Apologia pro vita sua

[PrinceMyshkin]

Who made me old, and who
made me self-centered, a rock
more solid the deeper you cut into it?

In the end there is nothing to tell
but truth and nothing
but lies to tell it with.

[Hawkman]

If the truth may be revealed in a lie, I wonder how many lies are concealed behind great truths. Nurture over nature is an eternal question. What makes us who we are?
The modern sages, the priests of Psyche, would claim nurture, whilst those of religious bent would claim nature. Is it that both are true, or neither? One man's truth is another man's falshood, leaving us with your poem, I suppose. :D

Best, H

[hillwalker]

Mm... this requires further thought. Cryptic, enigmatic.

[breathtest]

i suppose that lies can quite often tell us more about the truth than the truth can. i like this poem, Prince. i love the futility of the first question, 'who made me old?' Time would be my first answer, but is time just something we've invented? either way getting old is going to happen no matter what questions we ask. thanks for posting this.

[breathtest]

I have just googled the title of the poem and came up with this quote from Charles Kingsley: 'Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to the Saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so."

i think this is what the poem is getting at. i hope i'm right. your poetry is very clever Prince. One might even call it cunning.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Many thanks Hillwaker. Hawkman, Breathtest and Breathtest:


I have just googled the title of the poem and came up with this quote from Charles Kingsley: 'Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to the Saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so."

i think this is what the poem is getting at. i hope i'm right. your poetry is very clever Prince. One might even call it cunning.

Frankly I don't know offhand whether my poem is getting at what Kingsley wrote in interpretation of Cardinal Newman.

[breathtest]

well i think the poem is, even if you didn't know it ;)

[Delta40]

I like how a rock is more solid the deeper you cut into it as opposed to we're all soft on the inside.

[dafydd manton]

Still not sure quite what to make of this. Deep and meaningful, or cynical? Looking for something, or rejecting it?

[Bar22do]

Only the second "who" reads in place, as for the first, it might be "what" as well...
S1 breathes resistance and N's self-justification. And I wonder, who's motivated enough to strain and cut deeper into more and more solid...
S2 is promising (though the lack of S3's expected truth/avowal disappoints) and I liked its

"and nothing but lies to tell it with"

which emphasizes the importance of sticking to the truth at least in the end (any surplus being but a lie).
The question remains, as remarked previously, what the truth really is.

Cleverly put, as often more an aphorism than a verse, but certainly thought provoking. Thanks a lot.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Many thanks brreathtest, Delta and Dafy.

As for

Only the second "who" reads in place, as for the first, it might be "what" as well...

I disagree with you here because the narrator is speaking out of resentment and in such a mood, one would prefer a "who" to address one to rather than to a process, especially a process that is applied to everyone, whereas he feels his age to be a personal affront


S1 breathes resistance and N's self-justification. And I wonder, who's motivated enough to strain and cut deeper into more and more solid...

Implicitly he has been loved, or someone has wished to understand him as the pathway to love or empathy, and we all, I think, have felt it as a personal challenge to get beyond the armour of a seemingly well-armoured person.


S2 is promising (though the lack of S3's expected truth/avowal disappoints) and I liked its

"and nothing but lies to tell it with"

which emphasizes the importance of sticking to the truth at least in the end (any surplus being but a lie).
The question remains, as remarked previously, what the truth really is.

Cleverly put, as often more an aphorism than a verse, but certainly thought provoking. Thanks a lot.



I'm fond of the statement by Abraham Maslow: “We cannot be more honest with others than we are with ourselves,” but there is for me a fallacy in this doctrine, i.e. the question of how we know when we are being perfectly honest with ourselves, since we are both the judge and the object of the inquiry. What I would call the tragic cynicism of my final lines is incorporated in the German word lebensluege which, loosely translated, means either the lie we live by or the lie that is necessary for our survival.

[MANICHAEAN]

Prince

O quid solutes est beatius curis?

Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino

Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum

Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto.

Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Prince

O quid solutes est beatius curis?

Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino

Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum

Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto.

Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.

Thank God for Google! But, man! That is a bleak response to what I wrote...

[dafydd manton]

Strange thing, Prince, this poem always makes me think of a particular song, "Behind Blue Eyes", by The Who. See what you think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfuWXRZe9yA

[PrinceMyshkin]

Strange thing, Prince, this poem always makes me think of a particular song, "Behind Blue Eyes", by The Who. See what you think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfuWXRZe9yA

I've clicked on the youtube, thanks, I can see why you associate it with my poem.

[Hawkman]

Prince

O quid solutes est beatius curis?

Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino

Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum

Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto.

Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.


Thank God for Google! But, man! That is a bleak response to what I wrote...

The quote is a fragment of Ciaus Valerius Cantullus, (XXX) the entire poem being a hymn of praise to returning home, as far as I can see.

I found this transation of the quoted passage:

How blessed to put cares away from mind
And rest again on my familiar bed,
To come back home from distant toil to find
That this is where my toil has always led.

I don't find it particularly bleak as a response, Prince, more an acceptance (in context) that the destination is inevitable and ultimately a comfort.

One is reminded that in some classical poetry the Gods were said to envy man's mortality.

Best, H

[MANICHAEAN]

I was also a bit confused at it being described as "bleak" but did not pursue it.

My translation is more dated in terms of language usage. i.e.

O what is more blessed than to throw cares aside,
As the mind puts down its burden and weary with the labour of far journeys,
We return home and rest on the couch that we longed for.
This alone is worth all that labour.

[Hawkman]

I would say that from my limited (and diminishing) Latin vocabulary, yours is probably closer as a more literal translation :D Thanks for posting the quote and excercising my brain :D

[MANICHAEAN]

H.
Why don't you start a thread on latin extracts? There is some sublime stuff out there & I'm sure we all need to dust off those cobwebs. Its perhaps too much of a cheek to hijack Prince's thread!
Regards
M.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Perhaps you're the one to start such a thread. Thanks Manichean and Hawkman for your respective translations. I'd come upon another one that did seem more bleak than what either of you posted; both of which are indeed more in keeping with my intention in this thread.

I'll post another one soon with a somewhat more bleak reflection on "truth".

[MANICHAEAN]

Look forward to it Prince.

By the way, going back to your poem. I've read it a number of times & on each occasion the double blow of sadness, almost a reluctant finality of acceptance, hits me in the last three lines. Maybe its my relentless accelleration towards the final precipice! Ha Ha

Regards
M.

[PrinceMyshkin]

If the truth may be revealed in a lie, I wonder how many lies are concealed behind great truths. Nurture over nature is an eternal question. What makes us who we are?
The modern sages, the priests of Psyche, would claim nurture, whilst those of religious bent would claim nature. Is it that both are true, or neither? One man's truth is another man's falsehood, leaving us with your poem, I suppose. :D

Best, H

You will have noticed perhaps my response to Bar, where I cited the German word "lebensleuge" and did my best to translate it. Are you familiar with the great word that Stephen Colbert coined: "truthiness": Wikipedia:
"In satire, truthiness is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts."

We all, as it applies to my poem, strive to some degree or other depending on the situation to express "truth" but more often than not it is "truthiness" that we speak, a semblance of not the but our truth; and thanks to our need to be thought well of, no less than to think well of ourselves, those truths are often semi-lies...

[Hawkman]

Yes, Prince. I am. However, I don't think that it's application should be limited to satire. I regularly encounter people who live their lives by such tenets, feeding off prejudice and ignorance. But truth remains as subjective as lies. We are all, probably, guilty of self delusion in some aspect of our lives.

[blank|verse]

An ambitiously philosophical piece, as so often, Prince!

It has a slightly disjointed feel; starting a two-stanza poem with such an imploring interrogative, one naturally expects the second stanza to form an answer, of some sort. What follows is a relevant, but tangential statement; which, while thought-provoking, I found a little too abstract to really deliver the punch I felt the poem promised.

But the poem certainly stands up to repeated reading, and has great strength in being so short and 'solid', its form thereby nicely echoing the metaphor of the first stanza.

And looking at the poetry, the more I read the third line

more solid the deeper you cut into it?
the more I feel 'into it' is redundant; although saying 'deeper you cut' doesn't quite sound right; perhaps 'deeper it's cut' solves that? I think part of the reason this reads better is that the three lines could be realigned to become two lines of iambic pentameter:

Who made me old, and who made me self-centered,
a rock more solid the deeper it's cut?
I'm not suggesting you change it to two lines, three in context works fine, just stating that as a reason why a shorter line has more rhythm. My other suggestion is I feel a caesura of some kind in line 5 after 'truth' would help just to slow the poem a touch before the final thought is delivered.

But overall another great piece, Prince.

[Jerrybaldy]

This late at the party there is nothing to add but to say its a thought provoking welcome piece.

[angliholic]

Shorter than your normal poems,
yet more expressive and thought-provoking!
I love it!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks, Jerry, Hawkman, Angliholic, and


An ambitiously philosophical piece, as so often, Prince!

It has a slightly disjointed feel; starting a two-stanza poem with such an imploring interrogative, one naturally expects the second stanza to form an answer, of some sort. What follows is a relevant, but tangential statement; which, while thought-provoking, I found a little too abstract to really deliver the punch I felt the poem promised.

But the poem certainly stands up to repeated reading, and has great strength in being so short and 'solid', its form thereby nicely echoing the metaphor of the first stanza.

And looking at the poetry, the more I read the third line

the more I feel 'into it' is redundant; although saying 'deeper you cut' doesn't quite sound right; perhaps 'deeper it's cut' solves that? I think part of the reason this reads better is that the three lines could be realigned to become two lines of iambic pentameter:

Who made me old, and who made me self-centered,
a rock more solid the deeper it's cut?
I'm not suggesting you change it to two lines, three in context works fine, just stating that as a reason why a shorter line has more rhythm. My other suggestion is I feel a caesura of some kind in line 5 after 'truth' would help just to slow the poem a touch before the final thought is delivered.

But overall another great piece, Prince.

While I've always valued and will continue to read with great interest and respect your comments on my and others' poems, I feel that I have settled on or into my own voice and while I would hope to please you and other discerning readers, I'd rather be true to my voice (even if wrong) than technically flawless.