At some point, I felt the turbulence circulating my veins
The rage of horror parading my scenes
I feared my fears and hid my pains
Pretending freedom but mentally in chains
One day, I felt a man coming my way
No, not just a man but a God
A God who holds the world in his hands
His fragrance overgrown my odor
His presence made the day
And once again I felt I had a savior
He touched me and give my life a meaning
He broke me and gave me a new
beginning
He scorched me so I could bleed away my pains
He baptized me and made me clean again
He give me a new name and purpose
He called me his own though he wasn’t supposed
I knew I wasn’t worthy of him and all his glory but he called me his son; and to me, eternal life he proposed.
I gladly accepted to be his citizen
Rebored of his love
Justified by his blood
and Sanctified by his choice
FOR THIS, I TESTIFY
Because he rectified all my mistakes
Justified me no matter what it takes
Nullify my flaws
Amplified my joy
And Solidify my hope in him
So this is my Testimony
Charles G. Kpan, Jr, is a Spoken Word Poet and goes by the Penn Name: Charley De Inspirator. He termed his writing style as Inspirational Poetry. His work has been featured in Local and Internal Poetry Magazines including: PoetrySoup, We Write Liberia, League of Poets, Eboquils, helloPoetry, All Poetry, SpillWords etc.
Theodore Roethke was born in 1908 and died in 1963. The quote is the first line of his poem, In a Dark Time. Roethke won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book The Waking. He won the National Book Award for Poetry twice. Despite the accolades he received for achievements in his chosen craft, Roethke was a tortured soul. “Dark Time” reflects his struggle with madness. It has many allusions to a psyche filled with fear and dread. For example:
A man goes far to find out what he is –
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
And yet, there is a hopeful note in other verses in the poem. Roethke struggled with mental illness, especially depression, but he did not let it extinguish his creativity. The darkness in his poetry is usually overcome by the light of hopeful change. The darkness of despair can be escaped. There is a way out of depression, if the light can be found.
Roethke was a nature lover. He found solace being outside in forests, fields, hills, or dales. But his soul seemed to respond as deeply to the dark side as to the bright side of the natural world. Nature inspired allusions to both darkness and light in Roethke’s poetry. There is the bloody evisceration of prey by the predator, and there is the shimmering surface of a tree-lined brook. Roethke understood that both are inherent in Nature and in human nature. We can’t have light without darkness nor darkness without light. They are yin and yang.
Humans may be unique in our capacity to despair, as well as our ability to recover from it. Another poet, May Sarton (1912 – 1995), in her Journal of Solitude, put it this way:
Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
Roethke thought humans must experience the dichotomy of the light and the dark. And so, his mental illness, loss of a professorship, and a failed love affair were dark experiences, but they became challenges essential to making him who he was. Living through those periods of darkness, as claimed in his poem, his eye began to see. And what it saw was light at the end of the tunnel. Roethke ends the poem so:
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
In your experience, does light always, eventually, follow darkness? I am sometimes haunted by dark thoughts. They usually come at night, when I wake up from a troubled sleep or I am having trouble falling asleep. I do not consciously welcome these thoughts into my mind. It feels like they come uninvited and unwanted, like they have surfaced from a murky subconscious level. Why am I unable to banish them forever and know they will never return? I don’t know. So far, light has always followed those dark thoughts and every other type of darkness in my life. But that is not true for everyone I have been close to.
Three close friends of mine committed suicide. I know why each one of them did it, and I am sure that two of the three thought that they could not find a way out of the dark place they were in, except through death. I hesitate to judge their decisions, but I think those two friends of mine could have found a way out of the darkness, if they had been willing to put in the time and work to find the light.
I wish Bob would have kept trying to find alternative ways to deal with his bi-polar condition. I wish Byron would have taken responsibility for his deception, accepted his marriage was over, and built a new life. But Bob had tried for over twenty years to find a satisfactory way to live with his mental illness, and finally gave up trying to find a way out of that darkness. I think Byron was so intensely ashamed of himself that he was convinced he did not have the strength to work his way back into the light with his family. He must have felt that he did not deserve forgiveness, so he sentenced himself to death.
If people see a lighted tunnel as they are dying, as some survivors of near death experiences claim, I hope Bob and Byron saw that light and could feel some warmth at the end.
Ray’s case is more difficult, because he killed his life-partner Juan and himself. Juan was an eminent physician and proud man, who lost the ability to control most of his faculties in his mid 80s. He wanted to die. Ray fulfilled Juan’s request and then immediately committed suicide. Ray left his estate to a school for Palestinian children. He let it be known that he preferred his remaining wealth to be spent on that worthy cause rather than dwindle over time maintaining a life he did not want to live without Juan. Ray thought that putting Juan out of his misery and dying at his side was the way out of the darkness that had descended on them when Juan became incapacitated.
I was surprised to learn of my friend’s murder-suicide, because I thought I had talked him out of the plan. Ray told me a week or so before he did it, what he planned to do. I thought I had convinced him to meet with a Quaker “clearance committee” to talk through the issues before he took any action. However, he executed his plan the day before he was scheduled to meet with the clearance committee.
Ray thought that ending Juan’s pain was the way out of the darkness for Juan. And without Juan, Ray thought he would never feel the light again. I know that Ray believed ending their lives together and giving $250,000 to a school for Palestinian children was the right thing to do. He was convinced that putting an end to Juan’s misery and ending his own life was the best way to end the darkness they were experiencing. Ray was an atheist who did not believe in an afterlife, so he did not expect to see any light when his life ended. He just thought it would end.
As for us survivors, whether it is light, darkness, something else, or nothing at all that is at the end of this life, well, that is something we will eventually discover. If physical or emotional pain is terrible, and there is no hope for relief from the suffering, does death hold the only possibility of escape from that darkness into light? Will those who have faith in a lighted after-life be disappointed or rewarded for their faith? Does light always follow darkness, as Roethke implies, or will there only be darkness at the end of a lighted tunnel?
I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I agree with Roethke’s wisdom. There will be periods of light and darkness during our lives. That is natural and inevitable. The challenge is to find a way to use our dark times as opportunities for deep reflection, and then find a way back into the light. If we can find meaning in the darkness, and then find our way back into the light, Roethke’s assurance is that life will be even better. Do you believe it?
The enigmatic artist, M.C. Escher (1898 – 1972) wrote this in a letter to his son: A person who is lucidly aware of the miracles that surround him, who has learned to bear up under the loneliness, has made quite a bit of progress on the road to wisdom. Escher struggled with depression. Although his oeuvre now holds an honored place in modern art and eventually became popular with academic critics and the general public, he felt misunderstood by the critics and the art-buying public. His work was such a unique blend of mathematics, multi-dimensional perspective, optical illusion, fantasy and realism that it was and is weird and confounding. A common reaction to an Escher painting is, How did he do that!? What kept him working at his art, despite feeling unappreciated and misunderstood, was his sense of the miraculous in Nature and in human consciousness. Escher was convinced that, although it was a lonely one, he was “on the road to wisdom.”
May we each find that path.
This personal essay by Jeff Rasley is a chapter from his recently published book, 72 Wisdoms: A practical guide to make life more meaningful, published 2022, Midsummer Books.
Write a note on the functions of the chorus in Sophocles’ Antigone.
Or
How does Sophocles use the chorus in Antigone ? Do you think it represents his own point of view?
M.H. Abrams denotes chorus as a group of dancers, persona wearing masquerades, who sang songs and chanted verses, performing dancelike maneuvers at religious festivals. Sophocles has implemented the choral character and chorus to enchant, enlighten, enliven, enthrall and entertain the spectator of audience through commentaries and lyrical relief. Instances of dramatic actions and scenes wherein the chorus express traditional, moral, religious, ethical and social attitudes is revealed in the tragic drama Antigone. In this case, chorus functions in eulogizing lamentations of the cathartic plight of Creon associated to the tragic fate of his transgressions of heavenly laws. Or grieving maddening love of Haemon for Creon
The universality of the chorus survives in musical comedies and operas alike and tragic drama Antigone engrossed with the chorus in choral interludes as in the heart wrenching emotions arousal by the song of the chorus recalling the curse befall on the House of Labdacus. King Oedipus, King Creon and the progeny of royal clan are haunted by the grime murder and bloodshed. Furthermore terrible sufferings undergone by Danae, Lycurgus and Cleopatra resonate in contrast to Antigone’s awful suffering. During the Elizabethan age the Chorus was also applied to a single character who spoke the prologue and epilogue to a play, and sometimes introduced each act as well. The choral character served as the author’s vehicle for commentary on the play as well as or exposition of its subject, time, and setting, and the description of events happening offstage; ironic perspective of Chorus imitates invocation of Dionysus after Tiresias’ prophecy which can be starkly contrasted with the erelong justification of Creon’s edict; defiance to the divine laws or denial of Polynices’ corpse burial.
Chorus of Theban council consisting of elderly citizenry laments te grimacing grime of the royal legacy whose generations are preys to ruination. They are ruined throughout their race like ‘mounting tide’ and later ‘rolling dark heaves of sand as proclaimed by the chorus as reechoed and resonated in these lines as soon as Creon sentences Antigone to death and ironically absolutizes politicization of death.
Chorus:
“The ruin will never cease, cresting on and on
from one generation on throughout the race—
like a great mounting tide
driven on by savage northern gales,
surging over the dead black’ depths
rolling up from the bottom dark heaves of sand” [pg no. 91 lines 660-665]
“To combine, to harmonize, to deepen for the spectators the feelings excited in him by the sight of what has been passing on the stage— that is the one grand effect produced by the Chorus in Greek Tragedy.”
Bibliography and Further Reading
M.H. Abrams A Glossary of Literary Terms 7th Edition 1999.
Is the central figure in the tragedy not Antigone, but Creon? Discuss.
Or
Between Creon and Antigone who is the real tragic figure? Justify your answer.
Or
Describe and discuss Aristotelian tragic hero Creon and the protagonist Antigone with reference to textual evidence and critical evaluation.
Creon and Antigone are evidently manifestations of avowal to political sovereignty and commitment to fraternity of kinship respectively. These archetypal characters or dramatis personae are of Sophocles’ classical masterpiece Antigone. In the tragic drama Aristotelian hamartia invokes a provocative evocation through the fatal flaw of Creon’s defiance and transgressions to the divine laws of Heaven due to utmost denial of deceased Polyneices’ burial. And as far as hubris is concerned, readers and critics alike surely cast a probe to trace the superciliousness and haughtiness in the feminine figure of Antigone. Textual evidence and excerpted quotable illustration should be cited to be befitting; “I will bury him myself. And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. I will die with the one I love and loved by him—- an outrage sacred to the Gods!” (pg no. 63 lines 85-88) Antigone’s arrogance and vanity can be impersonating glorifying martyrdom as an eternal seeker of truth and justice. Antigone’s fate truly arouses in us feelings of pity, fear, awe and admiration which a tragic character is expected to arouse.
Although Creon embodies the epitome of loyal patriotism and welfare of polity nevertheless, this overindulgence with conscientiousness springs up arbitrariness, callousness, narrow-mindedness and obstinacy. On the contrary, Antigone is a damsel of family bonding, who exhibits the essence of humanity through advocacy of the claim of funerary rites of her dearest sibling Polynices. Creon establishes a hegemonic and patriarchal monarchy through defiance of unalterable and inevitable laws of divination. Despite being a secular believer, Creon’s utmost denial of granting funerary burial is the tragic flaw which delineates the peripetia or the reversal of fortune as the ominous foreboding misapprehensions prophesied by Tiresias, the disavowal and premonition of the enactment of the choral character, the rebellious spirit of Haemon and his stabbing of himself and finally suicide of Eurydice. Being neither villainous nor daredevil, either crafty or spiteful except viewing the world in a different light is the characteristic trait that Creon manifests within himself. In concluding Antigone symbolizes familial kith and kin brethrenship and adoration of cherishing fraternity whilst Creon symbolizes absolutization of polity through championing legendary statesmanship in his politicization of royal monarchy.
Write a note on the character of Haemon in Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone.
Creon’s heir, Haemon, is a main character emboldened with romantic engrossment with soon to be bride Antigone. Haemon is a personae of sacrificial romance for love of sweetheart maiden Antigone, who forsakes her living life in the ardor of life-in-death situation within the tombed rocky cavern. Creon is heroic in lambasting the royal decree of the injunction ordained by his father, Theban monarch, Creon. Disdaining the imprudence and absurdity of hegemonistic Creon, Haemon, the interlocutor, remonstrates “the city mourns” of the idealized fiance, Antigone. Furthermore, such a ‘brutal death’ for such a ‘glorious action’ arouses the tenderhearted Haemon in pity and admiration for his soon to be wife and thereby lectures Creon to the pathway of contemplation reawakening conscientiousness or prudent judgment.
Truly Haemon is in fact, maddened by the romantic love for the girl she idolizes and this is reflected as he exposes Creon’s vicious follies to peril Antigone at the enterprise of misfortune misery and injudicious entombed death. In this anticipation, ignominy of Creon, faces the harshest grumbling of Haemon, who scowls him to be a monarch of a desert island. This is manifested evidently in these crystal clear bold statement which delineates that he could stake life even soaring cliffs in justification of Antigone’s glory:
“She deserves a glowing crown of gold” and “What a splendid king you’d make of a desert island—
you and you alone.” [pg no. 97 and lines 826-827]
“Haemon is sort of between his father, Theban monarch, Creon and his betrothed lover and soon to be wife, Antigone, fighting to stay on both of their favors…” Luke Neberry the cast of National Theatre Antigone’s Production: Antigone and Haemon observations as the role of Haemon. Haemon is intensely desperate to be driven by the aura of passion and this is heightened by the obvious action in embracing death hood in togetherness with Antigone.
One cold, sad and sunny morning, I was walking my grandson along the Paseo de la Isla, in Burgos, when, suddenly, I had a horrible urge to urinate, remembering that my family doctor, in his day, already told me that: “every individual who has undergone prostate surgery, the cold makes him urinate a hundred times.”
The itch to urinate caught me next to the “Punto de Lectura” (Reading Point) booth; leaving my grandson in his car right next to the side of the booth, urinating where no one could see me.
While I was urinating, while I was ecstatic in the piss as if I were contemplating a masterpiece by Velázquez, Goya or “El Greco”; suddenly, an old and ugly lady appeared to me like a “Menina” by Velázquez, who told me:
– Hello, friend: have you lost the horn, because I only see a skin? I thought we could have rented the booth for both of us!
It’s been a few days since I’ve seen you coming to this place to urinate, but I never thought you’d have a penis smaller than my husband’s when, at the funeral house, they embalmed him to take him to bury.
-Ma’am, I replied, from the scare that you have given me, I have saved “the skin” as you say, before finishing, and with the zipper of my fly I have caught it.
Don’t even dream that here, in this booth, we’re going to ride. Zambomba!
“Whoa!” she replied. What annoyance I have taken to see myself represented, seeing you, in the “Burial of the Count of Orgaz”from “El Greco”.
Her copulative conjunction is minuscule, master!
– But, ma’am, I answered, I don’t ask that they give me a rabbit, but money. You are similar to the grandmother of Little Red Hood, when she told the wolf that she was, when she said no; and this one, instead of fucking her, ate her.
Unintentionally, a fart escaped me, telling to the lady:
-There goes, Menina, the service and the tip. Bye¡
I took the car with my grandson, marching towards the Castilian and Leonese Language Institute, listening to the lady yelling at me:
– What a blow you have given me when you peered, scoundrel!
Instantly I saw a crowd approaching; a brave man came out from among them and shouted:
– Bravo! Olé! The task that you have done to the lady is reckless. You could have given her a spanking!
On Halloween, 2022, we were in Duluth, Minnesota to celebrate with our grandkids… we had a beautiful evening with a spectacular sunset (ribbons of orange clouds behind intricate silhouettes of ragged pine trees and the pointed gables of West Duluth houses) and lots of kids in costumes looking for candy… later in the evening, after the grandchildren had sorted their candy and gone to bed, we left Duluth for the 150 mile drive back to Maplewood…
The next afternoon, we caught a direct flight from MSP to LHR (London Heathrow)… in Heathrow, we topped up our Oyster Cards and caught the Piccadilly line tube (subway) to Kings Cross/St. Pancras… we had one large bag and one small one so tried to arrange the trip with as few subway transfers as possible when we were carrying luggage… anyway, we got to the hotel and dropped our luggage… then we went into the Kings Cross/St. Pancras station and had lunch at our favorite London easy eatery, Pret… then we went back to the hotel on Argile street, a block from the station, checked in, realized that the bed was a bit slim for us old American fatties, but nonetheless, went to sleep about one pm…
We got up around four pm and purchased tickets on line for a West End play… for this first night, we picked Frozen at the Drury Lane Theater… we had dinner at a Greek place, which was super good although, we ordered too much… and then enjoyed the play from our cheap seats in the balcony… Drury Lane is a huge old theater, very ornate and a wonderful place to see a play… everyone is familiar with the wonderful, Scandinavian flavored songs of Frozen and it was a lot of fun, “the snow glows white/on the mountain tonight”… LOL… we bought an ice cream at the intermission from the ushers who set up a portable stand at the foot of the balcony stairs… and after the show, caught the Piccadilly subway back to Kings Cross/St. Pancras… we slept until nearly noon and then had a nice brunch at the Pret…
then it was off to the National Gallery of Art… this museum is just a wonder and every time I am there, I get to see many of my old favorites… like originals by Leonardo Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Velazquez, Turner…. etc. etc… I was a bit disappointed as one of my very favorite paintings of all time, An Allegory with Venus and Cupid by Bronzino, a lovely late Renaissance/mannerist masterpiece and a truly enigmatic painting… was not on display… anyway, it is such a treat for me, a sometime oil painter, to see up close and personal how masters like Titian or Turner smeared their paint around to make these wonderful pictorial effects…. to wonder what part of the small painting attributed to Michelangelo, was actually touched by his hand… to see the magical transformation of paint into picture in a Velazquez portrait of the superbly homely and inbred king Phillip IV of Spain…
we then had dinner at a tandoori restaurant near Trafalgar Square which was superb and then saw Jersey Boys at the Trafalgar Theater… it was fun to hear all of those Four Season songs from our high school years… of course, the songs were done perfectly as all the musical pieces on the West End are… the star did an amazing recreation of Frankie Valli’s weird falsetto delivery… altogether, it was another wonderful afternoon of art and evening of theater… the next day, we took a double decker bus (no, we did not go up to the top deck, we are too old and slow to climb the stairs – LOL) from in front of the station to The Tate Britain….
the bus is nice in that we can see a bit of the town as we pass along the streets, while from the subway, you only see the tunnels… the middle gallery of the museum was taken up by a huge contemporary work that did not seem to amount to much to me, but we walked past it to the gallery with all of my favorite Pre Raphaelite paintings… what a treat for me to again see these works that I have loved and studied for so many years, Watts’ Hope, Millais Ophelia, Burne-Jones Golden Stair… and so many more, two lovely Rossettis including a wildly weird and beautiful portrait of Rossetti’s girl friend (William Morris’s wife Jane) as Proserpine…
Norman J. Olson
I would love to be able to look closely at every inch of these paintings that I love so much, but they are hung too high to do that… but anyway, it was a real treat for me to again stand before these works and just drink them in with my eyes… leaving the Tate, we walked a bit along the Thames and then took the bus back to near Trafalgar Square where we found a lovely little authentic Italian Restaurant (I had the antipasto and Mary had a wonderful squash ravioli) …. then, a block away to another theater to see a riotous slapstick and very British comedy called Only Fools and Horses, based on a long running British sit-com… we loved it even though we probably missed a good deal of the very British humor… “Bob’s your uncle”… okay…
the next day was Saturday and our last full day in London… we started out toward noon taking the Piccadilly subway to Kensington to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum… this place is an enormous repository of arts and crafts with thousands of exhibits ranging from casts of classical sculpture to very old and gorgeous stained glass, jewelry, silver, and other “collectables…” they have two original paintings by William Blake that were amazing to see… William Blake was a genius and a visionary… he is my favorite of all the British poets and while his painting is quirky and interesting his lyric poetry is some of the best ever written and these small paintings are interesting to me more as artifacts touched by the hand of the great poet than as works of art in their own right… here is a line from a Blake poem that has always haunted me: “when the stars threw down their spears / and watered heaven with their tears…”
my purpose in going to the Victoria and Albert was to see one of my favorite Dante Gabrielle Rossetti paintings, another amazing weird and witchy portrayal of Mrs. Morris, in a painting called The Day Dream… I would never argue that Rossetti is a great painter, a Velazquez or Titian, for example, but for all his flaws, I love his work and especially his portrayals of Mrs. Morris… I guess because they do look so weird and witchy to me… Rossetti was also a poet, but his ornate, complex poetry is virtually unreadable today… and certainly not read by anybody… well, we then took the Piccadilly line back to Charing Cross and walked along the Strand until we found a lovely little Thai restaurant where we had a fabulous Pad Thai… and a few blocks further to the Strand Theater where we saw the musical, Pretty Woman… another retelling of the old Pygmalion story (like My Fair Lady)… it was very nicely done… and a lot of fun… we were sorry as we left the theater that we did not have more time to sample the artistic and theatrical treasures of London…
the next morning, we said goodbye to the skinny bed LOL of our hotel and lugged our bags to the subway station across the street… the Victoria Line also stops at Kings Cross/St. Pancras so, we were able to get to Victoria station without changing trains… just outside the station, we found a little restaurant where I was able to get another “full English breakfast” (two eggs, back bacon, pork and beans, grilled tomato, mushrooms and toast) for a reasonable price… and it was right on the way to the Victoria Coach Station where I had booked coach tickets to leave at one pm for Southampton… it had rained/drizzled on and off for our whole time in London, typical of the weather there at this time of year… but we had our rain jackets and an umbrella so we were fine…
for the coach ride to Southampton, it poured rain all the way which made the incredibly green English countryside even more green and lush, looking for all the world like the England we saw in the John Constable paintings at the National Gallery… or the misty landscapes of Turner… we even saw a gorgeous rainbow as we were approaching Southampton… I had booked the motor coach because of a pending rail strike that never actually materialized, but the coach is a fine way to travel and to see the countryside and was less than $20 for two tickets from Victoria Coach Station to Southampton… the rain stopped just as we were pulling into Southampton so we got off the coach and lugged our bags the half mile or so to our hotel which was near the cruise port… this hotel was far cheaper than the hotel in London but relatively sumptuous, with a big bed and a large room with a fancy shower… we dumped our bags and walked through a thin drizzle to the nearby shopping mall where we had a very nice Italian dinner looking out over the city…
the next morning, it was raining lightly, but we had our rain jackets and I thought I knew the way to the cruise port (about three quarters of a mile), so we started walking… a few minutes into our walk and we could indeed see the beautiful Emerald Princess tied up at the dock ahead… about the time we passed a street called Cuckoo Lane, it stopped raining, so we continued walking toward the ship… taxis and buses hurried past us, but a few hardy souls were also headed out on the dock on foot…
we paused briefly to be impressed with the lovely white and blue bulk of the ship looming over the dock and I could not help thinking of the accounts I have read from people like Somerset Maugham or the movies I have seen featuring travel from the classic era of ocean travel one hundred years ago, that was all but ended with the explosion of cheap air travel in the late 1950s… we dropped off our bags, glad enough to be rid of them and boarded the ship which was to be our home for 16 days… our stateroom was one with a window looking out on the lifeboats… the bed was super soft and comfortable and since our first stop was the buffet, we discovered that the food was just terrific… everything fresh and tasty…
we have done several of these trans Atlantic crossings and usually the ships have been pretty full, but this ship was half empty leaving with about 1300 passengers and nearly as many crew… it was the end of the European cruising season and so, the ship was “repositioning” to Los Angeles for the winter… the ship sailed at five pm as we were sitting down to our first dinner in the sumptuous Da Vinci dining room… the next morning we were docked at Cherbourg France by about seven am… I had found that one of the ships tours went to Mont Saint-Michel… we usually do not do organized tours in cruise ship ports, preferring to explore on our own… but we had never seen this famous site and since it was an hour and a half drive each way from the port, we thought we better take the ship tour, so the ship would not leave Cherbourg without us…
so, we left by about nine am on a motor coach for a lovely drive across the Normandy landscape to arrive at Mont Saint-Michel… Mont Saint-Michel is a small medieval town built on a rock in the middle of a bay… at high tide, it is surrounded by water but at low tide, it is surrounded by mud flats… there is a church at the top of the rock… there is a shuttle bus from the parking lots across a causeway to the town… we got off the bus and walked around the cobble streets of the old town… we were told that less than fifty people actually live there now… and the town is full of restaurants and souvenir shops… we did not walk the 400 steps up to the abbey… it is supposed to be very beautiful but we cannot do that many stairs anymore and so we stopped in a coffee shop and Mary had a coffee while I had a soda… it was fun to watch the tourists from literally every corner of the planet walk by and to see the old stone work of the houses and walls… we were told the history of this place but I don’t remember much except that before it became a tourist destination, it was last used as a prison…
the next day the ship stopped at Le Verdon sur Mer, where a shuttle brought everybody to a small French seaside resort called Soulac sur Mer… the resort season was over, so this town was very quiet with many resort cottages shuttered for the season… it had a small shopping street with a shop where we bought a wonderful French pastry… we walked a few blocks to where the street ended with an esplanade that overlooked a long, wide beach where we could see the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crashing on the sand… it was a lovely day, so we sat in the sun and watched the people walking on the beach and the waves rolling in… the next stop after a day at sea, was Bilbao Spain… this is the site of a branch of the Guggenheim museum of modern art in New York… the actual building is designed by Frank Gehry… this is one of his famous “tin can” buildings that looks like a building made of shiny metal that has partially melted… other examples of his work can be seen at the Weisman Museum of art on the campus of the University of Minnesota and other places around the world… I do love these odd looking buildings… my favorite is in Las Vegas, Nevada… I find going into these museums of modern art sort of depressing… I am sure that is some kind of personality failing on my part, and I am sure that if I went into the place, I would see things I found interesting, non the less, I took the path of least resistance and enjoyed the Guggenheim from the outside…
it is sited on a river that is developed with a very nice river walk… we had a gorgeous sunny day, so we walked along the river enjoying people watching with breaks to enjoy one of the many benches with a view of the river, the Gehry building and the buildings across the river… it was fun to see the many fit and stylishly dressed Spaniards of all ages strolling along the river, many with little dogs on leashes… there were trolley tracks near the river walk, so we hopped on a trolley and ended up in the “old town” part of the city where we had a nice long Spanish lunch with a view of the Cathedral square… we then took the trolley back to the shuttle bus stop and made it back to the ship, tired and a bit sunburned… the next port was A Coruna, also in Spain…
looking at a map at the tourist office when we got off the ship, we found the old Roman lighthouse which was the main tourist attraction in the town… the very helpful information person told us how to catch the city bus to get to the lighthouse… so we hopped on the city bus, paid the 1.2 euro fare and got a nice tour of the old town part of the city as the bus made its way to the lighthouse… the lighthouse was up a steep hill, so we contented ourselves with looking at it from the parking lot instead of climbing the hill… we then walked into the neighborhood where we found a Tapas Bar and had an amazing lunch of Tapas… this lunch was at a table on the sidewalk with a warm sun and a gentle breeze… then we caught the bus back to the ship and sat in the lovely park overlooking the marina and the huge graceful bulk of the Emerald Princess until it was time for all aboard…
the next port was Lisbon Portugal… we have been to Lisbon a few times and this time Mary suggested we go to the elevator…. this elevator is a huge very old steel structure with an ancient elevator that goes up to a viewing platform overlooking the city… we bought an all day bus pass for a few Euros which included the entrance fee for the elevator… we took a bus from the station which was right across from the ship to the old town part of the city and walked around until we found the elevator properly, Elevador de Santa Justa… after waiting in a short line we did indeed go up to the viewing platform and had a wonderful view of that part of Lisbon, including the old fort on the mountain across the valley from the elevator… descending from the viewing platform, we stopped for our usual coffee, soda and people watching and then took the bus back to the ship…. our final port before six days at sea crossing to Ft. Lauderdale, was Ponta Delgada on San Miguel Island in the Azores… these islands are part of Portugal but the small city is far more laid back than the bustle of Lisbon… it reminded us of what Europe was twenty five years ago…
we went to the farmers market and bought some honey and jam… the woman in the market stall gave us two small and surprisingly tasty mandarin oranges…. we spent the rest of our time here just walking around or sitting and watching the people… we have seen the tourist sites on the island and someday would like to go to the mineral baths, but this day, we did not feel that ambitious, so we had a lovely quiet day roaming around and people watching, talking about our trip and how lucky we have been in this life to still be seeing these amazing places at age 74…
the Portuguese people we met were invariably friendly and seemed to enjoy talking to us and helping us find our way to things like bus stops and cafés… the next six days were spent at sea… we enjoyed the sea days… the ship provided various “enrichment” lectures, which were lectures by retired college teachers on all kinds of interesting subjects… Mary enjoyed many of these talks… I mostly spent the days in a deck chair on the Promenade Deck, reading, drawing and just looking at the ocean… Mary also enjoys spent many relaxing hours looking at the ocean and reading… on these ocean voyages, one seldom sees any sea life… occasionally we will see flying fish jumping out of he way of the ship’s bow wave and there are sometimes frigate birds swooping over the waves… mostly, it is just vast, blue water right up to the knife edge of the horizon….
we had great weather for the crossing with it getting a bit warmer everyday until the last two days, the highs were in the 80 degree Fahrenheit range… every morning, I would start with my usual forty minute walk, except instead of walking around Beaver Lake, I would be walking around the Promenade Deck, Deck 7 on this ship… during the morning walks, I would recognize the same people who liked to get out and walk at that time… it was never crowded, in fact, the ship was never crowded anywhere due to it being half empty… then Mary and I would have a breakfast at the Buffet on Deck 9… I would usually have a modified English breakfast with lovely fresh croissants substituting for toast… then I would spend the whole day and Mary part of the day reading and drawing on Deck 7…
every day at noon, the captain of the ship would come on the sound system that covered all of the public areas of the ship and make an announcement of just where we were in degrees and minutes and make comments about the condition of the sea (very calm for the last six days) and other points of navigational interest… it was impressive to me when he said for several days in a row that the water beneath the ship was three and a half miles deep… we saw little shipping but would occasionally see a container ship or a tanker on the horizon… on a couple occasions, we saw other cruise ships… we would have a light lunch at noon, usually a salad from the extensive salad bar… and then back to Deck 7 for a few more hours of drawing and reading…
Mary had brought one of her favorite board games with so we would end our day on Deck 7 at three pm to find a quiet spot out of the wind on Deck 9, to play Ticket to Ride… at five pm, we would go to the Da Vinci dining room… usually, we would have a table of six people, so it was nice to meet different people and we could brag about how wonderful our respective grandkids and kids are… the people on the ship were mostly in our age range, aging baby boomers… and the ship catered to us by playing the greatest hits of the fifties, sixties and seventies continuously over the sound system in the buffet room and on the open deck by the swimming pools… the crew were mostly youngish, early 20s people from Philippians, Indonesia and dozens of other countries and from their constantly hearing those songs these people who knew nothing of our history or pop culture would be walking around singing “Sherry… Sherry baby” in a Jersey Boys falsetto… or “Pretty Woman…”
after dinner, there was always a show of some kind in the theater at the front of the ship…. sometimes it was singers, sometimes dancers… they were mostly young, beautiful and talented and obviously delighted to have an actual job as a singer, dancer, etc… there was a juggler who did magic tricks and a group who sang show tunes… there were a few production shows with the regular singers and dancers of the ships entertainment group… after the delicious meal and the show, we would sometimes go out on deck so Mary could finish her “steps” or else we would just sit and look at the black water and sky…
I know that some people are hostile to cruise ships as guzzlers of fossil fuels and disrupters of the sea… I am not a scientist or a politician and the ship is the only way a person like me can have the experience of sailing across the Atlantic ocean… which is an amazing experience… I hope that even as the future charges toward us with all of the many challenges known and unknown that it will bring, that people will still be able to travel… meeting people from all over the world, I have learned that we are not that different from each other… we all have the same wants, needs, loves and desires… and solutions to problems will come from us being able to come together across walls, borders and barriers as brothers and sisters…
on November 23, the day before Thanksgiving, we arrived in Ft. Lauderdale… after a quick breakfast, we were off the ship into the hot south Florida sun… we made it to Miami and caught our flight at noon and were back in Minneapolis on a bus heading for McKnight Road by four pm… now, a few days later, we are getting 7 inches of snow in Maplewood, Minnesota… so from sitting in the shade looking at the ocean to shoveling snow in only a week… Yikes… we certainly are a couple of lucky old baby boomers…
The Husband, The Wife, and Their Two Dead Sons Review Satish and Santosh Babusenans’ Winter of Discontent
The world of Santosh and Satish Babusenans’ cinema lures me in. Their lush cinematography, toned-down visuals, and deep philosophical undertones make their films a train of thought for the soul. Their newest film, “The Husband, The Wife, and Their Two Dead Sons” uses scenery resembling Korean and Japanese cinema masters of manipulating time. Asian cinema is a breed of its own, leaving spaces for breathing between shots, and allowing characters to grow through a scripted dialogue that feels rich and compressed. The Babusenans always create a sense of presence in their films. They are not concerned with the past or the future but with what is in front of the camera.
Time is an integral part of the Babusenan brothers’ cinema. Events stretch and extend, shots are long, and cameras are left rolling and absorbing whatever events are happening onscreen.
Kaladharan Sika is no doubt the Babusenan Brothers’ muse and inspiration. These two use him for the essence of what their cinema wants to say; wisdom, philosophy, the passage of time, sickness, and death.
Ever since the first film I saw by Satish and Santosh Babusenan, I’ve known them to be explorers of major themes and complex topics through the lives of simple people. Through a dissection of the day-to-day Indians going on with their lives, intertwining and mingling through various explorations of sexuality, existentialism, mortality, and morbidity.
Death in the Babusenan world is neither created nor destroyed. It is not a challenge to be conquered nor a feast to be celebrated, but like many Eastern Asian philosophies and religions, it is present as a parallel to life. They coexist in harmony and lead others through and through. Talking to dead people, accepting death, or questioning it does not seem like a part of a gigantic Western epic but more of a natural part of the course of life. That is what Narendran does with his dead sons. A conversation is still a conversation. The fact that half of it is in the land of the living and the other is not part of this world doesn’t change a thing. There’s no eeriness or creepiness in the mood. Death is just there and so are life, sexuality, birth, and mythology.
In this mystical tale of spirituality and modality, Narendran is a man who has come to terms with Death. Like Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”, Narendran plays board games with Death, and has existentialist conversations with the Grim Reaper, as represented by his two late sons. He seems to have solved the ultimate dilemma of life. He made peace with the ones who left and the aftereffect of loss and grief. But even as Narendran’s world harmoniously unravels the equation of death, his morality, philosophy of life, dreams, and aspirations are challenged as he faces the epitome of challenges, a death beyond his capacity for acceptance, a void more prominent than his burden to bear.
Satish and Santosh Babusenan dissect Indian society, touching on heavier stuff such as familial ties, financial struggles, and patriarchy. Absent fathers who traveled to secure a better life for their children who -in turn- were not appreciative or celebratory of their parents’ decisions. Mostly the Babusenan brothers rely on familiar worlds, familiar territories, and faces. Their heroes and muses are usually the same, their stories doused in the local flair. The Babusenan brothers do not fear voicing their passion or dissatisfaction with the world. Their characters are highly opinionated, expressive, and thoughtful. Their films reflect deep thinking and a technique that relies on realism and minimalism. Conversations in “The Husband, The Wife, and Their Two Dead Sons” are crucial to the plot dynamics and they are left unscathed, unedited. Richard Linklater script types where people’s dynamics are at the narrative’s core while heavier Bergman philosophical questions immersed in French realism are in control of the stylistic aspects of the films.
Ever since their first film, “The Painted House,” the Babusenans have been asking questions they seek answers to along with the viewers. But as their filmography progressed they stopped inquiring and became more introspective, more intrinsic in their quest to decipher the big mystery of the world. Their fiery spirit might not have died, nor has their fights with artistic oppression, but their nature has become more docile and forgiving, their technique more confident.
A different color palette dominates throughout the film, from shades of dark blues to orange hues, greens of the outdoors, and open spaces to dark shadows as Narendran faces his deepest fears and existential wonder. Forced into a corner when his wife’s death looms on the horizon, Narendran confronts his faith and the so-called harmony he has made with Death.
“The Husband, The Wife, and Their Two Dead Sons” is a movie for all the senses. This movie demands feelings and empathy. It projects its themes through a lens of humanity and understanding. Characters are going through crises of faith, certainty, and disillusionment, replicating their feelings through a series of events and sequences well crafted by the Babusenan brothers.
In a particular scene, an unseen character is quoted as asking one of the dead sons, “Do all poets love to be sad?” This question got me thinking about what defines the Babusenan brothers’ films. Is it melancholy? The eerie inevitable feeling of finite possibilities and endings to a life rattled with questions and accusations. Is it the monotony of rotating time or the familiarity of actors’ faces interloping from one film to the other? But I realized that it was all of the above. Against all odds, fighting a systemized global opposition to alternative art and artists, the Babusenan brothers carved their names as veteran filmmakers and authentic creatives. From their hearts and minds came a series of films that map out a world so intricate in its simplicity. For viewers from different parts of the world, the Babusenan brothers will stand out as proud artists who have refused to mold into more approachable moviemakers and auteurs, and for that alone, still they rise!
