I learned Nov 18, 2021 that John Cullen had died the previous April
and woke in the early hours of the next day during the longest
lunar eclipse in a century to write this epicedium, included pretty much as I left it then.
This is JCCIII on the roof of that sheep ranch house against the full moon. We watched several lunar eclipses from there.
I knew him in the
years we both received doctorates in English literature at the U of Texas,
1968-75, he in the nature of poetic mind, mine in the long sought renaissance Ameryca
and all its lives, but Dante was his first love. I had been made to change to
English from linguistics when that proved to endanger my assistant ship. The
English dept declared it could not have such outliers teaching English, a cover
up for the real reason that began when a local radio station wanted to
broadcast my classes. When this decision to vacate the linguist surfaced John
went to James Sledd, head of freshmen English then, and declared that if I was
not rehired he would resign. This surely made an impact, but I also got
evaluated and took some astonishing reviews to the Dean of Arts and Sciences,
John Silber, who after a direct interview, certified the results back to
English with the message that he wanted the best teachers regardless of their
major and I was rehired. I then changed
to English and got another 3 years of employment.
John lived on
Elysian Fields in New Orleans, a subject germane to my dissertation on the
golden age, not that it was ever mentioned. In those times I spoke the language
nobody can translate, the language of poetry, of prethought, that has no
reading, either it is or it’s not as all gradually become human beings to each
other. But the higher and lower minds and worlds must relate. My lower mind was
a dilettante, only present under compulsion but then its concentration was
excessive. So all by myself one night in 1973 I laid out A Calendar of Poems and took
it to the printer the next day and printed 500 copies. I was going to give it
away but John said no, make them pay. So it was $2. When in this latter day I
decided my backlog of writing was too great I invented six pseudonyms and
published dozens of long pieces under them and finally in 2022 put them on Amazon. He began his life work long after Austin, in 1987, in the translation of some 50 books of
note, translations both poetic and profound, after his own heart. Fifty
novels and non-fiction works, three made into major films; one was awarded the
French-American Prize. In 2006, he had two novels on the short list of ten for
the Dublin Prize, the prize in literature. My work has only just begun.
The thing that he cared about most was the
working of the poetic mind. The higher mind is philosophical, serious,
disciplined, formal and doesn’t much like to teach, the lower mind is poetic, childish,
open and loves to talk even to students. The irony is that the lower mind,
spontaneous, changeable, scandalous, just of the moment flickers this
constantly. If strangeness is poetic then Dante might be an exception but Dante
is the largest instance of the first possibility of the higher. This irony
is “a strangeness that we either never
altogether assimilate or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its
idiosyncrasies. (The Western Canon,
4).
This
higher and lower mind stuff is the thing that ails ya thatcan reverse with a
vengeance. So his love of Dante was mirrored in the Blues as noted in his
“Devil Blues” in Lucille 3, which I had remembered as another of his, “Pastoral
Blues”
Well I ain’t seen a nymph down here
for forty years or
more
I don’ know what I’d
do with one
for my backbones
stiff and sore
I hate meadows and I
loathe sheep,
I got the pastoral
blues.
But
this one is done with the spirit of Robert Johnson which he played often to me in the
Austin summers to dark beer and peanuts. Higher mind types love the crossroads
because it confronts them with the existential dilemma the poetic mind lives in. Human thought polarizes
its opposites in everything of course, so the proving that he could sink far further down
than I, who lived in spontaneity, could reverse too and rise far above the high, not that it ever did me any
good, but evidence the child joy of the
Amerycan, “from a land in the far away.” However most of the time the limits are
opposed in proper order, he the higher philosophical, me the lower poetic mind.
Andrew-
Greetings from Florence, which we are about to leave for Venice. As you
know, being a world traveler [Central America in 1963, N Wales ’73-74], isn’t
entirely without difficulty, but I’m glad that I retired early. Although weary
of Madonnas, tapestries and the busts of Roman emperors I have spent whole days
in the assurance that I was closer to
the flame than ever before. I trust you are prospering in whatever outpost
of civilization you have established for yourself. Do you think it’s true that
you can’t go home again? Hello from V; Hello to P. J.
He knew I would love
a card from Florence, home of the David, which besides its heroic human
character was such a calling of the human spirit. He always called me Andrew, like my grandmother. A
similar card from his companion V. describes the period just before his,
Dear Andrew, The gilding of this lovely card
has sparked the writing of #2 of a
continuing series. Is there a smile on your lips in this year 1976? We are well
and jolly and very much liking Toulouse. We returned to France after having
spent a thrilling week in Madrid buried in the Prado museum, staring ecstatically
at Goya and a dreadful week in Seville surrounded by humorous beings-slowly now
we make our gently way to Italy via
caracassonne… did you receive #1? Thinking of you fondly, Vick
On Criticism
In all the vicissitudes such studies can
bring, for study craves the love of action in the revolution of some kind, John
was a cook who baked bread all the time, was impressed once when Eden made
Creole and asked about the construction of the roux. I gave him the first
ceramic piece I ever made, a gruel bowl, very Mono-ha Casanovas, as
in Twenty
Blocks, which says "each piece is a silence."
We patronized together countless blues concerts of BB King and a hundred foreign
films from the first row of Batts Hall, Godot, Bunuel. I saw him once reading
up from a collection of film books on the one we were about to view,
typical habit of the higher mind to inform itself with the critics.
The lower mind has contempt for such preparation of spreading observed
prejudices before the viewing fact. After maybe, or not, but to taint the view
with tattletales like Harold Bloom whose chief affection for Hart Crane from
age 10, and quoting his whole corpus throughout his life precludes his
understanding of “Lachrymae Christi,” which “has never found me” (The Anatomy of Influence, 269), as
the greatest of Crane, is as obtuse as his not seeing the influence of Hopkins
so obvious, but against Bloom’s hermetic prejudice, he can’t see that Crane
reached highest when he celebrated
that Subject of Hopkins of
rhythms, signs and symbols, even if ‘he removed those things from the realm of
strict orthodoxy and gave them a free life of their own.” (Bloom citing
Elizabeth Jennings. Anatomy of Influence,
268).
Like Pope Francis said of Donald Trump after the death of Justice Scalia,
following his peculiar death, that Trump was not a Christian, which indubitably makes him one, Bloom says of
Crane (Possessed by Memory, 386) as if he determined it. I guess his sway
is near the Pope’s on Trump. Bloom cites Wilde as preface to his last book Possessed by Memory to the effect that
the highest criticism is the record of one’s own soul, “the thoughts of one’s life” but the critics’ thoughts are all base camps
of the expeditions they are on, valuable for definition, but not for
originality, seeing face to face. Wilde’s Critic as Artist (Intentions 1891) is a sycophant and may
define public fortunes and reviews and faculties, but is always second hand.
Bloom wants the daemonic to define the sublime as if, if said enough times and
of enough writers (The Daemon Knows.
2015) it is believed, but it is just projected hermetic, a counterfeit of mind,
and needs to be rescued from his mania and uncatalogued.
To be sure, a
critic resembles a poet as one pea another, the only difference being that he
has no anguish in his heart and no music on his lips of life's great
conflagration (Kierkegaard, Diapsalmata).Criticism
is the pillage and pinning of butterflies so they can’t fly.
We played softball games each Sunday among
these intellects, ate peanuts and drank dark beer listening to Robert Johnson,
for whom we must credit his penning of the Devil Blues in Lucille 3, but
otherwise the celebrated New Orleans piquancy of his life is a palimpsest
overtop or beneath a more universal layer. But in truth none of the people
herein exist anymore in their childish states. We grow old with patinas and
customs and culture and these are all that remain of old enthusiasms.
Greatest of all we shared countless hours
and nights in conversation around his fireside or mine in celebration of a
mutual love of poetry, vision, and truth. He loved Dante above all else and had
served as a child in the church, bespeaking a piety that may never have been
expunged, evidenced then in his love the Incredible String Band at the same
time he held extreme contempt for fools.
But faith expressed is not the same as that believed. His attraction to
so profound a believer as Charles Williams accompanies our assumption that the
most transparent and unguarded expressions are the first, later are curbed by
the intellect, so the statement that “the highest place in [Williams] literary
scale is the comedy of forgiveness and reconciliation wherein agony is solved”
(The Literary Criticism of Charles
Williams, 1974, 84) we spoke of many times in the last plays of
Shakespeare, but not of the deeper belief accompanying it in Williams that
“everything that exists in the universe, animate and inanimate, material and
immaterial, is intimately and inextricably bound up with everything else” (84).
Shall we ascribe belief to the quote? No, anymore than I believed in my
sentence that the fusion of the new world with a new man could produce in him a
new nature that would grow in the Virginian pearl, gold and corn as a “new
creature of virtue to whom the golden age is a reality” (136).
He loved classical music, the string
quartet and piano Sonatas of Schnabel who Yeats had dinner with at Roquefort in
France at the end of his life. No I think faith was not lost, for the spirit
grows in us as a tender plant and beyond our meaning, so we leave it alone to
prosper.
His fire place was in a chalet he occupied
with companion V, set off by two rockers face to face and to either side, all
surrounded by books. In those naïve times we removed the dust covers to see the
fine dark blue of the Oxford editions, stripped of their seeming garish covers
so called I guess, for the interest was never in the extrinsic value but of the
words themselves within, of which we talked day and night in these seasons of
friendship He had cats and so did I. Both of us nursed large male Himalayan
males through distemper, his Frank and my Jellybelly. His female was named
Grace. My was named Mummz. Three cats had been dropped off in the early Spicewood
Spgs days, Mummz, Leroy and Albert. All Mummz’s kittens were given away on the
Drag. I took Mummz and Bubba across country through Arkansas to Phila on the
way to the British Museum. Now I adopt chow-chow gang dogs and hounds.
My fireplace was in a stone room on a sheep
ranch outside Austin built on the limestone bedrock that swims the Balcones
Fault. This ranch was right on the fault line and the stone surfaced like the
backs of grey whales breaching. The room was painted lime green, was all stone
and had a dark blue rug where we would sit in front of the fire and smoke and
talk at ease. The house had many porches too and in summer the visits moved
outside. The grounds of this place stood right above Bull Creek Park, there now
and many many times we hiked down our own backtrail from the top to picnic and
bask in the Christimas or any holiday sun that Austin preserved against the
cold seasons of the north.
Before he took his orals I posted on the
door of his office a poem, Cullen at the Bat, for he had announced it at length
so it was celebrated. He of course passed with distinction. Of my orals the
next year I said nothing to anyone and merely announced the result the next
day, which vexed him considerably. The two manners show the course our lives. He
to distinction as a great translator of the European languages. He left Austin
to cycle back and forth to Vienna, Paris, etc for many years and I did not see
him again, only received postcards sometimes until he hit upon Nan Bleaker and
his calling to be. My life was clandestine like the orals, hidden. I don’t
recall he ever spoke of his time in Virginia before that, but I had three expansive
times already by then, in Central America, at Iowa for two years and then teaching
in the black American south in Fayetteville, which being purged there I went to
Texas. The first day on campus I encountered Warner Barnes who I knew from
Iowa, who brokered with Dean Ayres at the last minute an assistantship. He told
Barnes, “we have to cover these guys.” Things moved fast those years, I wrote
that vision of Ameryca, published in before Christmas 1973, immediately got on
th plane to London and Wales to visit the soon to be my Eden, came back write several
long poems, nightingale, went back to wales that summer after working and
missed the party for Lucille in which his notable Pastoral Blues appeared, which
fully gets his wit and point of view concerning nonsense. I was then an
arborist in new York Ossining, then writing the dissertation, but which time he
had already gone to Europe. And disappeared in the streets of Vienna, Prague, to
which I only got 20 years later. which is to say I hardly knew what I was
doing, for while he went to Europe I went to the Edwards plateau and to the
professional cultivation of herbs and native plants in countless greenhouses.
Explorations of the land and rivers of the Edwards, the middens and madrones,
rock shelters led, with the acquisition finally of wife of that spirit, back into literature
teaching to support her medical training and then just about the time he began
his translation work, we began the solo medical practice in Phoenix in which we
have labored since and still do, through all the trials and troubles that need
a book to name. but that office never closed as so many did when the scourge hid,
but remained open with every caution, just as did Dr. Rush in in the
Philadelphia yellow fever of in 1793. Even if there were only 5 patients a
day. But because of this I instantly recognize that he was taken by the scourge
that has shortened and ended so many lives and hopes, but which we have opposed
and treated from the outset of march 2020. If I have any regrets it is not buying
him a copy of the Mabinogian by lady Charlotte Guest I saw in a used book store
once, but this neglect like many others was not compelled by the passions,
forces, current that swept over all our lives. The
Hebrew word for “happenstance” is “kerry,” and implies a chance occurrence.
Rashi uses a form of the word to distinguish between the prophecy of Moshe
Rabbeinu and that of Bilaam: And He called to Moshe . . . (Vayikra
1:1)
But there is no
happenstance And if you treat Me as
happenstance, and you do not wish to listen to Me, I will add seven punishments
corresponding to your sins. Leviticus (Vayikra 26:21)
When it comes to happenstance, the “random” appearance of
history, there is only the hiding of God’s face. Hester panim is when
God makes things occur in a way that
disguises the patterns of history,
making events seem random to us. They are anything but random, but not
seeing the pattern, even after seeing the “answer,” the mind begs to believe that a pattern does not exist, that history is
random, and that God is not actively involved in the affairs of man.—
For though this is written during the longest lunar eclipse of the
century I did no intent to. It just happened after I heard of his passing
yesterday and this memory
preoccupied. If it is a question of
hester pannin or happenstance as it always is I choose hester pannin that all
things are made by Him and without Him is not anything made that is made. I
want this collection of essays to reflect the essence of our conversations of
those seven years together, he the scholar and prepared hard working man whose
dissertation I got afterward just to see
how he constructed his sentences and read to much enjoyment when I get it down
today, one third of it considering how Charles Williams and John Cullen both
loved Dante.
Even after writing from 2.30 every morning for 40 or 50 years I question
whether I yet know how to construct a sentence, but such is life. What ever
method of working I had my love in those days was the visionary construction of
a country, a nation I called Ameryca, inhabited by children and native soils and
rain. Which I hardly knew what it was, this way into the flowering heart, even
if I have after tried to find it out. I would say this lack of a track
sacrificed for simple discovery in in
the prolonged history of spiritually lawless Philadelphia, while he did
Meursault and… was further in the fluid ceramic sculpture of that eventual
decade of the miracles of clay that followed it. So here’s to you John with all
love and the belief that in the years we did not converse around the fire were
transported to dreams, for I have record of dream visits with him over and over
in my records, the last being jan 3, 2021. During and after every one of these
encounters and when I sometimes thought of him during the day, I prayed God’s
peace and love upon him and loosed the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, upon him as
do now, both now and ever more.
The higher mind is serious, disciplined,
formal and doesn’t like to teach, the lower mind is childish, open and loves to
talk even to students.
At
one point we had consideration of Edison and his sleep cycles, he observing how
much more time Edison had from less sleep and admiring it. But when at whatever point the man gets to this kind
oof sleep it is not to be envied. They call it insomnia, Levinas says it is
a form of observation. I found it decades ago and so have others of all kinds,
active intellects who seek to bless others, caregivers of sleep, with only
days, weeks, months years remaining to them.
A
calling preceded all statements and commandments. It is an expression of love,
an expression that the Ministering Angels use, as it says, “One called to the
other” (Yeshayahu 6:3). However, to the gentile prophets He revealed Himself with an expression of
happenstance and uncleanness, as it says, “God chanced—vayikar—upon Bilaam”
(Bamidbar 23:4, 16). (Rashi)
The
last letter from John Cullen had to
catch up to my changed address, one more stop and it had not made it. IN his
search of the higher mind he had many more stops so I could not reply. He was
in Florence then, the postcard chosen carefully, the meeting of Dante with
Beatrice, a subject we had much observed in hundreds of hours of talk together
and which I entertained in the poem Cullen’s Company. Higher mind seeks to know
the truth in those who have found it. Dante was an example of this for him. The
higher mind studies culture, literature, where it hopes to find the light it
seeks. Art is an inner quest for it. John was a good example, thorough,
precise, candid as he sought the light so it is a cruel irony that these fine
disciplined minds like Geoffrey Hartman’s have a “Job-like wish to be affirmed, to stand in the
presence—a wish that has never left me. I have kept a belief in the possibility
of a direct line to the truth, if only through the medium of literature. (A Scholar’s Tale, 8), only through a
medium.
Playing
chess on the bare cement floor of that outpost blasting jazz some melodious
scorpion had crawled onto his shoulder. I studied it for a move or so, then
casually mentioned it. He flicked it off and I stomped it with my huarache. All
matter of fact.
The
lower mind is domestic, doesn’t need to leave home since the all is within. The
higher must leave because it cannot find the home. So while he was in Florence
I was beginning life as a herbalist and drug garden horticult before starting a
medical practice.
The
lack of moral ambiguity, signal lack of the age, was not present in him, for
good or worse, two stellar examples being his offer to resign in my behalf the
first time I was fired at Texas and the second was provoking the murderous
crowd to peace at the 22nd St. party. One night there was to be a block party
on Cliff St. The street was not blocked off. Crowds of more than a hundred, the
usual carousing. The night was young, maybe 9 or 10 when a car with three
occupants wanted to drive through the center of the party, which resulted in
the car getting roughed up, rocked, pounded on. It drove to the end of the
street, which was however a dead end, turned around and accelerated into the
crowd. There were so many bodies in the way though that it stalled out. Maybe
the driver lost his nerve. But he hit a lot of people. Nobody however died. The
curbs were high on one side of the street. I remember the guy backing up one
last time to get out of his fix before the engine died. There was a kid just in
his taillights who I grabbed and fell against the curb with, then it was over.
Well partly. Now a serious demo of that car began. All the windows were broken
out. The occupants had gone catatonic, were frozen motionless, glassy eyed.
They were about to be torn limb from limb when John Cullen asserted himself and
required everybody near him to join hands around the car, even while the
bottles were still raining down and the glass flying. This bought a moment
respite. He was very insistent. There was one guy who would not release his
bottle to me and let fly. But it was the last one. After than it was all clean
up and we disappeared from the scene.
Other certitudes might be less wholesome, more
sensual, more abrasive, but the point is the same, he is no Meursault, courage had not been exchanged for
cowardice in him natively bred, all the more tragic that his end should be a “sudden
illness” terminated at a New Haven U hospital of equivocation, which sounds
like and no doubt is what it seems, so he was not greater in courage than
society. Here the higher mind fell, a parable of itself, another tale told to
the likes of the cowardly jpoets who cannot address what is going on all around
them, which of course we will not shed here for fear of algorithm in our dreams
if the sign of this time is a solar eclipse over Antarctica, not a full moon
but a solar eclipse no light signs, no light is a sign of the time. Well there
is light but it cannot be seen.
So
to answer the question about whether you can ever return home, it depends on
where it is. European cities of culture are crowded as American. But uncultured
places are empty, you can walk for miles and see only a few along the canals.
We should call him back and ask, is the home a place at all, for the true home
we return to, if all is well, as the psalm says the Lord shall preserve my
going out and my coming in from this day forth even for ever more, means my
going out is birth and my coming in is death.
The
only person who ever gave their life for me lives with me know, but John Cullen
was one of those too when of his own accord he declared to James Sledd he would
resign if the Department did not rehire me that fall. This is not to overly
laud him, it was an impulse, but a noble one, like the time he stopped the massacre
of the drivers of the car that crashed the party on 22 St.
We
are all alone in our way but sometimes meet and walk with one who shares the
high karma of our state for a time. One of these was John Cullen, who became
a translator. Spender says nobody can understand the chat he and Auden had
"with their mixture of sense and nonsense, fun and portentousness, malice
and generosity, compose a secret language among a circle" (World
57), which is what the poems of that Calendar of Poems were, addressed to
intimates, confidants who get it and don't, but are amused by it, a mumbling
argot like the one, "Cullen's Company," who to someone who knew
the translator himself would seem completely contradictory, if true. Easily the best
intellectual talk I ever had was with John Cullen at his bungalow
fireplace into the wee hours smoking. That's what experience gets us, or
innocence. Is it not innocence that longs to be made whole. So against the background of Vietnam, the 1970
militaristic conceit of this poem wrenches the unconscious. They meet in this
boot camp of dreams, as basic training is implied, which both had seriously
avoided, by different paths, his scandalous, but funny -- mine a product of
what time and the age would allow, the old meniscus maneuver--but they had
known each other before it seems, for he recognizes him there: "That is
Cullen. Diddley-bop" which signifies some statement of
joy. They meet for a moment in the center of an apparition of friendship
so fleeting they barely wave going past, even if their Gemütlichkeit
surpassed what either had known. Of course the poem written before the denouement
properly forespeaks as poems do. Can they enter by the strait gate of the poem
into innocence or must they go by experience the great broad way? If the rites
of this dream princess smack of the white goddess, an intimacy too great to
share, or speak in a flash as the moment passes, prophetic itself of our
lives, taken at large, right away the camp telescopes to graduation. They get
their stripes. The thing is organized. It has Officers and Review. Structure!
No wonder the speaker suddenly wakes up, discharged, but the thing is that the
memory of the dream continues in the poem and when he reads it he remembers the
feeling of the dream in the first place. It revives its innocence there. No you
don't have to believe this. All of these poems are riddles to remember the
moment. What they have to do for another remains to be seen. Idiots on the
street however say they have miles to go before they sleep. So there are
many kinds of translation, one with another, by which Enoch was not found,
because Yahweh had translated him, which
we suppose of that translation yet to come.
John Cullen was also the first person
to hear The Planetary Bulldozers. I called him up by phone and sounded
it over the line. He was the first to see The Raleigh Manuscript too, so
that's why there are all these pictures of him on the Spicewood Springs ranch
carrying stone. There's something about a large stone and a man that brings
them together. Ask Plutarch. Ask Sisyphus. These, being moved, had been up by
the road when it was conceived they should be down in the pasture to form some
kind of retaining wall. Anyone can see the logic of that. Planetary Bulldozers
almost got into The Planet Formerly Known As Earth at its end, which
could have been prophetic, for that organ ended its life before 2012, but they
wanted to change the last line. Editor should be smelled with an I. 2012 was you remember the year of another Kohouthek,
another ISOM. That Planet began its
publication with “The Ship of the World.” If it were really
true that one good poem leavens the lump Ship
would have justified the whole. Another lie. Right before Planet Former burned
into darkness it turned down the Bulldozers, but if only, they asked, the last
line could be changed. It could not. How could one ask, what will you do
when the towtruck stops at your door? Mr. Camel than proceeded to
Bulldoze this onto the internet from the American Calendar.
Preface to a festschrift
In the background I lay on my
right side and my left side digesting the books of Matthew and Romans,
traveling through the belly of the American Viscose plants especially of
Lewisburg that was swept away by the river and Parkersburg where the tall vats
lay fermenting, but also traversing the polluted rivers of the Clarion and
upper Susquehanna. I lived my whole childhood along the polluted Chartiers and
the ruined coal fields of black then white smoke on the rails, and I had
already been in the eruption of Irazu and walked the passion parades of the
holy Easter where the JFK president had come triumphant and in it all had known
the death of a brother, the late night plane rides, the locks of Panama, not to
speak of the transfer of the muse. But I spoke of none of this when I first greeted
John, as he said, hey man, fresh from the revolution of l968 and the firing and
takeovers of buildings. All these unspeakables fermented my soul and emerged in
the vision of America I first showed him in the Raleigh Ms. and read to him
over the phone when it was first composed, the planetary bulldozers are coming.
And he had his spoken his heart to it too,
being an altar boy, and how he got his exemption to the Vietnam war, for his
distaste of the bland was extreme as when he once proposed to throw two Frisbees
simultaneously while high on the little magic pill. They slowed considerable
then. There were others in that circle, my wife Ann Oppenlander, his inamorata,
esp. Victoria Donner, the photographer, Tom Goar his wife Suzie, all severed
soon enough at so that I was in the end the only fellow citizen with the saint.
Let us presume none of us can help being who
we are even when we choose with all our effort and might to be that which we
become. I unknowing presided over the end of many things in this life, presided
not the right word, perhaps served suits better. These winds and cross currents
carried about have little explanation depending on our own consistency and the
purpose we set for ourselves or is set by ourselves from the outset. So the
tides have taken me as they have and it is the purpose here to account among
the storms and hot waves the miracle of friendships and loves that help the ship keep sure.
They have an on again and off again
relation, the higher and lower mind, it seems from the learning, not to delay
our progress by saying what higher and lower are, but do say they need each
other for complete joy, which is always incomplete in the world. A difference
from our model and title, the relation of the spirit and physical is spiritual since
they meet in the flesh, speak words, smoke pipes, can be hot, cold,. The higher
mind is more sociable, limited, defined. It has to be, it works so hard to be.
The lower mind is indolent, sporadic, fragmented, unless compulsed then it is
concentrated and creative out of the ordinary and might do whatever and even
get away with it, but it won’t be recognized of any particular value in its own
court, for to the lower mind the outer court is the inner court, but for the
higher mind the inner court is the outer court. The lower always has access
face to face, it knows nothing else, but for that reason we do not praise it,
we fear it. The outer court higher mind wants
to know but cannot enter. Why not? It doesn’t believe! Simple enough. No better
proof of this exists than my substitute for John Cullen’s conversation in later
life, Geoffrey Hartman, a close match of intelligence, sensibility, humor and
profoundity, but not granted face to face: as Hartman’s
“Job-like wish to be affirmed, to stand in the presence—a wish that has never
left me. I have kept a belief in the possibility of a direct line to the truth,
if only through the medium of literature. (A
Scholar’s Tale, 8).
I have most of Hartman’s
works, if only one of John Cullen’s, but I have all the conversation of and
beyond that, all the dreams. The dreams are the reason for this depth of
response to his casualty. Yes he is a casualty, he and so many more. I know this because it is
my business to know. But the dreams with him that continued over 40 years more
or less are impossible to explain, nor was I ever tempted to prove them in
conscious communication since he would have contempt for such weakness. The
last dream was just weeks before he died. But there were none after until I woke
to the news of his passing at the longest lunar eclipse of a century, or
millenium, what a billing, Nov 18, 2021, and wrote this the next morning at 2am
during the affair, yes that was the day I searched his name and found his
epitaph. But there is record of some 6 dreams, companionable, chatty, always
friendship, no discords in the couple years before. So have at it
my Freudians.
His was a patrician mind that loved opera, Mozart especiallo, of which he talked often, bu my was a plebian mind, meaning unschooled, unconditioned by culture. the advantage of the patrician are obvious in its immediate acceptance in the languages of culture and admittance to those accolades there given,, but it can only see through that lens, not directly, which it longs to do. The plebeian on the other hand is ignored if tolerated, down graded as vulgar, but it can and does see directly into the life of things and if it doesn't boast in high language about its insight, it, as the psalm says, is superior to all its teachers. 119.99. And while no patrician will like this, it is only the least, the humble close to the pure in heart that shall see God. Daleth::and even more the one who God will look upon Isa 66.2::to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my word. It is the tov of God: the good to "He has shown you, O mortal, what is Tov. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
3/17/21 (The last) JCCIII
friendship dream: hanging all day at some kind of raw art event with some other
exhibitors, we leave in his large old dodge pickup with packages to ship, talk
about the difference between book and conceptional art.
1/3/21 Dream. John Cullen came by,
asked about my wife. I told him she and I share destinies, medical practice,
lack of criticism. Later he asked for a vodka. So I went under the cabinet and
cracked a bottle.
9/17/19
JCCIII visit
yesterday and today, some kind of Catholic confirmation ceremony before crowds
at the top of a building. He speaks first, me, less involved, after. I pass
down through various compartments and people who exist at the base.
2/3/19 JCCIII takes
mic to deliver 10 min of paradox and contradiction. V leaves in a huff, the
room empties except me. I stand and deliver an equally impassioned statement
about shining with sun. The students coming for the next class begin to hum.
11/28/18
--JCCIII arrives in rain w dogs and mate. We run a boarding, venue
facility. Dogs friendly, he white and wrinkled. They have a seminar.
1/6/18
--easily
the best intellectual talk I ever had was with John Cullen at his bungalow
fireplace into the wee hours shoming.
5 Sept 2013
Endnote; I have this
ongoing series of visits in dreams with John Cullen that have gone on for years
and years. Like the relation of philosophers or poets or scholars we talk but
also share mutual concerns
--and with further
acknowledgement forever to the joy of life eternal in the accompaniment of Eden
to whom these are dedicated.
On the denouement
of April 15, this note—unknowing--
4.15.21 Thurs. shorty
has stroke, all blind, nursing to rewire the brain. and destiny shoshonna life
cord
Then the next day 4/16/ 21 Fri. I Cancel the epitaph
2/10/21 I want to revoke my
epitaph I didn’t hold anything back.
No planet affords the
intercourse Earth does.
A chance to practice love in the flesh.
Like what we’d do if ere it were impossible but wouldn’t
dare
He called me
Andrew, after my grandmother
4.15.21 Thus. shorty
has stroke, all blind, nursing to rewire the brain. and destiny shoshonna life
cord
4/16/ 21 Fri. Cancel
the epitaph
2/10/21 I want to
revoke my epitaph I didn’t hold anything back.
No
planet affords the intercourse Earth does.
A chance to practice love in the flesh.
Like what we’d do if ere it were impossible
but wouldn’t dare
1/6/18 --easily the best intellectual talk I ever had was
with John Cullen at his bungalow fireplace into the wee hours shoming.
11/28/18 --JCCIII arrives in rain w dogs and
mate. We have a boarding, venue facility. Dogs friendly, he white and wrinkled.
They have a seminar.
2/3/19 JCCIII takes
mic to deliver 10 min of paradox and contradiction. Vic leaves in a huff, the
room empties except me. I stand and deliver equally impassioned statement about
shining with sun. the students coming for the next class began to hum. Later,
Aey is smoking coke?
9/17/19
JCCIII visit yesterday and today, some kind of Catholic confirmation
before crowds at top of bldg., he first, me less involved, after, I pass down
though various compartments and people and exist at the base.
--and with further
acknowledgement forever to the joy of life eternal in the accompaniment of Eden
to whom these are dedicated.
1/3/21 Dream. John Cullen came by
asked about my wife, told him we share destinies, medical practice, lack of
criticism. Later he asked for a vodka. So I went under the cabinet and cracked
a bottle.
3/17/21 JCCIII
friendship dream, hanging all day at some kind of raw art event with some other
exhibitors, we leave in his large old dodge pickup with packages to ship, talk
about the diff between book and conceptional art
This is a version I started to
revise but feared to lose the original freshness of the first: Let us presume
none can help being who they are even when we choose with all our might to be what
we become. I presided unknowingly over the end of many things in this life,
presided not the right word, served suits better. These winds and currents have
a little explanation depending on our own consistency and the purpose we set
ourselves or that is set from the outset. So the tides have taken and it is the purpose here to account among
the storms and waves the miracle of friendships and loves that helped sustain the ship.
But there is no
happenstance And if you treat Me as happenstance, and you do not wish to
listen to Me, I will add seven punishments corresponding to your sins.
Leviticus (Vayikra 26:21)
A
calling preceded all statements and commandments. It is an expression of love,
an expression that the Ministering Angels use, as it says, “One called to the
other” (Yeshayahu 6:3). However, to the gentile prophets He
revealed Himself with an expression of happenstance and uncleanness, as it
says, “God chanced—vayikar—upon Bilaam” (Bamidbar 23:4, 16). (Rashi)
When
it comes to happenstance, the “random” appearance of history, there is only the
hiding of God’s face. Hester panim is
when God makes things occur in a way that
disguises the patterns of history,
making events seem random to us. They are anything but random, but not
seeing the pattern, even after seeing the “answer,” our minds beg us to believe
that a pattern does not exist, that history is random, and that God is not
actively involved in the affairs of man.—
For though this is written during the laongest
lunar eclipse of the century I d did no intend to. It just happened I heard of
hi passing yesterday and this tribute
preoccupied me. If it is a question of
hester pannin or happenstance as it always is I choose hester pannin that all
things are made by Him and without Him is not anything made that is made.I want
this collection of essays to reflect the essence of our conversations of those
seven years together, he the scholar and prepared hard working man whose
dissertation I got afterward just to see
how he constructed his sentences and read to much enjoyment when I get it down
today, one third of it considering how Charles Williams and john Cullen both
loved Dante.
Even after writing from 2.30 every morning for 40 or 50 years I question
whether I yet know how to construct a sentence, but such is life. What ever
method of working I had my love in those days was the visionary construction of
a country, a nation I called Ameryca, inhabited by children and native soils
and rain. Which I hardly knew what it was, this way into the flowering heart,
even if I have after tried to find it out. I would say this lack of a track
sacrificed for simple discovery in in
the prolonged history of spiritually lawless Philadelphia, while he did
Meursault and… was further in the fluid ceramic sculpture of that eventual
decade of the miracles of clay that followed it. So here’s to you John with all
love and the belief that in the years we did not converse around the fire were
transported to dreams, for I have record of dream visits with him over and over
in my records, the last being jan 3, 2021. During and after every one of these
encounters and when I sometimes thought of him during the day, I prayed God’s
peace and love upon him and loosed the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, upon him as
do now, both now and ever more.
John
was 79 when he died I was glad when I was 80, to symbolically feel somehow what Moses did when he first confronted Pharaoh.
Up to a point we do not spend time considering our
mortality, even with strokes, heart flutter, bradycardia, blood thinners and er
visits, dysfunction of physical systems, but this changes when you best friend
dies, esp when you had not acknowledged them as such, not that you ever knew
them as that. Even in the vicissitudes of relationship over 50 years, the loss of
contact and apparent lack of sympathy, the relationship maintained in the dream
world is presumed to be two way, if unrecognized in the conscious mind. You
may have records of these extended relations and conversations in that realm
and the continued forever golden. But then comes the news of their
death, months later, by accident, at the eclipse, as all deaths should be, and
the strikes home. You too are mortal and not that you care so much for
yourself, but you do for those you love, who if you have lost them, you do not want
to lose the prayer for them, for their peace and grace and hope of a future. It
would be easier had you you been connected to their lives in society, so
the loss is one of the imagination as well. It was an example, those colloquies
of the higher and lower mind together the higher being disciplined musical
cultivated, the lower spontaneous, whimsically detailed. He would I’m sure
scorn such possibility of dream connection.
2/12/17
--Much
concerned about how to write I was trying to gain direction from a professor of
JCCIII's in 4D work on Aeschylus, Dante, Yeats...which ended in considering
outside the dream Northrop Frye and a really good substantive prose style, for
I have been reading much lesser models along the way, which led to wondering how
the human fights against the divine, the divine being the fallen, since it has
always existed and must have been resisted or influenced long since. "to those who really believe
in a Supreme Being the occurrence of supernatural interference, causing physical
convulsions and changes, presents no difficulty, especially in connection with
a world the moral condition of which as evidently out of course ages before the
creation of our race." Pember, Earth's
Earliest Ages Preface. The fiction
writers like McCarthy don't seem to be anything but deceived, so on through
Frye.. So "this expanding of images into conventional archetypes of
literature is a process that takes pace unconsciously in our reading"
assimilated to the whole subject so quickly "one hardly notices the
difference between creative and critical activity" thus "what is true
for the reader is true a fortiori of
the poet, who learns very quickly that there is no singing school for his soul
except the study of the monuments of its own magnificence." (Anatomy of Criticism 100) the fact of
death is different from the agencies of death. like war and the study of war
inculcated into earth by supernatural interference Yeats in the resistance
confronts these agencies even though he seems compromised with the Titans and
the gods, especially in the Death of
Cuchulain at the end of Last Poems. To fight against the divine is best
seen in Aeschylus after some thought. Construed after as fighting against God
is equivocation. It is the fight against Saturn, the Titans and all Olympus
with one difference, they were powerless to effect change even if they resisted
to the death, like Sisyphus, Prometheus. The recast of this man into demi-gods
themselves is to only to undermine the man, to turn him into a god means his has
become the enemy, has ceased to resist and is completely enslaved. That is the
crisis of our time. Except that Christ has made a mockery of these heavenly
beings and empowered us to fight to establish our humanity and his rule. This
is not the war among the gods, Titanomachy, the gods are evil. Shelley against
the gods, usually construed as against the odds, "Aeschylus against the
gods" no results found! The celebration of war is a victory of these gods
over men, a transfer of their apocalypse to earth. But all of the discussion of
human greatness subordinates to super powers. No living with out the gods. Be a
god is not to be a man. Man inferior to the gods, the lowly the eater useless
eaters looked upon by kings royalty the rich because they are Olympians,
children of the Nephilim. Antigone burying her brother resists the gods. Lear
as a fly to the gods they kill us for their sport. Wanton boys these nephs. Twelve Olympians are the major gods of the
Greek, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter,
Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia
or Dionysus. departure of the gods who left in the golden ag2/10/17 the blue
and white flag of the UN is centered on the North pole looking down as it were,
but the view of Kirill is opposite.
11/28/18 --JCCIII arrivies in rain w dogs and mate. We have
a boarding, venue facility. Dogs friendly, he white and wrinkled. They have a
seminar.
2/3/19 JCCIII takes mic to deliver 10 min of paradox and
contradiction. Vic leaves in a huff, the room empites except me. I stand and deliver
equally impassioned statement about shining with sun. the students coming for
the next class begian to hum. Later, Aey is smoking coke?
9/17/19
JCCIII visit yesterday
and today, some kind of Catholic confirmation before crowds at top of bldg., he
first, me less involved, after, I pass down though various compartments and
people and exist at the base.
--and with further acknowledgement forever to the joy of
life eternal in the accompaniment of Eden to whom these are dedicated.
1/3/21 Dream. John Cullen came by asked about my wife, told
him we share destinies, medical practice, lack of criticism. Later he asked for
a vodka. So I went under the cabinet and cracked a bottle.
3/17/21 JCCIII friendship dream, hanging all day at some
kind of raw art event with some other exhibitors, we leave in his larege old
dodge pickup with packages to ship, talk about the diff between book and
concepional art
6/18/21
The prompt here at
2am is the image of the map to morning star I looked for before but didn’t find
but did in search for Aeyrie’s deed: on the back of a poem. All these happened in 69, the basely person
plays in Jan, intro to class, the class beside the river, the Wallace stapp
diner and game, the English dept investigation and radio show, I was handing
out mimeo poems of the the fly and spider then, the morning star map is on
the back of one, bt morning star does happen
until late summer 72, also then another invite to join the elite from a
student who gave me a blue rug for the fireplace room who wanted me to take his
wife, exch myne, ho ho. That stone room of free stones an foot thick painted
light green had just the blue rrug, its windows showed out the front of the house
under some small live oaks where the sheep would congregate in summer to
shade, it all smelled of sheep, part lanolin part dung and the lambs would
bleat and gather out side the window there regularly. Not a metaphor. Inside
that room at night we would sit in winter before the fire and smoke and talk,
no chairs, into the night in tete ta tetes with jcciii, robert Williams,
esp the same students who organized the affair by the river at a park
I found, that full moon eclipse, at the
spring equinox 69 would come to visit unannounced and to smoke and hike the
valley below, still not domesticated, part of a state park now. All this was
got away with part from the time part from the 600 others who gave cover for
these acts, more traditional and well behaved, not with mantles. We would also
gather on the rooftop of that stone room where I then play the Japanese guitar, chordal
atonal notes in random order, which somehow seemed to fit. At that time I was
writing what was mimeo later ast America 2000
which did have the poems set against illustration drawings of some of
them.
Not to disregard prohibitions these poems refound occurred just when you call
send directly to my email and though there are problems in this submissions that
strike to the core, are being sent anyway for that reason of synchronicity.
Hence I bid goodbye
Epitaph for a small winner. I don’t write
this after I’m dead, however, as de Assis did, and Yeats wanted to publish his
last book from the grave, but after he is dead, to me something is the same
considering the nature of the case and everything is the case, my Ludwig.. for
the relation of the higher and lower mind is the case.
Mortal
states
Sickness
and death wear you down. We had harbored the death of our beloved chow chows at
home, never giving them the death shot to ease their pain as vets market their
service, one after another over the years, making them comfortable with love
and discrete aspirin and painkillers, seeing their noble response to the end of
life, heroic beyond any human ending, full of trust and love. But when a third
17 yr old adopted hound had a major
stroke, lost her sight, hearing and became lame, we still preserved against
death at the hands of a vet, and slowly rehabbed her over the next six months,
her appetite good, until she was an answer to that answer to prayer for dogs
and men that he makes the blind to see and the lame to walk. Indeed this became
the pretext to further adopt the care of a 94 year old family member and move
them near to us to demonstrate our duty to life and hope.
Essays
on the Consummation of Matter for John Cullen507 Essays on the Consummation of
Matter for John Cullen travels to mercury and beyond for…fictional festschrift for
John Cullen who might or might not approve mocking an honored traditon in his
honor, but that is the case of the higher mind vs the lower where is what we
have here
He
was politic but never personal, I was personal and never political, we were
opposites In this book the reader is offered the work of a poet, a parking lot
attendant, a trans Antarctic dentist of prehistoric dentition, and a
medievalist scholar of Sutton Hoo. A true hodge podge of consultation which
disparate variety does fairly represent the wide circle of John Cullens friends
who would justly rebuke these voices if they knew they exist, but they cannot
and will not know, since in fact none of them exist, but one. He who we call
the editor authored them all. And further none of these are essays either, but
better, fictional essays to further blur the one overwhelming fact of our
knowledge of him, his love of literature and poetry in general and to which he
made major contributions in the 50 works he translated in this long career.
These essays therefore concern the issue of translation and literature we
engaged in some half dozen years in Austin taking doctorates together his in 20th
cent and mine the renaissance.
