Homens Bêbados

It is raining so I will not go to the desert today. Instead, I looked through my small library of books in one corner of my art studio to isolate myself from the weather.

I have books I collected over the decades, as well as books I inherited from my father’s vast library. These are books written in Armenian, in French, in Arabic, in Italian and in English. Some of the books are a couple of centuries old, including a few from the Ottoman days in Turkish but written in the Arabic alphabet.

Today I pulled out a book of poetry by P. Pessoa.

I often read Pessoa and P. Neruda on rainy days. And on rainy evenings I find refuge in an Armenian romantic poet’s lines, those by Mateos Zarifian. Will come back to him later.

I do not start with a theme or idea in mind. I let the pages reveal these as I slowly re-read poems I have known for decades. This morning my mind focused upon the fact that Pessoa died from cirrhosis of the liver. Not an unusual event for artists who push the boundaries of their feelings and imagination with the help of stimulants. 

So, I read one of the Sonnets by Pessoa, the Sonnet XI:

Like to a ship that storms urge on its course,

By its own trials our soul is surer made.

The very things that make the voyage worse

Do make it better; its peril is its aid. 

Peril and stimulants. Among them love and disappointment.

Which made me recall a poem by Neruda, interestingly titled Love Sonnet XI:

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.

Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.

Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day

I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps

The “liquid measure”. And that reminded me of the controversy about Neruda’s death. It was not cirrhosis, it was not cancer. It was never known.

What filled the souls of these poets? Rumi, another of my favorite poets of rainy days, suggested:

      Take sips of this pure wine being poured. Don't mind that you've been given a dirty cup.

… Billie Holiday, Jimi Hendrix, Pessoa. Was it the wine? Or were they given a dirty cup by destiny?

… I am reading a Pulitzer Prize Winner book titled “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt. It is a book one reads slowly given the vast historical context within which the author revisits the contributions of “ancient” citizens of our planet. Two biographies have captured my curiosity so far – the poetry of Lucretius and the true message of Epicure.

His poem De rerum natura ("On the Nature of the Universe") has been discovered and rediscover over the centuries through translations by scholars and monks. It has influenced the thinking of generations and nations from the Romans to this day. In this poem Lucretius writes about the mind and soul of all creatures, analyzes their sensations and thought, and transcends to celestial topics. He specifically posits about the development of the world and its ever changing nature; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. De rerum natura  borrows heavily from the ideas Epicurianism, specifically the concept of Atomism and the analytic process of psychology. Lucretius was the first writer to introduce Roman readers to Epicurean philosophy. 

In synopsis, Lucretius proposes that our universe operates according to physical principles guided by fortuna or "chance". 

And that is the concept of atomism found in Epicureanism. The a-tome, or the non-further divisible, is what Epicure and Lucretius proposed as the fundamental particle making up all of us, our world and our universe. Their random (fortuna) movements eventually result in things, perhaps life and the celesta. It is called the Swerve, which is the title of Greenblatt’s book.

But Epicure was more than an atomic materialist – he proposed a way of filling our limited years of existence with joy. Epicurus believed that what he called "pleasure" was the greatest good, and that the way to attain such pleasure was to live modestly, to gain knowledge of the workings of the world, and to limit one's desires. This would lead one to attain a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear as well as an absence of bodily pain (aponia).

After reading the Swerve, I realized that Epicurianism is not about excess and debauchery, but about the way to minimize pain and enhance joy. If nothing else, that was a good outcome of my reading.

Now back to my “rainy day and night poets”.

Neruda, Pessoa and Rumi somehow touched on the teachings of Epicure. Love, wine and the tortured soul are the atoms of poetry. Or at least are the stimulants which when cannot be further divided, result in poetry. And that brings me to my favorite Armenian romantic poet, Mateos Zarifian.

I have read all of Zarifian’s writings many thousand times. I started when I was about 13 years old and have very often reread his work over the decades. I still have the 1950’s compilation of his works which used to be next to my bed as a teenager.

Zarifian died of pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 30, but given his lifestyle, he could have died of liver cirrhosis as well. He produced a handful of small booklets of poetry but his simple yet tortured feelings about love and destiny have shaped generations.

And since today’s theme seems to be Epicurianism and cirrhosis, in a calm voice I recited in Armenian one of my favorite poems by Zarifian titled “Toast”:

Fill the glasses.

Let us drink to

aimless sheer delight

without reason,

without cause

mocking death

and life […]

Fill the glass

and let me drink

the very fire of hell

while death himself

toasts in return

to my good health.

To my delight, I found this translation into English on the Internet done by Diana Der-Hovanessian, author of twenty-three books of poetry, including ten books of translations.

…The wind is howling by my window just like the coyotes do at night. And the rain will soon turn the yellow-brown of the desert into a collage of vibrant colours. Meanwhile, my morning has been all poetry, and I am grateful to the rain for it.

So I give the last word to Neruda to sum up my feelings:

“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.” 

February 12, 2018

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2018

• The title of this essay is “Drunken Men” in Portuguese.