Clarity
versus Unclarity
This
contrast is one that has always confounded me. On the one hand each of us
desires clarity and yet there is pretty little of it to be found in this world
- at least, of the logical variety. At college we had to read Albert Camus'
short book The Myth of Sisyphus for our philosophy class. For
Camus, the philosopher of the absurd, or the absurd person, demands clarity or
certainty above all, but again there is little or none to be found in the world
around him. The sense of the absurd, then, results from the the conflict that
is created between human reason that demands clarity and the unreasonable
universe that is very unclear indeed.
I remember many years ago when I was a green young teacher walking into a staff
room early one winter's morning to find a colleague named Gerard Smith, one
very smart young gentleman, asking me the following question, "Well, Tim,
what is it all about?" What a huge question that was, and I was
taken aback to be asked it so early in the morning. I don't remember what
I replied, but I certainly would have said little of worth as I was quite a shy
young man then with little confidence. A few years later we were all to learn
that poor Gerard had died in America, having taken a career break from school.
It as only then that we found out that the poor man had a congenital and fatal
heart defect from his youth and that there remained little time on earth for
him when he asked his question. In hindsight, I then understood why he
had asked that weighty question. Again, he would have known that I had a
background in theology and philosophy, and he perhaps believed that I could
furnish him with some sort of answer to his deep question.
Most religious or spiritual gurus and writers acknowledge the unclarity of the
world and the sheer lack of any logical answers. They simply have a different
take on things, a much different perspective. Often they even seem to delight
in the sheer unclarity of things, and speak about mysticism, wonder and
mystery, especially that mystery which the divine is, that mystery that simply
cannot be caught in a net of words or in dogmatic phrases no matter how
intricate or sublime. There are other ways, apparently of encountering the
world, outside the logical. Those who have this perspective are often fond of quoting
the words of Blaise Pascal: "Le coeur as ses raisons que la raison ne
connait point" - "The heart has its reasons which reason itself
cannot understand." It is with this background in mind that I now invite
the reader to read Louis Macneice's very fine poem called "Entirely:"
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Louis
Macneice 1907 - 1963
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Entirely
If
we could get the hang of it entirely
It
would take too long;
All
we know is the splash of words in passing
And
falling twigs of song,
And
when we try to eavesdrop on the great
Presences
it is rarely
That
by a stroke of luck we can appropriate
Even
a phrase entirely.
If
we could find our happiness entirely
In
somebody else’s arms
We
should not fear the spears of the spring nor the city’s
Yammering
fire alarms
But,
as it is, the spears each year go through
Our
flesh and almost hourly
Bell
or siren banishes the blue
Eyes
of Love entirely.
And
if the world were black or white entirely
And
all the charts were plain
Instead
of a mad weir of tigerish waters,
A
prism of delight and pain,
We
might be surer where we wished to go
Or
again we might be merely
Bored
but in brute reality there is no
Road
that is right entirely.
I
love this poem because of its complete honesty and total authenticity.
The poet does not trot out old pieties or standard traditional
phrases that simplify life. Rather, he honestly presents a perspective on life
which is all too common and all too realistic - that is, that life is
exceedingly complex and often beyond our understanding of it. In short,
the poet admits to being somewhat stumped about the mystery that life faces us
with. The theme is clear, and that theme is that there is no ultimate clarity.
Camus drove himself wild looking for such clarity.
In stanza one the poet recounts how we simply cannot "get the hang of it
entirely," and even if we could, we simply would not live long enough to
figure it out. When we listen we often only pick up a fraction of what is
said. Indeed, we readers can add in our minds to this that we often do
not see the full picture as we are only granted a certain perspective on
events, often from an awkward angle. MacNeice hints at religious and spiritual
themes when he says that when sometimes we try to "eavesdrop on the great
Presences" we scarcely succeed in that endeavour at all.
"[S]plash of words" and "falling twigs of song" are two
powerful images with the second one blending two totally opposite realities -
twigs (physical) and song (immaterial). Love is fleeting, not just the
romantic idea of it, but its physical reality, as we are not entirely satisfied
in our physical experience of it. The imagery of "spears"
reminds us of Shakespeare's line "to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune" and the intended meaning of both is the same, namely a
battle image to sum up the misfortunes we encounter in our lives. The
"yammering fire alarms" are those that are constantly calling out to
warm the citizens of London about the fires consequent on enemy attack.
Those bells "banish the Blue Eyes of Love entirely."
The last stanza is as succinct as the other two and points out that it is
ludicrous to approach life in a "black and white" manner as there are
too many other colours in between the two that manifest themselves through
"a prism of delight and pain." Indeed, even the maps we get are not
one hundred per cent clear and logical. They are, rather, more than somewhat
unclear as they often manifest themselves in actuality as "a mad weir of
tigerish waters." Then there are times that we merely grow bored of
trying to find our way through the maze of unclarity that much of life can be.
Whatever our reaction to our situation in life is, we can be fully sure that
there is "no road that is right entirely."
Finally, the title is a most apt and succinct summary of the poem, that is,
that we can never be totally sure entirely. I find this a comforting poem in
the down periods of my life as I begin to be less hard on myself as a result of
the wisdom garnered here. After all, we will never get everything right
entirely. Not even the commentary on this poem.
