Romantic poetry, cross-linguistic parapraxis, and Love as a revelatory force.
TRANSCRIPT
Once upon a time there lived a kind-hearted girl who lived with her cruel, selfish stepmother and her ill-mannered stepsister. When the girl was thirteen, her stepmother decided she finally wished to be rid of her and so she came up with a scheme to do so. She would ask both of the girls to step on the edge of the well and spin thread, and whosoever had the thread that first broke, she would push into the well. To her own daughter, the old woman gave strong flax, but to the kind-hearted girl she gave weak flax. As planned, the girl’s thread broke first, and the stepmother pushed her into the well.
At the bottom of the well, she discovered a beautiful land of rolling green hills and flowers. As she walked through the meadows, it wasn’t long before she came across a fence that spoke to her. It said, “You climb over me to continue your journey, just please don’t hurt me.” The girl said, “Of course, I won’t hurt you,” and she gently climbed over the fence and continued along her way. Before long, she came across an oven that said, “I will give you some bread, just please don’t hurt me.” Once again, the girl said, “Of course I won’t hurt you,” and she got some bread from the oven. Not long after leaving the oven, the girl met a cow who, like the fence and the oven, promised her milk as long as the girl didn’t hurt it; and so the girl had mily from the cow.
Finally, the girl came across a farm and a cottage in which lived an old woman. The woman took her in and gave her work to do to earn her keep. While it was challenging work, she received help from the bird and mice on the farm because she was so kind to them. After some time of staying on the farm, the old woman told the girl it was time for her to return to the place from which she had come; but before she did, she could select a special casket from the woman’s collection to take back with her.
The animal on the farm told the girl that, no matter what the other caskets looked like, she should select the small plain black casket. When the girl was taken by the old woman to see the room with all of the caskets, she was amazed by how ornate and beautiful many of them were: large and highly stylized, and decorated with gold and with jewels. Still, the girl followed the advice of the animals and selected the small plain black casket.
The girl then journeyed back up out of the well, returned to her stepmother’s house, and opened the caskets to find an abundance of riches, gold, silver, and precious gems. When the stepmother learned of the girl’s reward, greedy as she was, she wished for own daughter to have the same riches. And so she once again sat her daughter on the side of the well, this time with weak flax for spinning, and when the thread broke she pushed her down the well.
The stepsister came to be in the same beautiful land as the young girl, however when she encountered the fence, the oven, and the cow she scoffed at their requests not to be hurt and indeed acted quite scornfully and hurtfully towards them. The stepsister eventually met the old woman on the farm and worked for her; but when the time came to choose a casket and journey back, none of the animals on the farm advised her on which casket to select, because she had never been kind to them. The stepsister chose the most richly decorative and ornate casket in the room, and when she brought it back from the well and opened it, out of the casket came a great consuming fire that burned up both the stepsister and the stepmother.
I was reminded of this old story (which is called “The Two Caskets”) this past summer, around the time that my wife and I were celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary. It wasn’t actually our anniversary that reminded me of the story, but rather a poem that I had written for my wife as a gift for our first Christmas together as an adult couple. The poem now hangs in a frame on the wall in our bedroom, and on the occasion of our anniversary, it drew my attention… and so I read it and reflected upon it a bit.
The final line in the poem evokes an image of a well, which is what reminded me of the story. It’s a short poem, so I think I’ll share it in its entirety:
There is a light that rests in your eyes
It’s always been there
I would like to climb inside
And walk around for a time
And study that glow
When I do, I hope to find a way to say to you:
You are a bottomless well
Of things I wish to discover
It is a very romantic poem - as you might expect - obviously written amidst the newness of falling in love: the intimacy of staying up late to share our life stories; the excitement of knowing and becoming known by a new lover; the elation that comes with new-found feelings of wholeness; and the admiration of beauty to be found in every subtle and minute detail of a world viewed under the warm light of affection.
As if the poem wasn’t already romantic, I chose to translate it into French before giving it to her. My wife - Rose is her name - learned to speak fluent French while living abroad, and when we began to date, she had started to teach me a little bit of the language, here and there. Speaking French was very important to her, and I felt that her teaching me was important to us, and so I wanted to honor all of that with this gift.
The grammar of the poem, however, was beyond my level of understanding if I was to do any justice to the translation. Rose, before living abroad, also studied French in high school. Her French teacher also did many other things in the school district, including teaching the middle school literature class that Rose and I first met in, as well as directing the high school theatre productions I was a part of. Having had a very strong relationship with her while a student, I decided to reach out to her with my poem - for which I had already drafted a translation - and see if she would be willing to edit and polish the French version. And I was glad I did. She graciously sent the poem back with phases I certainly did not know how to use, but I could tell were just right for expressing its nuance.
I already mentioned that the reason for starting today with the story about the girl falling into the well was because of the last line of the poem: You are a bottomless well of things I wish to discover. When I was translating that line, I couldn’t find a French word to use for the English word ‘bottomless’, so I went with infini - the word for infinite - and I chose to use desirer (French for ‘to desire’) instead of ‘to wish’. So, translated back into English, the final French line would read: You are an infinite well of things I desire to discover.
Pretty darn romantic.
I made a mistake, however, in the translation. Not a mistake of understanding, but one of clumsiness. In the English-to-French dictionary that I was using, right below the entry for decouvrir (the French word for ‘discover’), was the word decourager… and this is the word I wrote down in my draft, the same draft I sent to my former teacher. And although I sent her the original English along with my draft of the translation, and although she otherwise sent back a beautifully edited version of the translation, for whatever reason, she did not correct my clumsy mistake.
Decourager means ‘to discourage’. So, as I was getting ready to write my romantic French poem onto a piece of beautiful art paper - upon which I had painted with watercolors, and which I intend to frame - the last line of that poem translated to, You are an infinite well of things I desire to discourage!
Thankfully, I caught my mistake before copying it onto my watercolored art paper, and to this day, it is perhaps one of the best and most romantic gifts I have given. However, not longer than a few short years into our marriage, Rose and I both began to muse (with varying degrees of levity) about whether there wasn’t something prophetic about my text-based Freudian slip.
Those who have been married (or who have cohabitated with a long-term romantic partner) know that such an intimate relationship - combined with the stressors of finances, parenting (perhaps), and the upkeep of a physical home - has the potential to bring out both the best and the worst in one another. In addition to those factors, Rose and I had a history with one another and reasons for having been close friends as teenagers, as well as reasons as to why our friendship had become strained. I’m reminded of the clever title of the musical theatre show: I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.
Just like the story of the two caskets, there are, of course, very different things that can come up out of the well of a Love Relationship. And there are also two very different relationships we can have with the well itself. When I recently read the poem I wrote for Rose, I got the image of me calmly sitting at the edge of the well, lovingly drawing beautiful things out of it - things that I would cherish. It’s a highly romanticized notion of love, and ultimately one centered around my own comfort and enjoyment of the relationship. But the phrase we use to describe that highly romantic notion - to “fall in love” - also seems to be prophetic of what happens when we stay within the Love Relationship long enough to really know and be known by another. We fall.
We don’t remain sitting by the edge of the well… we go down the well. And when we first get to the bottom, disoriented and confused, we think that the thing we have fallen into is the well of the other person’s flaws: irrational fears, irresponsible decision-making, and things they say or do that spark our anger or else feel like they are going to burn us up. And on one level this may be true.
But what is more true - true on a deeper level - is that the well that we have fallen into is the well of our own deep psyche and soul. And just like the fence and the oven and the cow all asking not to be hurt, when we get to the bottom, we encounter our own core wounds and traumas, which are each willing to provide us with something of value if we are willing to be compassionate with them. There’s an old idea that says that our core wounds exist right next to our core gifts; the two are related, and if we can face our own wounds with both courage and kindness, then we are likely to bring gold and riches with us when we come back up into the above-ground world.
However, if those characters we encounter at the bottom of the well - in depth psychology we would call them our complexes: in other words, the complex web of reflexive feelings, assumptions, and reactions that we have accumulated around certain core ideas like money, love, childhood, power, parenting, and home - if these characters are aggravated, the way I image they would be when faced with the step-sister of our protagonist from the story, then we might just be consumed by the fire of passion put forth by the complex… and those close to us can be consumed as well.
To be clear, we are all the step-sister sometimes. And while fire is the element of consumption and disintegration, it is also the element of transformation. And so it seems to me that when we get burnt by Love, we are being asked to transform our attitudes: to willingly fall into the well rather than believe we are simply to sit by its edge; to behold our wounds with compassion rather than contempt; and to accept whatever gifts we are given with humility rather than self-interest.
It’s now nearly twelve years since I wrote that romantic French poem, and many-a-time have I been cast into my own emotional well; but I’ve become more and more skilled at navigating the landscape down there, and I continue to resurface and find the same glow in my partner’s eyes that inspired me all those years ago. Early in our partnership, at a time when I was going through an acute struggle with things I was facing through my relationship with Rose - things I might have felt inclined to discourage - I shared my difficulty with a confidant, who in return, shared with me the exquisite writing of Kahlil Gibran: specifically, his passage “On Love”. And so I thought it would be fitting to end today’s episode with that poem.
Thank you for listening, for supporting the show, for sharing it with your friends, and if you have a moment, for leaving a review wherever you listen. If you enjoy the piano improvisations like the one that will come after this closing poem, you can find more music by going to patreon.com/meadowsongpodcast. Thank you for spending your time with me today. I’ll leave you now with the poem and the music.
Here’s “On Love” by Kahlil Gibran:
Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon
the people, and there fell a stillness upon
them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to
him,
Though the sword hidden among his
pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in
him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he
crucify you. Even as he is for your growth
so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and
caresses your tenderest branches that quiver
in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and
shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto
himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred
fire, that you may become sacred bread for
God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your
heart, and in that knowledge become a
fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only
love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover
your nakedness and pass out of love’s
threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you
shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes
naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be
possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say,
“God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am
in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course
of love, for love, if it finds you worthy,
directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil
itself.
But if you love and must needs have
desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook
that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own under-
standing of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate
love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with grati-
tude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the
beloved in your heart and a song of praise
upon your lips.