Unchained Logos

What is the hero? Simply formulated, the hero is who human beings aspire to be like. If I could change some aspect of my body or personality, my heroes are defined as those individuals that would model my new person. Traditionally, our heroes are strong, intelligent, funny, and confident. And ethically? Traditional heroes are morally good. They embody temperance, prudence, fortitude, and justice; faith, hope, and love. We portray and choose virtuous heroes because human beings desire to be virtuous themselves.

Superman is a perfect example of the hero. He is physically gifted with superpowers, but he also (in most renditions) holds tightly to traditional ethics and morality. Superman will save the damsel in distress, hand the villain over to the legal authorities, and work to bring justice to those criminals oppress. Superman, by design, is everything humanity aspires to be.

So why is he so boring?

Perhaps it is because virtually every conflict he is involved in is a foregone conclusion. Perhaps he is simply too dated, so that every conceivable variation on the few weakness he has to exploit has been done. He is boring because we cannot relate to him. Superman is so perfect, so extremely invulnerable, so virtuous, that the conflicts that beset him are either not true conflicts or strain our ability to suspend disbelief. We want our heroes to triumph over their real weaknesses, real temptations, and real conflicts, because it is more like our everyday lives. A brief survey of the literary canon reveals that this perfect hero is extremely rare. The most famous and abiding heroes in our culture are almost always far more complex and weak. Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Hamlet, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Churchill: they are all intensely flawed heroes. We can relate to them in their weaknesses, making their strengths and victories all the more admirable and inspiring.

The perfect hero then, exists only in some abstract way or theory in our minds. We might desire those qualities, but we do not find a human being who perfectly embodies all of them realistic. We might even be offended by them.

I am not writing this from a partisan perspective. I do not identify with either major US political party. But when I read of yet another shift in who the US military in Iraq considers most dangerous, I have to wonder, where does this end?

US forces have alternately identified Sunni insurgents and Shi’ite militants as the greatest threats to peace in Iraq. It’s changed so many times I can’t help but feel at least a little sorry for John McCain, who can’t keep the differences straight in his head. The truth is, the vast majority of Americans would have no idea who the enemy of the moment was in the media didn’t keep them up to date. As for the actual theological or cultural differences between them? That’s too boring to cover. Irrelevant. They just hate each other.

When will it end? Will US forces simply keep yo-yoing back and forth, continually helping whoever is on the wrong end of the stick? Is it any wonder when civilians are killed in cases of mistaken identity? The average US citizen (left or right) just knows one enemy now: Iraqis. Ironic, isn’t it, since one of the stated goals of the original invasion was to “free the Iraqi people.” I don’t think anyone will end up any more free than when it began. Maybe the Kurds will, simply because no one bothers to notice them at the moment.

The whole thing sings of rotten ironies. The president who vowed to end nation-building (remember that, anyone?) has gotten the United States involved in possible the most complex and dangerous form of it. The war to bring freedom and democracy to an oppressed people looks more and more like something out of 1984. The calls to defeat the enemy and win the war at all costs begin to resemble the call of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness: “Exterminate the brutes.” Or even the Kurtz of Apocalypse Now: “Drop the bomb. Exterminate them all!”

I weep for the Iraqi child who does not understand why his world has gone crazy, why everything is coming apart around him. I do not write this as an American or one beholden to the Stars and Stripes. I write this as a child of God who sees only a multiplication of nakedness, hunger, and fatherlessness.

That title is just too long. I can tell I’m rusty.

The point is that I perceive there to be shortage of the above. There may be millions, but if so, then they aren’t promoted. The sad reality is that too many Christians think Art is quite useless (and not in a Wilde way), and…vice versa.

So when my wife bought me Faith, Film, and Philosophy I was a little skeptical that the various authors might come out swinging against movies for portraying a sinful world or promoting a pagan philosophy. So far, I have been pleasantly surprised. A few of the movies discussed: Citizen Kane, Big Fish, Pretty Woman, The Truman Show, Being John Malkovich, The Matrix, Pleasantville, Bowling for Columbine, Mystic River, Silence of the Lambs, Contact, 2001. All quality flicks. And that is what has impressed me most in reading so far: that quality films are being acknowledged as works of art, their underlying philosophical presuppositions are being analyzed, and that these assumptions are intelligently discussed in their impact on culture and their relation to Christian principles.

I can’t wait to read the chapter on Charlie Kauffman’s films.

Cluster reading, or reading several books that tie closely together, is a fascinating activity. I’ve known this before, of course, but (in this very overdue attempt to get back into this neglected blog) I’ve just recently completed a cluster of books which has enthralled me tightly.

I was rereading Dante’s La Vita Nuova, a masterpiece any would-be poet ought to read. In it, he describes the story of his love for Beatrice, in all its idealized (never actualized) glory. It is the way he describes it that is fascinating, by leading the reader through careful analysis of the poetry he has written for and about her. Reading La Vita Nuova will enrich the reading of the Divine Comedy—I might even go so far as to say it is necessary to fully enjoy and appreciate it. (Along with a nicely annotated translation: I recommend Ciardi.)

Then in the midst of reading Dante, I began to read a new novel by Umberto Eco, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. In it, Eco refers to Dante many times, and to La Vita Nuova specifically often. Because of the parallels between his own experience and that of Dante (that he imagines? or creates?), my appreciation for Mysterious Flame was heightened.

Eco also repeatedly refers to Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac which I just finished reading this morning. A sensational, fantastical romance about a man who loves a woman but is forced by circumstance to always hold the love a pure ideal (and more dangerously, he is forced to help her love become actualized for another), it brought me to tears on a public bus. More importantly, I understand Eco’s novel better in retrospect for understanding the connections he draws to Cyrano and am able to understand instantly Cyrano’s literary impact and value because I had already experienced its impact.

There’s a few other allusions in Mysterious Flame that I may or may not follow up on, but these three works together form a spectacular cluster, all three likely to occur forever bound together in my mind.

The great Czeslaw Milosz. My tastes have quickly run away from Anglo/American writers to those of Europe; will they fly next to Africa? Asia? Is poetry really the essence of what is lost in translation? Then why the vast popularity of translated poetry? Why does Shakespeare remain dominant even in translation? The desire to read in the original languages runs very deep indeed. German. Spanish. Danish. Russian. And so on. But recently I find it difficult to keep attention to reading poetry, or writing it for that matter. My attention span: is it diminishing with age? At 24 am I already on the decline mentally. Perhaps. Nonfiction catches my eye as I age. Say mature instead. I sometimes mock (mildly I hope) my wife for reading light romances when she should/could/should read “greater things.” Who am I to judge or make divisions?

Enough. A commitment to reading well and reading often. Writing will come when I cease to distract myself and immerse myself in the stories of the past. The greats that inspire. I can never help but long to write after reading Kierkegaard or Salinger. Does Kafka inspire me less? If only because he steamrolls over any pretensions I might have–then again, he may be a better model of nonproduction or incomplete production. Better to be Kierkegaard, voluminous in his published writings as in his thoughts. Or Salinger, who wrote much, published little of it but enough.

Enough. What is enough? Rilke says that you should not write if you can imagine doing anything else. What if I cannot imagine doing anything else but still maintain difficulty

in the vision of myself as a poet? So much crappy poetry being published today. Is mine along with it? I don’t revise enough that’s true. I don’t polish as I should. I burst with ideas and grand dreams but seldom manage to carry it through to completion. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan…” Good old Coleridge. I suppose that’s one strategy, to reduce one’s inhibitions artificially until you can’t stop writing unless the dream is broken by that desperate interruption.

A commitment to writing then, one that must not be broken. Even freewriting is therapeutic and inspirational. From this very mess of thoughts poured onto to the virtual page, electronic page, communally glorious page, what riches can be harvested? The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.

Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning…
—Job 3:9

How pregnant was the night
that it began to curse?
What words shattered
the holiness that follows birth
while my blood mingled with the earth?

A living witness remains,
yet I cannot reach back
to seize the prophetic chords.
Did they warmly speak “Well done,”
or spit “Depart” and blind the sun?

I think the dark longed in vain
for a misbegotten dawn.
I wish the day had slumbered on and on:
my eyes continued undisturbed,
my first words never heard.

Poetry is hard for me to write.
First I must explore some lost emotion:
once found, identified, and stamped,
I struggle to uncoil its tight twisting.
Like a body steadily breaks down proteins,
I find what drives it, turns it, engulfs it with flames,
then douse the rising passion with cool reason.
I prod the wet ashes with a finger
until an image starts to form—
a bird, a breeze, a bloody field—
then slowly sigh purgation;
my poem is reborn.

Poetry is hard for me to write.
Before my pen begins its loving dance,
a figure arises fully grown in my mind;
I never recognize her at first,
choosing war instead of studying at her side.
Only as she bursts to freedom and I rest in her mercy
do I come to understand:
before I sung her delicate symphony,
my poem was reborn.

Poetry is hard for me to write.
My lover tells me I fill pages in the middle of the night,
but I wake and read poems written in an alien language.
I slave for months to learn the words and hear the verse.
My poem will be born!

All the great men conquer
or burn their love with a harlot’s breath
and sleep forever in the ashes.

All the great women pine
or just beyond the edges of the song
deride the fame their husbands win.

All the great poets laugh
to watch dead heroes dance at their command
or learn restraint when they are past.

I have little in common with the current incarnation of the Republican party but typically less in common with the Democratic party. Reading the exit polls from the recent United States election suggests to me that most people had the corruption of those in power or the Iraq war in mind when they cast their votes, but one the one issue that stood first in importance to me was the dismal attitude prevailing in this country towards immigration.

From the ranting radio talk show hosts, from most of the people I work with, from even those at the highest levels of political power I have heard a view towards immigrants and immigration that can most accurately be summed up in one word: xenophobia. “An irrational fear of foreigners or strangers.” Has America forgotten her history? I constantly hear that Mexican immigrants (nevermind that they probably comprise only half of undocumented entrants into the US, it’s all the same to these people) are only here to steal, murder, sell drugs, live it up off of our tax dollars, and take the jobs of good, hardworking Americans.

The United States, in case you have forgotten, was founded by immigrants from Europe, immigrants who were fleeing poor economic and social conditions for the chance to work hard to establish a new life. And throughout its history, a continuous flow of immigrant populations have maintained the strength and soul of America. Each was looked down on and oppressed by those who were “born in America,” imagining that this coincidence of parentage made them somehow better. And each has contributed in vital ways to the growth of America’s economy and culture. Where would the United States be today without the Italians, Irish, Germans, and Chinese, to name just four influential groups? Not the seemingly unbeatable economic and political powerhouse it is today.

The rush to prevent immigration from occurring, whether by old policies of artificially low legal quotas for certain ethnic groups or by new ones like a 700 mile long wall that evokes images of a divided Berlin, is extremely worrisome.

I shudder to think of what will become of the United States if those in political power continue to stay the course of an immigration policy rapidly turning from bad to worse.

Is it an animal sensation that I feel
when your teeth click softly against mine?
or my satisfied gaze begins to pierce
more deeply than a thrusting talon?

Is it relief that in my laughing swells
while viewing from so close your skin?
or an instinct too terrified to scream
foul curses in the middle of our prayer?

Or do you hear my ancient scars crying out:
waiting to be kissed?