by Sonny Saul
CHAPTER FOUR:
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“Historians and poets do not differ in the fact that the latter write in verse, the former in prose… the difference lies rather in the fact that one reports what actually happened, the other what could happen. Thus, poetry is more philosophical than history, for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.”
Aristotle
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“Long ago Aristotle defined the artists’ task when he declared that even in verse Herodotus would be an historian and not a poet since a poet is concerned now with what has actually happened with what is possible. The possible—in our understanding of Aristotle’s great insight after more than two thousand years—represents the issue of the moment confronting the human species—intensified to the maximum of its inner dynamic and dialectic.”
George Lukacs. From the preface to “Writer and Critic”
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“I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth”
Tennessee Williams — Blanche, “A Streetcar Named Desire”
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The Ritual—Gotama and Desire
When the mild evening breezes of the Tropics brought the stench of the men of the Forest of Mortification to Desire’s nose, she involuntarily became acutely conscious of herself as other.
The sight too, of the six stagnant, malnourished men, their soiled, dusty garments, their matted hair, and filthy bodies, repelled her deeply into herself. Directly and intensely through the senses she felt the irrevocableness of her own beauty; the fineness of her own hair, plaited into tiny braids entwined with many colored threads, her dark eyes outlined to appear still darker, and her lips painted a ruby red.
Like her sisters, she wore no upper garments other than the silver bracelets on each arm, and the many cords, and chains around her neck, some of which fell loosely between her breasts, and called even greater attention to them and their painted nipples and the leaves and flowers drawn and colored around each one.
“Beauty is no accident. Beauty is a prize that is won, achieved, like genius!” Desire (very much her father’s daughter) spoke her thoughts out loud as they occurred, discovering them in her own delicately balanced phrasing.
To Desire and to her sisters, these foul smelling “holy men”, whose appearance and manner of life evidenced such disregard for Beauty, were, naturally, contemptible. Everything about them seemed to indicate to the girls a wrong choice made, a wrong turn taken; life turned against itself.
Mitigating with a precocious resignation the disgust in the tone of her voice, Regret advanced Desire’s theme. “I can respect anything that comes out of suffering. The way suffering is borne is a measure of dignity. But to seek out and cultivate misery … Where’s the beauty there? And what does that say about the society of which these pathetic men are the conscience? Can they even see us, let alone comprehend our drama?”
Fulfillment took her sisters’ hands saying, “Nevertheless, our inspiration must not waver.”
Each of the girls did love the ritual they had created with their father. Their roles simple, but admitting of sufficient expression and variation so as never to be boring had long been internalized. Molded to their individualities, the ritual drama became a living mythology.
"Like her sisters, she wore no upper garments other than the silver bracelets on each arm, and the many cords and chains around her neck, some of which fell loosely between her breasts."
Yet there were difficulties. Lately, feeling that same effect that regular and frequent concertizing, which so accustoms a modern performing artist to the range of possible audience reaction that he may neglect the deepest meanings of his text, the girls, to protect the integrity of their drama, had become habituated to playing for themselves and for each other even to the extent of becoming capable of neglecting their “audience”.
But this time, as soon as they had entered the grove, Desire knew that one of the men was different. He sat opposite the others and a little apart. His face and body were without charm, to judge by certain details. His smell and appearance assaulted her. Yet, intuition compelled her to see him not as an other. Immediately he became central to her drama. Desire’s younger sisters, looking instinctively to her to set the tone, noticed the change in her.
The almost death-like gravity in his posture frightened Desire, but attracted her too. So thin, and so weak, yet he sat without tension. His easy repose was most unusual. He seemed unlike the others all the others to no longer merely aspire to detachment.
Through partly closed eyes, with half open lips, he accepted Desire’s presence like the sweetmeats she placed in his beggar’s bowl; neither attracted nor repelled but with an awareness that was uncanny.
Startled, she withdrew to the confidence of her sisters, feeling as if she had been seen for the very first time. “Look at that one!” she whispered excitedly, “Just sitting there … He’s like a flower! I mean, does a flower bloom as if it were a flower? He simply is what he is. He is like us! Let’s show him who we are.”
Thus exhorted, the three incarnations of youthful femininity began to fill the grove with inspired dance, and laughter; evoking timelessness (but not without tempo), creating distractions and contradictions for the renunciates, showing them, as only theater can, more of life than they had been aware of renouncing.
But Desire was drawn back to her flower. Like a cat, she brushed by closely before placing herself down on the ground across from Gotama Siddhartha for this was indeed the very ascetic described in the previous chapter.
A surprising and great thing about this extraordinary Saddhu was the extent of his silent, motionless capacity for expression. His highly concentrated inner absorption exuded an implacable calm, communicating warmth and benevolent power. Desire sensed it. She could feel too, beneath those now closed eyelids of his, the attraction of a concentration capable of immense realizations.
While her sisters concluded the scene without her usual participation, and then, at last, withdrew behind the curtain of trees bordering the grove, Desire; who had now adopted and was maintaining the ancient ‘lotus’ posture alongside of Gotama, remained.
The sun had set and the brightest evening stars were just becoming visible when Kama Mara appeared to fetch his daughters. He saw what Desire was doing and said aloud “Is she an actress? Or, is she playing the part for herself?” The expressions on the faces of her sisters echoed his question.
Desire, usually so alert to her father’s presence, apparently did not perceive it now until lightly, gently, he laughed as he was about to touch her shoulder. Taking her hands as she turned and rose, Kama Mara, with the laugh that had broken the spell, said, “Desire knows no bounds!”
Kama Mara glanced at her still seated companion and then, taking him in, really looking at Gotama, said, slowly and a little sadly, “It is a fact. Habit will depreciate even the most brilliant talents.”
Removing his gaze somewhat, stepping back he said, “A true hero scorns suffering. Strength, Beauty and Serenity alone should be offered to contemplation as models for perfection.”
Desire was still looking at the seated yogi, thinking, “His Strength, Beauty and Serenity are not yet alive in the world. Besides, honest men don’t carry their thinking, their reasons, exposed. Father taught me that himself. It’s not decent to display all one’s goods. What has to always prove itself has little value.” Unlike herself, she said none of this aloud.