by Niels Hammer
What beyond all else in my soul of yearning
did I wish would happen. Again, whom shall I
persuade to come back to be your dearest?
Psapphō! Who hurts you?
If she runs away she shall soon pursue you,
if she spurns your gifts she shall give you presents,
if she will not love she shall come to love you
although unwilling.
Love is independent of cognitive preferences or resolutions. Aphrodita’s prerogative is to inspire love involuntarily. All important issues are formed and determined subconsciously though the subsequent awareness of them sustains the curious illusion of self determination.
Come to me again, and dissolve the grievous
agonies, and give me all that my soul now
yearns to have and come as yourself to fight this
battle beside me.”
Traduttori – traditori. Also he.
“Following the Homeric tradition she expects Aphrodita to help her. Athēnē fights beside Odysseus against Dēiphobos. So while this poem clearly states the erotic aspect of her feeling for the unnamed woman, the invocation of the Goddess to come to her aid in the fight against this woman’s reluctance shows the sacred aspect of her emotions, for Aphrodita is also Ourania, the sacred process of love in Nature which this recalcitrant woman tries to disregard. Here the sacred is erotic and the erotic sacred. Sokratēs’ Diotima was an intellectual shadow envisaged as a Gestalt that could facilitate a state of unity with the sacred that was natural to Psapphō for whom Aphroditē was a Goddess as well as a confidente. We have a sense of the erotic but our sense of the sacred has vanished. So it is inappropriate to use the term Lesbian for a contemporary affair of the heart.”
“But you cannot rule out that some women may experience a certain sense of the sacred in their relationship even now-a-days, just like a heterosexual couple might.”
“Of course I can imagine that there may be atavistic examples, happy examples, of such states of mind, but I fear that they would be comparatively rare. Have you ever surmised such a sensitivity in any of your patients or in anyone else?”
“No, I’m mainly concerned with sun burns, stomach troubles and pneumonia, and though I do, from time to time, get a few patients who have emotional problems, or whose illness clearly is of a psychosomatic nature, a woman who had such a relationship as the one you suggest would be less likely than most to consult me as a doctor; but as a candidate I knew a woman who had such a sensual and spiritual sensibility. She became an excellent ophthalmologist later and – ”
“But what makes her longing for this woman who has deserted her so sacred?”
“Is there anyone or anything with whom or which you could associate a sense of something sacred?”
“I don’t really think so, though as a child in church at Christmas time I had a feeling of awe.”
“Imagine what it would be like to have this feeling intensified with cognitive and affective awareness then you might perhaps get an inkling of what Aphroditē meant to Psapphō.”
“It’s obvious that it’s the pale Galilean who has separated the sensual from the so-called sacred and that we have been left split right down the middle as a consequence.”
Sally had the necessary distance to the consensus illusions and a clear perspective of the colours of the successive historical periods. She saw the tragedy of Europe in its entirety. And Platōn –
“So the sacred began being present in all of Nature, and in the human body. In Cristianity it vanished from Nature, but the sacred remained in Humans as a soul. After the Reformation it was only the head, not the heart, that was sacred, and only the left hemisphere of the brain; but after la Grande Guerre no notions of the sacred were left.”
A fair draught of Armagnac as an antidote.
“But you cannot expect that Charlotte, regardless of her late Republic Latin, would be able to appreciate pre-Socratic poetry in the same way as you. There is a marked difference between the sophistication of Rome in the first century and the archaic nature of the Anatolian west coast in the seventh. The real flavour of an historical period does never survive in secondary sources; it is irretrievably lost; and the flavour of this period is hard to sniff out because of the scarcity of sources. You have an affinity with it which you cannot convey to anybody else.”
Seymour’s evaluation could be more inspired by his clinical experience than he imagined but he would have to ask him about it later.
“Of course. I agree, but there is another and just as important a prerequisite which we take for granted, although it is perhaps exceptional. It is the ability to shed the space and time contingent idiosyncrasies, prerogatives and conditioned reflexes of our own age and reach back –”
Re-ligo – yuj – yunákti – again and again.
“To the primal level of character and absolute value. It is only when we are in touch with this omnipresent subconscious sphere that understanding, any understanding, can develope.”
“And that cannot be emended by any amount of diligence.”
The violence of her irony surprised him. It had to be the result of daily experience and not of the magic of dreams though in accordance with it.
“If Seymour is right we will have to take your word for how they combined the sensuality of love with a notion of the sacred, but to get back to the issue of using the right word, then we’ll have to call her a homosexual though the word always makes me think of men, not of women; but regardless of what we call it, I would prefer not to be solicited by a woman.”
“Would you prefer a man?”
Jennifer raised her eyebrows in mock wonder. They all saw the very same thing but it became coloured by experience and character to such an extent that they appeared to talk about completely different things.
“No, of course not.”
“Homosexual is a horrible hybrid of a word. Half fish and half fowl. Another word which you could use would be ‘a tribade.’ It’s a loan word from French, but of Greek origin; from τρίβω rub, knead. Though it also has acquired pejorative connotations it may be the best alternative from a semantic perspective as it suggests the activity of the women, instead of describing a geographic locality, a group of people, a type of wine or a poetic metre.”
“There is great merit in using words precisely, but our time and knowledge are so limited that we are bound to make many mistakes. You have of course spent a considerable time studying this because you love poetry – ”
“Painting is silent poetry and poetry has the colour of music. That which happened once upon a time happens again as soon as I see it unfold from the words as images and events.”
“But the general trend is to use words more and more slovenly. I see it every day and I do my best to correct it when I have an opportunity to do so, but it’s like fighting the tide – ”
Looking out into the future he saw the tide of global warming overflow his home and the garbage of increasing gibberish erase the civilised traditions of his august department.
“Was it not Pound who said that when words were used indiscriminately culture was breaking down and with culture society?”
The antennae of the race prognosticated probably even the future of sociology.
“He sensed the trend, which now has become a khamsīn that sands us all down into discriminationlessness. The rapid demise of grammar and sophisticated morphology that started two thousand years ago, is accelerating. In the future we will grunt and use signs.”
“We’ll come back to the state from where we came. The process can start all over again.”
Partly Vico – Joyce – but his good-humoured cynicism was also sometimes present like an added spice in his paintings – so having done his best he could now leave the stage though feeling demeaned by having used silver instead of staying silent – and demeaned him
self though Sally – Seymour and Mary would have sensed what it was he had tried to convey – however – Charlotte always made him lose his precious equanimity for she –
“Have you seen that Suzy’s house is up for sale again?”
Attention flowed only through deep and well-worn channels. She was watching the market with a beady eye. Real estate transactions were much easier than to prepare and present a case.
“Oh yes! It was such a terrible story, really terrible.”
Mary shuddered with a certain chilled delight – Suzy was the bosom friend of her childhood.
“Who’s Suzy.”
Jennifer’s desire for precision – bull’s eye only. Her natural markswomanship was what he had liked – once upon a time – till she only had barbed arrows left in her copper quiver.
“You don’t know her, of course, she lives in Montpellier now. Her husband, George, was found last April floating in the river with a dislocated shoulder, I think, or some other similar injury. She was in France, and he was here or rather he was apparently not here, only his body was.”
“But did she not miss him?”
“They were not on the best of terms and were going to be divorced, but as they were still married when he died, she inherited everything. She thought he was living here and we thought he had gone to France or was staying in his flat in London. Apparently he had been lying in the water for several months. Maybe his death was connected with a burglary as all her jewels had disappeared.”
“How ghastly!”
A burglary and a fatal accident suggested a certain lack of good breeding. Jessie’s conventional surface was nettled but a bit further down she relished life such as it was – raw and tender.
“Oh yes, Moçambique was a revelation. Some parts of the country are still pristine.”
“Are there any traces left of the long and bloody Civil War?”
“Yes, here and there, ruined houses, but nobody has forgotten it. The place is rather primitive and brutal though beautiful.”
“Anyway, she tried to sell the house last autumn, but either she wanted far too much or the rumours of his death, the police said it was an accident of course, but it could have been either suicide or even murder, apparently frightened away the only buyers who were genuinely interested, or rather it pushed the price down. So as it’s more than a year ago now she hopes that the rumours will have been forgotten, but it’s a lovely house with four bedrooms, and a very fine drawing room which commands a splendid view out over the Broad.”
“She could just ask for less, then she would have no trouble finding a buyer even if the house should be teeming with ghosts.”
The unfortunates who had stumbled at the threshold.
“No, we flew to Maputo first, and then north to the Bazaruto Islands. The children loved it.”
“Yes, there are even Black Marlin, and of course Sailfish, King Mackerel, Tuna and Dorado.”
“But she would hate to lose a penny more than a tooth. That’s how she is and always has been.”
“No, bigger than New Guinea, and the population density is high, about twenty-nine per square kilometre, but concentrated in cities and villages. So there are, as I said, still pristine areas or areas that seem to be pristine, and for the children it was paradise, but we could hardly – ”
“There are only two genuine portraits, and all the others are, if not forgeries, like the ‘Flower’ then, at least late seventeenth century imaginative attempts to approach a likeness resembling that of the First Folio engraving.”
“As well as for you, darling!”
“What about the Cobbe portrait, when he was younger.”
Draining the last thick drops out of his glass Peregrine surmised the lacunae of the past.
“It doesn’t look like him at all, does it? Putting them up side by side it becomes fairly evident, that is, if you trust Heminges and Condell and of course, Ben Jonson, who all three knew what they were talking about; and that is really also the case with the Sanders portrait of sixteen hundred and three, although you could certainly argue for a somewhat greater degree of resemblance there. Still, even allowing for some artistic particularity, craniometric analyses show a certain resemblance between the First Folio engraving and the Chandos portrait, which was painted around sixteen hundred and five plus minus a couple of years, but they do not really cohere with the Sanders portrait, and anyway, it shows a much younger man.”
“But could it not have been painted at an earlier date?”
“Certainly, however, it’s more likely to be the portrait of someone else.”
“But the Flower Portrait has more character and artistic merit than the First Folio engraving, on which it is based, so even though it was painted in the first half of the nineteenth century, it seems to be the most expressive portrait. If only Frans Hals had gone to London.”
“And if only it hadn’t been for that chrome yellow – ”
As an art historian he had to pay great attention to the factual circumstances which only had a subordinated importance for the practising artist judging a painting.
“Old paintings are hard if not impossible to emulate. As basic prerequisites you will have to make your own colours, grind them, mix them with the appropriate oil, or egg white and canvas is out of the question. The best bet is to find a piece of wood from the period. So the paintings will have to be small. It’s still possible to do nineteenth century paintings, but eighteenth and seventeenth century ones are too fraught with difficulties even if having a very good laboratory at your disposal. The problem is to find pigments that are indistinguishable chemically and spectroscopically from the original and that’s nearly impossible because of isotope differences.”
“As it can be so financially rewarding there will always be craftsmen or artisans who will try and invest a considerable amount of money in such endeavours.”
“The man who has the talent does not have the money and vice versa.”
“But the two will collaborate.”
Such as Han van Meegeren or Shaun Greenhalgh – maybe – but it was past midnight. The animation in the atmosphere had begun to be tinged by the darkness outside and by the growing fatigue of having lived through a long and busy day. It would not be impolite to make a tactical retreat now.
“Mary, please excuse me, it must be half past twelve, so would you mind if I said good night now and thanked you and Peregrine for a lovely evening and a very tasty dinner. You know I love the early Summer mornings, and may I leave my car here till to-morrow?”
“Oh yes, of course, and the season is so short.”
“It certainly is, so good by!”
The chorus of voices wishing him well with varying degrees of sincerity obliterated his tracks – so feeling tired mentally and still a little tipsy in spite of his vigilant exercise of caution he slipped out through the front door to walk home alone in the fragrant Summer night. Maybe it would be hard to get up as brightly-early as usual? Character – oh no – merely desire and interest. Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit. If only it had rained – then he could have slept to his blue heart’s content but then he would have had no excuse for leaving already. In spite of the mist that haunted the shades beneath the trees the Sky looked clear and serene with twinkling stars because of the new Moon – so he had no choice – no choice in the matter. Maybe there was a chance now to see where the Barn Owl had her nest so he could just as well cross in over the Hemp Agrimony field and Colonel Sommerville’s backyard. There was light enough though his eyes had not yet reached the sensitivity Herschel recommended – but the Festuca straws were long and their drooping tops drenched with dew. His shoes became wet and his trousers clammy and cold – going against the grain. Climbing up over the mouldy fence to their garden he hoped that they had not forgotten to close the door to-night. It was a rather nasty beast. Like master like man. A Cat had more integrity because a Ca
t was less of a social animal. There were yellow lights in the upper windows but not a sound escaped the stone-walled house. Beside the old Oak – cautiously through the dense tangle of Nettles and Brambles – in his mind’s eye a lean and hungry Wolf in a world of grey-light and shadow. The Night was colour blind. Veils of droplets hung as shrouds among the Yews and the Thujas that guarded the remains of those who had left the Earth behind. The graveyard was silent and eerie and the north gable the most likely place. All the warm colours of the day became ghosts at night – but under the embroidered table cloth – how softly strong had Sally’s touch been when she sealed their tryst. She would probably telephone sometime during the late afternoon and he could easily find room for the large mattress in the bottom of the boat. No movement anywhere – not even a single Nightjar. One never knew what to expect – like last night. What was she doing now? The sooner he slept the better – and having opened the windows for the night sounds and the stars he sought shelter beneath the eiderdown. As the cool humid night air came in to touch his cheek he felt liberated from intentionality and fell asleep – beyond the mundane pull of gravity – to dream and take her in his arms.
IV
The narrow path through the undergrowth – the leaves were wet with dew – the mosquitoes – sensing warm blood to be within sucking distance – defied the toluene of the Jungle Oil and whined tinglingly just outside of the net. A smell of sweet weedy water – fused with the fragrance of flowering Hawthorn and mushroom-like mulch – saturated the receptors in his nostrils. Here and there sporadic twitters whitened the leafy thickets but a Nightingale – close to the brink – praised life at one with his own singing skill – and the juggling – snarling – clucks – chirrs and liquid trilling honed the Summer night too keen for thoughts. The river opened up for a spacy tunnel in the forest and May-pale ghosts of stars floated on the polished surface of night-shining water as worn out fire-flies – but he was inconspicuous like the Nightingale among the chequered leaves and only present as a quiet breath. Adjusting to the harmony of the liminal hour he placed the telescope and the binoculars in the boat and loosened the bow knot to paddle outward with slow singing strokes – but keeping close to the dense shadow of the overhanging trees he merged with the movement of the boat as if he had been camouflaged by sitting on an Elephant. The coming day was present in the cool air and the wood-pigeon-grey reflections in the north-eastern Sky had deepened with notes of honey. The twilight hour – the metamorphosis of night to day. Transformations of thoughts – tunes and colours suggested the Protean fragility of all that which truly lived and died. Change came more quickly now – fraught with the danger of being killed or with the prospect of nourishment and illusions of stasis dissolved like smoke-blue twists in the air above a half-abandoned camp fire. A couple of Coots came flapping by – sensing but not seeing the boat – too intent on each other. Close to the brink a Grey Heron worked her way forward with heavily flapping wings to steal through new hunting grounds and at the side of an inlet the dissolving mist became a long lean figure bending forward – a projection in grey trying to discern a hidden pattern. The light revealed the true colours of the leaves and began to creep in under them to dissolve obscurity and doubt – but as long as the Sun had not woken the wind the tell-tale telescope could be kept fairly steady. Peace – life and death – in unison – all Nature – systole and diastole – but a houseboat – present as a silhouette – had anchored up beneath the Alders on the far brink. There were no signs of movement on the deck but the windows reflected the Sky above and shielded the dreams of her sweet-water sailors. No noise or spoor in passing – so sleep – sleep still. In an hour’s time his species would be up and about some bitter business fraught with purpose – but the harmony of nightpeace did yet prevail here on the sedge-shallow waters. Dawn – rosy-fingered – rosy-thighed – arose in the North-east to see herself reflected in the ocean and in the water-ways between the woody brinks. A Cuckoo had begun calling and in the telescope the dark horizontal shape was sharply outlined against the pearling Sky for as so often before he was sitting on a leafless branch to further the fetch of his call. Like a spinnaker – strung out in a fair breeze – his throat – a third of a second before the call. The Gentian blue bell of infinity ringing the high of Summer in or A to F sharp. A faint ripple in the silver-grey surface midstream became an ophidian movement in the binoculars and he looked straight into the black vibrant eyes of an Otter. Gamy curiosity and wary caution – so he sat still without the movement of a thought till the Otter lost interest and continued fishing for his fresh and bony breakfast. In the greening sedges on the other side the soft hollow boom of a Bittern was repeated with irregular intervals – and from a fair distance in the East – as predictable as the change of the seasons – came the thrilling calls of kṛ-auñch kṛ-auñch as they left their roosting marsh to fly out and forage in the sprouting fields. The Sun was now close to the horizon and skeins of Greylag Geese wrote their legends across the Ragged Robin Sky but in the shadow of the tall Crack Willows the water hid dark muddy death debt – still owed by being reflective enough to wonder at the sense of suchness that had begun to wane. When the present made both past and future fade away into insignificance consciousness as such became keen – beyond thoughts – even beyond happiness – and that which was arose but nothing else – as the view there between the trees – a distinct atmosphere – Matin à Villeneuve – the same light even – Marsh-marigold green. He paddled outwards – in tune with the wavelets that lapped the clinkers at the waterline though without disturbing a pair of stately Mute Swans – by passing through their wake – but even now the mental image of the features of her face and the chilling sensation of her lightning blue movements sharpened his senses and attuned his thoughts to their common future. Not yet diluted by the wind the smell of fresh water – combustion and Bird Cherries hung still like curtains of Northern Lights in the air. This light green floral scent – Sally and his promise – the softly eager blacklight in her eyes and her womanly cupping hand. Of course he could excuse himself and of course he was bound by his word. It was his Fate to follow the Drinking Gourd towards the illusion of freedom or rather to set sail towards the horizon under the bitter-sweet auspices of the Seven Sisters. The Bittern called again and he drew imperceptibly closer and with the field glasses fixed on the spot from where the calls could be pin-pointed – though there was nothing to see but sedges and branches. He might be close to that large cluster of sedges but the odd anfractuosity of leaf-shapes could not be puzzled into a shape that could suggest a likely semblance. Patience – no not patience – existence – not expecting anything – not waiting for anything – but being prepared for everything. The prow had been stopped by the flat slope of the brink. Soft mulchy watery mud mixed with grains of sand. In time past the Sun had warmed the air to wake the wind that moved the waves to crush the rocks. Both his eyes watered – the concentrated effort of seeing through the oculars. The Bittern called again to announce his readiness – and there he came at last edging out of a gap in the sedges – probably also having his eyes fixed on a frog or a small fish. As he was still partly hidden the brown and black of his feathers merged with last years’ withered leaves – two willow twigs – new shoots and their slowly rippling reflections in the water. His movements were stealth personified. So secret a life – a life in twilight – a life spent lying in wait. Warm life feeding on lukewarm life feeding on ambient life feeding on plant life. That was what it was all about – eating and being eaten. Once again the Cuckoo carried him away to the love-green land beyond the horizon as he paddled back and watched the first Barn Swallows – of midday and midnight – hunt mosquitoes just above the swaying beds of the top-green sedges. And yet – drifting along with the slow cold current he ceased to think and merged with the water – the sleepy breeze – the expanding apple-green and orange light – the sound of the tiny ripples that lapped the violin flanks of the boat – and the bat-like twists and turns of a Lapwing as she c
hased a Kestrel away from her nestlings. He would have to arrange the net on four poles attached to the gunwales if they were to avoid being sucked dry in the evening – and it would be best to do it right away – rather than in the afternoon – right now while Dawn still was sweetening the air. Along the deep-shaded lanes he walked – to let the day unfold on its own and fill his lungs with morning air – past quiet houses and dead-cut lawns. Mary and Peregrine would still be fast asleep inside their fortress so he opened the windows of his car and drove slowly home in the idyll of the pristine day when time was light as a feather. His Way was given – a roll of marline – the mosquito net – a large plastic bag – a knife – drill bits – four small cramps – a folding rule – a pencil – a thick blanket – a small saw – the electric drill – the large mattress – four six and a half foot long rafters – and returning to the landing through the shortening shadows the light within grew more luminous as her presence again permeated him consciously to the pores of his skin. The slow rocking movement of the boat in the moorings – the jubilant notes of a Nightingale in the Honeysuckle on the opposite brink – the shifting reflections on the surface of the water and the humid smell of mulch-rich decay – softened the noise of his drilling of quarter inch holes in the end of the rafters. Ceaseless metamorphoses of causality. Lashing two rafters on each side to the frames at a distance of seven feet from one another and securing them with the small cramps to the gunwales he connected the top of the rafters with marline and slipped the mosquito net up over the construction. The mattress and the blanket were protected by the plastic bag in case of a sudden shower though that was unlikely if judging by the Sky for there were no cirri yet on the western horizon. It had taken almost two short hours in this that was his life – and feeling dizzy with the sudden change in perspective he drove back – but had presence of mind enough to greet Mis’ess Tomlinson as she came racing along in her flame-red Lamborghini to stay à jour with the grim crowd in the cockpit of the metropolis.