Bahá’u’lláh and the Houri of the Deep

There is an old mystical tradition in Islám, generally attributed to Sufis and Persian poets that represents God as “the beloved,” a beautiful “youth” who can sometimes border on the erotic. It seems to be that some more subversive poets such as Hafez made use of this equivocation between God and desire in taking license to celebrate wine, women, and song. Where did this sense of God as the obsession of a drunken lover come from? I haven’t studied this topic nearly enough to hope to have anything new to contribute on the matter, but here’s what I’ve got.

La Houri: Black-eyed beauty , 1919

Constant Montald: La Houri: Black-eyed beauty, 1919

Let’s go back to the old Zoroastrian tradition of Daena, the goddess or daemon that greets each soul three days after death. The old tradition says that good souls are greeted by a beautiful, even voluptuous maiden, but bad souls are greeted by an old hag. I composed (or perhaps plagiarized) a poem on the subject years ago. It turns out that Daena, that heavenly reward for the good and punishment for the wicked is really just a reflection of the soul’s own character, expressed esthetically and sexually. The “paradise” of this model is the paradise of one’s own character. As Heraclitus is known to have said, “character is destiny.”

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In the Beginning was the Voice

Qur'an 96:1: Recite in the name of your Lord

Recite in the name of your Lord

Though Muslims generally reckon their religion to be based upon a book, Islám is a profoundly oral religion. Even its theology is fundamentally oral. The God of Muhammad, it might reasonably be said, is something of a poet; a lyricist and vocalist.

The book that Muslims hold in such reverence as to be an object of worship is not so much something to be read as something to be recited. The book is even named “the Recitation,” and its very first word, according to the traditional chronology of the book, is “recite:”

Recite [اقرا] in the Name of thy Lord who created,
created Man of a clot of blood. (96:1)

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Desire as Will

The fire that consumes Tamar’s world is more than a sacrificial fire offered up to “magic horror away.” It is a fire of primal yearning. When Tamar says, “I have my desire,” that narcissistic lust is what aches to set her family’s house ablaze, and correspondingly, in Apology for Bad Dreams, it is a fire—represented by the flammability of the California coast—that ignites Jeffers’ world over and over again. The poem returns to the notion of return, and then it returns again (SP 143–4):

… Beautiful country burn again, …

Burn as before with bitter wonders, …

… I know of no reason / For fire and change and torture and the old returnings.

… the ever-returning roses of dawn.

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Neurasthenia and the Calvinist Gloom

Dr. Brad Campbell (Cal Poly SLO) may be accountable for the most curiosity-inducing chapter of the Wild that Attracts Us (ed. ShaunAnne Tangney, 2015). Campbell has studied the “American” phenomenon of neurasthenia, a mental disorder that was frequently diagnosed in the late 19th Century and much of the 20th Century. Neurasthenia ceased to be listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM in 1980. Dr. Campbell presents a strong argument that Robinson Jeffers suffered from symptoms associated with neurasthenia. Though I generally resist the temptation to tag artists with mental disorders (and sexual preoccupations), I can certainly see what Campbell is getting at. Dr. Campbell appears to be something of an authority on neurasthenia as a cultural phenomenon. This may make him overly inclined to diagnose it, but then he knows better than most who might qualify.

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Jeffers in an Existential Nutshell

One of Jeffers’ most characteristic passages occurs in his narrative “Mara” (CP 3:45):

… He smelled the wet delight of the dawn-wind
Dropping down the deep canyon to the dark sea, and saw the
       pearl-tender rose-flood
Lining high distant ridges, while still deep night
Slept in the canyon-trough, a thousand feet down
Under the shoulder of his horse; he felt a fountain of hysterical sadness
Flow up behind his breast-bone through the net of nerves:
      “This is so beautiful:
We are so damned. …”

This passage is more existential than explicitly philosophical, but it carries the tone of tragic beauty that characterizes Jeffers’ most powerful work.

A Salacious Peek into the Creepy Closet of Bahá’í Love

Who are the Ungodly and Why Should We Avoid Them? That’s the double-question answered by Bahá’í blogger Susan Gammage in a recent post. Her answer to the first question implies her answer to the second. It comes in two parts:

The ungodly are

  1. those who disbelieve in God
  2. those whose hearts are turned away from God

I’m not sure whether the answer is “1 and 2” or “1 or 2.” Either way, the implications are astonishing.

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RJA Conference 2017

RJA Conference 2017 is only two months away! This time the annual conference will be taking place at Robinson Jeffers’ alma mater, Occidental College, in Los Angeles, California. Mark your calendars: Friday, February 24 to Sunday, February 26.

Robinson Jeffers spent nearly a decade in Los Angeles, living most of his collegiate years there. He also met his highly influential wife-to-be there. Entries in the Carmel Pine Cone show that for a couple years after Robin and Una Jeffers moved to Carmel, they were still regarded residents of Pasadena. They spent the summer of 1915 in Pasadena and their twin boys were born in Pasadena in late 1916. The Jeffers did not settle in Carmel until 1917.

There is a sense in which Jeffers was a Southern California poet, though he wrote little of value there. It might be said that his poetry was in one aspect a rejection of his Angeleno years, but even as such might have been impossible without his Angeleno years.