Resisting interpretation
Experiencing the event, not the story of the event …
Dear friends,
This week I have been listening to David Naimon’s interview with the French poet-philosopher-feminist-critic-theorist Hélène Cixous. It’s two hours long and brilliant and dense and overwhelming. I love David’s podcast because he reads everything so carefully and crafts precise essay-like prompts that elicit all kinds of answers from his interviewees.
I also like Hélène Cixous. She was born in Algeria to a German Jewish mother and a North African Sephardic Jewish father. Her mother had to flee Osnabrück in Germany for her own safety — the Nazis eventually eviscerated the Jewish population of this town.
Reading Cixous — who is now 87 — I am struck by how she manages to synthesise disciplines (much like Maria Popova does in The Marginalian). Cixous references art, then phenomenology, then poetics, then quirky quips about male philosophers, then a fragment of a violent dream might arise. I had to read some of her work for a project I did a few years ago and felt overwhelmed by the idea of writing any coherent sentence about her — her work was so appealing to me, but my grasp of her references and sources was so paltry.
My favourite work of hers is “Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing” — a kind of meditation on the creative process. She writes that we have to pass through three schools along these steps: The School of the Dead, The School of Dreams, and The School of Roots.
Anyway, all of this is a long introduction to a short quote from her. Commenting on Freud’s approach in The Interpretation of Dreams she responds by saying she doesn’t want to interpret a dream: “I want to make the dream cough up.”
Then she writes:
“We must know how to treat the dream as a dream, to leave it free, and to distrust all the exterior and interior demons that destroy dreams. We all have a demon, the one hidden in the dream. This demon contrives to make the dream disappear the moment we move. … we must write at the dictation of our master the dream, a pencil in hand, straddling the mane at full gallop.”
It seems to me that one of the things Cixous is highlighting is the tendency for certitude, closure, and control — all illusions of a certain (sometimes sensible, sometimes misleading) human nature. In writing and even in her dreams, she’s interested in the experience itself, not the interpretation or chaining or pinning-down of the event.
So, my question today is about some uninterpreted or uninterpretable event — it might be a dream or something else — that has happened in your life. I’ll start.
When I was 20, I suddenly began crying. For much of my life, I have not been someone given to tears. This has changed in middle age, but as a teen and younger man, for years at a time — six, seven, eight — I’d not shed a tear. But one evening, when I was 20, I did cry. I was living in the north side of Dublin City. I climbed onto a wall, watched late summer evening sunshine, and cried and cried and cried. It lasted a few hours. I wanted nobody to come near me, not because of shame but because the experience was so enlivening. There was a spectacular — and surprising — joy at the release of it all. As the late night arrived, the crying left. I was happy. And tired.
What does it mean? A hundred things. Nothing. Everything. Anything. I am not too interested in looking at the Why or the What does it mean or even the What did it do. I am interested in touching the experience that occurred in my body that — even still, almost 30 years later — I can recall and feel physically.
So there you go.
What’s an event in your life that has asked for your attention but resisted your interpretation? When you share, try to resist the pathway of explanation, and when you comment on other people’s experiences, try to resist speculation. Simply comment on the language, that speedy horse!
PS. The quote I shared above is from Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, by Hélène Cixous, translated by Sarah Cornell and Susan Sellers (Columbia University Press, 1993), pages 80 and 107, respectively.
Poetry in the World
A list of events: Online; in the US (New York City and Rhinebeck, NY; Kent, OH; Norfolk, VA; Durham, NC ); in Canada (Hamilton); and the Scottish island of Iona
September 17, New York City, New York, US, and Online
The brilliant Palestinian American poet and medic Fady Joudah has won the Jackson Poetry Prize, and I’ll be interviewing him at at The Greene Space at 7 pm. The fee for in-person tickets is $16, but online attendance is free. Info and registration here.
September 19–21, Kent, Ohio, US
I’m looking forward to being part of the 40th anniversary of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, alongside Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, and Adrian Matejka. You can register here, and find more information about the celebratory events here.
October 6–11, Rhinebeck, New York, US
I’m back for a week at Omega (just two hours north of NYC) for a week of reflection on poetry, poetry prompts, and group discussions. Expect lovely people, gorgeous surroundings and food, and conversations about how poetry opens your world. Learn more here.
October 26–27, Norfolk, Virginia, US
I’ll be giving some readings, a class, and a reflection, hosted by the good people of Christ & St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Details will be on their website shortly.
October 30, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
I’ll be giving a lecture on literature and health at the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University as part of the Hooker Lecture 2024 series. Details are coming soon.
November 3, 10, 17, 24, December 1, Online
Fill your Sunday evenings with peculiarity, poetry, and ancient literature: I’ll be giving new online lectures on “Strange Stories of the Bible”. You can register here.
November 18–19 Durham, North Carolina, US
I’m giving the William Preston Few lecture at Duke University. I’ll share details here as they emerge.
March 10–15 and March 18–23 2025, Isle of Iona, Scotland
I’m holding two Poetry Unbound retreats on the gorgeous Scottish island of Iona; each retreat is the same. Both retreats are booked up, but you can get on the waiting list by contacting the folks at the St. Columba here.
Two weeks ago, a group of us walked, offtrack in wilderness with a guide, through an ancient gorge that insisted we scramble over rocks, climb along ledges, wrap our packs in watertight bags and float and swim in crystal clear water, dry ourselves off and walk again, scramble some more. Some found it very hard to climb and carry their packs, others needed more rest. The guide paired us up to support those that needed it. It was as if we were in a time warp, a 5 hour walk took 11 hours. We emerged from the slender valley late afternoon. The walker I was with said, with despair, 'I cannot get to the camp over the next rise.' I was bone tired and had little reserve. I looked at her, 'We have got each other. You and I are doing this together, one step at a time.' I felt a surge of deep love and care and inner resource. I am crying as I write this because I felt like 'I' had disappeared and there was only us and the two of us made it to the camp before dark and held each other and laughed. I want to make a myth and an interpretation out of it. The valley has it's own story...
My husband and I couldn't sleep. We lived in Camaiore (a town near the Mediterranean in Tuscany) Our month-old (first) child was sound asleep, but his father and I were wide awake. We decided to walk up the winding road to Monteggiori (a 1000-year-old town with footpaths only, no cars could go). I bundled the baby into my Snuggly, and off we went into the pitch black Italian summer night. Suddenly, we began feeling little raindrops, but they were gentle, and a little rain never hurt anybody. We decided to keep making our way up. As the rain increased, we were grateful for the canopy of trees over the road, protecting us from the rainfall. Holding hands, we went for about another 15-20 minutes in the 'tree tunnel', then turned around and made our way back home. The rain stopped.
We'd driven that road a hundred times without ever noticing that tunnel of trees. How blind had we been to mother nature?! The next time we drove up that road (a few days later), we realized that there was no 'tunnel of trees' of any kind. Nothing. No branches arching over the road. Not anywhere. So what had happened that night? We'd both experienced it. No answers for that one, and I'm happy to leave it at that.