Reflections on Poetry

I have the constant feeling: I will recover, I can recover. I slept very well. None of those dreams or other morbid symptoms. Tomorrow dear O will come to me, and everything will be as simple, right, and limited as a circle. I do not fear this word “limitation.” The function of man’s highest faculty, his reason, consists precisely of the continuous limitation of infinity, the breaking up of infinity into convenient, easily digestible portions— differentials. This is precisely what lends my field, mathematics, its divine beauty. And it is the understanding of this beauty that the other one, I-330, lacks. However, this is merely in passing—a chance association.

All these thoughts—in time to the measured, regular clicking of the wheels of the underground train. I silently scanned the rhythm of the wheels and R’s poems (from the book he had given me yesterday). Then I became aware of someone cautiously bending over my shoulder from behind and peering at the opened page. Without turning, out of the merest corner of my eye, I saw the pink wide wing-ears, the double-bent… it was he! Reluctant to disturb him, I pretended not to notice. I cannot imagine how he got there; he did not seem to be in the car when I entered.

This incident, trivial in itself, had a particularly pleasant effect upon me; it strengthened me. How good it is to know that a vigilant eye is fixed upon you, lovingly protecting you against the slightest error, the slightest misstep. This may seem somewhat sentimental, but an analogy comes to my mind—the Guardian Angels that the ancients dreamed of. How many of the things they merely dreamed about have been realized in our life!

At the moment when I felt the Guardian Angel behind my back, I was enjoying a sonnet entitled “Happiness.” I think I will not be mistaken if I say that it is a poem of rare and profound beauty of thought. Here are its first four lines:

Eternally enamored two times two.

Eternally united in the passionate four,

Most ardent lovers in the world—

Inseparable two times two…

And so on—about the wise, eternal bliss of the multiplication table.

Every true poet is inevitably a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus, but only Columbus succeeded in discovering it. The multiplication table existed for centuries before R-13, yet it was only R-13 who found a new Eldorado in the virginal forest of figures. And indeed, is there any happiness wiser, more unclouded than the happiness of this miraculous world? Steel rusts. The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring—hence he erred himself. The multiplication able is wiser and more absolute than the ancient God: it never—do you realize the full meaning of the word?—it never errs. And there are no happier figures than those which live according to the harmonious, eternal laws of the multiplication table. No hesitations, no delusions. There is only one truth, and only one true way; this truth is two times two, and the true way—four. And would it not be an absurdity if these happily, ideally multiplied twos began to think of some nonsensical freedom—i.e., clearly, to error? To me it is axiomatic that R-13 succeeded in grasping the most fundamental, the most…

At this point I felt once more—first at the back of my head, then at my left ear—the want, delicate breath of my Guardian Angel. He had obviously noticed that the book on my lap was now dosed and my thoughts far away. Well, I was ready, there and then, to open all the pages of my mind to him; there was such serenity, such joy in this feeling. I remember: I turned and looked into his eyes with pleading insistence, but he did not understand, or did not wish to understand, and asked me nothing. Only one thing remains to me—to speak to you, my unknown readers, about everything. (At this moment you are as dear and near and unattainable to me as he was then.)

My reflections proceeded from the part to the whole: the part, R-13; the majestic whole, our Institute of State Poets and Writers. I wondered at the ancients who had never realized the utter absurdity of their literature and poetry. The enormous, magnificent power of the literary word was completely wasted. It’s simply ridiculous—everyone wrote anything he pleased. Just as ridiculous and absurd as the fact that the ancients allowed the ocean to beat dully at the shore twenty-four hours a day, while the millions of kilogrammometers of energy residing in the waves went only to heighten lovers’ feelings. But we have extracted electricity from the amorous whisper of the waves; we have transformed the savage, foam-spitting beast into a domestic animal; and in the same way we have tamed and harnessed the once wild element of poetry. Today, poetry is no longer the idle, impudent whistling of a nightingale; poetry is civic service, poetry is useful.

Take, for example, our famous “mathematical couplets.” Could we have learned in school to love the four rules of arithmetic so tenderly and so sincerely without them? Or “Thorns,” that classical image: the Guardians as the thorns on the rose, protecting the delicate flower of the State from rude contacts… Whose heart can be so stony as to remain unmoved at the sight of innocent childish lips reciting like a prayer the verse:

“The bad boy rudely sniffed the rose, But the steely thorn pricked bis nose. The mischief-maker cries, ‘Oh, Oh,’ And runs as fast as he can go,” and so on.

Or the Daily Odes to the Benefactor? Who, upon reading them, will not bow piously before the selfless labors of this Number of Numbers? Or the awesome Red Flowers of Court Sentences? Or the immortal tragedy He Who Was Late to Work? Or the guidebook Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene?

All of our life, in its entire complexity and beauty, has been engraved forever in the gold of words.

Our poets no longer soar in the empyrean; they have come down to earth; they stride beside us to the stern mechanical March of the Music Plant. Their lyre encompasses the morning scraping of electric toothbrushes and the dread crackle of the sparks in the Benefactor’s Machine; the majestic echoes of the Hymn to the One State and the intimate tinkle of the gleaming crystal chamberpot; the exciting rustle of dropping shades, the merry voices of the latest cookbook, and the scarcely audible whisper of the listening membranes in the streets.

Our gods are here, below, with us—in the office, the kitchen, the workshop, the toilet; the gods have become like us. Ergo, we have become as gods. And we shall come to you, my unknown readers on the distant planet, to make your life as divinely rational and precise as ours.

Thirteenth Entry

TOPICS:

Fog

Thou