Nothing Gold Can Stay, but Apparently Silver Can

Nothing Gold Can Stay's seeming simplicity and shortness in verse and rhyme leads the reader into a riddle of life and nature. With lines that are easily glossed and yet so cunningly written, it may be easy to pass over the true depth of its meaning.

At its heart, Frost laments. Life is so briefly created and stunningly clear in the short span that it lives in glory but it is too soon to wither. Frost expresses life through nature. Its “gold” is the spring, the bud and the dawn. These things live briefly in comparison to what they begin The flower may grow all summer, but when it first emerges, like the crocus, it is merely a bud that holds all potential for the plant to come. “But only so an hour” it will remain in its state. Just as our childhood cannot be kept forever, neither can this state linger. There is no Neverland for us. Even Eden, the wilds of man’s biblical beginning, synonymous with a haven-state of purity, peacefulness and innocence, eventually fell in order to give rise to the generations that follow.

But, perhaps the most mysterious line in this short solitary stanza is the “dawn goes down to day.” This concept is not immediately clear. In the swift current of the poem, the most literal answer is sought, but how does the dawn fall when it clearly rises and then is no more? But perhaps it is that the dawn dies swiftly as it is followed by the day, falls before it, conceding. Overall, within the context of the poem, this line is rather dark and disturbing. Never once is mentioned the beauty that the day might have but only the dirge of its slaying the dawn. In those short minutes in which it exists it holds more grace than the day, according to Frost. It is the gold of nature. What is the flower to the bud? What is Eden to the future? Perhaps it is the potential of it, that they, the beginnings, posses in that hour the realm of possibilities to come and in that they are precious. For would there be an end without a start? Besides that wondrous beginning, we must be stuck with the second best life has to offer.

Light the Way with the Laterna Magica

Reading the Laterna Magica is like being browbeaten senseless with a moral stick. It is a thrifty version of life through childhood, love, living, and eventually death and what follows. Each story that follows the other seems equally unrelated to the first and yet they all have a dreamy, childhood thriller story quality. The first section speaks of death in the terms of a literally ferryman who is waiting to take the narrator away, and as he walks through the town he sees the people there and reflects upon them. There are the children, newly born into the world who are reluctant to leave it, just as humans are reluctant to leave life, as if we are yet children in the terms of out immortal souls.

And there follows tales that reflect what the narrator has found to be the truths behind the public masks that the townsfolk wear. The ghosts, the three weavers are possibly the spinners of fate, the maid, the matron and the hag, who spin our lives through time. As the children playfully plan their futures, fate is “sizing up the two brothers.” But a point is made that not all plans are completed, but the journey changes to fit the adventurer. Take Jakob and Urd, two unfortunates who have be left lame by the world. At first, it may seem, to the public and to religion that they are deviants in their untraditional love but it only brings about the peace. In the guise of devils, white birds bring joy and song. They have made their own lives just as Stubborn Stina has. No one understands her desire to be alone. There is no “great loneliness” for her. She is happy and comfortable with her silence and waiting. And yet, society believes that she needs a man to be happy, to be married. The wait for her misbegotten Thomas gives an excuse for her freedom and independence, and his death only highlights that she waits only for herself and not for him. And the Miracle, the absolute freedom, when age and disabilities cease to hold back the soul and it may wander as strongly as ever. In childhood we would believe such things, just as these tales may be told by them in darkened rooms, under covers and taken for the magical miracles they are. But the Miracle is squandered and unbelieved by the ‘rational’ world. The pastor, religion, stems the impulse to believe in it, to close the third eye, the sight of imagination and truth. The pastor tells the deacon to blind his eyes and bind his lips so that none will know and all will be in peace in ignorance.

And yet the narrator, on this journey through the viewfinder perspective of behind closed doors finds that the truth, the good, the human is the greatest joy. For here is God, to pick you up when you fall, to grant miracles when you find fate within yourself. The child who traveled far with his footstool-ship was more alive inside than the one who imaged a safe life and saw nothing beyond the stool than just a stool. It wasn’t a ship or a journey, just something familiar and the same. But to seek after the Laterna Magica, to believe in it blindly without knowing its full meaning or purpose brought the greatest happiness. It is like the innocent faith in life itself or in religion. We need not define our lives through the collective or through the opinions of supposed representatives. Stina, Urd, Jakob, Old Tonnes, they created their own fates that were far happier than society could have provided for them. To the world, they were lame, they were old, senile, and stubborn. Their lives were wasted. And though things may not come about as they were planned. Though imagination may not come to fruition, the faith itself is enough to sustain.

Well...that was a nice beating.

Heinesen, William. Laterna Magica. Fjord Press: Seattle, 1987.

The Enemy's Enemy

The Enemy of the People is the Holocaust. In all its absurdity of convictions and populace of lemmings, the green-eyed monsters take hold. The good Doctor has it right that these townsfolk are “ambassadors of hell”, grubby minions of ill fate and feeble mind who follow in the path of their devious master, the mayor. He is full of promises and desires; he buys the people into his servitude. Sure, there are fine carriages and bulging pockets just there for the taking. You must only take his hand and swear your allegiance, to give up your soul, your morality, in exchange for these gifts. Were those not the actions of Hitler as he promised the masses a happy life, a better life if they would only turn their devilish eyes upon his scapegoats? Lies were spread, propaganda. Just as the mayor, smugly standing amid the people at the lecture, had poisoned their minds and hearts with his hateful, cooing words he had already planted there from his newspaper article? It took but a tap to send them over the edge.

But, greed is not enough. It is not enough to drive normally placated people to hate. No, the mayor used fear. In a small community such as this, your neighbor is all you have. And, by threatening the destruction of all these ties and of the livelihood of the townspeople, who see not beyond their own doorsteps, become afraid. They become vicious and cruel in order to hold onto what little dingy materials they have, even if it brings them down. The mob mentality will take over.

Everyone demanded that the doctor think of his family. Should they not come before the public? But, oh how they had forgotten, that their neighbors are their family. The doctor himself referred to the township as if it was his brother. Can we, as moral human beings, find it within ourselves to put us above our neighbor or above any other human life? Would you watch a man drown just because you don’t want to get wet? But the people once touched by the mayor’s hand recall their mortality and their weaknesses. If only they believe him, they will have a richer life. If only they believe him, they will become stronger. If only they believe him, one man will be to blame and it won’t be one of them…

Hamlet: The Hate-Hate Relationship with Claudius

The power-relationship between Hamlet and his Uncle/Step-father, Claudius, is created in Act I of Hamlet through a very brief interaction of the two, but mainly through Hamlet’s monologues and his discussion with the Ghost. The reader (or viewer) does not gain much from the conversation between them except that Claudius is rather unfeeling for his brother’s demise and Hamlet’s right to mourn. Apparently it is “unmanly” for him to “persevere in obstinate condolement [which] is a course of impious stubbornness,” (92-94). Hamlet has an “unfortified heart” according to his uncle (96). So, it must be that being cold-hearted and unfeeling are good qualities of a king and/ or queen. Claudius does continue to confess his love for Hamlet, that he is like a son. One quote that stands out is right after Claudius calls Hamlet “my cousin…and my son,” (64) and Hamlet replies, “A little more than kin, and less than kind,” (65). Hamlet’s animosity, or annoyance is rather evident is this first interaction between them when the reader may tentatively gauge their relationship. Hamlet is saying that they are close by blood but not that close. Almost no one easily accepts a new father and this strain is emphasized here without any specific reason except that he is his father’s brother.

It is only when Hamlet is left alone with his thoughts that the true import behind this conversation comes to light. At first, it is unclear how long it has been since the “old king” passed, but then, as Hamlet explains, it has been only two months since and it was only ONE month after that his mother married his uncle. It puts Claudius in rather smug and undeceiving light and lays down some suspicion. This only increases throughout the talk with the Ghost, which claims to be the old king and the recently murdered victim of Claudius. So, on one hand, we have a princely youth, victor over Fortinbras, wooer of Ophelia, mourner of his father, an all-around young and righteous Hamlet. And on the other there is a lecherous, self-gratifying, fratricidal false king. The struggle for the thrown has begun. Which contender will be the winner?

I have only one question: what if the ghost was lying?
This whole story may hinge on a “what-if?”.