The ghost of life: A surging tide of terrible disaster

We may never know the actual disease known as the Plague of Athens. It struck that city in the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 BCE), and wiped out an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 of the people who had crowded within the walls for protection against the Spartan besiegers.

Symptoms were reported (by the historian Thucydides) to include fever, coughing, sore throats, sneezing, vomiting, diarrhea and extreme thirst. Which might be accounted for by typhus, smallpox, typhoid or some flavor of viral hemorrhagic fever. Or it could have been something that died out and is waiting under layers of dirt and rubble for someone to dig up and unleash on the modern world.

Whatever the cause, the plague devastated Athens. Thucydides and others describe the societal effects—deaths were so numerous that survivors couldn’t properly perform the rites, and dumped corpses on the funeral pyres of others. Or they just appropriated pyres to cremate their own dead. The hardest hit were those who cared for the afflicted, so people abandoned the ill and dying. And no amount of propitiation of the gods seemed to do any good, so people abandoned them as well.

The Roman poet Lucretius devotes a good chunk of Book VI of De rerum naturae (On the Nature of Things) to really graphic descriptions of the symptoms. You can read some of it here, if you really want to. I have a fairly strong stomach, but even I draw the line somewhere, and I’m going with Sophocles.

Though set in Thebes, the plague that sets off the plot of Oedipus Rex probably draws on the Athenian situation. The play opens with the people of Thebes, through their spokesman the Priest, beseeching the king to guide them through this calamity. He’d become king through answering the riddle of the monster Sphinx, and sitting on the throne of their murdered king Laius. So they reckon he’s just the man who can solve the problem of this monstrous disease that leaves both the fields and women of the city barren.

Here’s some of what the Priest says:

So now, Oedipus, our king, most powerful

in all men’s eyes, we’re here as suppliants,

all begging you to find some help for us,

either by listening to a heavenly voice,

or learning from some other human being.

For, in my view, men of experience

provide advice which gives the best results.

So now, you best of men, raise up our state.

Act to consolidate your fame, for now,

thanks to your eagerness in earlier days,

the city celebrates you as its saviour.

Don’t let our memory of your ruling here

declare that we were first set right again,

and later fell. No. Restore our city,

so that it stands secure. In those times past

you brought us joy—and with good omens, too.

Be that same man today. If you’re to rule

as you are doing now, it’s better to be king

in a land of men than in a desert.

An empty ship or city wall is nothing

if no men share your life together there.

Notice the appeal—“best of men”; “consolidate your fame”; you saved us once, but what have you done for us lately? Oedipus can’t refuse—under the assumption that the gods sent the plague in retribution for the unsolved murder of Laius, he sets out to bring the regicide(s) to justice.

Well—as we know, Oedipus himself is the plague, and the cause, having (unknowingly) killed Laius and subsequently begetting a whole family with his mother Jocasta. It is a Greek tragedy, after all, and the blame for the ills of the world is not divine or natural, it’s the hubris of man.

The play ends with Oedipus blinding himself in remorse (Jocasta has committed suicide in shame) and setting off into exile. It’s somewhat facile, but Sophocles was writing for a different time. However, the final word—from the Chorus—are still valid today:

You residents of Thebes, our native land,

look on this man, this Oedipus,

the one who understood that celebrated riddle.

He was the most powerful of men.

All citizens who witnessed this man’s wealth

were envious. Now what a surging tide

of terrible disaster sweeps around him.

So while we wait to see that final day,

we cannot call a mortal being happy

before he’s passed beyond life free from pain.

The ghost of life: The fading order

Right now I’m feeling like I need something to capture my rage at where the world and my country are. The novel coronavirus was not predestined to be cataclysmic; governments all across Earth basically screwed the pooch, and this administration and its Repug enablers basically told everyone else, “Hold my beer,” and had at it.

So my entry for National Poetry Month today is Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-changin’”. Because not only is it scathing, it gives me hope. Ain’t nothing going to be the same on the other side of this pandemic, just as nothing was the same after the bubonic plague of the Fourteenth Century. I have no way of knowing what the differences will be—but I can tell you that the Black Death broke the feudal system in Europe.

Are you listening, Capitalism? How about you, senators and congressmorons?

“The Times They Are A-changin’”

Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide

The chance won’t come again

And don’t speak too soon

For the wheel’s still in spin

And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’

For the loser now will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’

It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don’t criticize

What you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin’

Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin’

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’

And since this is, after all, a song, here’s one of my favorite covers, by Tracy Chapman, from Bob Dylan’s Fiftieth Anniversary concert:

The ghost of life: Nothing left but sighs

There have been many pandemics in human history; our current one will just be added to the list dating back to at least the Plague of Athens in Fifth Century BCE. Cholera, typhoid, bubonic plague, enteric fever, influenza, smallpox, polio—humanity has been dancing with death as long as it’s been around.

This doesn’t even count self-inflicted cataclysms like wars, which often turbo-charge diseases in their wakes.

Those caught up in the horrors often take time to examine life overall, and their lives in particular. And they write their way through the exploration. So in this month of poetry, in the pandemic that’s reminding all us first world poseurs who gets the last laugh, I’ll be featuring poetic expressions of earlier catastrophes.

Today’s poet is Francesco Petrarca, known to Anglophones as Petrarch. I was first introduced to Petrarch in a humanities class in college. The humanities core curriculum was my primary consideration in choosing my school, and the value of that choice has been validated again and again.

Petrarch, a Renaissance Italian poet and classical scholar, was a humanist, which of course makes him kind of critical to the, you know, humanities. In fact, he’s known in some circles as the Father of Humanism.  He followed on Dante, both chronologically and linguistically, and was a contemporary of Bocaccio.

His use of language was foundational to the building of modern Italian. And he developed the poetic form we know as the sonnet: two stanzas, an octave and a sestet. The Petrarchan sonnet poses a question, an observation or an argument in the octave, and then turns it around or answers it in the sestet.

Many of his poems revolve around his unrequited and idealized love for the woman he refers to as Laura. The story is that Petrarch first clapped eyes on Laura at Mass on 6 April (Good Friday) 1327 in a church in Avignon, France. A married woman, she spurned all his advances, so he channeled his passion into his poetry. Laura died of plague on 6 April, Good Friday, in 1348 and Petrarch of course wrote through his grief.

I’m giving you two of his sonnets on the subject, No. 186 and No. 294:

No. 186

Occhi miei, oscurato è 'l nostro sole;

anzi è salito al cielo, et ivi splende:

ivi il vedremo anchora, ivi n'attende,

et di nostro tardar forse li dole.

Orecchie mie, l'angeliche parole

sonano in parte ove è chi meglio intende.

Pie' miei, vostra ragion là non si stende

ov'è colei ch'esercitar vi sòle.

Dunque perché mi date questa guerra?

Già di perdere a voi cagion non fui

vederla, udirla et ritrovarla in terra:

Morte biasmate; anzi laudate Lui

che lega et scioglie, e 'n un punto apre et serra.

e dopo 'l pianto sa far lieto altrui.

My eyes, that sun of ours is darkened:

or rather climbed to heaven, and shines there:

there I'll see her again, there she waits,

and grieves perhaps that we're so late.

My ears, her angelic words resound there,

where there are those who understand them better.

My feet, your power does not extend there,

where she is who set you in motion.

Then why do you fight this war with me?

Already every reason's lost to you,

for seeing, hearing, walking the earth:

Blame Death: or rather give praise to Him

who binds and frees, opens and shuts again,

and, after the tears, makes known another joy

And one more, but I’ll stop here.

No. 294

Soleasi nel mio cor star bella et viva,

com'altra donna in loco humile et basso:

or son fatto io per l'ultimo suo passo

non pur mortal, ma morto, et ella è diva.

L'alma d'ogni suo ben spogliata et priva,

Amor de la sua luce ignudo et casso

devrian de la pietà romper un sasso,

ma non è chi lor duol riconti o scriva:

ché piangon dentro, ov'ogni orecchia è sorda,

se non la mia, cui tanta doglia ingombra,

ch'altro che sospirar nulla m'avanza.

Veramente siam noi polvere et ombra,

veramente la voglia cieca e 'ngorda,

veramente fallace è la speranza.

She used to be lovely and living in my heart,

like a noble lady in a humble, lowly place:

now by her ultimate passing I am

not only mortal, but dead, and she divine.

My soul despoiled, deprived of all its good,

Love stripped and denuded of her light,

are pitiful enough to shatter stone,

but there’s no one can tell or write the pain:

they weep inside, where all ears are deaf,

but mine, who so much grief encumbers,

that I have nothing left but sighs.

Truly we are ashes and a shadow,

truly the blind will’s full of greed,

truly all our hopes deceive us.

The ghost of life: an unmusical ploughboy

Well, well—here we are in April, so you know what’s coming. That’s right—30 days of poems for National Poetry Month.

This year, we’re in a strange place. Well, most of us are probably in familiar places, but we’re here under strange circumstances as we attempt to flatten the COVID19 curve by social distancing and staying the fuck home. Bandwidth is straining under multiple streaming applications, home ovens are turning out loaf after loaf of artisan bread, people are breaking out the silly hats for video conferences.

And that’s just my company.

To start us off this month, I’m giving you “April Dusk”, by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. It kind of sets the tone, I think. I don’t know whether the impending calamity he’s anticipating in Europe is World War I or World War II; I suspect the latter. Either way—as with our current situation—everything is uprooted and nothing will be the same again.

“April Dusk”

April dusk

It is tragic to be a poet now

And not a lover

Paradised under the mutest bough.

I look through my window and see

The ghost of life flitting bat-winged.

O I am as old as a sage can even be,

O I am as lonely as the first fool kinged.

The horse in his stall turns away

From the hay-filled manger, dreaming of grass

Soft and cool in hollows. Does he neigh

Jealousy-words for John MacGuigan's ass

That never was civilised in stall or trace.

An unmusical ploughboy whistles down the lane

Not worried at all about the fate of Europe.

While I sit here feeling the subtle pain

Of one whose Tree of God has been uprooted.

First world problems

Well, this year March kind of gamboled in like a lamb, and is stalking out like an enraged lion with mange.

I’m not talking about the weather, which of course has been mucked about by climate change. I’m talking about life in a global pandemic, during which the US government has shown all the leadership of a banana republic run by a carnival barking clown.

Here in the Old Dominion, we are under stay-at-home orders until 10 June. Instead of sipping limoncello in Sorrento, I’m tapping a bottle of Costco prosecco. Yay.

Also, I’ve realized that all the olive bars in all the grocery stores have been shut down, and I don’t have enough pitted Kalamatas to see me through the next two-and-a-half months. I’ve already started rationing how many go onto my pizza bianca insalata and my Greek salads. Tough times ahead, man.

Still—I would give all the olives and all the limoncello to keep our healthcare workers and their patients safe, around the world and in my neighborhood. I'm not an empathy-deficient carnival barking clown.

Gratitude Monday: Love isn't lost

It’s Gratitude Monday and I’m halfway through cancelling a trip to Sorrento, Italy, which was scheduled for next week.

Months ago, I’d told my manager that my idea of a vacation involves trans-oceanic flights, so I’d be looking for two weeks at a whack. He was fine with that, and I started to consider where I’d like to go.

Well, revisiting Japan and Korea in the Spring got tossed because I found out Tokyo’s hosting the Olympics this summer, and I reckoned the place would be Looney Tunes in the run-up. I also figured I’d need more planning time for South Africa. Then I realized that I was about to be managing an external alpha test of my new product, and two weeks was going to be out of the question.

Hmm.

Late in January I thought about visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum, so I IMed friend of mine who’s a Napolitana. Could I do those two in a week’s time?

Friend: Yes! And you want to hike Vesuvio!

Me: I do?

Friend: Yes! And stay in Sorrento.

Well, alrighty then.

So I booked a hotel on the sea, and figured out the flights. (Amex was helpful with the former, but sadly is next to useless on the latter—they don’t show all available flights, so you end up having to go to Kayak or the like.) Also, sadly, Delta/KLM/Air France was not my friend—their schedules were crackbrained, and their fares likewise. But Lufthansa showed this incredible price drop bracketing Easter, which seems counterintuitive, but I took it. Also—the fare for DC to Napoli was exactly the same as DC to Roma, so I snapped it up and began checking travel guides out of the library.

I was going to spend Easter in Italy, and watch the Good Friday White and Black Parades through the city streets. I was going to eat seafood and imbibe two millennia of history. I was going to drink crisp Italian whites and breathe in the scent of lemon blossoms. I was not going to worry about engineers or customers. It was going to be heavenly.

Well—as we all know—about a month ago things started looking bad for Italy, and I watched as COVID19 started seeping southward from Lombardy and washed away my hopes of Sorrento in the Spring.

This weekend I cancelled the hotel via Amex. After waiting on hold with Lufthansa for a couple of hours, I listened to Amanda’s spiel about the benefits of holding the booking for future use ($50 in credit! No $300 rebooking fee!) and the downside of outright cancellation (normal refund time = 14 business days; current refund time = unknown); I decided to wait a couple of months before I request a refund.

I’m hoping Lufthansa is still around by then to give me my money back, and that I’ll be healthy enough and enough of the world is still around to make a trip somewhere worthwhile.

Anyway—as much as I was truly looking forward to this trip, if having to forego Sorrento is the worst thing that happens to me during this pandemic, I have absolutely nothing to bitch about, and a massive amount to be grateful for.

So I’m sharing this mashup of Italians singing CSN's “Helplessly Hoping” from their individual quarantine locations. This takes me so far back to my youth. And it gives me inspiration as well.