Excerpt, "Nightmares" by Jorge Luis Borges

I want to recall that great book by Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, which Dante read and reread, as he read and reread all of the literature of the Middle Ages. Boethius, who has been called "the last Roman," Boethius the senator imagined a spectator at a horse race.

The spectator is in the hippodrome, and he sees, from his box, the horses at the starting gate, all the vicissitudes of the race itself, and the arrival of one of the horses at the finishing line. He sees it all in succession. Boethius then imagines another spectator. This other spectator is the spectator of the spectator of the race; he is, let us say, God. God sees the whole race; he sees in a single eternal instant the start, the race, the finish. He sees everything in a single glance; and in the same way he sees all of history. Thus Boethius bridges the concepts of free will and of Providence. Just as the spectator sees the race (albeit sequentially) but does not influence it, so God sees the whole race from cradle to tomb. He does not influence what we do. We act by our own free will, but God knows -- God knows at this very moment -- our final destiny. God sees all of history, what unfolds as history, in a single splendid dizzying instant that is eternity.

-- Jorge Luis Borges, "Nightmares," a lecture collected in Seven Nights, New York: New Directions, 1984, p. 27.

Clip, "Wild Strawberries" by Ingmar Bergman, 1957

-- Ingmar Bergman, "Wild Strawberries," 1957

Poems by Ko Un

Maternal Grandfather

Ch’oi Hong-kwan, our maternal grandfather,
was so tall his high hat would reach the eaves,
scraping the sparrows’ nests under the roof.
He was always laughing.
If our grandmother offered a beggar a bite to eat,
he was always the first to be glad.
If our grandmother ever spoke sharply to him,
he’d laugh, paying no attention to what she said.
Once, when I was small, he told me:
‘Look, if you sweep the yard well
the yard will laugh.
If the yard laughs,
the fence will laugh.
Even the morning-glories
blossoming on the fence will laugh.’


Maternal Grandmother

Cow eyes
those dull vacant eyes
my grandmother’s eyes.

My grandmother!
The most sacred person in the world to me.

A cow that has stopped grazing the fresh grass
and is just standing there.

But she’s not my grandmother after all:
rather, this world’s peace,

dead and denied a tomb.


-- Ko Un, poems from Maninbo (Ten Thousand Lives).

Excerpt, "Poetry and Commitment," Adrienne Rich

From the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz of November 7, 2004, comes an article by David Zonsheine, a former commander in the Israeli Defense Force who became organizer and leader of the anti-Occupation movement within the IDF, the Courage to Refuse. Zonsheine comes by chance upon some lines from a poem of Yitzhak Laor and finds that,

Reading these lines a moment after a violent month of reserve duty, which was full of a sense of the righteousness of the way, was no easy thing. I remember that for one alarming moment I felt that I was looking at something I was forbidden to see. What this thing was I did not know, but on that same Friday afternoon I went out to look for every book by Yitzhak Laor that I could find in the shops.

Zonsheine continues,

The sense of mission with which I enlisted in the IDF was based ... on ... the painfully simple message that we shall not allow the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe to repeat itself no matter what the costs, and when the moral price became more severe, the sense of mission only increased ... I am a freedom fighter ... not an occupier, not cruel, certainly not immoral...

Something in Laor's texts spoke to me about the place inside me that had been closed and denied until then...

Here I am, 28 years old, returning home from another month of reserve duty in Gaza and suddenly asking myself questions that are beginning to penetrate even the armor of the righteousness...in which they had dressed me years ago. And Laor's strong words return to echo in my ears: "With such obedience? With such obedience? With such obedience?"

Ever since I refused to serve in the territories and the Ometz Lesarev (Courage to Refuse) movement was established, I have returned again and again to Laor's texts...

... The voice is that of a poetic persona through whose life the "situation" passes and touches everything he has, grasping and refusing to let go. The child, the wife, the hours of wakefulness alone at night, memory, the very act of writing -- everything is political. And from the other extreme, every terror attack, every act of occupation, every moral injustice -- everything is completely personal.

... This is ... a poetry that does not seek parental approval or any other approval, a poetry that liberates from the limitations of criticism of the discourse, and a poetry that ... finds the independent place that revolts and refuses.

Did Laor's poetry "work"? Did Zonsheine's commitment "work"? In either sense of the word, at any given moment, how do we measure? If we say No, does that mean we give up on poetry? On resistance? With such obedience?

"Something I was forbidden to see."


-- Excerpt from speech, "Poetry and Commitment," first presented as the plenary lecture at the 2006 Conference on Poetry and Politics, Stirling University, Scotland. W.W. Norton & Company, New York: pp. 27-30.