There is no place for grief in a house which serves the muse.And I can't help but disagree. And I'm hoping that something was lost in translation (which I suspect).
– Sappho
For me grief and sadness (and starkness) are defining to my favorite poetics. Unlike regret and anger, grief and sadness seem driven out of compassion and I don't think, per intuition, that they can be thought of as "bad". Maybe I would characterize a kind of compassionate, altruistic attachment as opposed to a possessive, entitled attachment that is the differentiation.
I do wish to dismiss my anger and regret, because it's destructive, counterproductive, combustible. Ideally, I don't wish to dismiss my grief and sadness, because it's laced with loved things, ardor, nostalgia. But I can wish to dismiss my grief and sadness if it's too much at one time or too difficult.
There is no place for despair, resentment, hate, regret, denial, perhaps. Ideally. But then, maybe it's more like "This bar is no place for a woman like you." One can still be there, but disaster is portended.
And poets are no strangers to disaster.
Anyway, Elizabeth Bishop has started on this before, but played off grief.
2 comments:
This is Sappho, fragment 150. A different translation is this:
"There is no place for lamentation in the house of the Muse."
Lamentation: A refusal to be consoled/believe in the possibility of consolation, even through language. The sound of the grief is more important than the utterance or the shaped iteration of grief.
Elegy: A belief that language offers the possibility, perhaps the only possibility of consolation. Poesis, poesis, as Wallace Stevens writes.
Does this help?
Yes, perfectly. Thank you and Merry Christmas.
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