I wonder if it is a pocket knife
you use to carve initials. On a
tree, or on the bench right outside
your home.
These initials, are they mine? Or
of someone who shares the first
letter of my first name. Ludwig
in my ear.
Whispers Muss es sein?1 I think
then of your camera on that day
remembered because it took no
photographs.
It was in your bag. (What
colour was it?), were you afraid
of overexposure? The sun?
Es muss sein!
This deeply engraved alphabet.
Does it belong to the one whose
name it is. Or to the hand that
left the impression.
- Muss es sein? Es muss sien! Es muss sien! (Trans. Must it be? It must be! It must be!) Beethoven’s notes on the manuscript of String Quartet No. 16 in F major. From Wikipedia: The work is on a smaller scale than his other late quartets. Under the introductory slow chords in the last movement Beethoven wrote in the manuscript “Muß es sein?” (Must it be?) to which he responds, with the faster main theme of the movement, “Es muß sein!” (It must be!). The whole movement is headed “Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß” (The Difficult Decision).
A more entertaining story about the phrase here. [back]
Posted on April 18th, 2007 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: Poetry and Fiction
Its easy to see why everyone raves of your poetry!
My first comment here, so please bear with me if I am a bit awkward, or circular, or tangential. Actually it was this last verse that broke the barriers of mute for me.
“This deeply engraved alphabet.
Does it belong to the one whose
name it is. Or to the hand that
left the impression.”
Verses like these are bound to expand the market for poetry. As “unpoetic,” as that previous phrase sounds, it is true that the audience for art – especially an art that packs such charged simplicity as this – is laity. So, speaking from one of the back pews, I am saying…
For a longest time I didn’t like poetry, because it all came across as compressed ideation to me. I didn’t relate to the hidden coded meanings that pointed only to one another, and not to me. Yes, at a general level I like re-reading a few of them, (Yeats’ “Second Coming,” for example) but it was always a conceptual meaning at a distance. Nothing innermost.
But when I read your poems on this blog (came here through Desipundit), I forgot I didn’t like poetry. I forgot my awareness of the form. And then I forgot to notice that these words are how the world would be, if it were uncompressed, uncoded, laid out from one end to another end, sprinkled with time, shown in full frontal mosaic. As if a quilt made out of patches of our recollections. Not as memories, but as re-collections, the only way longing soaks us. That means, I forgot to notice in a self-conscious way, but felt in a way of belonging. A precious gift to laity, in this fast fragmenting world. For this, I thank you.
Anyone can put address labels to memories and recall them at will. That is not poetry. That is not re-collection. As E.M. Forster said, our inspiration to write should not solely be driven by, “a reminder of early happiness.” I now understand a bit more, not only about what was blocking me to read poetry, but also the undeniable power of verses in lifting our spirits, even while we lament, even while we bitch and moan. And for this too, I thank you. Please keep writing. Don’t change a thing.
Regards,
Crazyfinger
beautiful reappropriation of kundera’s use of the beethoven story.
i find myself doing that all the time :-)
perspective inc: Thankings…
Crazyfinger: First off, I hope this isn’t your last comment. Frankly speaking, I had no lofty ideas of recollection when I wrote it. But I write in the way that it comes to me – in its essence – devoid of a form. An idea is better expressed without the binding forces of prose in my head.
Sometimes, I think I write poetry because I am too lazy to add the details that make it a work of prose. But that laziness – makes me yank out that idea and put it (very quickly) into words. Before it disappears entirely.
Thank you – your comment made my day.
Anand: Kundera has a significant impact on me to this day. It’s impossible not to lapse into the sheer beauty of his ideas now and then.
Neha – Thanks for your reply comment. Of course I believe you that you had no “lofty ideas of recollection.” I would actually be worried if you were creating your poetry from such a deliberate, idea-filled consciousness. A few observations, such as mine, belong entirely in the interpretive world, not the creative world.
I wanted to express my thanks for your poetry and fragments by really engaging the text in an intimate and serious way. So I have begun a “Blogging Neha Viswanathan’s poetry and fragments” series over at Crazyfinger.org blog. Please come on over, and bring your readers along! I will try to write as frequently as my time allows me. But I hope it won’t cause too much intrusion into your poetics (actually it should not cause ANY intrusion, if I do it right).
Regards, Crazyfinger