. Aside from the obvious references to heaven & hell, this can also signify higher and lower consciousness and the subconscious. Doron, as you mentioned the ladder as a means of traveling through this distance, there are also mountains, towers etc. to reach the higher levels. It seems our narrator has now traveled to a lower level where mercy is poured into hell. The titanic descent into this level seems to create an almost crucible like effect on the narrator where the heart declares its secrets.

Let me be with you again, absolute companion, let me study your ways which are just beyond the hope of evil.

I find the idea of "the hope of evil" works well with the

the sorrows of our freedom

. Mankind, alone among the creatures lives in history as well as nature. For some reason, it makes me think of Auden's poem, Their Lonely Betters:

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

let me cry to the one who judges the heart in justice and mercy

If this were called "Book of Justice," the secrets of the heart would betray all those promises that were not kept-the consequences of our freedom. But I would predict that there will be an affirmative ascension out of this lower place.

Joe

[lazariuk]

Book of Mercy #27
27 Angels

I may be lost here, maybe not.
Maybe someone can find me a way out, maybe not.
Either way, it is bewildering to me.

It was predicted earlier that when we got to this part that it might have special significance. Something about the number 27 being associated with the name Cohen in Hebrew. I don't think it unreasonable to entertain that idea.

I'm just going to try to describe how I am experiencing it.

Is the words "27 angels from the great beyond, they tied me to this table right here in the tower of song" relevant here? If I entertain the idea that it might be connected then I ask myself "why does he use the word "table"?
A table is where you eat. This brings to mind the book "the naked lunch" which the author describes as " that frozen moment when you see what is on the end of every fork"
Meaning I think, learning about the price that was paid for us to be where we are.
If the angels tied him to a table maybe they are trying to get him to swallow something.
Then I ask myself " If the angels are right here, and Leonard is tied to the table it leads me to wonder what Leonard is doing. What is he doing here?

Then I consider that Leonard wrote a poem called "What I'm doing here"
It is from the book called "Flowers for Hitler" It was written during a time when the germans were on trial for what they had done to the Jews. He demonstrated in the book that he had followed the proceedings closely. Here is how it goes

WHAT I'M DOING HERE
I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi

Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted
only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each one of you to confess

I get a sense that Leonard is a decent guy. I also think of myself as a decent person or at least that I try to be. As a decent person one thing that I would never consciously do is suggest to another that they are doing something wrong unless I was absolutely sure it was something that I have done myself. I can't think of Leonard as being less decent.
Another thing that I noticed today, that might be a result of trying to be decent for a long time was that while I was standing in a snowbank waiting for a bus, I noticed that while waiting I was stomping around a bit in the snow with the goal of trying to make it a bit easier for the next person who had to wait there for the bus. It caused me to think that probably Leonard would do the same while he was waiting. Trying to make things a bit easier for people to go through what he went through. His words about this book was " I wrote it for someone like me" and to me that means that if he addresses someone in it, that he thinks that he is addressing someone like him. I think that should be kept in mind when he seems to speak in a stern voice.

[mat james]

" I wrote it for someone like me"

many of us would like to lay claim to that one Jack.
We probably all feel a little that way.
That's good.
He's made contact.

But don't kid yourself for too long
because I am the
"someone like me"
not you.

Matj

[Steven]

Hi Doron,

Considering this passage reminds me of words that the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, said/sang in a recording that he released after the Six Days War. His words: "Old chasidim who knew the secret of being real..." To be real is to be present for and to acknowledge the full range of experience; Leonard's words in this passage reflect that he too is very real. And both Rabbi Carlebach's song and Leonard's poem seem to put the capacity to do so as implicitly resting on faith.

[DBCohen]

#28

I mentioned Northrop Frye's Axis Mundi earlier, that is "a vertical line running from the top to the bottom of the cosmos." This notion of a human world layered between higher and lower worlds is shared not only in the the Bible, but in mythology and literature. Aside from the obvious references to heaven & hell, this can also signify higher and lower consciousness and the subconscious. Doron, as you mentioned the ladder as a means of traveling through this distance, there are also mountains, towers etc. to reach the higher levels. It seems our narrator has now traveled to a lower level where mercy is poured into hell. The titanic descent into this level seems to create an almost crucible like effect on the narrator where the heart declares its secrets.

Joe,

Thank you for this observation. Axis mundi, the ladder, mountains and towers, indeed, they are all of a kind, connecting high and low. What you say about the narrator’s being in hell, and connecting evil and freedom is also very meaningful. To me it always seems that the hell – and heaven – he is talking about, are here on earth.

Thank you also for the Auden poem. It seems to me that the first and last lines allude to other famous English poems. The first line brought to mind a poem by Emily Dickinson:

In the Garden

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad, --
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim

I will not venture an interpretation of this magnificent poem, which might turn out too simplistic, but somehow it also feels relevant to what we are talking about.

The last line of Auden’s poem alludes, naturally, to Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, which I guess there is no need to quote.

[lazariuk]

II.27
Israel, and you who call yourself Israel

PEACE

I understand that it one of the rungs of an 18 part prayer that many Jews, and I think that Leonard is one of them, pray every day that there be peace in Israel.

Peace is a word that stands apart for me from other words. When it came I was at war with it and that made it look like something much different. What it looked like was an army of devils that were trying to kill me, and as a matter of fact I thought they did and that I was dead. Then with the help of someone else I ended my war and saw that it was the word peace and slowly it filled all space and it remained long enough for me to be ready to fall asleep. I don't know the truth of other words but I do know that peace is a special one.

There are two people I'm going to quote, who have been known as peacemakers, one acknowledge by the many and one by just a few. Both at one time or another pointed in the same direction in different ways.

The first is Menachem Begin who won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Menachem Begin was the leader of the Irgun, and later became Prime Minister of Israel . He said ,

"The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yassin."

Can that be seen as saying that there would not have been an Israel without the massacre at Deir Yassin ? Is it a fair question?

The second is Martin Buber who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dag Hammarskjöld, himself a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and Secretary General of the United nations. In his nomination letter he compared Buber to the military leaders with these words:

one can say of Buber that he makes living the essential traits of the heritage of the prophets. Perhaps one might dare to predict that this time too it will prove to be the case that the voice of the prophet will reach further into the future than that of the military leader.

I think it was further into the future when he wrote to Ben Gurion saying,

"The time will come when it will be possible to conceive of some act in Deir Yassin, an act which will symbolize our people's desire for justice and brotherhood with the Arab people."

Both these men of peace, one a military man and the other maybe a prophet point to Deir Yassin.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid= ... 19569830&q

[lazariuk]

#28

I mentioned Northrop Frye's Axis Mundi earlier, that is "a vertical line running from the top to the bottom of the cosmos."
Joe

That brings to mind something that Doron wrote earlier:

it might be worthwhile to examine, as we go along, whether there are any substantial differences between the two parts, and try to figure out, if we can, for what reason did LC divide the book into those two parts

[mat james]

{ Kindle the darkness of my calling,
Let me be with you again, absolute companion,
let me study your ways which are

just beyond the hope of evil.

Blessed are you, who opens a gate
in every moment,
to enter in truth to tarry in hell
who have broken down your world to gather hearts
Arouse my hear again
with the limitless breath you breath into me,
arouse the secret from obscurity.
Kindle the darkness of my calling. }

I have grouped these lines above in a formation, an “holistic fragment”. It helps me clarify my perspective.

Kindle the darkness .

Here we have a methodology that initiates a solution, sometimes.
“Kindle the darkness”. The “darkness” is the absence of god consciousness, which is there, ever-present and yet "just beyond the hope of evil". This “evil” Leonard refers to is our normal state of consciousness that is pervaded by what we might term “god-absence”. God-absence is the darkness/evil or evil darkness which Leonard struggles through like a deep valley or gorge. As he struggles through this darkened valley of miss-directed consciousness he pleads with his God to make the journey and his vision (or lack of !) even darker, and hence, “Kindle the darkness of my calling”.
“Kindle” is poetry!
“Kindle the darkness” is also a paradox. To kindle means to promote and encourage the darkness and it also means, at the same time, to fire the darkness up and ignite it !
To me, this is poetry of the highest order; a line of sheer genius.

The methodology of kindling the darkness is sensible. The darker it gets, the more visible a tiny speck of Light will seem ( God’s Light ). By hanging in there, dousing himself in darkness and accepting the utter futility of everyday consciousness in this arena, so to speak, the seeking soul may find a beacon to direct it…one faint star in a midnight mind, offers direction and the hope of finding a way through the “gates of evil”, and home.

(Cruz puts it this way, “ In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised--oh, happy chance!”)
It is the same theme with striking similarities, such as words/symbols; for instance:
“Kindled in darkness”, says Leonard, 400 years after Cruz says this:

“On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings
… . In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder
…Oh, night that guided me,
… Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!
… All ceased and I abandoned myself ”

In my opinion Leonard is striving for the same experience Cruz writes about and claims to have had, which he termed "becoming God by participation".

By the way, the words below are in the poem “Dark Night of the Soul” as well as this verse of Leonard's. I would argue that this is no coincidence. I believe Leonard was thinking deeply about his personal experiences with regard to the "spiritual marriage" that this mystic (Cruz) sings of and the symbols Cruz draws from Plotinus' writings, Leonard also chooses to use; particularly the concept that "Darkness" is the method for the flight of the soul to God: "The flight of the alone to the Alone" (Plotinus).
• Kindled
• Secret
• Darkness
http://www.ecatholic2000.com/stjohn/drknt3.shtml

It is interesting to note that this journey of Leonard’s is probably not the first one he has taken, to his “absolute companion” for he suggests in this verse that he has been there before; through this darkness and the gates of evil and onto that “other” world of “Light”.

“Let me be with you again, absolute companion,”

“Again” !

In a sense, it is "no big deal" as Hopkins puts it in his magnificent poem, Windhover. Very, very

" ... No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion. "

Matj

[lazariuk]

II.27

I wonder why he begins Part 2 here at number 27

I wonder why he wrote in a poem in the book before this one.

Fuck the twenty-six letters of my cowardice

[mat james]

I have no idea Jack.
Good luck .

[lazariuk]

I have no idea Jack.

Might just have something to do with the 26 letters in the alphabet. Nothing important.

[Steven]

II.27
Israel, and you who call yourself Israel

Jack,

The New Testament through a "grafting in" of non-Jews into the Christian faith considers
those gentile Christians as spiritual "Israel." And apocalyptyc scenarios in both the "Old" and
"New" testaments share some similarities with regards to the land of Israel. Seems
that the commonality of shortcomings is also parallel to some commonality of belief
about historical destiny when it comes to this particular piece of land. Just thought this
worth bringing up for others to consider; it does further the notion that "we" (all
of us) are more connected than might be thought.

[lazariuk]

Just thought this
worth bringing up for others to consider; it does further the notion that "we" (all
of us) are more connected than might be thought.

I agree wholeheartly. Much earlier in this book I spoke about what attracted me to a certain Jewish writer and spoke about how Buber outlines the difference between two kinds of faith :the emunah of the Jews, and the pistis of the Christians. In doing so he also writes sympathetically about Jesus who he sees in some way as part of the spiritual history of Israel. For Buber the Jews faith is communal and centers on their persistence in history in continuing their communal religious life. He sees Christianity as having a different kind of faith one which focuses on individuals, and the individual salvation. In his concluding chapter he suggests that in the future each might take a bit more of the character of the other( not in doctrine) but in the Jewish faith becoming more pistis and the Christians moving more toward a communal faith.
I think sometimes that in our personal life we are living all of the aspects that the Jews are living in their communal life. The Jews communal life is out there and it is easier to look at sometimes than our personal life but the looking at it always points to the personal.

I like the kind of relationship this suggests for Christians to the land of Israel much more that some of the things that I have heard from so-called Christians who see themselves as the true Israel. That kind of thinking really scares me.

[Manna]

so the book goes:

Part 1
1-26

poem

Part 2
27-whatever the end is

yes? or is the poem in one of the parts? Has Leonard written other stuff between the passages?

is there other stuff there? Can someone post it so we can discuss it? Jack, would you post the whole poem?
I haven't even begun to think about 28 yet. Maybe you could start a new thread for the in-between stuff.

ps. Nothing important? Tell me you're not serious!!!!

[lazariuk]

the book is

I

1-26

II

27-50