Oh Man

Resignation must be defeated

The poet Pablo Neruda

Leaving aside all culture war related trappings, I’ll kick off this post about “being a man” with a translation of the Neruda poem “Walking Around.”

Walking Around

by Pablo Neruda 1904-1973

Translated by Robert Peake

As it happens, I am tired of being a man.
As it happens, I go to the tailor and to the cinema
shriveled, impervious, like a swan made of felt
flowing on the waters of origin and ash.

The smell of the barber shop makes me sob.
I want a break from stone and wool.
I want to stop seeing institutions and gardens,
commodities, eyeglasses, elevators.

As it happens, I am tired of my feet and my nails,
my hair and my shadow.
As it happens, I am tired of being a man.

Nonetheless, it would be delicious
to frighten a notary with a fresh-cut lily,
or mortify a nun with a smack on the ear.
It would be lovely
to roam the streets with a green knife
yelling until I froze to death.

I do not want to go on like a root in the dark,
wavering, stretched out, shivering with a dream,
down, into the moist guts of the earth,
absorbing and thinking, consuming daily.

I do not want such misfortunes.
I do not want to continue rooting to the tomb,
alone underground with a cellar full of corpses
frozen solid, killing me with sorrow.

This is why Monday burns like gasoline
when I show up with my jailbird face,
and howls on its way like a wounded wheel
and takes hot-blooded steps into the night.

It pushes me to familiar corners, damp houses,
hospitals where the bones fly out the windows,
to cobbler shops that smell of vinegar,
terrible, cavernous streets.

There are sulfur-colored birds, and foul intestines
hanging over the doors of these houses,
false teeth misplaced in a cafeteria,
there are mirrors
that should be crying with shame and horror,
everywhere umbrellas, poisons, umbilical cords.

I walk calmly, with eyes, shoes,
rage and oblivion,
step through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards where washing hangs from the line:
underwear, towels, and shirts that weep
slow filthy tears.

Whereas Dostoevsky’s 19th century Underground Man manages to delude himself enough to ruin a young women’s life through his cruel stupidity, Neruda’s 20th century narrator is almost as equally horrifying, through his seeming inability to even lash. While admitting it would be “delicious” to brandish a green knife or “mortify a nun with a smack on the ear”, these remain thoughts. He ends the poem saying, “I walk calmly, with eyes, shoes/rage and oblivion…”

Resignation. Tiredness.

For young men in particular there is a temptation today to resign, whether through suicide, drug abuse, screen abuse, or other state sponsored, garden variety vices. There is even the bizarre promotion of early retirement (10 Steps I Took to Retire at 30), whatever that means.

I can’t help but think of the words of my first teacher, William Blake, and what he would make of the current state of men, the artists in particular:

Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against
the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court, &
the University: who would if they could for ever depress Mental & prolong
Corporeal War.

I think of Blake the city man, the mechanic, in his workshop lifting and resetting his materials, manning the heavy wheel of his press, despite the antipathy towards the Machine, sweating his summer out over his own in pursuit of his imaginative work.

I confess I would not trade my place in 21st century America for Blake’s more earth bound one in 18th century London. Still, our present age presents unique problems that uniquely challenge the basic patterns of human be-ing, primarily through digital technology. Would Blake be horrified by digital technology? Yes. Would he use it to assert the beauty of the Human Form? Certainly. Whether this is the right approach I can’t say, but how and to what degree one uses any technology to unveil the beauty of creation requires sobriety, and a touch of fire/genius.

But one can’t be called profitably sober and resigned. A man resigned to his couch is just a man on his couch, whether he is sober or drunk.

Rouze up.

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