Category Archives: verse and worse

Cuttings: Ninety-Nine Essays About Happiness

Cuttings is a book in progress that consists of 99 essays about the inner life: about suffering, happiness, compassion, and related themes. I first posted each of the essays on this blog, which is 22 years old today and has accumulated more than 2,400 posts. I’ve selected the contents of Cuttings carefully from this archive, revised most of the essays substantially, and arranged them so that there is a small and meaningful step between each one. In the last three years, I have written some new posts to fill gaps that I perceive in the overall structure. I believe that the architecture is now pretty solid.

Michel de Montaigne is the hero; I seek to emulate his skeptical, curious, humane mind. Like Montaigne, I talk about books, but my library is different from his. Cuttings includes short essays about Montaigne himself, early Buddhist texts, Greek philosophers, Keats and Blake, Hopkins and Stevens, phenomenologists from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty, Arendt and Benjamin, and Hilary Mantel and Ann Carson, among others.

I am releasing the third edition today–a substantial revision from last year, but not yet the final one. You can find the book here as a Google doc. I have also posted it as an .epub file, which will open directly in many e-readers. Alternatively, you could download the .epub to a computer or phone and then use this Amazon page to send it with one click to your own Kindle.

As always, comments are welcome and really the best reward for me.

“Complaint,” by Hannah Arendt

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Hannah Arendt wrote the poem “Klage” (“Lament” or “Complaint”) in the winter of 1925-6, the season when she turned 20 and broke off a passionate relationship with her teacher, Martin Heidegger. It appears in What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt (Liveright, 2024), translated by Samantha Rose Hill with Genese Grill.

Hill’s translations are eloquent as well as learned. She aims for reliability and does not attempt to replicate Arendt’s sing-song rhythms and rhymes. I have given myself a little more license in translating “Klage” as follows:

Complaint

Oh, the days they pass by uselessly
Like a never settled game,
The hours pressing ruthlessly,
Each play of pain the same. 

Time, it slides over me, and then it slides away. 
And I sing the old songs’ first lines—
Not whatever else they say. 

And no child in a dream could move
In a more predetermined way. 
No old one could more surely prove
That a life is long and gray. 

But never will sorrow soothe away
Old dreams, nor the insight of youth. 
Never will it make me give away 
The bliss of lovely truth.

 -- Hannah Arendt, 1925-6 (trans. Peter Levine)

This is a young person’s poem about a broken heart, concluding with an expression of indomitable spirit. The author was just a kid (and her teacher certainly shouldn’t have slept with her). The result could have been a cliché, a torch song, but Arendt’s tropes were original, and her craft was impeccable.

For instance, we read about a little girl dreaming that she is trudging along, and an old man knowing that life is gray, and then we encounter the phrase Alte Träume, junge Weisheit (old dreams and young wisdom). This is a surprising, chiastic twist.

Heidegger would soon give lectures that included an extended treatment of boredom. Perhaps he and Arendt had already discussed this topic before she wrote her poem (assuming that he didn’t get the idea from her verse). In short, for Heidegger, our experience of boredom discloses truths about time that are otherwise concealed. When we shift into or away from moods like boredom (or angst), we learn that what we imagine to be a self and a world are actually a single complex that unfolds in time (Levine 2023). Heidegger is all about acknowledging the vorgeschrieben Gang (predetermined way) of life but still claiming one’s own Glückes schöne Reinheit (beautiful purity of happiness). Even as Arendt felt depressed about breaking up with Heidegger, she explored and applied such ideas.

Later, the distinguished political theorist Hannah Arendt defended a distinction between the public and private spheres and guarded her private life, as she had every right to do. But her dignity should not mislead us that her private emotions were ever tame. Hill quotes a letter from Arendt to her husband: “And about the love of others who branded me as cold hearted, I always thought: If only you knew how dangerous love would be for me.” As someone who has read Arendt for nearly 40 years–but who only encountered her poetry recently (thanks to Hill)–I would say: I always knew this about her.

Source: P. Levine, “Boredom at the Border of Philosophy: Conceptual and Ethical Issues.” Frontiers in Sociology, July 2023 See also: Hannah Arendt and philosophy as a way of life; on the moral dangers of cliché (partly about Arendt); Hannah Arendt and thinking from the perspective of an agent; homage to Hannah Arendt at The New School; Philip, Hannah, and Heinrich: a Play; don’t confuse bias and judgment; etc.

concerto of our climate

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A supple line and steady chords,
A light, stately pace, a pulse.
The air itself vibrates with the
Bows on strings and the buzzing reed.
Oboe and counterpoint—one wants
So much more than that. Time itself
Simplified; measures and chords,
With nothing more than these pure notes.

Suppose that this old melody
Floated free of its author’s flaws,
Erased his bile, spite and fear,
Cleansed the players’ bitterness,
And turned our time into a tune.
Still, one would want more and need more
Than this oboe’s sinuous line.

There would remain the restless mind
So that one would want to return
To the music from bitter thoughts
From regrets and shames. That turn,
For us—with our minds so noisy—
Our delight lies only there.

(A direct response to Wallace Stevens’ “The Poems of our Climate,” using music and time instead of art and space. See also: Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man; Wallace Stevens’ idea of order; the fetter; and one supple line.)

Mrs. Dalloway with a smartphone

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Mrs. Dalloway created the Zoom link herself. There was so much to do for the evening’s virtual meeting: outreach, slides, breakout-group assignments.

Scrolling social media, Clarissa came upon a lovely vacation photo of an English garden. How calm the air can be early in the morning, like the flap of a wave, the kiss of a wave. She scrolled down to the comment thread and saw that Hugh had posted a cheerful remark. Her old friend Hugh–the admirable Hugh! She “liked” his comment.

A push notification: Active shooter. The location seemed to be no more than five miles away. Clarissa could have been there.

Septimus saw the same notification. Deep in a subreddit for veterans, he muttered to himself several times: “Active shooter.” Evans had been shot. No, it was an IED–Evans had bled out before Septimus’ own eyes when the shrapnel had ripped his throat. He’d come home in a body bag. But you could still see Evans sometimes, you could still hear him clearly speak. Septimus scanned the comments for Evans’ name, because he might still post. He might say what it’s like where he is now–is it a happier place?

Now, an automated reminder to take his meds. Septimus hated those pills. They deadened him so that he could hardly see the future or how love rules everything or the disgusting corruption of the human body.

On Clarissa’s screen, the name Peter Welch popped up. Out of the blue, after so many years, Peter suddenly wanted to know how she was doing. “Where RU?!?” she asked him back. He was in town, visiting from Dubai; maybe they could get together? His status was complicated and he wanted to talk.

A flood of memories, like photos from deep in one’s saved-items folder. For some reason, seeing Peter’s text brought back that time she’d hooked up with Sally Seton.

Richard was talking to someone, but Clarissa couldn’t see who. His laptop was angled away from her, and he had his headset on. She checked his calendar. He must be talking to Millicent Bruton. Millicent had sent the meeting invite and had asked Hugh to join them. Clarissa felt a pang. It wasn’t sexual jealousy–Millicent was no threat, and these people would never see each other in person. The feeling was FOMO. Why didn’t Millicent want her to join the conversation? Was Clarissa totally out of the loop now?

Richard honestly found Millicent Bruton a bit silly and scatterbrained. She’d drafted a post that she wanted him to put on his policy Substack. He, Hugh, and Millicent were editing it together in a shared doc. It was a mess. Her main point seemed to be that people should move to Canada. (That’s always the idea, Richard thought–let’s all move to Canada). Hugh, who managed internal comms. for his family’s real estate business, believed that no one ever reads more than 40 words. He was adding bolded headings– “What it means” and “Why it matters”–and turning Millicent’s paragraphs into bullet points.

Richard would post her piece–why not? His traffic was way down, anyway. So nice of Clarissa to organize the webinar for his org! A virtual get-together might boost his profile. He thought about sending his wife a heart emoji, but that feeling passed before he clicked.

Clarissa hoped that people would join the Zoom on time, leave their cameras on, post witty comments in the chat, and have a good time together. She pinged an old friend with a reminder and ordered a protein smoothie to be delivered for lunch. Before she submitted her order, she messaged Richard to see if he wanted anything, but he’d already ordered his own tempeh tacos.

Their daughter Elizabeth said, “I’m going outside for a walk.” Clarissa and Richard nodded distractedly and went back to their screens.

Amy Replies

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Written upon learning that Tennyson’s Locksley Hall (or its successor, Loxley), is now “occupied by a Staffordshire County Council special school for boys with learning difficulties.”

As you cease to babble, man, about my forehead and my cheek,
Once my ear finds surcease from the wordy cataract you speak,

Then I turn my thought to the future; I peer far as an eye can see,
And I trace successive branches of our august family tree.

With each generation, daughters appear less bound to duty,
Wriggling free of what you'd call their debt to men--their beauty.

I watch the public purse fill with funds for a war on poverty.
The revenue, from taxes on this very kind of property.

Loxley Hall, a council school for teenagers with special needs.
That is the vision, cousin, I descry once your voice recedes.

Locksley! our fruitful land, our ivied walls, our portion of the shore,
Where curlews cry and moorlands meet the hollowed ocean's roar.

My vision conjures the final squire, possessions in his boot.
A receipt for his old feudal seat has made his tax bill moot.

An administrator takes his place, perhaps a she or a them,
Born in the eastern lands, I imagine, whence you say you come.

Not in vain does the future beckon us; onward must we move.
The great world spins forever and it's our burden to improve.

Answering “Locksley Hall,” although Tennyson may also disparage his narrator. See also: three endings for Christabel; “For Gerard Manley Hopkins“