Sunrise With Schubert: March 31, 2018

Upon leaving the United States Navy, I landed a provisional job in Little Rock, Arkansas. Problem was, provisional jobs pay very little. Almost nothing. Someone was kind enough to inform me that I was receiving a bit less than secretarial pay.

No problem. I found a cheap, but spacious apartment within walking distance of both the job and the city library. It was much larger than the library on the ship on which I had served, so it allowed me to expand a favorite pastime, reading.

What to read? The writings of T.S. Eliot interested me, so why not? I checked out a copy of his poems and started with The Wasteland. Ouch! It is a troublesome piece, used by generations of professors and mentors to discombobulate arrogant young minds, one belonging to me.

Now Eliot was kind enough to include substantial footnotes as part of the poem, so I checked out some works cited and tackled them.

What on earth, you might say, does that all have to do with the present time?

Well, you see, it’s Easter weekend. That has a lot to do with the topic of so-called “vegetation rituals” so densely treated in wasteland imagery.

It turns out that our ancient ancestors had a few strong beliefs. One was that the Earth exhibited some strange behaviors at times. Another was that it was somehow up to humankind to control such behaviors through various types of magic. And, as alchemy gave birth to scientific investigation, magical attempts at understanding and controlling Earth’s behavior helped give birth to religion.

A prevailing belief was that the Earth died each winter, and it was up to puny humans to revive it. This required great efforts aimed at the rebirth of vegetation. Unfortunately, some of these efforts were quite cruel by today’s standards. The sacrificing of humans as a trade for the rebirth was not uncommon. The giving of a single life for the safety of all became a ubiquitous motif in modern literature.

Hence the beginning of Eliot’s afore-cited work, “April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land …”

Interesting as well is the claim that Eliot’s working title for the poem was a line, borrowed from Dickens, attributed to a reader of newspapers who was extolling a certain writer, “He do the police in different voices.” There’s hardly a better example of that talent than T.S. Eliot.

Now ain’t that something? Education is such a dear and entertaining friend. One must wonder why such powerful forces seek to destroy it in America. I learned to appreciate it many years ago in a cheap apartment, filled with shabby furniture, in Little Rock, Arkansas. It made me happy then.

It has led me down many a path since. It doesn’t take much to satisfy the yearnings of a young man of limited means with the promise of a full life ahead. Way back then, I learned that joy can be found wherever you are, if you’ll only look for it.