 |
| Poet Robert Herrick |
I
did my Ph.D on the poetry of Robert Herrick. Herrick was a Seventeenth-Century
poet, known mostly for his line, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"—the
poem that Robin Williams recites to his students in Dead Poet's Society when he takes them down to the
trophy room at their school and shows them the pictures of former students, now
all dead, and urges his current students to "seize the day." The name
of the poem is "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time," and it is
considered one of the classic carpe diem
poems.
I
also had a neighbor. Let's call him Jerry. He lived around the corner from me
when I was a kid. He had a wife and two adopted sons and was very devout
religiously. My family did not pay much attention to religion, so his devotion
to faith (he was a Roman Catholic) fascinated me. We lived in that house just
across from his for about ten years, so I got to know him and his wife, and,
later, his two sons, very well.
I
give these seemingly unrelated facts because they came together to make a
story. Hemingway is famous for his advice that writers should "write one
story about each thing you know." And many times I've wondered, How do
stories come about? What disparate elements congeal to make a narrative? It is
possible to write about what we know. I write about music quite a lot because I
am a musician. But how do stories form? I am amazed at how very remote matters
can make a story. In this one my experience as a musician, my propensity to
ponder religious matters, and my experience knowing some very devout people all
came together to create the tale, "To Keep a True Lent."
The
title is taken from a poem by Robert Herrick. Few people know that this poet of
"seize the day" was an Anglican priest and wrote many religious
poems, one of them titled "To Keep a True Lent." Lent is the time of
year before Easter when many Christian sects deny themselves certain things so
they can identify with suffering of Jesus Christ. What you gave up varied from
age to age. In the Middle Ages, people gave up sex during Lent (now that was a true deprivation); I've know
people today who give up the internet, soft drinks, candy, such things as this
(which does not seem a particularly
great deprivation). But people do this, and I often get asked by friends what I
am giving up for Lent. Since I don't belong to a denomination that practices
this discipline I tell them nothing.
My
story centered around a successful musician, named Blake, nationally known, who
likes to play local gigs in bars, not announcing who is playing, giving the
people who show up a surprise that they will get to see a rock superstar play
at their favorite pub. He plays one night and is tagged by a girl afterwards.
He takes her home. When they are finished making love she tells him she is
homeless and asks for money. He gets lots of requests for this, but something
about the girl's sincerity moves him. He asks her if she wants to work for him,
sets her up in an apartment, and pays her for shoveling snow and cleaning his
apartment (his regular girlfriend is away for a stint working in Japan). She is
amazed and accepts his offer. An occasional night in bed is also a part of the
deal.
Enter
his next-door neighbor, Jerry. He is a lot like my neighbor from so many years
ago. He is devoutly religious. When Blake asks him how he is he says he's a
little hungry because he is practicing a "black fast." This is when
one only eats bread and drinks water during the Lenten season—to "mortify"
(kill) the fleshly desires of the body. Jerry also know Julissa, the girl who
Blake has hired and his housekeeper. He knows her story, says the way she lives
has devastated her parents, and gently but thoroughly condemns her. For all
their differences, Blake likes Jerry and parries his criticism of Julissa,
saying her parents had been unfair with her, she had fallen on hard times, and
he is helping her out. Still, Jerry has little good to say for the girl. Later
on, Blake discovers that Julissa's family knows Jerry and Julissa knows a lot
about him. She claims he doesn't have sex with his wife but lives in
"married chastity." This, she says, is why they adopted children
rather than having their own—though Blake is not certain this is true and
thinks it might just be rumor and gossip.
Jerry's
criticisms of Blake and his relationship with Julissa, grows more strident. He
finally accuses Blake of exploiting the girl, a thing he denies, saying she
consented to the arrangement and can back out of it at any time. They get in a
heated discussion, but Blake and Jerry genuinely admire each other, despite their
differences, and manage to remain civil and not part ways.
And Jerry has brought Blake a gift. It is some of the bread he is eating for
his "black fast." He thanks Jerry and takes the bread back to his
apartment to eat it. He meditates as he partakes:
I took the bread inside, cut off a thick slice, warmed
it in the microwave, put on butter, and bit into it. The sweet, wholegrain
flavor filled my mouth. I thought of Jerry eating such delightfully flavorful
bread as a way to suffer. Could he recognize its delightful flavor when he had
framed the act of eating it in such a negative way? I thought of Julissa,
probably back at her apartment by now, excitedly telling her boyfriend I
intended to pay for her school and hire her as my booking manager when she graduated--or
possibly before.
 |
| Julissa |
He thinks
of Samantha, his girlfriend, and of the tour he will soon embark upon.
The theme of the
story is, of course, the nature of religious devotion. Blake, an unbeliever, is
showing compassion and love to Julissa. Jerry is only condemning her. In the
poem that is the title of the story, Herrick talks about how some people keep
Lent by denying themselves meat but then "heap the platter high with
fish" (an acceptable alternative to eating meat during Lent). To keep a
true Lent, he says, is "to dole /
Thy sheaf of wheat, / And meat, / Unto the hungry soul." Blake is
showing genuine love and compassion to Julissa, and this is more important than
only eating bread. Blake is in fact keeping a true Lent.
"To
Keep a True Lent" appeared in a magazine called The Cynic OnLine, no longer published, but it does maintain an
archive and you can read the story here.
A vampire who is an internationally known lutenist and guitarist has to be careful to keep her identity as one of the undead a secret--hard to do when you are a celebrity. Get a copy of Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute. Great reading. Don't read it alone!
For more titles, see my Writer's Page.
I would love to hear your comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment