Publisher's Synopsis
Invitation borrowed from Henry David Thoreau So we go about indefatigably, chanting our stanza of the lay, and awaiting the response of a kindred soul out of the distance. Limitation from Ishikawa Takiboku A poem should be a strict report of events taking place in one's emotional life - a straightforward diary. This means it has to be fragmentary. Description by Walt Whitman: I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches [...] But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there . . . Postscript by Simone Weil: The Recognition of God and Man. Electra encounters a young man in the cemetery where her father, the king, is buried after his asassination. It is her brother, the son of the king although she does not recognize him. If these verses are read without thinking of the story of Electra and Orestes, the mystical reso-nance is obvious (hear it from no other voice - never again to part). If after that the story as it appears in Sophocles is thought of, the evidence becomes greater. It is a matter of recognition, a frequent theme in folklore. One believes to have before oneself a stranger and it is the most beloved. This is what took place between Mary Magdalene and a certain gardener. Electra is the daughter of a powerful king, but re-duced to the most miserable state of slavery on the orders of those who have betrayed her father. She is hungry. She is in rags. Affliction not only op-presses her but degrades and embitters her. But she does not give in. She hates these enemies of her father who have complete power over her. Only her brother who is far away could save her. She is consumed by the waiting. Finally he comes but she is unaware of it. She believes she is seeing a stranger who announces his death and carries his ashes. She falls into a boundless despair, she wants to die. But even though she no longer hopes for anything, not for one instant does she dream of giving up. She only hates her enemies the more intensely. While she is holding the urn, weeping, Orestes, who had taken her for a slave, recognizes her by her tears. He tells her that the urn is empty. He reveals himself to her. There is a double recognition. God recognizes the soul by her tears and then he allows himself to be recognized. It is when the exhausted soul has ceased to expect God, when outer affliction or inner aridity makes her believe that God is not a reality; if, in spite of that, she continues to love him, if she has a horror of the good things here below that would replace him: it is then that God, after a while, comes to her, shows himself, speaks to her, touches her. This is what Saint John of the Cross calls the dark night . . . Sophocles is the Greek poet in whom the Christian quality of inspiration is the most obvious and per-haps the most pure. (To the best of my knowledge, he is far more Christian than any other tragic poet of the last twenty centuries.)
