from The Keeper of Sheep
Fernando Pessoa
"Hello there, keeper of sheep,
You there, by the roadside,
What does the passing wind tell you?"
"That it is the wind and it passes,
That it has done so before,
And it will do so again.
What does it tell you?"
"A good deal more than that.
It speaks to me of many other things.
Of memories and yearnings
And things that never were."
"You've never listened to the wind.
The wind speaks only of the wind.
What you heard was a lie,
And the lie is in you."
Monday, February 11, 2008
For Reme: Thoughts in Search of the Secret
Posted by The M&M Gang...its where its at @ 12:17 PM
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5 comments:
I love the wind, as long as it doesn't take my trees down, and that is no lie.
Love Dee
Wow,...I want to bring this into class to analyze. I think the keeper of sheep is much more than a shepherd. Do you think that it is saying that people read into things like the wind, poetry, or even nature, things that aren't there? We lie to ourselves that there is a secret in the wind, or a line of poetry, when there is no secret merely the wish that it is there. The wind is just wind, and we are just humans, with lies and pretend secrets. But if we lie to ourselves then that means that there is a truth, and maybe that is the secret. It just isn't in the wind. This make any sense?
Reme,
Most people, when I show them this poem, a puzzled look crosses their face, like a dark cloud that refuses to pass. This of course only puzzles me, since Pessoa is quite easy to grasp, as he states very simply what he means.
Imagine my delight that you get it.
Pessoa would argue that the wind is only that...the wind...and so it can not speak of anything but itself. To hear something else is not to hear the wind, but to hear something inside yourself that you have mistaken for the wind. Whatever we might hear, be it good or bad, comes from within us, and it is a lie to say it comes from the wind.
Here is a further thought from Pessoa, also from Keeper of Sheep.
Today I read nearly two pages
In the book of a mystic poet
And I laughed as if I'd cried a lot.
Mystic poets are sick philosophers,
And philosophers are lunatics.
Because mystic poets say that flowers feel
And that stones have souls
And that rivers are filled with rapture in the moonlight.
But flowers, if they felt, wouldn't be flowers,
They would be people;
And if stones had souls, they would be living things, not stones;
And if rivers were filled with rapture in the moonlight,
Those rivers would be sick people.
Only one who doesn't know what flowers and stones and rivers are
Can talk about their feelings.
Those who talk about the soul of stones, of flowers and of rivers
Are talking about themselves and their false notions.
Thank God that stones are just stones,
And rivers nothing but rivers,
And flowers merely flowers.
As for me, I write the prose of my verses
And am satisfied,
Because I know I understand Nature on the outside,
And I don't understand it on the inside,
Because Nature has no inside,
If it did, it wouldn't be Nature.
Both of you are delightful that you are so incredibly attuned to the written word, your love of books, poetry, discussion of.........you inspire those of us who sometimes struggle to understand the meaning beneath the prose. I have to say I am one of those who had a look of puzzlement but was waiting for Reme to decipher for me...thanks Rame!
...on the other hand I do not think it would be false to feel peace or even rapture in Nature. Sometimes assigning inanimate objects human emotions is a way for us to recognize our own, or to even put them into something we feel we can understand, like the physical realm. The smallest child can identify between a rock and a bug. Pessoa seems to be/have been advanced enough to not need symbols, just stark truth. This is Nature, this is me. Or something like that. I just don't want to take the romance out of it you know? This is the girl that reads romance novels remember!
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