We’ve been listening to some of Beethoven’s music for cello and piano. Very beautiful. The strings and piano doing such different things, like two different songs at once. Sudden bursts of volume and then falling back, but all carefully controlled, unhurried and regular. I’d like to listen to more classical music, but I don’t have the head for it it seems. It takes a lot of focus and time, and you’ve got to know some musical theory, some history and background. It could be a really engrossing hobby. Maybe when I get older.
It’s a beautiful summer afternoon in Highwood, hot and still. I roasted coffee this morning with Seth at Newport for a few hours before lunch. Just walked up to Poeta’s Market for some drinks and to get out for a little. It was very quiet. A north shore woman was buying Italian pastrami and blade loin at the deli. Outside she got into a black Lexus and drove south on Green Bay, toward Highland Park. Five or six Hispanic kids came past talking in Spanish in high voices and drinking bottled water. They smiled at me and I smiled back. Burchell Avenue was completely quiet with no cars or people walking except me. Jenni and Aiden were still napping in the bedroom when I came back in, and Beethoven was still playing.
Here are a few lines from Hopkins that I found yesterday, about art and fame, which pertain to what I wrote before. “Fame whether won or lost is a thing which lies in the award of a random, reckless, incompetent, and unjust judge, the public, the multitude. The only just judge, the only just literary critic, is Christ, who prizes, is proud of, and admires, more than any man, more the receiver himself can, the gifts of his own making. And the only real good which fame and another’s praise does is to convey to us, by a channel not at all above suspicion but from circumstances in this case much less to be suspected than the channel of our own minds, some token of the judgment which a perfectly just, heedful, and wise mind, namely Christ’s, passes upon our doings. Now such a token may be conveyed as well by one as by many.”
Hopkins burned all his poems when he became a Jesuit, and resolved “to write no more, as not belonging to my profession.” Very hard to understand. The priesthood seems to me very amenable to writing poetry, and if anyone was aware of that, I would have thought it was Hopkins. On the day he burned them, May 11, 1868, his journal entry is, “Dull; afternoon fine. Slaughter of the innocents.” A funny way of putting it. A fine afternoon, a column of smoke, and the innocents slaughtered. Maybe he was right, though. It’s all worthless in the end, all inadequate and grasping. Anyway I’m far too in love with what few things I’ve written to admit to myself that it’s really all rubbish.
For seven years he didn’t write anything, and then only started again at the behest of his Father superior. His poetry was passed among friends, but he begged them not to publish it. It’s hard to imagine all the time and effort spent on those poems without any thought of publishing them. He was afraid they’d be misunderstood. It’s only through his friends that we have these, and they were published only after he died. The joy was in doing a thing well. “For Christ plays in ten thousand places/Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/To the Father through the features of men’s faces.” It’s easier to burn all your poems when you aren’t preoccupied with their being read and praised. It was whom they praised, and He had already seen them all. It’s a very foreign way to think about your writing, but an honest one, and once you see it it’s evident all through his poetry. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” said the Preacher, and St. Paul wrote, “I count everything as loss…”
Summer is winding down, and we’ve moved into a new place, in Highwood. Much more pleasant, with light blue walls, wood floors and air conditioning. The baby is laughing now, and rolling over. He’s very happy most of the time. It’s still hot but not too hot. I have a lot of work to finish up for my summer courses this week and I’m feeling the motivation ebb and sputter. Sort of dreading the next year for that reason, and wondering often what’s next. I think we’ll stay here for a while longer, at least while Jenni finishes her nursing program.
“To Christ our Lord.”
