147 Kies u okkultisme of God as inpirasie vir U gedigte

147 Kies u okkultisme of God as inpirasie vir U gedigte

Dink u dat u eie gedigte uit die hand van God uit kom of glo u dat dit slegs uit u eie vermoëns en verstand daar is of is daar ‘n ander gees wat dit dryf?

Netsoos N.P. Van Wyk Louw is ek van mening dat grootse gedigte aan mens deur God gegee word of dalk as dit jou keuse is deur ‘n ander gees (1) en op my profielblad op die Woes webwerf kom hierdie gedig voor:

As ‘n digter

As ‘n digter wou ek die wonderlikste sinsnedes maak wat mense verstom,
woorde skryf wat ander mense se harte aanraak en niks enigsins vermom
en versreëls neerpen wat vir ewig soos monumente staan
maar toe besef ek dat alles uit U hand uit kom.

Daar is mense wat glo dat hulle eie vermoëns hulle groot digters maak en sommiges glo nie eens dat daar ‘n God bestaan nie en wat nog van ‘n liefdevolle sorgsame God.

Daar is egter vandag digters wat ‘n keuse maak om hulle te laat lei deur ander geeste in hulle digkuns en groot roem en aansien behaal en selfs God verplaas of feilbaar maak in hulle gedigte.

Dinkmaar aan Ted Hughes (2) en Robert Graves (5) en Aleister Crowley (6) en W.B. Yeats (3) (4), Ezra Pound (3), Robert Duncan (3) en Sylvia Plath (3) maar in my eie opinie is dit beter om eerder deur die Gees van God gelei te word.

N.P. Van wyk Louw waarsku teen hierdie tipe van ding (1) en selfs in William Shakespeare se dae in 1592 tot 1593 was hierdie soort van ding reeds besig om te gebeur met die digter Christopher Marlowe wat Southampton die beskermheer van Shakespeare probeer afrokkel het en William Shakespeare skryf self hieroor in sy gedig sonnet 86 (7) (8) (9) en in sy versdrama “As you like it “(10). Digters kan egter okkultisme in hulle digkuns gebruik en daaroor skryf maar dit nie werklik navolg nie soos byvoorbeeld T.S. Eliot se gedig “The Waste Land,” waar daar van verskeie tarot kaarte melding gemaak word. (4)

Voetnotas:

(1) “Ek wil vir jong skrywers (of altans: digters) byna die evangeliese raad gee: “wees nie bekommerd oor wat julle gaan sê of hoe julle dit moet sê nie – “dit sal vir julle gegee word.” Maar dan sal ek tog hierdie ander stukkie raad moet bygee: “Ondersoek die geeste;” kyk naarstiglik wie dit is wat jou die inspirasie gegee het; moet nie jou eie gebreke as geïnspireer beskou nie.” N.P. Van Wyk Louw. Rondom eie werk. Tafelberg. 1970 P85.

(2) “Mythic poets, Hughes wrote in Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, “
… seem to be a distinct biological type.”. Hughes,T. Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, London, Faber, 1992, p.39

“In their work, beneath the “surface glitter of the plot”, there lies a deep “mythic plane” where, as for the Occult Neoplatonists of Shakespeare’s time, “all archaic mythological figures and events are available as a thesaurus of glyphs or token symbols”” Hughes,T. Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, London, Faber, 1992, pp.32-33

“For such poets, myth is part of the essence of their poetry rather than something on which they draw from time-to-time. Hughes, himself, was just such a mythic poet. Through myth he had access to all the intensity and drama of life and death; to universally recognisable patterns of human behaviour; to the powerful energies of gods and devils; and to ritual frameworks which have been used for centuries to contain such powerful energies and emotions. Yet, for him, myth was more than a thesaurus, it was also a divining-rod, a tool for channelling and controlling the energies he worked with, whether they were conscious or subconscious energies, sacred or profane, good or bad. This is not just my own opinion. There is ample evidence of Hughes’ intentions and of his belief in the power of myth in his prose writing (some of which is collected in Winter Pollen (Hughes,T., Winter Pollen, London, Faber, 1994.) and, especially, in his discussion of Shakespeare’s work in Shakespeare and The Goddess of Complete Being. There is evidence in an important early interview between Hughes and Ekbert Faas4. There is also very persuasive evidence in the patterns which can be discerned in his poetry.” Skea,A., Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest, Armidale, UNE Press, 1994

“Hughes was interested in Occult Neoplatonism, in Cabbalah, and in Alchemy and he was knowledgable about all these arts. This is not to say that he devoted himself to the practice of all or any of them. But he did believe in occult (or hidden) powers and he believed, as did the Neoplatonists, that poetry is a discipline, a mnemonic tool, and that it can be used to bring healing, creative energies into a world which is sorely in need of them. “Poetry”, he once said, “is magical… ; is one way of making things happen the way you want them to happen”” Hughes,T., Review of Bowra,C.M. Primitive Song, The Listener, 3 May 1962.

“Hughes’ first published poems, in The Hawk in the Rain (Hughes,T. The Hawk in the Rain, London, Faber, 1957.), are examples of his use of small poetic charms which contain powerful animal energies. They were “written in an effort to create an absolutely still language he told Ekbert Faas.”( Faas, Ted Hughes: the unaccommodated universe, op.cit. Appendix II, pp. 208-9)

“Yet these small, self-contained symbolic creatures are full of energy, not at all the “graven images” that one critic thought them to be11. In Lupercal(Hughes,T. Lupercal, London, Faber, 1960), Hughes turned to myth as a magical ritual: “Almost all the poems in Lupercal were written as invocations to writing”, he told Faas. Like the Lupercalia as it was celebrated in Ancient Rome, these poems enact a cathartic rite, and Hughes completed it with a prayer:

… Maker of the world,
Hurrying the lit ghost of man
Age to age while the body hold,
Touch this frozen one.” Skea,A., Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest, Armidale, UNE Press, 1994

.

“Crow (Hughes,T. Crow: From the Life and Songs of a Crow, London, Faber, 1970), however, was the first sequence of poems in which Hughes began to create an extensive folk-mythology of his own, complete with a fallible God (reminiscent of Blake’s, Nobodaddy,) and with a questing hero who, in the end, turns out to be inadequate for the task which he, and Hughes, have set themselves. Skea,A., Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest, Armidale, UNE Press, 1994

“The Goddess in Hughes work takes as many forms as she does in Nature. In his very early poem, ‘Song’ [Hughes, T. Collected Poems, Faber, 2000, p.24.], which he said came to him “as such things should in your nineteenth year – literally a voice in the air” [Heinze, D. ‘Ted Hughes: The Art of Poetry’, The Paris Review, Vol.37, No. 134, Spring 1995, p.11], she, like the goddess of Robert Graves’s writings [Graves, R. The White Goddess, Faber, 1961], is a moon goddess and a muse to whom Hughes pledges allegiance, knowing already the enthralling wonder of her presence and the heartbreak when she turns from him.” Skea,A., Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest, Armidale, UNE Press, 1994.

(3) “We have already seen how occultism shaped Pound’s conception of the poet and chapter 5 shows how important occult lore was to Robert Duncan. These poets, however, did not seriously pursue occultism outside of poetry. Pound believed in the importance of mystiery cults but did not like Yeats, join one himself. Of the poets examined in this book only Yeats and H.D. were practicing occultists. Althought Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes used astrology, the Tarot, and the Quija board, they did not demonstrate the obsession with them that marks the true occultist. Neither was as persistent as Yeats or H.D. in their attempts to contact the dead. James Merrill’s use of a Ouija board (1955-1995), which rivals the endurance of Yeat’s preoccupation with contatcting the dead, suggests a true occult obsessiveness.” Timothy Materer, Modernist Alchemy: Poetry and the occult P 87.

(4) “Among the personal effects of poet and Nobel Prize winner William Butler Yeats was a pack of tarot cards. By most accounts Yeats was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn*, an occult secret society that practiced ceremonial magic. As it was, the Hermetic Order considered tarot divination to be one of the foundational studies that the society’s initiates learned (the others being astrology and theurgy). While other notable members of the Golden Dawn, namely A. E. Waite and illustrator Pamela Colman Smith, were conceiving the tarot deck now known as the Rider-Waite (or Rider-Waite-Smith) deck, it is said that Yeats was an advisor to Pamela Smith on the mystic symbolism to be incorporated into Waite’s new deck. So poetry and poets have influenced the tarot and its symbology as much as the deck of cards has influenced and inspired poets and their poetry. The title of Yeat’s autobiographical work The Trembling of the Veil hints at the poet’s association with the Rider-Waite tarot. The veil is a notable Hermetic reference, which has also been used by A. E. Waite in his book on tarot The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Part I of the book is titled “The Veil and its Symbols” and Part II, “The Doctrine Behind the Veil.” What’s more, in the Introduction to Pictorial, Waite writes, “The pathology of the poet says the ‘undevout astronomer is mad.’” (He takes the quote from William Herschel, a musician, mathematician and astronomer.) The more one digs, the more patterns are found.” Wen, Benebell. “Poets and the Tarot.”

For the poets who look to poetry as evidence, look to Yeats’s “The Tower.”

“…Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;
And when that ancient ruffian’s turn was on
He so bewitched the cards under his thumb
That all but the one card became

A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,
And that he changed into a hare.
Hanrahan rose in frenzy there
And followed up those baying creatures towards –“

“To start, the thematic references to pride and ego throughout are the ascribed meanings to the tarot card Key 16, named The Tower, which is also the title of Yeats’s poem. As for what that “one card” was, I suspect the title offers some indication. The fellow Hanrahan has been interpreted by many to be a representation of The Fool, significant because the progression of the Major Arcana cards in the tarot has been referred to as “the Fool’s journey.”” Wen, Benebell. “Poets and the Tarot.”

“…Before that ruin came, for centuries,
Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees
Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,
And certain men-at-arms there were
Whose images, in the Great Memory stored,
Come with loud cry and panting breast
To break upon a sleeper’s rest
While their great wooden dice beat on the board.”

“The foregoing stanza describes The Tower card: the ruin, the rough men-at-arms, narrow stairs, and the general imagery reminiscent of the Tower of Babel, which is often the depiction on The Tower card in tarot. As for the “Great Memory stored,” it could be speculated that it is a reference to the card that follows Key 16, The Tower, which is Key 17, The Star. The Star card is associated with depicting the varying states of human consciousness and the unconscious, with the Great Memory a metaphor for the collective unconscious, which is a concept deeply rooted in ceremonial magic and the traditions of the Golden Dawn, which Yeats was purported to be part of (though the Golden Dawn do not use the actual term “collective unconscious,” and ascribe a different designation for the concept).” Wen, Benebell. “Poets and the Tarot.”

“Tarot may be one of the lesser known muses of poets past. Take T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” for instance:”

“Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.”

“In that stanza, Eliot makes reference to several cards in the tarot deck. Some speculate that the drowned Phoenician Sailor is the Ten of Swords and the Lady of the Rocks is the Queen of Cups. There is then the Three of Wands (“man with the three staves”), The Wheel of Fortune (“the Wheel”), the Six of Pentacles (“the one-eyed merchant”), and The Hanged Man. “Fear death by water,” writes Eliot. The Hanged Man is ruled astrologically by Neptune and is governed by the element Water.” Wen, Benebell. “Poets and the Tarot.”

“If the tarot cards are to be interpreted, they may suggest pending doom and misfortune, empathy felt for that downfall, a period of waiting and yearning for validation, the karmic turns of the samsara wheel, and the ultimate benevolence–self-sacrifice and prophesy. The tarot reading sets the tone for the progression of Eliot’s poem. Richard Palmer, a prolific contemporary poet and master tarot practitioner says that in the union of the tarot and poetry, the poetic voice is joined with the voice of the universe, our words with the ancient symbols, which is the language of the cosmic soul. Together, tarot and poetry “weave a song of mystery, meaning, beauty, and love upon the unfolding tapestry of Time,” as he eloquently put it. Palmer’s poetry, some of the most brilliant of his works showcased in The Traveler (Writers Club Press, 2002), among his other collections, demonstrate the richness of poems conceived from a poet-mind that has been influenced by the tarot. Likewise, his tarot books, such as Tarot: Voice of the Inner Light (Custom Book Publishing, 2008) exudes a depth and breadth to tarot interpretive work that surpasses other practitioners, precisely because of his poet-mind approach. It is no surprise that poets might gravitate toward the tarot for inspiration. Poetry calls upon our mythologies as metaphors of otherwise hidden truths, and the notion of revealing what has been hidden is a fascination of, I dare say, all poets. And what is the occult? The occult is but the study of that which has been hidden from view. So it would be of little surprise that poets and occult secret societies might be bedfellows. Tomorrow, I hope to explore the idea of mythology and metaphor further, in particular how the tarot is itself a book of poetry, and even more significantly, poetry for poets.” Wen, Benebell. “Poets and the Tarot.”

* “Notwithstanding Yeats, other acclaimed poets and writers that were known members of the Golden Dawn were Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, Sax Rohmer, author of the ever lovely Fu Manchu series, Scottish poet and writer William Sharp, who also wrote under the pseudonym Fiona MacLeod, writer Arthur Machen, who Stephen King has called perhaps the best writer of horror in the English language, Arnold Bennett, Algernon Blackwood, Gustav Meyrink, John Todhunter, Violet Tweedale, and Charles Williams, to name a few.” Wen, Benebell. “Poets and the Tarot.”

(5) Graves, R. “The White Goddess,” Faber, 1961

(6) “Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, mystic, ceremonial magician, poet and mountaineer, who was responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. In his role as the founder of the Thelemite philosophy, he came to see himself as the prophet who was entrusted with informing humanity that it was entering the new Aeon of Horus in the early 20th century.” Booth, Martin (2000). A Magick Life: The Biography of Aleister Crowley. London: Coronet Books.

(7) Sonnet 86 deur William Shakespeare

“Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the rize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb the womb werein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast:
I was not sick of any fear from thence;
But when your countenance filled up his line,
Then lacked I matter: that enfeebled mine.”

(8) Die historikus en letterkundige A.L. Rowse skryf hierdie gedig in moderne Engels as volg:

Sonnet 86

“Was it the proud full sail of his mighty verse, bound for the precious prize of much-loved you, that shut up my thoughts in my brain, leaving them there to germinate as in a tomb? Was it his spirit, taught by spirits to write above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No: neither he nor the spirits aiding him stunned my verse into silence: I was not discouraged by any fear from that quarter. But when your favour filled his verse, then I lacked inspiration: his enfeebled mine.”

A. L. Rowse “Shakespeare’s sonnets” Macmillan & Co Ltd, London. 1964. P177

(9) “Commentary for Sonnet 86: With this we reach the most important of all the Sonnets autobiographically – and the most difficult. From every point of view it is a crux, and, as you shall see, it springs from the great crisis in Shakespeare’s life and career. Any amout of commentary has been devoted to it, but this may be disregarded as mostly beside the mark. Observe that this sonnet is written in the past tense: in the interval something has happened to the rival poet; the rivalry itself is in the past. We can only achieve certainty through having arrived at a firm chronological foundation. We have followed the sonnets firmly through 1592, through their references to external events, their internal coherence with Venus and Adonis of 1592-1593. We are now in 1593. There was only one possible rival the superiority of whose genius and verse Shakespeare could recognize; only one to whom the phrase, “the proud sail of his great verse,” could apply, confirmed by the strange particulars of this sonnet. And, by the time of this sonnet, he is dead. Marlowe was killed in the tavern at Deptford on 30 May, and was buried there on 1 June 1593. It is thought that Shakespeare had that event in mind when he wrote in :As You Like It,” III. iii. 12-13: “It strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.” This is fairly certain, for it is in this play that Shakespeare refers specifically to Marlowe and quotes his famous line: “Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might: “Who ever l loved thet loved not at first sight?”” We learn from the second quatrain that the rival poet dabbled with the spirits – and that is likely enough with the heterodox mentality of Marlowe, given to “questioning” the truths of religion while constantly speculating about such issues, probing and searching into them. So unlike Shakespeare. No one has ever satifactory explained lines 9-10: “that affable familiar ghost, which nightly gulls him with intelligence.” To my mind the likeliest is Mephistophilis, with his attendance on Dr. Faustus by night. Though Marlowe was dead, his play Dr. Faustus – in which Faustus is very much a projection of Marlowe – continues to be preformed. Thus the present tense of “nightly gulls him with intelegence” is in place in this sonnet in the past tense. And we can now explain the previous lines 7-8, which have hitherto resisted interpretation: “his compeers by night giving him aid” has been taken to refer to the corporeal night-companions of the rival poet. We now pereive that – so caresteristic of Shakespeare – it is simply another way of addressing the idea in previous lines 5-6, “by spirits taught to write above a mortal pitch.” What we learn of Shakespeare is no less important: in Marlowe’s last days he had gained upon Shakespeare in Southampton’s favour, and was replacing him. What would have happened to Shakespeare in this crisis for him, dependent as he was on Southampton, had Marlowe not been killed? We have seen from the introduction that Marlowe was writing his “Hero and Leander” describing Southampton in the guise of Leander, in competition with Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis,” in which Southampton is Adonis. Shakespeare’s poem came out in the month before Marlowe died, leaving his poem uncompleted.” A. L. Rowse “Shakespeare’s sonnets” Macmillan & Co Ltd, London. 1964. PP. 178-179.

(10) “As you like it,” III, iii 12-13 by William Shakespeare: “It strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.”

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