At Home in Exile: “The Liquid I”
by Ian Kluge
“A
Letter from Li Po”, one of Conrad Aiken’s last major poems, crystallizes his
beliefs about the individual’s place in a Heraclitean universe in which
relentless change constantly subverts our sense of a
identity. Through his reflections on the true nature of the self, Aiken shows
how we can attain a state of mind that accepts and even embraces our situation
despite continuous temptations to view it as devoid of all meaning. Like Li Po,
we must not despair but rather understand that if we are “exiles born” (Li Po,
IV,17), then we must learn to be at home in exile.
The
poem begins with a moving evocation of seasonal change to remind us that change
is the primary condition of our lives:
Fanfare
of northwest wind, a bluejay wind
announces autumn, and the equinox
rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon.
(I,1-3)
The reference to winds and
autumn reminds readers - but especially those who might recall Shelley’s “Ode
to the West Wind” - not only of the
immanent arrival of winter and death but also of the inevitable re-birth of
spring, evoked here by reference to the “bluejay wind” (I,1). Thus the poem
begins on a note that is both soberly realistic and hopeful, assuring us that
regardless of how bleak our existential situation may seem, nothing, not even
death, is permanent in a Heraclitean universe. This is re-emphasized in the
immediately following lines. Though Li Po is dead to us, “[s]omewhere beyond
the Gorge” (I,4) he is still lives,
looking for friendship or an old love’s sleeve
or writing letters to his children, lost,
and to his children’s children, and to us.
(I,
5-7)
He is still alive, albeit in a
different form, and present to us by virtue of his “letters” and poems. Li Po
is our contemporary.
Having
re-assured readers that in a Heraclitean universe death is not the end of our
life-journey but rather an advance “beyond the Gorge” (I,4), beyond the event horizon where others can no
longer see us directly, Aiken begins to explore the idea of change in more
depth. He begins by
asking, “What was his light?”, meaning by what light or wisdom
did Li Po guide his travels. However, Aiken refuses to answer the question
because if we become too attached to the answer he might give, we will be
diverted from the single most important fact of existence, change. Regardless of what the answer is, Aiken reminds us that “it changed for better or for
worse.” For similar reasons, Aiken refuses to answer the question of when Li Po
lived: “What was his time? Say that it was a change” (I,14).
This answer is the only one that makes any sense in a Heraclitean universe in
which time is constantly changing and, thereby, inherently meaningless since
the past is also subject to change. Consequently, one cannot answer questions
about when Li Po lived, at least not in any conventional sense of calendrical
dates.
However,
after refusing to answer our superficial questions for a second time, Aiken
develops his theme further by reminding us that the changes we experience are
as “constant as a changing thing may be” (I,15) . The
only constancy in the universe is the paradoxical constancy of change itself.
Superficially this might be seen as reason to despair, but in fact, it is the
foundation of all our hope since eternal change suggests we are immortal:
nothing, not even death, is final because death, too, is only a temporary
condition. Not only does the “chicory’s
moon-dark blue” (I, 16)
survive its transformations, but also the human spirit, or heart.
But
of the heart beneath the winecup moon
….
What
can we say but that it never ends?
Even
for us it never ends, only begins.
(I,
19 – 24)
The last two lines exemplify the
almost too subtle ambiguities that so often mark Aiken’s work. The phrase
“never ends” I, 24) is
intended to mean that “it”, change, will never end and that “it”, the heart,
will never cease. Aiken intends both meanings simultaneously because, in his
view, the two ideas are closely connected. In a Heraclitean universe, the heart
can never cease existing since no condition is ever permanent. Given Aiken’s
interest in Nietzsche, it is tempting to see this as a hint at the German
philosopher’s doctrine of the eternal return whereby all possible combinations
of atoms must inevitably re-occur over an infinite span of time. However, these
lines could just as well allude to the Buddhist notion that the ‘karmic chain’
which constitutes our ‘existence’ is eternal since no sequences of cause and
effect can ever end.
By-passing
the Nietzshean and Buddhist implications of these lines, Aiken proceeds to
explicate a third way in which Li Po is eternal, and, therefore, still with us.
Simply by reading the poems, we “assume / Li Po himself” (I, 27-8). In other
words, Li Po still lives and through us as we “spell down the poem down on her
page” (I, 24), “parsing forth / the sevenfold prism of meaning” (I, 26). The
act of reading allows us to “assume” or take on the role of Li Po through our
powers of empathy; we are able to feel our way into his life and situation just
as Li Po did the same for his poetic predecessors:
Like him, we too have eaten of the
word:
With him are somewhere lost beyond
the Gorge:
(I,
30-31)
Given the fact that the self is later portrayed as divine,
Aiken probably intends our understanding of these lines to be enriched by the
eucharistic connotations of the phrase “eaten of the word” (I, 30). These lines
portray reading as a ‘literary holy communion’ in which we become attuned to,
or ‘at-oned’ with the author and his work. In short, we become the poet Li Po, “lost
beyond the Gorge” (I, 31), and like him, we
…
write, in the rain, a letter to lost children,
a letter long as
time and brief as love.
(I, 32-33).
Amidst this cleverly presented secular communion, Aiken
also expands our notion of human identity. Our attunement or ‘at-onement’ with
Li Po changes us profoundly; our traditional sense of identity as limited by
time, place and other qualities is broken – and left behind for a greater, more
creative and far-ranging existence in which we too travel “beyond the Gorge”
((I, 31) and write great poetry by an act of spiritual participation in Li Po’s
work. This means that the boundaries of the “I”, our usual sense of identity,
are not as narrow as we tend to believe, a fact that Aiken will exploit in the
development of his renewed Heracliteanism.
The image of writing letters in
the rain effectively portrays the futility of trying to create anything
permanent in a Heraclitean universe. Even our deepest, most intense, energetic
feelings and thoughts, described here as “the dragon of his meaning” (II, 4)
cannot ensure survival. After all, in a Heraclitean universe, love, too, is
subject to change, and, therefore, “brief” (I, 33).
This recognition of the limits of love forms the transition to Part II of the
poem.
And
yet not love, not only love. Not caritas
or only that. Nor the pink chicory love,
deep as it may be, or even moon-dark blue,
in which the dragon of his meaning flew
(II,
1-4)
In these lines, Aiken rejects not only personal and
especially romantic and erotic “pink-chicory love” (II,2 ) as defense against
universal change, but also “caritas” (ibid.), a more generalized care and
concern for the well-being of others. He will not allow readers to escape the
challenge of ubiquitous change by turning to, or, imagining some enduring
‘platonic’ realm of perfect ideas or feelings.
In subsequent lines, Aiken
presents yet another reason why love is inadequate to the task of saving
ourselves and others from change. Even if our universe were not Heraclitean, it
is impossible because the objects of our love are “in the self’s circle so
embraced: / too near, too dear, for pure assessment” (II, 7-8). We cannot
‘save’ others by taking them ‘into’ ourselves because what we take in is not
the other as s/he really is in him/herself,
but as s/he is to us; our assessment is not “pure” (II, 8) because we only accept certain aspects of others
and, therefore, can only ‘save’ a part of them. Li Po’s letters, the poem tells
us, are crammed and creviced, crannied full”(II, 9-10)
“with other faith than this” (II, 11). Li Po’s other faith is in
……………………………….
sole pride
and holy loneliness, the intrinsic face
worn by the always changing shape between
end and beginning, birth and death.
(II,
13-16)
Li Po’s choice is existentially daring because he chooses,
as the very foundation of his faith, the conditions that most philosophers seek
to overcome: being alone. That which is a problem to
others, is a solution to Aiken. He begins this feat by concluding, logically
enough, that in a Heraclitean universe we cannot ask what a thing or person is,
(since that always changes) but can only ask about its motion, about where it
has been.
How
moves that line of daring on the map?
Where
was it yesterday, or where this morning
when thunder
struck at seven …
(II,
17-20).
This brings us to the problem of location: where is any
place in a universe in perpetual flux? If we ask where a place is, the answer
is either ‘here’ or ‘somewhere else’. But how can ‘here’ and ‘somewhere else’ remain absolutely distinct in a Heraclitean universe?
Logically speaking, they cannot, which is why Aiken writes, “But somewhere else
is always here and now” (II, 23-24). As the word “now” (ibid.) indicates, time
is also relative in the same way. In the language of modern physics, ‘locality’
of both space and time have no objective existence
amid universal change; from the viewpoint of classical physics, they have been
abolished.
Aiken is not afraid to pursue
this line of thought to an even more radical conclusion, namely, the
non-existence of self as an absolutely independent, isolated and eternal
entity. He tells us that in every moment “that lightning” (II, 24) of change
“crawls …on your eyelid” (ibid.) and, therefore,
each moment you must die. It was a tree
that this time died for you: it was a rock
and with it all its local web of love:
…
perhaps a skyful of Ben Franklin’s kites
and with them us. For we must hear and bear
the news
from everywhere: the hourly news,
infinitesimal or vast from everywhere.”
(II,16-33)
In these lines, Aiken revives the ancient doctrine of man
as a microcosm, though he does so from a radical Heraclitean perspective. In a
relative universe, all things are inter-dependent and thus continually
affecting one another. Aiken calls these universal exchanges in which we are
engaged “the news from everywhere” (II, 18). Because we receive this universal
“news” (ibid.), we are, in effect, microcosms in which all other events are
reflected.
By forging a link with a concept
endowed with such a rich intellectual heritage, Aiken is able to present his
potentially negative-sounding ideas about the self in a positive light. This he
begins immediately in Section III, where he hastens to assure us that our “sole
pride” (II, 13) is the natural condition of all things:
Sole
pride and loneliness: it is the state
the kingdom rather of all things: we hear
news of the heart in weather of the Bear
(III,
1-3)
The description of this condition as a “state” (ibid.) and
a “kingdom” (ibid.) shows that it should not be seen negatively, as a handicap
but rather as a guarantee of our sovereignty, or what later in this stanza he
calls our “divine loneliness” (III, 20) into which we gather the “news from
everywhere” (II,18). In other words, universal flux does not undermine or
impoverish the self but enriches it by enlarging our conventional notions of
self to include what was formerly considered to be ‘other’.
What
is this ‘man’? How far from him is ‘me’?
Who,
in this conch-shell, locked the sound of sea?
We
are the tree, yet sit beneath the tree ,
among the leaves we are the hidden bird,
we are the singer and are what is heard.
(III, 7-12)
In these lines, so reminiscent of Emerson’s “Brahma”,
Aiken re-affirms his conception of self as a microcosm and illustrates one of
its consequences, the denial of any absolute distinction between subject and
object. This, of course, makes a shambles of our conventional Western theories
of perception which pre-suppose such an absolute distinction. However, unlike
Emerson, Aiken does not rest comfortably with this insight as if it were the
end of our, and Li
Here
is the divine loneliness in which
we greet, only to doubt, a voice, a word,
the smoke
of a sweetfern after frost, a face
touched, and
loved, but still unknown and then
a body
still mysterious in embrace.
(III, 20-24)
Even when we accept the Heraclitean nature of self and the
universe, we are always plagued with doubts and questions because universal
change prevents us from attaining full knowledge of anything or anyone. How can
there be knowledge when two perpetually changing beings embrace one
another? Thus, in the end, not only is
the ‘other’ forever “still mysterious” (III, 24) but also our own feelings and
experiences of love which are themselves not immune to
change. In the last analysis, we are left “only to doubt; / from world within
or world without, kept out.” (III, 28 –29).
The last
line re-emphasizes the theme of exile; we are “kept out” (ibid.), barred by
change and resulting mysterious nature of all things from finding permanent rest
or comfort. Section IV begins with this theme, reminding us of Li Po’s travels
and then describing Li Po, the robins, the Ho-Ho birds – and by implication,
all beings - as “[r]overs of chaos” (IV, 4). “We fly with these,” (IV, 6) he
says, and then adds significantly, we
have always
flown, and they
stay with us
here, stand still and stay,
while, exiled
in the
still at the
Wine Spring stoops to drink the moon.
(IV, 7-10)
Amidst universal change, we may, indeed, be fairly
described as “rovers of chaos” (IV, 4) and yet, seemingly in contradiction,
Aiken claims that all things “stay with us here” (IV, 8) and that Li Po
permanently remains in the moment just before he allegedly drowned while trying
to drink the full moon from a lake. Thinking about this contradiction forces us
to realize the distinction between change and extinction. Too often we mistake
one for the other. However, when we change, we simply come to exist in new,
albeit perhaps unrecognizable form, but this does not mean we have ceased to
exist completely. In our new form, we continue to exist, as do our experiences
and memories which, in that sense, “stand still and stay” (IV, 8). Once the difference between ‘being changed’
and ‘being extinguished’ is clear, change loses much of its threatening nature
and we can embrace our natural destiny as ever traveling exiles.
Exiles
are we. Were exiles born. The ‘far away,’
language of desert, language of ocean, language of sky,
as of the unfathomable worlds that lie
between the apple and the eye,
these are the only words we learn to say.
Each
morning we devour the unknown …
(IV,17
– 22)
The last line should be read in the sense of “each moment we devour the unknown” which implies, of
course, that the world will be an endless stream of surprises. An ever-changing
universe is, by nature, ever-surprising.
Of equal import in the previous
passage is the introduction of the idea that the physical world itself is a
“language” (IV, 17) although one that we can never master. “[N]one knows the
source” (IV, 24) of this language Aiken tells us, then adds
…
We do not know, can never know,
the alphabet to find us entrance there.
so, in the street, we stand and stare,
to greet a friend and shake his hand
yet know him beyond knowledge, like ourselves;
ocean unknowable by unknowable sand.
(IV,
26-31)
In a Heraclitean universe, certain knowledge about
anything or anyone is impossible and we are required to live in a perpetual
state of agnosticism, of momentary, incomplete knowledge and eternal doubt. A
willingness to live in what Keats called “negative capability”, that is, a
willingness to accept and even appreciate intellectual uncertainty is
necessary, as is a cosmic open-mindedness that allows us to immerse ourselves
fully in the richness of every moment’s experience. We are, as the last line
suggests, an “ocean” (IV,31), a microcosm, which
reflects the growth of the entire universe.
Being a
microcosm and essentially unknowable raises the question of whether or not we
can find any sort of stable identity in a Heraclitean universe. In section V,
Aiken intensifies our understanding of this dilemma by dramatizing the problem.
He begins with reference to the famous dream in which Chouang dreamed he was a
butterfly, and upon awakening, wondered if he was now simply the dream of a
butterfly. Aiken then exclaims,
This
‘I’, this moving ‘I’, this focal ‘I’,
which changes when it dreams the butterfly
into the thing it dreams of; liquid eye
in which the thing takes shape, but from within
as well as from without: this liquid ‘I’:
how many guises and disguises, this
nimblest of actors takes …
(V,
12-18)
Given this multiplicity of ‘I’s’, common sense logic leads
to the question of which is the ‘real’ self, “the ‘I’ / of ‘I’s’?” (V, 30-31),
the “master of the cadence who / transforms all things to a hoop of flame, (V,
31-32). The tricks performed with the hoop are analogous to the various roles
or identities we assume and the personal meaning they provide. Naturally, Aiken
wonders which of identities is “true” (V, 34) and eventually concludes that
In every
part we play, we play ourselves,
even the
secret doubt to which we come
beneath the
changing shape of self and thing,
yes, even
this, at last if we should call
….
the only
voice that answers is our own.
We are
once more defrauded by the mind.
(V,
38 – 44)
This is a dramatic reversal of expectations. Our fear of
losing our identities in a wealth of roles turns out to be utterly groundless,
since each role and identity is a genuine reflection of who
and what we really are. Far from losing our identities, we cannot rid ourselves
of them no matter what we do. We are not lost – but trapped! The word
“defrauded” (V,
44) effectively conveys the shock of this discovery.
However, momentary appearances to the contrary, Aiken is not a
solipsist. In the next verse he rejects the shocked conclusion of the last
stanza and asserts that far from having been “defrauded” (V, 44), this process
is “the alchemy by which we grow” (V, 45), by which we expand our own
identities until, eventually, we become a world, a microcosm, and, thereby, add to the
growth of the entire macrocosm: “we add to cosmic Sum and cosmic sum” (V, 48; original italics). This pun opens an
entirely new dimension in Aiken’s philosophy of consciousness. ‘Sum” not only
means ‘total’, but is also Latin for ‘I am’, words that embody the essence of
self-consciousness. In effect, the universe attains self-consciousness in and
through each human being. The human mind is the agency by which the universe
comes to know itself and develop its self-consciousness. The growth or
evolution of human consciousness thus has cosmic dimensions.
Language
plays an essential part in this growth. The “alchemy by which
we grow” (V, 45) involves “the self becoming word, the word / becoming world”
(V, 46-47). ‘World’ and ‘word’ are two closely inter-related concepts
for Aiken: as indicated in the reference to “language of desert, language of
ocean, language of sky” (IV, 18), the things of this world are themselves words
in a language spoken by the universe. In humans, however, each word creates a
world because each word refocuses our awareness of our surroundings around a
different concept, often with new emotional and intellectual connotations.
This, in turn, creates a qualitatively new state of consciousness in us, and
with that we find ourselves in a new world. In Aiken’s view, a new world and a
new consciousness are the same things because we cannot distinguish one from the
other: we only know the world through our consciousness, and therefore, if our
consciousness changes, so does the world. Our ability to change the whole
universe by changing our consciousness is another reason why man is the
microcosm.
However,
Aiken is not a solipsist. Being a microcosm and being able to make and unmake
worlds by altering our consciousness does not necessarily mean that we have
complete and perfect knowledge of all things. In a Heraclitean universe, no
knowledge can ever be final or absolute. Without ever explicitly denying such
knowledge, Aiken conveys that it cannot be obtained by slyly teasing readers
with clever impossibilities. Perhaps, he says, one day we might find “the
square root of the eccentric absolute, / and the concentric absolute to come”
(V, 51-52). The “eccentric absolute” (ibid.) refers to the macrocosm, to the
absolute that is found outside us, away from the centre. The microcosmic self,
focussed on the centre, is the “concentric absolute” (V, 52)
. The nonsensical idea of the “square root” (V, 51) of these absolutes,
combined with the childish notion of finding “the prism at the rainbow’s root”
(V, 50) cleverly conveys the notion that such knowledge is not attainable – and
that attempts to find it are philosophically naïve.
To
counteract any despair we might feel because of the apparently negative
consequences of living in a Heraclitean universe, section VI provides a
celebratory interlude revealing the beauties inherent in this fact. In a
changing world, our loves are, indeed, multitudinous, but that also means our
loves have been far-flung into all of creation. As the following lines show,
there is rich potential for beauty in this:
The
thousand eyes, the Argus ‘I’s’ of love,
of these it was in verse that Li Po wove
the magic cloak for his last going forth.
(VI,
1-3)
Li Po’s poems, the products of his many momentary loves
for what he has seen, are his “cloak of words” (VI, 5), the various identities
he wears, and which he sends forward in time to us. However, as the last line
of this section makes clear, humans cannot long escape the quest for reasons.
Li Po hears “the lost cuckoo’s cry” (VI,17) “pierc[es]
the traveller’s heart” (VI, 18) with poignant questions: “why are you here? what brings out here? why here?” (VI, 19).
In a
Heraclitean universe where everything is inter-connected, the quest for reasons
is foredoomed since reasons can be isolated and identified only in a stable and
uniform past – something that is not possible amid cosmic flux and
connnectedness. Consequently, the poem
wastes no time in answering “the lost cuckoo’s” (VI, 17) question. Section VII begins, “Why here. Nor can we say
why here” (VII, 1), after which the poem provides a variety of reasons that
will serve as well as any: a “peachtree bough” (VII,1)
scraping “on the wall at
The only
way to achieve endurance in a Heraclitean universe is through repetition. From
the re-occurrence of any and all phenomena, patterns emerge and these, insofar
as they are repeated, endure and thus become the only possible basis of human
or non-human identity amidst universal flux. After all, what else can having an identity mean except possessing similarities that
provide continuity through change over a period of time? Because they endure,
these patterns or identities are, in a sense, timeless in the flow of time
itself: “The timelessness of time takes form in rhyme:” (VII, 17). The
“timelessness of time” (ibid.) is that aspect of time which, while not exempt
from the law of change, circumvents it by repetition and, thereby creates
stability. It is both ‘timeless’ - exempt from time - and ‘eternal’.
To illustrate his point, Aiken
notes that “the lotus and the locust tree re-hearse / a four-form song, the
quatrain of the year:” (VII, 18-19). The year receives its identity from the
pattern of cyclical behaviors of living things of the natural world. These
patterns make the year visible to us, just as in “the alteration of a bough /
times becomes visible, becomes audible” (VII, 23-24) as music and poetry. In these repetitions, or rhymes as Aiken calls them, “time becomes
still” (VII, 26), and \, even more, “time becomes time” (VII, 26).
Although startling, this conclusion is perfectly logical. Time is change, and
change can only be observed and understood in contrast to what is still or
unchanging. Thus, time and timelessness themselves are relative, observable and
comprehendible only in simultaneous co-existence.
Aiken
provides a historical example to illustrate his ideas about time. In order to immortalize - make
timeless - a spring in her garden, Lady Yang calls on Li Po to write a poem
about it. Inspired by the spring, Li Po writes “the song of Lady Flying
Swallow” (VII, 32) which was later played by the Emperor. The rhymes and
rhythms, i.e. the repetitions amidst the changing words and progress of the
song, capture and repeat the motions of the spring itself, thus immortalizing
it in the only way possible. The actual spring may disappear but its unique
identity as expressed through its rhythms continues in the song. The spring, and the entire story, also live on in the
repetitions of memory and subsequent retelling of this story in which, as part
of the repeated image, the moon remains permanently stationed in the sky, and
the water gushing from the fountain remains frozen.
They
story of “Lady Flying Swallow” (VII, 32) is more than a pretty tale, for it has
profound consequences: if a poem or song can capture the timeless identity of a
real, material thing in its repetitions, then the real world and poems share
the same fundamental nature. In each case, identity is found in a pattern of
repetition amidst change. Furthermore, it is essential realize that repetition
is not just repetition of explicit content of images and ideas, but also the
rhythms inherent in a work, in the patterns of disappearance and re-appearance
of sounds, in its ‘vibrations’ to use a theosophical term. The rhythm of a
thing is an integral part of its identity. Thus, Li Po’s song immortalizes the
spring not so much by praising it directly but rather by enshrining the
fundamental rhythms and rhymes of its being in verse. Therefore, we may
conclude that Li Po’s poem immortalizes the spring in two ways – in the
repetition of human memory and in the repetition of its identifying rhythm in
the poem.
The realization that Li Po has
‘translated’ the spring, an entity from the material world, into a poem marks
the beginning of Section VIII:
Text into text, text out of text. Pretext
for scholars or for scholiasts. The living word
springs from the dying, as leaves in spring
springs from dead leaves, our birth from death.
And
all is text, is holy text. Sheepfold Hill
becomes a name for us, and yet is still
unnamed, unnamable, a book of trees
before it was a book for men or sheep
before it was a book for words.
(VIII,
1-9)
In poetry, we translate one kind of text into and out of,
another. As Aiken so often does in the midst of serious matter, he indulges in
an extraordinarily clever pun at this point. He says that these poetic
translations are the “pretext”, i.e. the excuse or rationale scholars need for
their work as well as the pre-texts from which their own critical texts
originate. In this way, Aiken, who was himself a literary critic, affirms
literary criticism as creative work representing a further translation and
transformation of the poetic text. The subsequent image of new life springing
from dead leaves suggests that the poetic-critical process is as eternal and
natural as what we find in any garden.
Aiken’s
illustrations with particular references to Sheepfold Hill and verbal
legerdemain notwithstanding, serious problems remain. If a poem translates
something into words, “how can we know / where most the meaning lies?” (VIII,
13-14). Where is significance found – in
the thing or the poem about the thing? Furthermore, as we climb Sheepfold Hill
through bushes and grass, can we really say that we are moving “through the
words, the cadence and the rhyme?” (VIII, 19)? Are
they really the same? Do they share the same identity? These questions are
dramatically emphasized when he writes, “ Which is which? / The poem? Or the peachtree in the ditch? / Or
are all one?” (VIII, 24-26), which he immediately answers with
…………………….
Yes, all is text, the immortal text,
Sheepfold
Hill, the poem, the poem Sheepfold Hill,
and we, Li Po, the man who sings, sings as he climbs
transposing rhymes to rocks and rocks to rhymes.
(VIII, 26-29)
Granted the premise that the identity of things is in
their patterns of recurrence, in their rhythms and rhymes, it follows logically
that things which share the same rhythms are, external appearances
notwithstanding, identical. If a poem can repeat the
rhythmic, vibratory pattern of a stone, then the poem and the stone are one and
the same, united in harmonic identity. Each can be viewed as a
transposition of the other. Once this is accepted, then it also follows that
despite appearances to the contrary, Chang Hsu’s brush was literally “tipped
with lightning” (VIII, 22) since the brush repeated the rhythm of lightning
itself. The clouds on the scroll are also really present insofar as Chang Hsu
caught their rhythms.
Applying
this idea to Li Po himself, Aiken asks, “What is this man who sings?” (VIII, 30). Using ‘what’ instead of the ‘who’ is significant
here because it draws attention to the fact that if vibration or rhythm are
identity, then the difference between ‘who’ and ‘what’ disappears. A person is
what s/he does and the pattern established by such actions; in Li Po’s case,
this is singing. To illustrate how important this is, Aiken retells the story
of Li Yung, “the master of the epitaph” (VIII, 34) whose body and work have
completely disappeared but who is not lost because he and the texts he created – which are
essentially one – have flowed “into that
other text that knows no year” (VIII. 41), i.e. the cosmos itself which, as a
whole, is timeless or eternal. Li Yung’s rhythm is now joined to the rhythm of
the cosmos. “The peachtree in the poem is still here” (VIII, 42). He, like
everything else, is immortal, not only because the poem still survives but
because Li Yung, and the poem itself have become part of the new rhythm that constitutes our
present time. We can, if we wish, still hear Li Yung’s song in the peach-tree
itself: “The song is in the peachtree and the ear” (VIII, 43).
As if to
forestall a complaint that such ideas are too ambiguous and vague to be
satisfactory to thoughtful readers, Aiken informs us that
The
winds of doctrine blow both ways at once.
The
wetted finger feels the wind each way,
(IX,
1-2)
This startling statement supported by such a simple yet
effective image, opens the way to new reflections about the nature of the
relationship between reality and language. The “winds of doctrine” (IX,1) symbolize our
intellectual ideas, our rational thoughts and conclusions, and these, Aiken
tells us, are naturally dual, they “blow both ways at once” (IX,1). Our
knowledge comes by means of opposites; we know white by contrast with black,
‘good’ by contrast with ‘evil’, and ‘true’ by contrast with ‘false’. A
statement that something is white inevitably implicates and evokes the presence
of black. Because all human knowledge implies its opposite and no absolutely
clear, one-sided statements are possible, human knowledge is irreparably
ambiguous. However, this should not be interpreted, as philosophers often have,
as a short-coming in language or the intellect. The ambiguity of language is a
perfectly accurate reflection of the ambiguity of a Heraclitean universe in
which everything is always changing into something else. If language provided
clear, unambiguous ‘pictures’ of the real Heraclitean world, it would be
deceiving us.
That which
so many have deemed language’s greatest flaw, is, in fact, proof of its
greatest virtue. In what is surely an intentional philosophical joke, this very
reversal of judgments itself reflects the idea that the “winds of doctrine blow
both ways at once” (IX,1). Those who have condemned
language for its supposed ‘lies’, have unwittingly, also been praising it for
its truthfulness in reporting the nature of the universe to us.
Not content to leave matters at
this point, Aiken points to the existence of “song” (IX, 9), knowledge that is
more enduring because more inclusive and capable of embracing opposites.
Song
with the wind will change but still is song
and pierces
to the rightness in the wrong
or makes
the wrong a rightness, a delight.
(IX,
9-11)
In a Heraclitean
universe, sooner or later, every right will change into a wrong and vice versa
because right and wrong interpenetrate one another, as illustrated by the
yin/yang mandala in which each half of the circle contains a point of its
opposite. Song can permanently embody this knowledge because it is adaptable to
change and is not locked into any pretensions to one-sided, absolute and
changeless knowledge; song can recognizes the relativity, the complementarity
of right and wrong and includes them both in a greater unity.
To
challenge the reader, Aiken applies the same principle to human beings. The
“eager guests” (IX, 12) cannot stay because “the winds of doctrine blew their
minds away” (IX, 14). Subject to constant change like anything else, the human
mind is also ‘blown away’, and with it, our previous identities. Those waiting
at Li Po’s gate are not the same as those who originally arrived. We will have
“no loving-cup” (IX, 15) with those whom we invited not only because they are
no longer the same people, but also because we are not the same either: “for
not ourselves are here” (IX, 16). However, we have not simply perished into
absolute nothingness since “we are absent till another birth” (IX, 19). The
last line obviously affirms a theory of rebirth or reincarnation, but this can
be understood in two ways. Traditionally, in a metaphysical sense,
re-incarnation refers to an actual re-birth in the world; psychologically, it
may be re-interpreted as the repetition of certain psychological states that we
call our ‘identity’.
Aiken
maintains continuity between Sections IX and X by making reflections on death
and reincarnation the substance of Section X. He asks,
Have we come
this way before, and at some other time?
Is
it the
(X,
10 – 12; italics added)
Later he tells us that Lady Yang, like Sheepfold hill, and
all the other things we have named “move / into another orbit: into a time /
not theirs “(X, 39 - 41). They re-appear, are re-born in our times and will
continue even beyond us.
Section X begins with a
description of a bird brought down in hunting season. Aiken use this
commonplace event to illustrate the idea that even in the most extreme
situations all things, in this case, the killed, the killer and the observing
universe are one, part of a single, on-going cosmic process in which nothing is
absolutely separate from anything else. This is the “secret” (X, 6) the hunter,
“life” (X, 5), the bird, “death” (X, 5), and the universe, “heaven” (X, 6)
share amongst themselves as they exchange looks. Appearances notwithstanding, they are joined, parts of one process and share in one another’s
fate. Aiken calls this understanding a
“moment of union and communion” (X, 9). Each of the three is
‘re-born’ in and through the perception of the other, and thereby
re-born as part of the other’s life. By using the word “communion” (X, 9),
Aiken suggests that there is a spiritual aspect to this seemingly brutal event,
insofar as each one is offering itself to the other as part of an eternal
process. For the bird to make its sacrifice, the man
must also sacrifice himself by consenting to becoming a killer and the
surrounding cosmos must consent to becoming an impassive accomplice. This self-sacrificial aspect of the
“communion” (X, 9) is re-emphasized
when, a few lines later, Aiken points out that the “eye of death” (X, 13) which
is also the “eye of God” (X, 14) acts by “giving its light, giving its life
away” (X, 15).
The
complexities of Section X, which is, in some ways, the intellectual heart of “A
Letter From Li Po”, are best clarified for readers by
a review of its underlying metaphysical premises. All things, ourselves
included, are part of a cosmic process in which things change, that is, die
every moment to be reborn somewhat differently a moment later only to die
again. This concept has many consequences. It means, for example, that each
individual genuinely dies every instant and then, a new, similar, but not
identical individual is reborn. In one sense, the two are the same person,
since they resemble each other closely; in another sense, the two are separate,
disconnected and distinct individuals, who happen to share some qualities. The
first individual is irrevocably dead, even though the second resembles him in
many respects. Looking at the similarities of the successive “I’s” gives us the
impression of an on-going, continuing identity; but, strictly speaking, no such
single identity exists, since all we have are a succession of distinct though
similar “I’s”. Thus it is true to assert that we have an identity and just as
true to assert that we do not: “The winds of doctrine blow both ways at once”
(IX,1).
Furthermore, it is important to
understand that the whole universe, God, or, in Chinese terms, “heaven” (X , 7; t’ien) is
this process of constant deaths and subsequent ‘re-births’ of distinct but
similar replacements. Visually, one
might say that all things flash into and out of existence, thereby creating the
illusion of continuity just as a lantern whirled around one’s head creates the
illusion of a continuous line. Everything
dies and is always re-born, or as Aiken puts it, God’s eye “closes as in sleep”
(X, 14); “[i]t is the end of god each time, each time” (X, 24). The death and
re-birth of God is eternal.
The universe is also the “eye of
god” (X, 14), the consciousness of God “giving its light, giving its life
away” (X, 15). Though everything flashes into and out of being, it also
bequeaths its life to its successor. Each moment becomes the raw material from
which the next is created; this ‘recycling’ explains how there can be at least
some continuity i.e. sameness, repetition, even amidst universal flux.
Nonetheless, if repetition is the foundation of permanence and identity, it is
not a perfect foundation since not everything can be preserved
; inevitably some things must apparently be left behind. That is the
“always and unredeemable cost / of his [god’s] invention and fatigue” (X, 21-22). All things cannot be used or even in
subsequent re-creations. Creation involves destruction. However, even here the
loss is not absolute; having played a necessary role in the death and birth of
their successors, the things that ‘die’ live on implicitly in them. Once again,
“The winds of doctrine blow both ways at once” (IX,1).
The “eye of God” (X, 14) is
sentient, and feels the pain inherent in this process of endless death and re-birth for which reason it “cloud[s] itself as
consciousness from pain” (X, 16). Consciousness can ‘cloud’ or ‘hide’ us from
pain because once we become conscious of pain, we no longer suffer it passively
and without understanding. It is a common human experience that when our
suffering has a purpose, it becomes more bearable. The mere fact of
understanding our pain, of knowing its purpose seems to mitigate the pain
itself because the pain has been replaced by understanding as the focal point
of our consciousness. One might also say that consciousness transforms pain
into understanding and, thereby, raises unconscious and passive animal
suffering to a higher plane where it takes on meaning it never had before.
Aiken illustrates and develops
these ideas with the story of Lady Yang. Even though everything in the
universe, symbolized here by “the galaxies” (X, 25), falls to its “own / perplexed and
individual death” (X, 26-27), and even though Lady Yang is “beyond recall by
any alchemist / or incantation from the Book of Change” (X, 31-32), she lives
on “in the loving and the saying so” (X, 35). By loving her, we remember and
name her for a reason, and, thereby, “bestow an essence and a meaning, too” (X,
37). In so doing, we also endow her with
“new eyes” (X, 41) because our love, our consciousness of shared meaning and
purpose, make us one with Lady Yang who is thus reborn into our world. She, her
friends, indeed, her world
……………………………………….…move
into another orbit: into another time
not theirs: and we become the bell to speak
this time: as we
become new eyes
with which they see, the voice
in which they find duration, short or long
the chthonic and hermetic song.
(X,
39 –45; italics added)
Section X with its circular
structure, ends as it began, with the death of a bird on Sheepfold Hill.
However, our understanding of the nature and meaning of this death has altered
dramatically. We no longer see mere destruction but rather the transformation
of life, indeed, the elevation of this bird’s life into a ‘higher’ human orbit
by becoming part of human consciousness, not just in the hunter but in all
current and future readers of the poem. On the physical plane, the bird is
dead, but on the non-physical plane of meaning, understanding and significance,
it will survive as long as “A Letter from Li Po” itself.
The theme
of different things achieving identity through unity of meaning is emphasized
in Section XI.
The
landscape and the language are the same
And
we ourselves are language and the land,
together grew with Sheepfold Hill, rock, hand
and mind, all taking
substance in a thought
wrought out of mystery, bird-flight and air
predestined from the first to be a pair:
(XI,
1-6; italics added)
These lines say far more then that the dead bird, like
Lady Yang, attains new life in our consciousness. The phrase “all taking
substance in a thought” (XI, 4) shows Aiken’s thought turning strongly towards
some form of metaphysical idealism, since he is, in effect, defining
‘substance’ as the object of thought, as anything that is or can be thought.
Such a definition of ‘substance’ is integral to virtually all forms of
idealism. Readers may need to remind themselves at this point that the concept
of ‘substance’ must not be confused with ‘matter’ or ‘material substance’ with
extension in space. This common error, spread by Descartes’ and Locke’s
misunderstanding of Plato’s and Aristotle’s concept of substance as essence
ignores the existence of intellectual
substances or essences as objects of thought. Indeed, since whatever we know of
the material world is known by the intellect or mind, idealist philosophers
have traditionally argued that only intellectual substances exist. ‘Matter’
itself is really only our perception or idea
of matter. There is, these philosophers argue, no way of knowing whether or not
something exists behind this perception or idea.
If an object of thought is a
substance (in the idealist sense), it follows that Aiken’s claim that the bird
lives in our consciousness, is not mere verbal sleight-of-hand to cover a
philosophical difficulty. Both the original bird and the bird in our memory are
ideas, or objects of consciousness and, thereby, real in the same way.
Similarly, if a substance is an object of thought, then both the “language and
the landscape are the same” (XI, 1) in the most literal sense because both
language and landscape are ideas or objects of thought. The bird not only
possesses as ‘much’ substance as it possessed on Sheepfold Hill but also we,
the land, language and mind turn out to be the same basic ‘stuff’: “The
landscape and the language are the same / And we ourselves are language and the
land” (XI, 1-2)
However,
to understand Aiken’s thought at a deeper level, we must recall that there are
two kinds of idealism, subjective and objective. Aiken’s earlier work, and most
clearly in “Preludes for Memnon”, is imbued with Kantian subjective idealism;
the mind takes the raw materials provided by the absolutely unknowable noumenal
realm and shapes them according to the categories, most notably those of time
and space. Thus, humans become co-creators of the world. Objective idealism,
perhaps best exemplified by Hegel and Berkeley in the European tradition, holds
that all things are in and of themselves, no more than thoughts or perceptions.
Nothing truly exists but thought; to be is to be perceived, either by God, or
Universal Reason or some other such entity.
Because “rock, and hand, / and
mind, all take[e] substance in a thought” (XI, 3-4), the perceiving mind and
the object of thought, like “birdflight and air” (XI, 5) are not only the same
basic substance, but also “predestined from the first to be a pair” (XI, 6).
This marks Aiken, philosophically speaking, as a Kantian. According to Kant
what we call reality is created when the mind orders or organizes input from
the noumenal realm according to such categories as time and space. This gives
the mind tremendous power; it can, in Aiken’s words, “make and break / the
text, the texture, and then all remake” (XI, 9-10).
This
powerful mind that can by thinking take
the order of the world and all remake,
will it, for joy in breaking, break instead
its own deep thought and thought itself be dead?
(XI,
11-14)
Since the action of the mind helps create reality as we
know it, “the order of the world” (XI, 12), does the mind also make itself? Can
it “remake” (XI, 12) itself and thus put an end to all thought? Aiken provides a
negative answer to this profound question which has been the subject of long
debate in various schools of mystical philosophy. Mind is eternal, and thought
itself cannot be dead because
Already
in our coil of rock and hand,
hidden in the
cloud of mind, burning, fading,
under the waters, into the eyes of sand
was that which in its time would understand.
(XI,
15-18)
This means that thought and mind always exist as
potentials in matter and, therefore, can never be lost completely. Indeed,
Aiken goes further, seeming to espouse a form of determinism in which all
people and events pre-exist as a potentials inherent
in matter, and are pre-destined to appear sooner or later.
Already
in the Kingdom of the Dead
the scrolls were waiting for the names and dates
and what would there irrevocably
be said.
(XI,
19-21;italics added)
“The ‘Book of Lives’ / listed the name Li Po as an
Immortal” (XI, 23-24), that is, as one destined to be reborn in other times and
forms, like a “phoenix” (XI, 27). That is why it is possible to receive this
“Letter from Li Po” (italics added).
He is still among us not only through his work, but also because his presence
is still felt among everything that exists.
Viewing
our world from this timeless perspective also provides an answer to age old
questions about the existence and nature of evil. Viewing the universe from a
timeless perspective, that is, from a perspective that recognizes neither the
universe nor anything in it have a beginning nor end and that all changes and
merely changes in form, it becomes clear that evil is merely a temporary
imperfection or inconvenience. Evil is simply part of the endless process of
change, and is neither final nor irrevocable. From the sub specie aeternatatis viewpoint, we can
…watch
evil, like a brush-stroke disappear
in the last perfect rhyme
of the begin-all-end-all poem, time.
(XL,
30-32)
These lines contain a clever philosophic joke. Since the
universe is always starting and ending, then we have, at each moment, the “last
perfect rhyme” (XL, 31). Evil is always being wiped out in the arrival of a new
perfection. That being the case, one cannot help asking whether or not evil is
real in Aiken’s philosophy. Though he does not answer the question directly,
the logic dictates a negative answer; evil is, at most, a temporary state of
affairs in an incomplete process but does not exists as a final state of
affairs. From this point of view, Aiken’s philosophy represents a metaphysical
and moral optimism.
In the
last section of the poem, Aiken re-affirms the optimistic tenor of his
philosophy. Just as the tide rises and falls, so the mind opens and closes to
contact with the rest of the universe
The
hour is open as the mind is open
Closed
as the mind is closed…
(XII,
11-12)
Nothing and no one is lost in “the all-remembering world”
(XII, 16). As boats rise and fall on the tide, we rise and fall, are born and
die repeatedly in the cosmic flux, coming and going “on the
And
they are here. Li Po, and all the others,
our fathers and our mothers: the dead leaf’s footstep
touches the grass: those who are lost at sea
and those the innocents the too soon dead:
all mankind
and all it ever knew is here in-gathered,
held in our hands, and in the wind
breathed by the pines on Sheepfold Hill
(XII,
21-28)
In these lines, Aiken delivers a message of universal
salvation. All are ‘saved’, from the humblest leaf and “the wind / breathed by
the pines on Sheepfold Hill” (XII, 27-28) to our beloved parents and other
ancestors. He re-emphasizes his belief that all are saved and, thereby,
eternal, when he says that his ancestor Cousin Abiel, looking at the stars
felt, “the father within him, the mother within, the self / coming to self for love of each to
each” (XII, 36-37). Indeed, Aiken goes on to assert that all things survive in
each other because all things are, in essence, identical as objects of
consciousness. He describes the “Quaker Graveyard” (XII, 30) as a “mute
democracy of stones” (XII, 38) in which Abiel and Li Po “are the same, and it
is both who teach” (XII, 41) us our essential one-ness. We are all written in
“the leaves of love that fill the Book of Change” (XII, 44).
It should
not be assumed that Aiken simply introduces the theme of love at the end of “A
Letter from Li Po” to strike a soft, sentimental note. Logically speaking, love
plays an essential role in his metaphysic although he does not develop the idea
as much as one would have wished. Since the universe is in continuous flux,
and, since specific nature of this flux is that everything is constantly dying
and being born anew, it is only reasonable to ask what gives ‘unity’ to the
universe. Why is it a universe and not a fragmented, disjointed polyverse made
up of endless unrelated successive appearances? The answer is love. The
attractive force of love in its various forms from erotic to “caritas” (II,1) is what joins things
because it is part of the legacy that each momentary existence passes on to its
successor. Love unifies and, thereby, joins fragments into a unity.
Once we
realize that our loved ones are always with us, and, in a sense, are us, it is
clear why human beings can learn to be at home in exile: the truth is, that
with our loved ones so close, we have never left home! The “I” changes
perpetually, that is, leaves itself and its world behind at every moment – yet
at the same time, the “I” arrives at home in every moment as well! This is the
fundamental paradox of the self: it is lost and re-gained at every moment.
Changing, being “liquid” is the very strategy by which the “I” saves or
preserves itself in a Heraclitean universe in which nothing must hope to remain
as it is. We are indeed, “exiles born” (IV,17) and being forever exiled from
our former selves but if we learn to take advantage of this opportunity and see
it is a source of strength, not weakness, we shall consciously join Li Po as
immortals who find themselves at home in exile.