Kerguelen Land

Kerguelen Land

 

I came destitute, desolate, and alone
to Kerguelen Land

the rocky wind beneath me
hiding in a cliff face far above the surging sea
in the guano-infested mountain heights
of a splendorous infernal kingdom
a sanctuary for fugitive dreams
and stoic salt-whipped seabirds
penguins dancing in the cold wash
lightning above the plutonic peaks
somewhere near the whispering edge
of Péninsule Rallier du Baty
my soul is floating up and down currents
of tides unknown yet strangely
homeward tending

I saw her in a cold summer
in a dress red and gleaming
her music fell upon the mount
a distant elven tune
her name was spelled in the cloudbank
that loomed over Notre-Dame des Vents
of all volcanoes in France
she was the most beautiful

I was lost, adrift, and alone
ere I came to Kerguelen Land

in the ballroom I saw her despair
her elegance transported her
to the utmost heights of tragedy
she danced to a pure and noble sigh
among the cold blue stars
that glittered above Golfe du Morbihan
on that twinkling dark romantic eve
when ideals crashed down upon
the ragged rocks of Pic du Grand-Ross
a dreamless night ensued

cold and bleak and drear was I
ere I set foot in Kerguelen Land

I searched the frigid wastes
haunted by reindeer and solitude
she disappeared among the rocks
of the Île aux Rennes
her song drifted on the winds
a ghostly somnolence prevailed
before her eyes were seen again
brilliant beauteous and beatific
radiant in the twilight
that settled on the loveless shores
of Baie de l’Oiseau

I saw her in a cold summer
her elegance glittered evermore
lifting her higher than Mont Ross
she, like a misplaced Marie Antoinette
longed for her true homeland
a place of fabulous gorgeousness
ornate baroque and inspired
far from these Desolation Islands
and the abandoned Port Couvreux
on the Baie du Hillsborough

a wanderer, a drifter, a dreamer was I
ere I caught sight of Kerguelen Land

we had dined auspiciously together
in the vicinity of Port Jeanne d’Arc
at a lesser known house of lovemaking
we had watched stars fall into the sea
on the Presqu’île de la Société de Géographie
the dimming sky bled purple
as the sun vanished from mortal sight
bathed in the green cold icy wash
of the Golfe des Baleiniers

her cheek kissed by the empty atmosphere
her eyes awash in endless night
we made congress in the volcano-plutonic complex
of the galeswept Rallier du Baty
amid the fossilized remains of araucarians
which beautified this land some million years before
now among the moss and lichens
the lonesome rabbits and sheep
that dot the hills and silent vales
our eyes, not seeing, touched

a hoper, a believer, a romantic was I
ere I lay down in Kerguelen Land

there is a place in La Grande Terre
where costume balls are held
in libraries of long forgotten books
volumes of ancient lore turned to dust
where women still wear hoop skirts
tall wigs and rococo evening gowns
bathed in violet perfumes
it is not far from Anse Betsy
they serve a dainty dish
of boiled Kerguelen cabbage
a rabbit pate and seabird stew
then the comtesses and quaintrelles dance
to the music of philosophers
like Schopenhauer and Spinoza
clockwork mannequins pretty and proud
and marvelous to behold

deep below the surface of the salted sea
lies the sunken continent, the Kerguelen Plateau
a land of lost and terrible dreams
of wisdom never to be known again
in the sad history of the world
I lay in a white bed watching television
in a land’s end hotel
somewhere near the landing site
of the famed Boisguehenneuc
reports of geologic research
and the latest in women’s undergarments
fill the airwaves, cold and blue and lonely
in the night air, the despairing stars
the penguin-populated beaches
of Les Terres australes et antarctiques françaises

what can lovelorn time tell me
in Kerguelen Land?

what can the empty spaces teach
in Kerguelen Land?

I must bid my adieu to the land of Desolation
where beauty, once seen, was not seen again
where love, once felt, was lost upon the sea
the cold and blue and breaking ocean
on the bleak rocks and icy waters
the guano-infested mountain heights
the caves where I dwelled like a troglodyte
hoping and watching in vain
for a ship to come to shore
tormented by dreams of elegance
of cold summers
when beauty was glimpsed, never had
and lost

I departed destitute, desolate, and alone
from Kerguelen Land





Steven Holland
July 23, 2012

Hymn to the Blind

Below is a poem I wrote a few weeks ago but felt hesitant to publish at first because it occurred to me that it could lend itself to two or three different misinterpretations, each of which would be not only erroneous but rather unfortunate. I won't go into what those might be, because I don't want to color your view of the poem, especially in a bad way.

I also will not positively interpret the poem for you, because that is against my poetic religion. If asked what the poem means, I would follow the example of T. S. Eliot and repeat it back to you line by line. There is also some wisdom to poet/librarian Archibald MacLeish's dictum that "A poem should not mean, but be."

The only thing I will point out is that it makes reference to a couple of ancient myths. The poem came to me as I lay awake in the middle of the night, at least in a rudimentary form, and I wrote it down and fleshed it out the next day. I also will point out a technical feature, which is that it is meant for two voices. The lines on the right hand side are for the second voice.

***

HYMN TO THE BLIND

O ye gods that know not time
I pray thee take and make her mine

I sing

I sing

I sing

With my lyre I shall pluck
The finest flower from the earth

Away from the sun

Away from light

With my song I shall lead
The fairest maid from light of day

Into darkness

Into night

Darkness befall her brilliant eyes
That in blesséd night she might see

Away from the sun

Away from light

Her face like snow upon still water
Her wings like sacred birds of ice

Into darkness

Into night

O ye gods that know not time
I pray thee take and make her mine

I sing

I sing

I sing

I shall lead her weak and wintry hand
To the deep secluded hallowed grove

Away from the sun

Away from light

Her tongue shall taste the pomegranate
Its blood red juice shall stain her lips

Into darkness

Into night

She shall lie on a river of forgetfulness
Transported to a depthless night

Away from the sun

Away from light

I shall lead her with wounded eyes
Into a dim and dreamless bliss

Into darkness

Into night

O ye gods that know not time
I pray thee take and make her mine

I sing

I sing

I sing

The daylight’s pallid blasphemy
Shall be slain by my votive lyre

Away from the sun

Away from light

She shall be the queen of night
Her eyes become a holy fire

Into darkness

Into night

I shall bestow her secret name
She shall glow a radiant star

Away from the sun

Away from light

In her surrender made divine
Her heart shall beat within mine

Into darkness

Into night

O ye gods that know not time
I pray thee take and make her mine

Away from the sun

Away from light

I sing

Into darkness

Into night

I sing

Away from the sun

Away from light

I sing

***

Steven Holland
July 5, 2012

The Passion and Devastation of Writing

In the first six days, I have written over 7000 words, so I'm averaging over 1000 words per day. At this rate it would take maybe two months to complete, which would mean by the end of the summer. Of course, there's no guarantee that this pace will continue. I'm grateful to have gotten off to a great start, but I know that the middle section could be tougher going.

My writing these days is animated by a passion that makes me feel like I am in love. I think that perhaps such feelings of passion arise any time we find ourselves close to something that our souls long for, something that most deeply fulfills our being, whether it be in relationship with others or in the work we do or in the simple enjoyment of things. But I think also that the passion I am experiencing is further intensified by the nature of the work I am producing, as I have never really felt this way before when writing anything else. This story, more so than anything else I've written, is intended as a deeply serious and, I hope, profound, work of art, something that, while it may not make any bestseller lists, I like to dream might prove itself to be an enduring contribution to literature. I wouldn't dare to say, nor would it be seemly for me to say, that it is in fact a great work of literature. I'm just saying that this is the hope I have for it, and the way I envision it. I have many other ideas for stories and novels, and if I am blessed with the time on this earth to write them all, and if I am further blessed with even a minor literary reputation either during or after my lifetime, I do believe that this first novel of mine will always remain thought of as one of my most important works. Note I am simply saying one of "my" most important (like a personal best), not necessarily one of the most important in all of world literature.

The reason for this is that this story is, I have come to realize since starting to write it in earnest, something like a distillation of my soul. I feel it has at least the potential to be one of my greatest personal achievements because I am, as they say, pouring my soul into it, in a way and to a degree that I never have before. In the writing of this novel, I am focusing on my highest ideals of beauty and truth, and attempting to express them in the best and most powerful and most beautiful way that I am capable of doing, according to such gifts and talents as I have. I am looking at life, and writing about life, in the largest possible way, with a view toward ultimate meaning.

I am doing all this through earthly, imperfect, and real characters. Among many other things, I am attempting to show the coexistence in human life of vulgarity and sacredness, despair and ecstasy, and I choose to do this through characters who are not necessarily role models or heroes, who don't always do or say or think admirable things, but whose souls nevertheless hunger for the good, the true, and the beautiful. I believe their very imperfections and flaws will make their encounters with goodness, truth, and beauty all that much more real and powerful. These characters become more real to me, fuller and richer human beings, the more I write them. I feel, as many writers do, that I am discovering them more than I am actually creating them. It is great fun to write about them, as though they are actual living friends. I know, too, for that reason, that I will be sad to say goodbye to them at the end.

But I think there will be something even more difficult about coming to the end of this novel. Even though I say this is a serious and hopefully profound work, it is far from being thoroughly serious in its tone. I only hope it is half as fun for others to read as it is for me to write. I am filling it with all the passion for life that I am capable of feeling, which comes out in ways both playful and mournful. But despite all the fun along the way, I know that the end, at least for me as the writer, will be emotionally devastating. Not because of any overt tragedy--no one dies, I can reveal that much--but just because the sheer weight of the story, the reality of the characters and their souls, will make the beauty and truth I wish to convey, the profundity of life which it is my aim to express as clearly and powerfully as I can, fall heavy on my heart. It is something I can sense from here, near the beginning, but I know I will not feel its full effect until I actually reach the end. It is by no means a tearjerker, and I am not one who likes easy sentimentalism. In fact, the ending is not highly dramatic at all. If anything, it is quite understated. But the most beautiful and the most profound things often have the effect of devastating us, in a very good and healthy way. It is an effect as joyous as it is melancholy, and it feels like a strange, wondrous mixture of both. To me, that is the ultimate passion for life that we can feel... like fire, it lights us up, but also lays us waste. It is something that breaks us open.

This story, at least as I envision it in my head and heart, does that to me, and my hope is that I will be successful in translating that vision into writing... like all art, it is a communication and a sharing of what truth or beauty one has seen, and the artist's greatness lies in his ability to communicate his vision from his own mind and heart and soul to that of another human being as fully and powerfully as possible. I have seen, and continue to see, something beautiful and devastating, and my passionate quest right now is to try and make you see the same thing. It is something that cannot be summed up in a sentence, but will take at least about 200 pages or so of fictional storytelling to explain, and that can only be explained in the exact form which this novel finally takes.

Artistic Inspiration, When It Happens

There is a novel that has been gestating in my head for many years now, going through many changes and mutations while still on the drawing board (and through occasional attempts at actually writing it). One thing it has lacked until very recently, however, is a profound sense of inspiration, the kind that brings both great clarity and urgent motivation. I am experienced and practical enough as a writer to know that one can't always rely on inspiration to get writing done, but for a major, long-term project like a novel, it certainly helps. Looking back, I'm not sure why I have stuck with this story idea as long as I have. There have in fact been times when I abandoned it altogether, but somehow it always ended up resurfacing after some new spark of an idea cast a fresh light on the material. It is almost as though the story keeps insisting that I write it, even when I don't fully want to.

This novel, though, I am happy to say, has really come together for me both conceptually and emotionally in the last couple of months. In the past, I had a large number of ideas about the characters, their personalities, motivations, stories, and relationships, but there was always some crucial element that was missing. It was as though the story had no real center, but was rather like a fairly formless nebula spinning around in the dark recesses of my imagination.

However, about two months ago, in a way very indirectly related to a major change in my life circumstances (more like a long chain reaction than a direct cause, and by no means about that real life event), I happened upon a simple yet strong central idea for the novel. In one sense, it already had a central idea, but one that was abstract and merely philosophical. What really animated it was a concrete central idea, a new and clear conception both of the main character and of his primary, motivating conflict, in very specific and particular terms, something that made the philosophical premise immediate, human, and real. Suddenly, like a new sun appearing in the midst of the nebula, light was cast on the whole region and the clouds began to form into clearly defined planets and moons, an ordered system brought out of primeval chaos.

So, for the last two months, in between and during many hectic changes in my life, I have been secretly, busily organizing all of my myriad ideas for the story, selecting the best ideas from the many years of imagining and conceptualizing, while continually dreaming up (sometimes literally) new ideas to add to the mix. I have finally come to a place where it feels like the story is more or less there, just waiting for me to write it. I have to stress again that I do not believe this is a necessary condition in order to write a novel or any other major work--but it is of course very welcome and provides great motivation and direction, and might be just the kick I needed to actually get started writing it in earnest.

To top things off, yesterday, on a mundane Monday morning at work, entirely without intending or expecting to, I conceived the final scene of the novel. It simply occurred to me, unbidden, so suddenly and naturally, in a way that made it seem, as artistic inspiration so often does, as though it was given to me from an external source, rather than being the product of my own effort.

This idea was very simple, yet it struck me as quite poignant, and a perfect way to close the novel. Like many of my favorite endings, it is understated, subtle, yet quietly powerful. I know I run the risk of sounding like I am praising my own work, but I speak only of the idea's effect on me as it presented itself to my mind. It genuinely made my heart ache, and that was evidence that I had stumbled upon something good. I just thought, "Yes... that's it." It is so obvious in hindsight, an image that serves as a concise summation of the novel's theme and its very title. Like any artist with inspiration, I only hope I can do it justice in the finished product, which means, if I am successful, that it will make your heart ache too.

I am happy to say that this morning I began the task of setting words to paper (or screen, as the case may be). I normally don't publicly discuss my ongoing writing process, but blogging about a large-scale project such as this may help to keep me accountable to my work. I know it will most likely be a long haul, but the journey has at last begun.

Bird

In the circling dark green bower
...a red flit...
    ...a majestic swoon, an airy rise...
the purple bloom that I sought
    is lost to heaven!

A deep and tragic radiance
lusters from the shadow
    ...my heart is mortified
by your angelic chirps...
    your song of heaven!

The blue rose, in a garden lost to daylight,
exudes an ancient, rich perfume
    ...only the faintest hint
may scorch my tortured flesh...
    oh desolate heaven!

Bright bird, upon your sun-sparkled heights,
you light a moment upon cold earth
    ...then set the bower ablaze...
take flight from aching eyes...
    you’re lost to heaven!


***

Steven Holland
June 26, 2012

The Dreamer

This angel dreamed upon a lake
frozen vast with ice and time
Oblivious to the starry deeps
but those deep within her mind.


Silent wishes flurried about
her forlorn forgotten face
Trembling her bloody lips pronounced
a name of mysterious grace.


Midnight lay upon the snow
spread like a funereal veil
Lit by obscure and ethereal light
her dark vision did not fail.


Night hid her pallid flesh
her visage lost to mortal men
Terrible graces visited upon her
sight of worlds beyond their ken.


Sleep denied the dreamer
the dim stars and blackened skies
Yet gifted dreams blue and bright
to her beauteous occulted eyes.

***

Steven Holland
June 20, 2012

Remembering Ray

Ray Bradbury, long known as "the world's greatest living science fiction writer", has left this world at the age of 91. The news of his passing bears a particular poignance for me, as his tremendous literary talents had exerted an incalculable influence on my imagination starting at the age of 7, and ever since he has maintained a consistent place among my favorite and most esteemed authors.

I was first introduced to Ray Bradbury in the fall of 1978, when my father showed me the Heritage Book Club edition of The Martian Chronicles. The magical illustrations by Joseph Mugnaini certainly helped to stoke my fascination, but above all it was Bradbury's words and stories and the strange, wondrous worlds they conjured up that captured my young mind, and that played a large part in inspiring me to become a writer.

Throughout my adolescence and adult life I read many more stories by Bradbury, in addition to revisiting The Martian Chronicles. I came to feel that the well-intended epithet "world's greatest living science fiction writer" did not in fact do him the greatest service. Even though Mr. Bradbury was perhaps more responsible than anyone else both for popularizing science fiction (pushing it beyond the domain of a few SF nerds) and also for making it respectable to devotees of "serious" literary fiction--both feats due to his deeply humane and poetic style that dealt with real human issues and feelings rather than technical details--he was not exclusively, nor even primarily, a science fiction writer. He preferred to think of himself as a fantasist, but in reality his work spans a wide range of genres and subject matters.

In addition to stories about the exploration and colonization of Mars, depicting crassly materialistic Earth people's encounters with a dying race of noble Martians, and other outer space and futuristic tales, Bradbury also wrote a large number of gothic tales (e.g., the stories collected in Dark Carnival and The October Country, as well as the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes), nostalgic and wondrous stories inspired by his childhood in 1920s Illinois (especially Dandelion Wine), stories set in Mexico, and a number of other stories that can only be described as realistic fiction, about ordinary people in the real world. His stories are often punctuated by bitterly ironic humor but also by bittersweet longing, and always by a marvelous sense of wonder at the endlessly amazing, mysterious, and miraculous universe in which we find ourselves.

Most readers agree that Bradbury's greatest and most significant work is his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, named for the temperature at which book paper burns. Although it is widely known as a dystopian work decrying the evils of censorship, I realized upon reading it for the first time that it is more about a society which has become shallow, a world in which the masses lead superficial lives distracted by electronic entertainments and hectic lifestyles. Book burning is almost an afterthought, since very few people in this society bother to read anymore anyway. Nevertheless, the main character, Montag, whose job as a "fireman" is to go around destroying the remaining illegal stashes of books, discovers the existence of an underground subculture made up of people who not only read books, but also take the time to have real, meaningful conversations and to enjoy the simple beauties of the natural world. The ending of Francois Truffaut's 1966 film version makes the ending of Bradbury's novel especially moving when it shows a succession of book lovers, hiding away in the woods, reciting great works of literature that they have committed to memory, in an inspiring and magnificent effort to preserve these cultural treasures for future generations. In the process, each one takes on the identity of the book he/she has memorized... "I am Moby Dick", "I am Great Expectations", etc. It is enough to make any bibliophile choke up.

Many film and television adaptations have been produced of Bradbury's works, but it has become almost a truism to say that it is impossible to capture the full magic of his writing on screen. You have to read his books to really get it. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, paid Bradbury a high compliment by calling him "a poet". Although Bradbury has written actual verse poems, Huxley no doubt meant this to refer to Bradbury's writing as a whole, which of course has been dominated by fiction. Many others have noted and appreciated the poetic style of Bradbury's writing--some dismissing his style as overly florid, while his unnumbered fans admire the evocative beauty and richness and lyricism of his distinctive language. In the larger sense of the term, Bradbury was indeed a poet, a writer of immense imagination and vision, who easily and naturally perceived the magic and wonder of the world we live in and who was blessed with an incredible talent for communicating that vision to the rest of us. So, while it is no insult to call him a science fiction writer (a genre that he, after all, helped to make respectable), it is important to note that he is far more than that.

Or perhaps, since one adjective in the epithet cited at the top of this post no longer applies, perhaps we can now just call him "the world's greatest science fiction writer".

*    *    *    *

So long, Ray, and thank you for sharing with us your wonderful talent and imagination, in themselves miracles as amazing as anything you told us about in your marvelous tales. To paraphrase a line from the Chronicles: "Your bibliography is beautifully complete."

Raymond Douglas Bradbury

American author

1920 - 2012