Robinson Jeffers thinks of life like a kid who can’t play
basketball, and now wants to ban the sport. He’s a man constantly dreaming of
death, but in a twist of irony, he didn’t kill himself or completely stop
eating. I guess death isn’t so fun when you can’t dream about it.
Jeffers’ Freudian “Death Drive” must have been in overdrive.
Even Schopenhauer would have talked Jeffers back from the ledge. Jeffers poetry
suffers from a breathtakingly mellifluous denial of the human situation. While
Jeffers does not recognize any moral depravity in animal or vegetable, and
sometimes even excusing all humans from immorality—not ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but
beings who “mean well”—he is quick to want to sweep all being and matter to the
big trash bin of oblivion. He has apparently had enough, and he’s decided the
rest of us has had enough too. I think it’s a good thing the ‘fire project’
button for the universe wasn’t within arms-reach of him.
Though he was reportedly interested in Nietzsche’s writings,
the mood of his poems are a far cry from the life-affirming, life-surpassing
things that Nietzsche’s works were. Nietzsche himself would probably have
considered Jeffers a downer…which Nietzsche most definitely was NOT. Nietzsche
condemned whiny, world-weary souls (religious or otherwise) who looked too far
backwards or forwards, and begged for the punishment of life to be over.
“Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one
leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any
longer: that created all God’s and backworlds” (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke
Zarathustra).
Nietzsche had no time for people who just wanted quiet lives
and quiet deaths, and he didn’t believe the point of existence was to avoid
struggle; rather, he conceived of life as a realm where joy can be so rich and
profound that it “thirsts for woe.”
“O man! Take heed!
What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?
I slept my sleep—
From deepest dream I've woke and plead:—
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day could read.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper still than grief can be:
Woe saith: Hence! Go!
But joys all want eternity—
Want deep profound eternity!" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
Even in the tradition of the 20th century existentialists, a
nihilist like Jeffers—for that’s what he appears to be—would fall into the
category of a denial of freedom and a flight from self and existence. It’s
basically self-rejection.
“All in a simple innocence I strove
To give myself away to any power…
I failed, I could not give away my soul.” (The Truce And The
Peace)
He’s what Simone de Beauvoir, the French activist and
philosopher, would have described as a “sub-man” who has an increasingly
destructive bent against one’s own existence that stems from the deep anguish
brought on by the responsibility to live and create new values. Not sure if he
would agree, but he also didn’t have to READ HIS OWN BOOKS LIKE I DO! Okay….I
just totally sub-manned it. Sorry. Ahem. I’m back.
Let’s face it, Jeffers wanted to die. He had clearly
euphemized death into some kind of euphoric peace, which I don’t understand
since peace is a state of mind and being, and not a state of mindlessness and
beinglessness.
“[Death] said, Come home, here is an end, a goal
Victory you know requires
Force to sustain victory, the burden is never lightened, but
final defeat
Buys peace. (Woodrow Wilson)
So, peace in the womb and peace in the grave is what you
always wanted? Making sure I understand here: it’s what you always wanted as
long as you were able to want, which you are only capable of in this life, so
you’re basically using your life to bitch about life? So, just die then! What’s
with all the poetry? Why write about hating to be alive to write? Unless...life
really is worth it in some way, and whining just helps people blow off steam.
I’m a big believer with the other existentialist thinkers that
nothingness proceeds (comes after!) being and “plays on the surface of being.”
Even the very idea of ‘nothing’ is only a maneuver of consciousness to separate
out oneself from matter and think of self as ‘not that’. In the words of Jean
Paul Sartre, “Human reality secretes a nothingness which isolates itself…and
this is called freedom.”
Imagine, if you will, the process of a consciousness. A
person is born, and their consciousness, or self, begins to distinguish itself
from its environment. Then it begins to account for ‘space between’ as a metric
for that distinction. For some people, this consciousness, this subjectivity,
that is now independent of the objective world may begin to feel so alone and
isolated that it wishes everything back ‘into the box’. It begins to wish even
for an identity that is the empty space itself between, before, and after self
and world, and neither subject or object!
“Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were
prologue and epilogue merely
To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is
called life?
I fancy that silence is the thing, this noise a found word
for it.” (The Treasure)
However, HOWEVER, besides sounding like complete
nonsense—which, I admit, the best of any of our ideas sound like sometimes—it
is an expression of pain and loneliness; and I suppose that THAT always is
valid, no matter how it is expressed. It’s sad that some people feel that way
so much of the time, but pity from others, or worse—self-pity—will only make
things worse. Get out of there Jeffers! She’s gonna blow!
But one thing gives me hope: Jeffers didn’t commit suicide.
He kept writing and speaking and living. He must have liked life more than he
admitted. Maybe his words were, as author Paul Tillich liked to put it, “a courageous
expression of decay” which tacitly affirmed self even while seeming to disavow
his life.
So, maybe I’ve been a little hard on him. Maybe I heard too
much about him protesting the U.S.’s involvement in WWII. Maybe, just maybe, he
still loved life, even if he allegedly loved death a little bit more.
“And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score
years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is
for harbor.” (Night)
And, to be honest, there were some pretty awesomely awesome
lines in his collected poetry that left me stunned with their beauty. Even some
of the lines which I hated for the philosophy, I loved for the gorgeous way
they were expressed, and the way I was challenged to look outside my normal
perspective and feel with others.
And, if I’m being honest and not just biting his head off
for fun—which I do to the delight of some of my more blood-thirsty readers—even
some of his odes-to-death were beautiful in that they helped me not fear death
so much. I happen to think that a limited will-to-death may be an authentic
coping mechanism of over-exposure and reinterpretation of the thing we fear
most—death—and may even be healthy to a certain extent. As another example of
what I liked, I lift up the poem “Mediation On Saviors” in which he is critical
of what people look for in their heroes, “This people has not outgrown
blood-sacrifice, one must writhe on the high cross to catch at their memories.”
Good stuff there, no doubt.
All said, I do think Jeffers fell face forward into his
morning bowl of death-soup and drowned his will to live, but he left a few
helpful things behind. And for that, I’m thankful.
Best poems:
The Truce And The Peace
Shine Perishing Republic
The Treasure
Woodrow Wilson
The Old Man’s Dream After He Died
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