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Poetry Book III:TETRALOGY I:
THE WOODS · THE DESERT · THE SEA · THE STARS
AN EVOLUTIONARY JOURNEY IN FOUR PARTS
POEMS, 2004-2008
Allahabad: Cyberwit. 2019. 428 pages
I. SCIENCE AND POETRY
I
have always been interested in questions about the nature of life,
about how the world came to be, about how everything works, how
everything is related to each other, and how human beings fit into
this world. I guess I am not alone in asking these questions ―
they will be of interest to anyone with the time and energy to think
about them. The
entirety of literature and culture of the world is full with
traditions ― both old and new ― speculating,
meditating, pondering about such questions. This is one trajectory I
am pursuing in this volume: a discussion of aspects of mythology,
theology and philosophy as they pertain to natural and cultural
history.
Yet
there is a second trajectory. While poetry and mythology seem a
natural fit, the assumption is typically made that poetry and science
do not mix. The assumedly cold and inhumane processes of
hypothesizing, experimenting and theorizing that characterizes much
of science surely would not lend themselves easily to a poetic
treatment? Richard Dawkins (River
out of Eden, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Magic of Reality, An Appetite
for Wonder)
would certainly disagree with this, as he has published widely on the
poetic nature of the world, demonstrating that once you unweave the
rainbow, it does not become less fascinating but more so, and that
the natural world is simply so wonderous that you cannot help but to
see it in poetic terms. Similarly, Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson
(Cosmos),
Stephen Hawking (A
Brief History of Time),
David Attenborough (BBC nature documentaries, especially Life
on Earth),
and many, many others more have worked to imbue the public
understanding of science with the same degree of wonder, fascination,
and poetry that usually is reserved to the realms of mythology and
religion. My attempt here is to follow this direction by structuring
the poems in this book in a way that science is clearly seen as an
inspiration and organizing principle in the understanding of the
natural world. There are plenty of passages dedicated to the
description of scientific knowledge, the understanding of the theory
of evolution, and the celebration of the scientific achievement of
all human cultures throughout history.
This
brings me to the third and final trajectory, the interaction between
both principles, the harmonization of mythos and logos, of shadows
and forms (in the Platonic sense), or fiction and fact, of religion
and science. The late Stephen J. Gould famously understood science
and religion as “non-overlapping magisteria.” I do not
subscribe to this belief at all. All our religious and mythological
creation stories are attempts to situate human existence within a
natural order. There are many ways of telling that story, and before
science took hold, universal forces and principles would simply be
described in the language of divinity. Mythological and religious
knowledge has also always evolved. Contrary to what religious
institutions may want you to believe, religious orthodoxy has always
been in flux, has always adapted to changed understandings about the
world. These processes of adaptation may have seemed longer and more
subtle, but they have always been there. Anyone trying to systematize
Greek or Roman mythology/theology will discover that different
authors will disagree with each other about the nature of the gods
all the time, and that functions and even family relations of gods
are oftentimes contested, resulting in multiple origin stories.
Furthermore, serious theology has always come with the warning that
if you believe you understand the nature of god, you have not
understood the nature of god, just as Richard Feynman has reportedly
said that "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you
don’t understand quantum mechanics.” The Biblical
commandment forbidding humans to make graven images of God is exactly
such a warning against being too sure in your convictions, against
believing you can define God, and in favor of retaining the capacity
for doubt and continuous life-long pursuit of the truth, without
never knowing whether you have finally reached it. I only wish more
people would follow that.
Science
and Religion are thus more related to each other than might typically
be assumed. However, I would not put both on the same level of
hierarchy: Science clearly has shown to have more predictive and
explanatory power than religion; even though religion frequently is
left to tell the more emotionally affective story. Despite Newton’s
best efforts, his statement that “for every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction” does not read as awe-inspiring as
religious warnings against sinning. An angry god is probably scarier
than a simple statement of cause and effect. But talking to people in
the language of religion tends to infantilize people, unless, of
course, you get to conduct serious theology, but that is typically
reserved to the priestly caste, who may very well be rather cynical
about their business as already remarked by Cicero, echoing Cato,
when wondering “that a soothsayer doesn't laugh when he sees
another soothsayer” (De
Divinatione
2, 24). Science does not approach humanity with such cynicism, but
with the serious invitation that anyone could practice it, and that
its findings are transparent and will, if true, stand up to anybody’s
scrutiny. Science is democracy in practice. What is more poetic than
that?
II.
ABOUT THE POEMS
Now
to the poems. The four poems forming my first Tetralogy are set up
with the following reasoning in mind:
They
describe the evolution of humanity since we have left the Woods,
ventured into the Desert, spread through the planet by traversing
its Seas, to eventually discover space and the Stars.
The
four parts also mimic the four seasons: spring (“The Woods”:
the time of growing), summer (“The Desert”: heat,
stress, warfare), fall (“The Sea”: the moral fall of the
world in colonization), and winter (“The Stars”: the
coldness of space).
They
also mirror Wagner’s operatic tetralogy The
Ring of the Nibelung:
from innocence (“The Woods”
/
The
Rheingold),
to temptation and conflict (“The Desert”
/ The Valkyrie),
flawed heroism (“The Sea”
/ Siegfried)
and the transcendence of the world (“The Stars”
/ Twilight of the Gods).
This is not as direct a connection, but it is made explicit
sometimes when referring to Wagner especially throughout The
Woods.
I
have provided footnotes throughout to explain some connections that
may not be easily apparent for everyone. That might seem
unnecessarily academic or even pedantic, but so be it. I do not
believe poetry should essentially be riddles for a specially
initiated elite, but I am hoping to be communicating as clearly as
possible.
All
four poems are organized into five acts like a classical drama, with
introduction, epilog and interludes. Each act consists of 10
sections. You will see little graphics at the end of each small
section. These are inspired by Richard Dawkins’ “Biomorphs”
that he established in his Blind
Watchmaker,
but they are not algorithmically evolved but deliberately designed to
fit each section’s theme.
Now,
let me make some remarks about each of the individual poems.
“THE
WOODS” introduces
in its introduction the leitmotif “would we go lost / were once
to return we?”. This is the question that hints at our origin
as the “Third Chimpanzee” (Jared Diamond), a creature of
the woods. We became human by leaving these woods, evolutionarily
speaking, and yet we are still tied in many ways to this history. We
seem to calm down in the presence of greenery, and we are used to
think in three dimensions just as we would have had to when we were
“mere” forest dwellers. Maybe some of our ancient fears
come from these times still (Donald Brown, Human
Universals, Steven
Pinker, The
Blank Slate).
We
begin our voyage by discussing elements of the forest, mixed with
some loose meditating on the wider meaning of them in both Acts I and
II till we approach the night. Act III follows, loosely, Wagner’s
opera Siegfried,
Act IV is about natural evolution, and Act V provides a wider
discussion of hopes, dreams and desires. The decision to create a
tetralogy was made during the end of the writing process of the poem,
which was originally intended to be a stand-alone piece. But once the
format had evolved, it became clear that there was clearly the
potential for a larger structure, and so it was to be.
“THE
DESERT”
is a meditation on the abyss, following the theme of “Errand
into the Wilderness” established by Samuel Danforth. Just as
Moses, John the Baptist and Jesus were tempted in the desert,
humanity is tested by the wilderness. Civilization is a thin layer
covering human nature, sometimes successfully, sometimes not; and in
itself, even civilization is not as civilized as it claims, and
shares more with its supposed opposite, barbarism. Just as Goethe’s
Faust exclaims that two souls are living inside him (“Zwei
Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust”), humanity is drawn
between good and evil, sin and virtue, easy and hard, success and
failure, Thanatos (death wish) and Eros (life wish). We begin with
descriptions of landscape and nature, (Acts I and II), warfare (Act
III), civilization (Act IV) and conclude with reflections on the life
of the soul (Act V).
“THE
SEA”
opens with reflections on the origin of life in the seas (Act I),
then continues on to marine life (Act II), mythology (Act III), the
Age of Discovery (Act IV), colonization and genocide (Act V), and a
somewhat bittersweet ending. The juxtaposition of the optimism of
discovery, and the realization of the moral failure of the
colonialist enterprise belong together, and cannot be resolved, but
in talking about them together, at least the story itself is being
told in a more complex way, hopefully. It needs to be told in order
to shape a better future after lessons hopefully learnt.
“THE
STARS”
continues with the theme of discovery. It begins with reflections on
physics (Act I), continuing to descriptions of the planets (Act II),
mythology (Act III), astronomical discoveries (Act IV), and concludes
with further meditations on scientific themes (Act V). The
intersection of mythology and science is supposed to illustrate not
just the triumph of science, but also to recontextualize the
mythological approaches within an early pre-scientific framework. We
know so much more now than we ever knew in the history of humankind;
yet future generations will probably know even more than us, and look
at us as primitive, even though we tried our very best. This
perspective should humble us and generate and sustain a deep sense of
respect for the achievements of the past, however imperfect the
results may have been in today’s eyes. Yet where science still
sometimes fails today, mythology has been succeeding till now, and
probably will continue to succeed in the future: in inspiring us, in
telling fantastic stories that weave a tale of universal importance
into the intimate need of human beings to situate ourselves within a
world that has other priorities than our own individual happiness or
even survival.
This
then concludes my meandering meditations about the evolution, natural
history, the nature of civilization, and the deeper layers of the
human mind.
III.
OTHER POEMS & OUTLOOK
This
is my third poetry volume published with Cyberwit. While all my poems
can also be found online at philjohn.com, these books provide the
additional benefit of more commentary, different selections and new
contexts that shall provide an enhanced reading experience. The first
volume, Life
As We Know It,
is a brief compilation of individual poems and excerpts from larger
ones. It follows five different themes: I. Observations, II. (Human)
Nature, III. Life and Death, IV. Love and V. Civilization.
The
second volume Daimonia
follows
a clear line of thought which describes the shattering of a solid
belief system, and attempts to rebuild and reshape it. In its five
sections, it moves through the stages of I. Certainty, II.
Introspection, III. Trauma, IV. Questioning, and V. Redefinition.
A
future volume is already in preparation and it will follow up
directly to the volume at hand. Tetralogy II will again comprise four
larger poems dealing with essential philosophical questions of human
life. Its individual parts will probably be “The Road”,
“The Garden”, “The City” and “The
Ruins.”
Thank
you, dear reader, for joining me in this voyage you are about to
undertake. I hope you will find the effort worthwhile, and that after
pages and pages of reflections on science, mythology, and culture,
with plenty of erratic distractions, and approximately 200 pedantic
footnotes, you will have had a chance to experience a similarly
ecstatic effect as when I was setting out on this private voyage of
poetic discovery all these years ago.
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