“Time’s a circumference
Whereof the segment of our station seems
A long straight line from nothing into naught.
Therefore we say “progress,” “infinity”
Dull words whose object
Hangs in the air of error and delights
Our boyish minds ahunt for butterflies.
For aspiration studies not the sky
But looks for stars; the victories of faith
Are soldiered none the less with certainties,
And all the multitudinous armies decked
With banners blown ahead and flute before
March not to the desert or th’ Elysian fields,
But in the track of some discovery,
The grip and cognizance of something true,
Which won resolves a better distribution
Between the dreaming mind and real truth.
I cannot understand you.
‘Tis because
You lean over my meaning’s edge and feel
A dizziness of the things I have not said.”
– Trumbull Stickney’s ‘The Soul of Time’
I discovered this poem around four years ago, and it did make me feel dizzy from the lack of complete understanding that eluded me. I re-read it recently and let my intuition lean over the edge once again.
Here is how my mind deconstructed the poem initially:
- The mind perceives time due to the constantly changing contents of our consciousness. Everything is seemingly changing into something else as seen via this arrow of time, which only points in one direction. This is what Stickney calls the ‘segment of our station’.
- Based on our conditionings, we classify a certain category of change as ‘progress’. Progress can be only be defined on a finite time scale, as we traverse our segment of time. At an infinite time scale (or a time scale that is beyond our mind’s imagination), life starts from nothing and goes back to ‘naught’.
- The discrimination of our mind makes us look only at the bright stars of progress, against a sky of ever changing things. Our mind’s ‘aspirations’ make us forget the sky in which these stars shine forth and grab our attention.
- Certainties declared and promised by various belief systems (logic positivism, science, mathematics, religions, spiritual practices and methodologies) are what champions their faith. All believers are inherently seeking something true, and these belief systems help them march on this journey. All seekers are driven by this deep desire to ‘discover’ the eternal Truth. A Truth that nihilates all their seeking and desires. This final and ultimate desire is the desire to be desire-less.
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This particular poem reads a lot like an English translation of Upanishads that I’m currently reading. One of the passages that I particularly liked, which is relevant to this poem:
“You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”
[Brinhdaranyaka Upanishad]
Stickney was a student of Hindu scriptures and studied Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishads in details. From his Wikipedia page:
He wrote there two dissertations, a Latin one on the Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro, and the other on Les Sentences dans la Poésie Grecque d’Homère à Euripide. The latter is openly indebted to The Birth of Tragedy and to Stickney’s study of the Bhagavad Gita under the tutelage of Sylvain Lévi.[
The core structure via which he reaches the final line of the first stanza is quite remarkable. Starting with the passage of time as the root illusion in which we seem to be trapped, he catches hold of other key illusions such as progress, aspirations, victories, certainties and ends by pointing out to the reader that the real ‘grip’ that we are under is our deep, driving desire to realize the ultimate Truth.
The line about ‘better distribution’ between dreaming mind and real truth is worth lingering on. The reign of mind that human civilization is currently under conjures up all the illusions mentioned above. Most of that reign is concerned with phantom goals and desires that will turn out to be nothing but distractions that mind threw up for you to keep you ignorant of the Truth. But a small set of those same goals will lead to paths such as ‘seeking enlightenment’, where the seeker rejects almost all the distractions, to surrender to this final distraction. This can be called a better distribution from a practical sense of how to lead one’s life, a sort of a truce between your mind and your True nature.
Stickney knew that a lot of readers will utter in their minds – “I can’t understand you”. In some sense the poem ends with the first stanza. But is it possible to take one last crack at trying to explain what can never be explained with words?
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Poetry is a great vehicle for spiritual musing, because it can create a negative space from the explicit meaning of the words as they flow together. The juxtaposition teases a range of interpretations and the reader’s creativity fills this negative space. The reader becomes entangled with the poem, and intertwined with the author’s creativity.
Stickney is trying to point out to the reader that the so called meaning of his words have a natural limit. The medium cannot truly describe the medium in which and out of which it emerges in the first place. A part cannot show you the whole that it is a part of (unless you see the part as a fractal). Language cannot ever describe the place it comes from. One has to go beyond this edge of meaning and feel the Truth experientially, rather than understanding intellectually.
The negative space of the ‘things I have not said’ is yet another pointer, just like language. It points to the Truth that is beyond words. Once you touch this Truth , albeit for a brief moment, it will leave you feeling dizzy. And once you get comfortable with this dizziness, you will be truly ready to take the leap into the abyss of Truth.
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[This post originally appeared on my substack]