Not really bearing direct relation to Adam's last poem, like I said in the comments I would try to do, but here's some stuff I've been looking at which I wanted to toss out. I'm mostly interested in writing that self-consciously generalizes about life and the human scene. Here's Byron in "Don Juan", Canto VII
When we know what all are, we must bewail us,
But nevertheless I hope it is no crime
To laugh at all things, for I wish to know
What after all are all things - but a show?
[...]
They accuse me - me - the present writer of
The present poem of - I know not what -
A tendency to undertake and scoff
All human power and virtue and that;
And this they say in language rather rough.
Good God! I wonder what they would be at!
I say no more than has been said in Dante's
Verse and by Solomon and by Cervantes,
By Swift, by Machiavel, by Rochefoucault,
By Fenelon, by Luther, by Plato,
By Tillofson and Wesley and Rousseau
Who knew this life was not worth a potato.
'Tis not their fault nor mine if this be so.
For my part, I pretend not to be Cato
Nor even Diogenes, We live and die,
But which is best, you know no more than I.
Socrates said our only knowledge was
'To know that nothing could be known,' a pleasant
Science enough, whch levels to an ass
Each man of wisdom, future, past, or present
Newton (that proverb of the mind) alas,
Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent,
That he himself felt only 'like a youth
Picking up shells by the the great ocean - Truth.'
Ecclesiastes said that all is vanity;
Most modern preachers say the same or show it
By their examples of true Christianity.
In short all know or very soon may know it;
And in this scene of all-confessed inanity,
By saint, by sage, by preacher, and by poet,
Must I restrain me through the fear of strife
From holding up the nothingness of life?
Dogs or men (for I flatter you in saying
That ye are dogs - your betters far), ye may
Read or read not what I am now essaying
To show ye what ye are in every way.
As little as the moon stops for the baying
Of wolves, will the bright Muse withdraw one ray
From out her skies. Then howl your idle wrath,
Whe she still silvers o'er your gloomy path!
Here's Han Shan (Cold Mountain), ancient Chinese hermit poet (translated by Red Pine):
Brothers share five districts
father and sons five states
to learn where the wild ducks fly
follow the white-hare banner
find a magic melon in your dreams
steal a sacred orange from the palace
far away from your native land
swim with fish in a stream
(Poem 13)
The new year ends a year of sorrow
spring finds everything fresh
mountain flowers laugh with green water
cliff trees dance with blue mist
bees and butterflies seem so happy
birds and fishes look lovelier still
the joy of companionship never ends
who can sleep psat dawn
(24)
Since I came to Cold Mountain
how many thousand years have passed
accepting my fate I fled to the woods
to dwell and gaze in freedom
no one visits the cliffs
forever hidden by clouds
soft graass serves as a mattress
my quilt is the dark blue sky
a boulder makes a fine pillow
Heaven and Earth can crumble and change
(26)
Who takes the Cold Mountain Road
takes a road that never ends
the rivers are long and piled with rocks
the streams are wide and choked with grass
it's not the rain that makes the moss slick
and it's not the wind that makes the pines moan
who can get past the tangles of the world
and sit with me in the clouds
(32)
They don't know all that much about Han Shan cept that he went up to this mountain, and seems to have both Buddhist and Daoist influences (most of those liberation-seeking types stuck to one or the other). What I think is interesting is how you can take the drift of those short poems, and see the idea magnified and made invective under the pen of Nietzsche. This is from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. Walter Kaufmann (if you ever read Nietzsche, his are the best translations to read):
ON THE NEW IDOL
Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not where we live, my brothers: here there are states. State? What is that? Well then, open your ears to me, for now I shall speak to you about the death of peoples.
State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tells lies too; and this lie crawls out of its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." That is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.
It is annihilators who set traps for the many and call them "state": they hang a sword and a hundred appetites over them.
Where there is still a people, it does not understand the state and hates it as the evil eye and the sin against customs and rights.
This sign I give you: every people speaks its tongue of good and evil, which the neighbor does not understand. It has invented its own language of customs and rights. But the state tells lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies- and whatever it has it has stolen. Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, and bites easily. Even its entrails are false. Confusion of tongues of good and evil: this sign I give you as the sign of the state. Verily, this sign signifies the will to death. Verily, it beckons to the preachers of death.
All-too-many are born: for the superfluous the state was invented.
Behold, how it lures them, the all-too-many- and how it devours them, chews them, and ruminates!
"On earth there is nothing greater than I: the ordering finger of God am I"- thus roars the monster. And it is not only the long-eared and shortsighted who sink to their knees. Alas, to you too, you great souls, it whispers its dark lies. Alas, it detects the rich hearts which like to squander themselves. Indeed, it detects you too, you vanquishers of the old god. You have grown weary with fighting, and now your weariness still serves the new idol. With heroes and honorable men it would surround itself, the new idol! It likes to bask in the sunshine of good consciences- the cold monster!
It will give you everything if you will adore it, this new idol: thus it buys the splendor of your virtues and the look of your proud eyes. It would use you as bait for the all-too-many.
Indeed, a hellish artifice was invented there, a horse of death, clattering in the finery of divine honors. Indeed, a dying for many was invented there, which praises itself as life: verily, a great service to all preachers of death!
State I call it where all drink poison, the good and the wicked; state, where all lose themeselves, the good and the wicked; state, where the slow suicide of all is called "life."
Behold the superfluous! They are always sick; they vomit their gall and call it a newspaper. They devour each other and cannot even digest themselves.
Behold the superfluous! They gather riches and become poorer with them. They want power and first the lever of power, much money- the impotent paupers!
Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one at another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness- as if happiness sat on the throne. Often mud sits on the throne- and often also the throne on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
My brothers, do you want to suffocate in the fumes of their snouts and appetites? Rather break the windows and leap to freedom.
Escape from the bad smell! Escape form the idolatry of the superfluous!
Escape from the bad smell! Escape from the stream of these human sacrifices!
The earth is free even now for great souls. These are still many seats for the lonesome and the twosome, fanned by the fragrance of silent seas.
A free life is still free for great souls. Verily, whoever possesses little is possessed that much less: praised be a little poverty!
Only where the state ends, there begins the human being whoo is not superfulouous: there beigns the song of necessity, the unique and inimitable tune.
Where the state ends- look there, my brothers! Do you now see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the overman?
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Ok, so this is abhorrent to anyone with a liberal sensibility. No one with a political conscience will take Nietzsche up here, or at least where he gets to calling people 'superfluous'. In the next section, Nietzsche writes "Where solitude ceases the market place begins." I think that summarizes his stance acutely. I don't want to comment on all of this too much. But I think these three writers are only standing at various distances from the same abyssinal view of things. For anyone interested in Deleuze, everything Nietzsche says here about 'preachers of death' is the same as what Deleuze will say. Nietzsche essentially takes Byron's 'holding up of nothingness' and Han Shan's flight to the hills and turns it into a philosophical symposium, treating all the approaches and all of the solutions in his own very biased, but deliberately polemical style. Anyway, this is long enough. Hope it was worth something.
