Our Birthright: The Bright Wild Circus Flesh

Happy 449th Birthday to William Shakespeare!
b. 23 April 1564
d. 23 April 1616

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind."
~ Shakespeare ~
A Midsummer Night's Dream ~ Act I, scene i, 231 - 32

The Circus Rider ~ Marc Chagall

Chagall & Shakespeare just seem to go hand in hand!
[see also last year's post: "Happy 448th"]

*****************

A birthday poem . . . for Shakespeare . . . and for all of us!
When I Went to the Circus

When I went to the circus that had pitched on the waste lot
it was full of uneasy people
frightened of the bare earth and the temporary canvas
and the smell of horses and other beasts
instead of merely the smell of man.

Monkeys rode rather grey and wizened
on curly piebald ponies
and the children uttered a little cry--
and dogs jumped through hoops and turned somersaults
and then geese scuttled in in a little flock
and round the ring they went to the sound of the whip
then doubled, and back, with a funny up-flutter of wings—
and the children suddenly shouted out.

Then came the hush again, like a hush of fear.

The tight-rope lady, pink and blonde and nude-looking,
with a few gold spangles
footed cautiously out on the rope, turned prettily spun round
bowed, and lifted her foot in her hand, smiled, swung her parasol
to another balance, tripped round, poised, and slowly sank
her handsome thighs down, down, till she slept her splendid body on the rope.
when she rose, tilting her parasol, and smiled at the cautious people
they cheered, but nervously.

The trapeze man, slim and beautiful and like a fish in the air
swung great curves through the upper space, and came down like a star
--And the people applauded, with hollow, frightened applause.

The elephants, huge and grey, loomed their curved bulk through the dusk
and sat up, taking strange postures, showing the pink soles of their feet
and curling their precious live trunks like ammonites
and moving always with a soft slow precision
as when a great ship moves to anchor.
The people watched and wondered, and seemed to resent the mystery
that lies in the beasts.

Horses, gay horses, swirling round and plaiting
in a long line, their heads laid over each other’s necks;
they were happy, they enjoyed it;
all the creatures seemed to enjoy the gameiIn the circus, with their circus people.

But the audience, compelled to wonder
compelled to admire the bright rhythms of moving bodies
compelled to see the delicate skill of flickering human bodies
flesh flamey and a little heroic, even in a tumbling clown,
They were not really happy.
There was no gushing response, as there is at the film.

When modern people see the carnal body dauntless and flickering gay
playing among the elements neatly, beyond competition
and displaying no personality,
modern people are depressed.

Modern people feel themselves at a disadvantage.
They know they have no bodies that could play among the elements.
They have only their personalities, that are best seen flat, on the film,
flat personalities in two dimensions, imponderable and touchless.

And they grudge the circus people the swooping gay weight of limbs
that flower in mere movement, and they grudge them the immediate,
physical understanding they have with their circus beasts,
and they grudge them their circus-life altogether.

Yet the strange, almost frightened shout of delight
that comes now and then from the children
shows that the children vaguely know how cheated they are of their birthright
in the bright wild circus flesh.

~ D. H. Lawrence

P.S.
Added on Len's birthday ~ 30 June 2015

Chagall's Homage to Gogol

Cry of the Masses ~ D. H. Lawrence

Give us back, Oh give us back
our bodies before we die!

Trot, trot, trot, corpse-body, to work.
Chew, chew, chew, corpse-body, at the meal.
Sit, sit, sit, corpse-body, at the film.
Listen, listen, listen, corpse-body, to the wireless.
Talk, talk, talk, corpse-body, newspaper talk.
Sleep, sleep, sleep, corpse-body, factory-hand sleep.
Die, die, die, corpse-body, doesn't matter!

Must we die, must we die
bodiless, as we lived?
Corpse-anatomies with ready-made sensations!
Corpse-anatomies, that can work.
Work, work, work,
rattle, rattle, rattle,
sit, sit, sit,
finished, finished, finished--
Ah no, Ah no! before we finally die
or see ourselves as we are, and go mad,
give us back our bodies, for a day, for a single day
to stamp the earth and feel the wind, like wakeful men again.

Oh, even to know the last wild wincing of despair,
aware at last that our manhood is utterly lost,
give us back our bodies for one day.

Copyright

A few brief excerpts from Jan Donley's story, "Blind"
and T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
available on my latest
Fortnightly Blog Post:
"There on the Edge of Autumn"
After having his manuscript of Sons and Lovers rejected, D. H. Lawrence exclaimed: "Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, belly - wriggling invertebrates, the miserable, sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulse - less lot that make up England today. God, how I hate them."

Now, I realize that publishers and copyright attorneys are not one and the same. Still, I have to wonder if Lawrence would approve of how difficult and costly it can be to obtain permission to quote from his work. It certainly was for me anyway, back in the late 20th Century, though times are quickly changing (e.g., "The Captain's Doll" ~ on line!).

When I came across Lawrence's outburst on a page of literary insults, I was struck by the irony of the literary establishment's initially rejecting -- only to now so fiercely protect -- his work. The issue also came up recently when writer Jan Donley told me of the difficulties she was having in placing her short story "Blind": "I have not posted it because I was trying to get it published, only to find out that I need permission from Eliot's publisher to use the quotations in the short story. Sigh."

I could certainly commiserate with Jan about the copyright requests. Getting those permissions was one of the most disedifying experiences with publishing my doll book (dissertation) 10 years ago. Some were so kind, but others . . . not so much! Can you guess who was the meanest and the most costly -- The D. H. Lawrence Trust. So it looks like a similar crowd of Dickensian attorneys must have control of Eliot's work as well.

Another irony that has stayed in my mind -- one of the easiest to deal with and at minimal cost was the Angela Carter Trust, even though Carter had died young (at age 51, in 1992) and left behind a child, who deserved and could no doubt use the profit from his mother's work for his own education -- but no one was asking that from Carter's readers. On the other hand, there were no living relatives in receipt of the D. H. Lawrence money -- just some rule - bound law firm holding his work hostage and extorting the reading public!

I shortened the Lawrence passages as much as possible (not easy, since his short story "The Captain's Doll" was the focus of an entire chapter), but even then it cost me $250. And even though I had a "real" publisher (Assoc. Univ. Presses), I was responsible for paying the copyright fees (thank goodness for the McCartney Foundation!).

I called one of my advisors to be sure that I wasn't being hoodwinked by the copyright people, and he said, no, it's heinous, but that's the way it's done, and just bite the bullet and pay up, frustrating though it is! Really, I ask myself, is that what T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence wanted? What would Jesus do, etc. etc. Still and all, I remain yours in scholarship, stumbling blocks and all!

The Falling Fruit, The Certain Spring

"Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion."
~ D. H. Lawrence ~
On 14 November, my Fortnightly post --"Daffodils of Autumn" featured two seasonal songs by Adrian Henri, both dedicated to his predecessor A. E. Houseman. Yet another of Henri's autumnal poems is dedicated to modernist poet and novelist D. H. Lawrence. Henri offers an "Epilogue" to Lawrence's long poem "The Ship of Death," a ten - part extended analogy, in which Lawrence writes bleakly of death as a choppy voyage into the unknown, rounded out with the faint promise of rebirth.

Henri responds to Lawrence's poem by personifying and embracing the Dark. He dispels the fear of a long dark late autumn night with an open invitation of hospitality and in-gathering:

Epilogue
(for D. H. L.)
Autumn
and leaves swirl at the roadside
splatter on windscreens
summer hopes gone
fears for the dark
the long night ahead
light ebbing to the slow horizon

"Autumn,
The falling fruit,
The long journey,"

Prepare for the dark
O bring it home with you
tuck it into bed
welcome him into your hearth
into your heart
the familiar stranger at the evening fireside

Wind howls in the trees
and toads curl into beds of leaves
night moves into day
moths into velvet
hedges brown with dying willow-herb

Open your door to the dark
the evening snow drift in unheeded
light dies from the sky
gather the stranger close on the pillow

seeds lie buried
safe under hedgerows
gather him to you
O gather him to you

Take the dark stranger
Cold under blankets
Gather O Gather
Alone in the darkness

Adrian Henri ~

click here to read the entire text of "The Ship of Death"
by D. H. Lawrence
and here for further analysis of the poem

and here to read my most recent essay
"The Falling Fruit, The Certain Spring"

on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony

Peace: Like a Cat Asleep On a Chair

My Brother David's Cat, Saitong
PAX

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
To be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the
mistress
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world,
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of a master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.

by D.H. Lawrence

Summer Solstice Connection

Praying Mantis ~ 10 - 03 - 2011

"Oh, what a catastrophe . . . when we cut ourselves . . . off
from the rhythm of the year,
from our unison with the sun and the earth.
Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love
when it was a personal, merely personal feeling,
taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun,
and cut off from the magic connection
of the solstice and the equinox!"
~ D. H. Lawrence ~

09 - 13 - 2012
I can only hope that D. H. Lawrence will not mind that I have edited out the sexist language of the above passage for an inclusive version which does not sound insipid or detract from his original. Suffragettes forever!