searching for beauty

as i was playing with my lens to have the frail dry leaves in focus, curiously glued unto the windowpane because of the extreme condensation in the room, i accidentally changed the depth of field and suddenly got an image of the outside world, where, rummaging through the garbage behind the block of flats, two homeless people were collecting plastic bottles, or so i imagined (they usually do this, taking them to plastic collection centers where they get paid a couple of cents for each bottle). the first, instinctive response was irritation: their ugly apparition had ruined the perfect composition for my image! then i stopped and pondered the entire situation: the sheer ridiculousness of my attempt at "capturing the beauty" of two deep red leaves against the frame of a winter window, when outside people were dying of hunger and cold that very minute. only by a generous twist of fate had i been allowed to be inside, to enjoy the warm room and all the other privileges going together with it, allowed the luxury of "searching for beauty"...

i remembered Sei Shonagon's dismay at the view of moonlight ruined by the shabbiness of poor people's huts (dwelling for a moment on the plausibility of my being her late 21st-century avatar):

Snow on the house of common people. This is especially regrettable when the moonlight shines down to it.

as Jeffrey Angles stresses in his comment of these lines, it is not only class-based elitism which motivates such a view, but her appreciation for the ability to produce poetry, art, out of this scene: "the beauty of moonlight on a snowy roof would be wasted on a poetically unskilled member of the lower classes". this moral naïveté is of course justified by the social conditions defining class and class behaviour at that time. but we still perceive poverty and suffering as "ugly", don't we? thus the mixed response to Salgado's photographs, Susan Sontag writes, which portray the lives of the powerless in images which are nevertheless compelling works of arts which seem "beautifully staged": "Transforming is what art does, but photography that bears witness to the calamitous and the reprehensible is much criticized if it seems "aesthetic"; that is, too much like art. The dual powers of photography—to generate documents and to create works of visual art—have produced some remarkable exaggerations about what photographers ought or ought not to do. Lately, the most common exaggeration is one that regards these powers as opposites. Photographs that depict suffering shouldn't be beautiful, as captions shouldn't moralize. In this view, a beautiful photograph drains attention from the sobering subject and turns it toward the medium itself, thereby compromising the picture's status as a document. The photograph gives mixed signals. Stop this, it urges. But it also exclaims, What a spectacle! ..."

(Regarding The Pain Of Others )

is it possible to accept the paradox of such an existence where contemplation of a red leaf and aesthetic pursuits go hand in hand with the awareness of the pain of others? mostly, we end up living by closing our eyes and turning our backs to this essential issue, otherwise living wouldn't be bearable at all. Brecht's lines sum this up, as actual now as they have been in 1938, as they have always been:

It is true: I still earn my keep
But believe me: that is only a coincidence. Nothing
Of what I do entitles me to eat my fill.
Only coincidentally am I spared. (If my luck fails, I am lost.)

People tell me: Eat and drink! Be happy that you have!
But how can I eat and drink, if
What I eat, I take from the hungry, and if
My glass of water deprives the thirsty?
And yet, eat and drink I do.

(To our posterity, trans. by Arden Rienas)

Levinas is quite radical on this: "There is something vicious and egoistical and cowardly in aesthetic pleasure. There are times when one should feel ashamed of it, as if one celebrated during the plague". 

and yet: what if such celebration were the only possible way of surviving, without - to put it simply - going mad?

now

It's entirely conceivable that life's splendour surrounds us all, and always in it's complete fullness, accessible but veiled, beneath the surface, invisible, far away. But there it lies - not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If we call it by the right word, by the right name, then it comes. This is the essence of magic, which doesn't create but calls.

Kafka

Es ist sehr gut denkbar, daß die Herrlichkeit des Lebens um jeden und immer in ihrer ganzen Fülle bereit liegt, aber verhängt, in der Tiefe, unsichtbar, sehr weit. Aber sie liegt dort, nicht feindselig, nicht widerwillig, nicht taub. Ruft man sie mit dem richtigen Wort, beim richtigen Namen, dann kommt sie. Das ist das Wesen der Zauberei, die nicht schafft, sondern ruft.

the quiet forest

first snow

first snow--
great luck to be here
in my own hut


Bashō
(tr. by David Landis Barnhill)

..

no sign of spring, but in our dreams

Fresh morning snow in front of the shrine.
The trees! Are they white with peach blossoms
Or white with snow?
The children and I joyfully throw snowballs.


Ryōkan

..

beyond the edge of time

..

self-portraits with snow and mirror

looking into the mirror
until one becomes another
at the window gazing

white pure white
the snow has fallen
silver hidden within silver
self nestled into self

note:
after Akahito's poem:

Coming out
from Tago's nestled cove
i gaze:
white, pure white,
the snow has fallen
on Fuji's lofty peak.




..

in the last hour of the sun, walking past the water of stillness

..

more about dreams, snow and cats

At noon, it began to snow, and we stopped
on the window-sill, and looked out, dreaming
of a walk by the lake with her, seeing
her face, intent, when she listened, pursing her lips,
and then turning towards us her white face
like a flower of ice in the upturned collar
of her loose raincoat. Snow in her hair,
(and we, dreaming of alcohol-algae hung loosely in her
locks), and walking with her by the lake.











And later, someone came
and asked us something. We went to the bar,
and played with the long-legged glass
on the counter. And when we remembered
and looked out of the window — it didn't snow anymore.











And then, last night, I descended
to the bar in the hall, but down there
I was stopped as I had just reached out my hand
toward the bottle, by the moon's icy gaze.
It summoned me to the window — and there,
I saw, just under the terrace's French window,
the cat Theobald crouching, ready to spring
toward some indistinct shadow by the shore.











Then, that shadow moved, and I saw it was
a girl in a loose mackintosh, walking
as in a daze, by the moonlit lake
— I saw her shivering — she was alone —
and, absent-minded, tried to fold her raincoat
up, around her neck. The cat was watching her. So was I.



Mircea Ivănescu

La amiază, a început să ningă, şi ne-am oprit
pe pervazul ferestrei, privind afară, visînd
că ne plimbăm lîngă lac, cu ea, şi-i vedeam
faţa, atentă, cînd asculta, muşcîndu-şi buzele strînse,
şi apoi întorcîndu-şi spre noi faţa albă
ca o floare de gheaţă în gulerul înălţat
al hainei de ploaie largi. Zăpada în părul ei
(şi noi, visînd alge de alcool atîrnînd destrămate
în buclele ei), şi plimbîndu-ne împreună cu ea
pe malul lacului. Mai tîrziu, a venit cineva
să ne întrebe nu mai ştim ce. Am coborît
şi ne-am jucat un timp cu paharul cu piciorul înalt
pe tăblia lucioasă. Cînd ne-am amintit mai tîrziu
şi am privit pe fereastră — nu mai ningea.
Şi apoi, astă-noapte, am coborît
către barul din hall. însă acolo
m-a oprit locului, tocmai cînd întindeam mîna
spre sticlă, privirea de gheaţă a lunii
— şi m-a tras la fereastră. — Acolo
l-am văzut, chiar sub uşile de sticlă ale terasei,
pe motanul Theobald, chircit, gata să sară
spre o umbră nelămurită, pe mal.
Apoi, umbra s-a mişcat, şi-am văzut că era
o fată într-o haină de ploaie prea largă, mergînd
ca-ntr-un vis pe lîngă lacul bătut de lună
— o vedeam înfiorîndu-se — era singură —
şi, absentă, încerca să-şi încheie haina de ploaie,
sus, la gît. Pisica o pîndea. Şi eu.



(the English version belongs to the poet himself)



..

december chrysanthemums

The chrysanthemums
were yellow or white
until the frost.

Godō's death poem (1801)

Note on a note:

"Ladies moistened a bit of chrysanthemum-patterned brocade with dew from chrysanthemum flowers, rubbed their cheeks with it to smooth the wrinkles of age (since chrysanthemum dew conferred immortal youth), and composed poems lamenting the sorrows of growing old", says Royall Tyler in his notes on The Tale of Genji (which he translated into English).

(i am still searching for a chrysanthemum-patterned brocade to photograph it for the Bridge, against snow and delicate fingers, like faded petals themselves)




..