Possibility and Loss in the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (Part 2)

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “You Who Never Arrived” and “Be Ahead of All Parting” (II.13 from his “Sonnets to Orpheus”), and whether—as Rilke suggests—death can be put in service of life, and suffering sourced as the principal wellspring of a joyful existence. Upcoming Episodes: Rebecca (1940), Dickinson. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Welcome to part two of our discussion of some poems by Rilke. We discussed you who never arrived in part one. So go listen to that if you haven't listened to that already. In this part, we will be discussing be ahead of all parting. Right? Yes. Sonnets to Orpheus 2.13. All right. Yeah. Why did this make it into your shortlist for potential Rilke poems? 0:56 Erin: Because the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang is probably one of my single favorite lines in Rilke. So for that reason, this sonnet has some fascination for me and I think it's one of the best of the sonnets to Orpheus. But yeah, the whole poem is a bit of a. I don't know, a bit of an admonition to somebody like me, somebody who, like Lot's wife, is always looking behind me or something like that. And so it's important. It's an interesting and maybe important poem to me in that regard. Not to get too personal, but I mean, it's important for everybody, right? We all get stuck. So, yeah, it has some great lines. 1:38 Wes: Yeah, I like these self help poems that just Order me. 1:41 Erin: I know, I know. 1:44 Wes: This is. Yeah, it's kind of reminiscent of what he's doing and Letters to a Young Poet as well. But he's a good advice giver. 1:50 Erin: The imperative really just makes me fall into line immediately. Okay. 1:57 Wes: It's not like Jordan Peterson. It's not like, you know, make your bed. And it's be. So in a way, it's advice that's anti advice. Right. Because you don't have to do. It's less about doing and more about being. And that line, be and yet know the great void where all things begin is such a great line. Or be forever dead in Eurydice. That is, I just think, quite a startling line. And it's just one of those lines in a poem that'll wake me up a bit and think, whoa. Yeah. And that's what happened. When I heard someone recite this, I thought, that's amazing. I have to read more of those poems. 2:37 Erin: It's confident. It's so confident. It's not like if you feel like it's that maybe you should think about what does it mean to you. Maybe. I'm not saying that you should do this. I'm just saying it worked for me. 2:49 Wes: Well, look, it's easy to be confident when the person you're giving advice to is a dead toddler. I'm sorry. Right, so isn't that part of the backstory to this poem? 3:04 Erin: Okay, first of all, I think she was five. That's not a toddler. 3:09 Wes: Sorry. 3:12 Erin: Five for six, maybe. Yeah. Oh, wow, you're. That's dark. 3:18 Wes: Am I wrong? 3:19 Erin: No, you're not wrong. 3:20 Wes: This is addressed to her, right? 3:22 Erin: Yeah, it's really. Then for her parents. No, just get over it. Act like. Act like she was dead all along. Then it won't matter that much that she's not here. Jeez. 3:38 Wes: Wow. 3:38 Erin: This goes right to the top of our darkest episode. 3:41 Wes: So it was the playmate of one of his. Playmate of who? 3:45 Erin: Okay, I just want to point out that her name was Vera Ukama Knoop. What a name. 3:50 Wes: Knoop. 3:52 Erin: But Vera. Vera is the first name. Yes. 3:54 Wes: So, yeah, so it was a playmate of Rilke's daughter, Ruth. Ah. Oh. 3:59 Erin: It says vera died at 19. 4:00 Wes: Oh. So, okay, so I misunderstood this. 4:05 Erin: You're just a lot sicker. In your imagination, you made this much sicker. 4:10 Wes: That should have been obvious. 4:12 Erin: I thought she was like five or six. 4:13 Wes: The word playmate. Yeah, the word playmate caught me. Okay. 4:17 Erin: I don't know why I had that number in my head, but I was wrong. 4:21 Wes: Okay, so this is the death of a 19 year old. 4:24 Erin: Right. Which makes more sense, I suppose, but also it doesn't, because the central myth here is Orpheus and Eurydice, and that's about their marriage as two lovers of the same, you know, the same age. So how Vera fits into this is a little unclear to me. 4:41 Wes: Also, if I were writing to a dead 5 year old, I'd try to dumb down the language just a little 4:46 Erin: bit, you know, say night. Night. Okay, that's so bad. 4:52 Wes: That's the first. Everybody dies. 5:04 Erin: Good night, moon. And good night you. 5:08 Wes: That's great. Good night you. Okay, well, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah. So she's 19. 5:14 Erin: If it was a 19 year old boy, it would be called Die Hard and it would be okay. 5:20 Wes: Yeah. I think these poems go well together because we get a similar sort of paradoxical sentiment here to begin with. Although maybe. Yeah, I don't think you haven't read it yet. Yeah. Do you want to read it? 5:31 Erin: Oh, sure, sure. Be ahead of all parting as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter, that only by wintering through it will your heart survive. Be forever dead in Eurydice more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song. Here in the realm of decline among momentary days be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang be and yet know the great void where all things begin, the infinite source of your own most intense vibration, so that this once you may give it your perfect assent. To all that is used up, and to all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world's full reserve the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself and cancel the count. 6:28 Wes: So, yeah, I was going to say, be ahead of all parting. Similarly paradoxical sentiment. And it sounds, you know, once again, like. Well, in this case it sounds like foreclosure. On loss. It almost sounds like something that the Stoics would say, right, which is that you anticipate that everything will be lost and so you get ahead of it. Right. So in Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, he thinks a little bit about, I'm going to get ahead of this today when I go out for a walk, I'm going to imagine that people are going to bump into me and get in my way. And he really does this, by the way, and he's emperor, he's still doing this. People are going to aggravate me today and I'm just going to meditate in the morning and anticipate that, and therefore I'm going to be able to deal with it. Or if you're maybe Seneca or Epictetus, you prepare yourself for the fact that any object of attachment, person, place or thing can and will be lost. So it changes your comportment to them from the beginning. You get ahead of it. Now, I don't know, maybe we'll find out that that's not quite the right way to look at this, but that was my initial reaction. 7:38 Erin: Yeah. The line I thought of which. I don't know if this is a saying or if this is just something that Erin Sorkin made up, because it's a line that Abigail Bartlett says in the West Wing. But the idea of hold the fish loosely or it'll slip out of your hands. Right. So I'm wondering now if there are two different ideas here, because there seems to be this idea of holding the fish loosely on the one hand and then of using oneself up, of almost like bearing down with a vice grip on the other. Do you see that? 8:10 Wes: Yeah. Where are you getting that? 8:11 Erin: The crystal cup that shattered as it rang, destroying yourself. In other words, living with the knowledge that in living your life fully, you will use yourself up, but only through living fully will you actually live and therefore die with some sort of sense of satisfaction or fulfillment. In other words, without full investment, you live a kind of a half life, which will then result in death. Anyway, so there's something, I think, about being used, using yourself up here, which is a good thing. 8:42 Wes: Yeah. I mean, I think this line you're thinking about here. Here in the realm of decline, which I take to be the realm of becoming and decay. It's the realm of the living, but it's the realm of the always dying. That's what we're doing, right? And momentary days, and we just have a few of them. Be the crystal cup that shattered even as. Even as it rang, which is an interesting way to put it, because you might say, be the cup that rang even as it shattered. So, you know, here you are among the mortal dying things and makes something of that. Turn that becoming and turn that dying into something ringing, into something brilliant. But he's reversed that. So it shatters even as it. As it rings. But it. I don't know what it is. In the original German there. Klang, klang, schon, zerschlug. Clanging, I assume, is the ringing. It seems like the translator may have reversed it. Maybe Rilke didn't reverse it. Okay. Anyway, in the original. So I don't know that we can read anything into that, then. 9:48 Erin: Well, we have to get song and rang as a slant rhyme, so perhaps. 9:53 Wes: I see that that's what's going on. Yeah. Okay. Yep. All right. So let's not make anything of that reversal. So I see where you. Yeah. You were getting at this idea of being used up, I guess, which comes up in the last stanza as well. You know, I was also thinking as you were talking, this only makes sense to me so far as something that's written to someone who's alive. Yes. He says be forever dead in Eurydice, but then he addresses her as someone here in the realm of decline. And there are other parts in the poem where. I don't know. Does it seem to you like it's addressed to someone living? 10:33 Erin: Yes, it seems that this is for the living, reckoning with the loss of the person. 10:38 Wes: Okay. 10:38 Erin: This is specifically written for someone who's. Yeah. Who's undergone a loss. And that means it's for Orpheus, you know. So he is directly referencing, I think, the configuration, shall we say, of Orpheus and Eurydice on their way out of the Underworld by saying. As though it already were behind you. Right. So Eurydice famously is behind Orpheus as they're escaping from the Underworld. Right. And he turns and looks at her, and therefore she's lost forever. So this is addressed to the survivor, to the one left behind after the loss. Right. 11:15 Wes: Yeah. I was trying to figure out, on one level, it's addressed to Orpheus, and then I was wondering if on the other, it's addressed to. 11:22 Erin: To your. Yes. 11:24 Wes: I think it's both to died or to. Yeah. All right, so let's just think about Orpheus for now. Right. 11:30 Erin: I just want to say that, you know, I wonder if I'm bringing too much of my own because I love this crystal cup that shattered even as it rang line so much, and because I'm so interested in famous singers who have lost their voices or who destroyed their voices through overuse, that I am putting too much of an emphasis on this idea of burning brightly. And if that's affecting my ability to read this relatively clearly, because I'm very, very interested in that. In these. 12:00 Wes: Better to burn out than to fade away. 12:02 Erin: Exactly. 12:03 Wes: Let me just back up a little bit to the first stanza. What is. Okay. So be ahead of parting like the winter that has just gone by. So treat. A parting which apparently is forthcoming as something that's already happened. But then we are told to think of it, or to think of an endless A winner that is so endlessly winner that only by wintering through it will your heart survive. And then the question is, what does wintering through it mean? Because wintering is. Well, maybe I'm. Again, this is a problem with translation. I mean, doesn't wintering suggest somewhere you go, somewhere that's warm during the winter? No, it's not here. I guess it's just sort of hunkering down. But the winter is, I suppose, endless. 12:47 Erin: You're pointing out, I think, the difficulty of the syntax here. So there's the winter that has just gone by. So this is the cyclical, the seasonal, the winter that everybody experiences. And then I think he's referring to. For among these winters, there is one so endlessly winter. So over and above this cycle, there are winters that we personally experience. And he means to, I think, juxtapose these two things by saying, treat that winter, the winter that has come to you and the winter we all face in death. So we all have the cyclical winter that we experience every year. We have the eternal winter that is ever ahead of us in death. And then we have these. I mean, this is my way of teasing this out. I could be wrong. And then we have these occasional winters, irrespective of place. Right. And time, which come to us because someone close to us specifically has died. Because we go through bad experiences. Right. So by winter, by wintering through that one, we can get to the other side of that. And that seems to be acceptance. And therefore the ability to kind of live in a spring knowing that this winter is sort of ever before you. But it's paradoxical, right? Because you have to. Because there's an endless winter that you always have to be confronting, that you, at the same time have to be ignoring. Hence this idea of, you know, as I suggested, of holding the fish loosely. It's there, but you're not so fixated on it that you can't live as though it isn't there. 14:16 Wes: Yeah, I mean, I think so. The endless winter is what happens after you lose someone. Which I think. Right. I'm echoing what you were saying. 14:25 Erin: I thought that was the winter we all go to. The endless winter is death. Our death. 14:30 Wes: Okay. Or it could be both. 14:32 Erin: Or both. 14:33 Wes: Right. So Orpheus in particular, I mean, I think could turn out to be a rumination on his particular approach to loss. Right? Which is to say, hey, I'm not gonna put up with that. I'm gonna go to Hades and get her back. And then at the final moment, told that he's not Allowed to look back. Looking back and losing her because of that. So the admonition to be ahead of all parting, I think, seems to be relevant to that moment. Or is it? I mean, he's supposed to be ahead of her and not like regaining her or holding onto her requires not looking back at her as he retrieves her. 15:11 Erin: Yes. 15:12 Wes: Yeah, maybe that's not connected. Maybe I can't really make this connection to being ahead of all parting. 15:18 Erin: She has this untimely death. She's bitten by the snake. So. Yeah, so she's ripped from him. And rather than accepting that he goes down to the underworld, and because his song is so beautiful, Hades allows him to retrieve her on the condition that he does not look back and he doesn't hear her footsteps. So he's worried the gods have played a trick on him. And so it seems to be you can get something back, but only once. You know, there's something about the fact that he has to make sure that she's there that causes him to lose her the second time. And the second time is the irreversible time. 15:52 Wes: Well, there's a certain lack of faith in that maybe. 15:56 Erin: Yeah. 15:57 Wes: You know, it was occurring to me, too, that this is another example of the power of poetry to retrieve the object, so to speak, the object of desire. Right. Metaphor retrieves it. We were thinking in the previous poem about transference, although I didn't specifically use that word, but the ways in which our relationships to others can be patterned on, and in a way mean some prototypical relationship with the first object of love, you know, the maternal object or paternal. And then the experience of poetry and metaphor. Right. I was suggesting, could be evocative of a. A true merger experience, a reconnection to the love object in a way that's typically not possible. And it does that by showing us that things in the world that seem to be radically separate are on some level the same. That's what metaphor seems to suggest here. Right. So here we have him engaging in this object retrieval. So it's very apt. And he can do it by way of his song, by way of his poetry, ultimately. 17:00 Erin: But then. 17:01 Wes: But he. I mean. Or he couldn't do it. He could, partly. 17:04 Erin: Well, he can. He can retrieve it. 17:05 Wes: But. 17:06 Erin: But then the anxiety is what intervenes. Right. So. So retrieval is possible so long as you don't somehow get in your own way. Or maybe it isn't possible. Maybe. Maybe that's the. The anxiety will always cause you to falter. 17:19 Wes: Yeah, but. So why. Why is he given that command to not, you know, you can have her if you don't look back. What is that about? This is Hades himself. Right. Who gives this command, I think. Right. 17:31 Erin: What's that old, old term from the Middle Ages? Uxoriousness or something like that. Right. When one is too in love with one's wife. So there's a. You know, there's supposed to be, okay, you can have her, but only if you're not too obsessed. Something about. No, I'm joking, of course. But he's anxious that he's lost her. So, yes, there's a lack of faith and an anxiety over the fact that she might not actually be there. And by looking back, by being anxious over having lost her, that is what causes him to lose her. 18:03 Wes: Well, I think you're onto something too, with uxoriousness, because it's almost like he's a bit too eager, Right? 18:09 Erin: Yes. 18:09 Wes: He's allowed to look at her once he gets her into the. 18:11 Erin: Yes. 18:12 Wes: Up into the regular world. But this journey, this part of the journey that is in the Underworld. Yeah. For whatever reason, he ought not to look at her until that's over. And maybe it's a way of saying that the trick is that she doesn't actually exist and he needs to not notice that in order to revive her. As long as she's dead, she's not really there, even if he's leading her out of Hades. And it's not productive for you to remind yourself that she's dead by looking at a dead person. I mean, she's not alive technically, right. Until she gets out of Hades. Do you see what I'm saying? So in other words, he needs to believe in some way, maybe as the upshot. 18:54 Erin: That's right. And also he needs to follow through on that belief. He needs to have the full experience. So one of the things that the Orpheus and Eurydice mythos is invoking, though I think the Persephone myth comes later, is this idea of, like the winter in the, you know, Persephone, when she's up above, not in the underworld, right. It's spring. And when she goes down below, it's winter. Right. So the idea, you have to winter through it. You have to go all the way through. You have to make it all the way up out of winter before you can turn around and look at the object of desire. And so by not allowing himself to finish that journey, somehow by turning before he had been through, going through the winter of the underworld experience, what he hasn't allowed himself to fully experience the loss. He hasn't gone through some sort of full psychological experience. 19:46 Wes: Well, it may, you know, it may accrue to him, especially as a poet, to lose her, in other words. Right. To the extent that we do this psychologically, if we lose someone and we engage in the fantasy that they're not gone, that we've been able to retrieve them, that's not healthy. We have to do a little reality testing and figure out that they are in fact dead and let go, mourn, grief, all of that stuff. So this seems to be suggesting that grieving Eurydice is the right thing to do. And also on top of that, it allows him to seamlessly to rise into the seamless life proclaimed in his song. Right. So his ability to be a musician, a poet, is related to that ability to leave her behind and to be dead in her. Although that's a very strong way to put it, be forever dead in Eurydice. So the suggestion is almost that he would have lost his powers if he had gotten her to the well. 20:46 Erin: In fact, he did. He didn't lose them so much as because of his devastation over having turned and looked and lost her that way. He goes through a kind of artistic winter, if you like, where he's too sad to be able to return to his song. So there's this sort of artistic winter that he experiences after that where he no longer plays. 21:06 Wes: Well, you know the best way to get out of that? Just get ripped apart by the bacchae. 21:10 Erin: Yeah, that always works. 21:14 Wes: That's the way he comes to an end. Right. Like Pentheus. He gets ripped up by frenzied women. No, I think it's the. 21:21 Erin: Oh, is it? It's the Bacchae. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I'm thinking of what's his face. Orestes. 21:27 Wes: Okay, Right, right. 21:28 Erin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he rejects them because he's so upset over Eurydice that he never. He doesn't want to ever get with any other woman. So that's part of it. He doesn't get over her. 21:39 Wes: Right. So he denies Eros its due. He denies the ecstatic and the denied Dionysian. It's due because he's stuck with not being able to get over someone. But that'll get you out of it. So in a way. Right, yeah. To be ripped up by the bacchae. It's like having the ecstatic imposed upon you from the outside. Right. If you can't do it, it psychologically, you just get it done to you 22:03 Erin: physically, it's like when all your buddies are like, okay, we're going to the strip club. Let's go. I'm not advocating for that. Don't ever go to a strip club. 22:15 Wes: I'm not into that. I just. I don't like it. 22:19 Erin: You don't have a choice. 22:20 Wes: You know what's going to happen if you don't? The strippers will rip you apart. They will find you and rip you apart. So just do yourself a favor anyway. You do it the easy way or the hard way. 22:34 Erin: So you'll more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song or be ripped at the seams into. Yes, sorry. 22:44 Wes: Yeah, very good. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a good point. Seamless is in. There's more unity and less conflict in this sort of life. So in other words, he's got. Sorry, he's gotten rid of the old ball and chain here, is what it seems like. 23:01 Erin: Well, I think what this. 23:02 Wes: He's got more time to devote to his work. 23:05 Erin: Okay, well, I think you're right. I just want to say, I think you're right, that the problem was the retrieval. Right. The whole idea that he couldn't give. Yes, Now I'm getting it. Okay. Took me a little while. Right. But the whole idea that he went after her in the first place, and of course that's impossible. She's dead. You can't get it back. You can never go home again. That is what needed to be accepted. And so he was always going to look back because the. The impulse to go and retrieve her in the first place is the looking back impulse. It's the. 23:35 Wes: Yeah, yes. 23:36 Erin: Okay, I get it. 23:37 Wes: Good point. 23:38 Erin: I can be taught. 23:38 Wes: Yeah. 23:39 Erin: I mean, well, can finally learn this myth. After all this time, I finally get it. 23:46 Wes: All right, so he's being admonished to do something that he already failed to do, which is another interesting aspect of this. Right. He's being advised to do something he failed to do. So it's almost like he's being addressed before the moment where he actually descends into Hades. He's getting this advice from an elder. 24:03 Erin: Well, this is maybe in the middle of the. Just thinking through that. I mean, this just occurs to me, maybe this is in the middle then of the anhedonia. That comes after the second. You know, this is in the middle of the point of no artistic production. And he's trying to be. Right. He's being spurred back into artistic production. 24:20 Wes: Okay. 24:20 Erin: Yeah, potentially. So that's. 24:22 Wes: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. 24:25 Erin: And then be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang, becomes the. You know, put yourself back on the line for artistic production's sake. Right. Because that's the ringing is the song, perhaps. 24:38 Wes: Yeah. So he can take his loss and make art out of it. That's the admonition. But then we get be. So this is my favorite admonition. Just be. Hey, even if it's just sitting on the couch watching tv, just be, Man. Be. 24:57 Erin: I heard a podcast where someone said you're a human being, not a human doing, which is really New Agey, but I thought it was profound at the moment. 25:09 Wes: Yeah. It's good to be reminded of that. Yeah. Really. 25:12 Erin: Especially when you're a workaholic. Yeah. 25:13 Wes: And in this case, it is really. Yeah. I just found this very touching hearing it recited. It is like a palliative. It's a little chicken soup for the soul when you hear it. But, yeah. Be and yet know the great void where all things begin. 25:31 Erin: Be and yet know that you are not being in fact, or that you know that ultimately all being will come to an end. 25:40 Wes: Well, yeah, so there's the perspective part of it. There's, you know, be and yet know you're gonna die. But that end point in debt, that is also the. That's where it all begins as well. So this is. Right. It's an interesting idea because it's an ancient one. The ancient Greeks didn't like to stop with just God, you know. Right. What's before God? Well, nothing. Nothingness and void. Although I guess there's a bit of that in the Old Testament. And then the face of the deep. Right. So, yeah. Anyway, the idea that the ultimate foundation to things is a nothingness or void or a chaos. So it's not just where we're going, but in a way, it is a source of life. It's something that we can tap into. So the infinite source of your most intense vibration. 26:26 Erin: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. No, that actually sparked the image in my mind of, say, the pool of water that you're sort of coming out of and then going back into in a circle and that. That recapitulates. Right. The trip to the underworld and the reemergence and the bat. You know, that in itself is like the, you know, the cyclical seasons, the. Whatever we want to call it. Right. So, yeah, just that image you evoked for me is very. I think it's very apt. 26:53 Wes: So know, the great void, you know, we ought not to forget about it. And I guess I suppose that is what we do. It's part of the manic defense is to forget about mortality and I suppose to forget about the time we spent several billion years not existing. We make an awful lot of this very temporary existence that we have. It wasn't so bad before we existed, but anyway, so wanting to be connected to this before times where one is only potentiality. My existence is only part of one possible future. And there's something about being connected to that. I think that's very interesting. So it sounds like with intense vibration, right. It's supposed to be a kind of inspiration, right? This is a muse, in a way. We can be inspired by this. And why is that? 27:44 Erin: Well, arguably, I think all poetry is. I'm not the first person to ever posit this by far, but someone was saying the other day in some context that they were reading that all poetry is elegy on some level. Right? All poetry, all artistic production is. It's mourning a loss, in a way. And therefore, that is both the incitement to create and the end of that creativity. Right. So that somehow, whether it be because of the loss of something or because of the knowledge of one's own eventual loss, one is spurred into creation. And that is the source of whatever the heightened purpose that you have is that intense vibration. That's what gives it meaning and purpose and organization. I think we talked about this in several other episodes. The idea that we wouldn't produce anything unless we knew that we were going to die. Right. Like, the idea is that you could always keep going and never actually bother to do anything because you knew you would always have more time. And it's the knowledge of mortality that actually spurs any progress at all, oddly enough. 28:47 Wes: Yeah. 28:48 Erin: I can't remember in what context we spoke about that, but I think that's. I think that's something being invoked here. 28:54 Wes: Well, we didn't do the Tempest, did we? 28:56 Erin: No. Winter's Tale. 28:58 Wes: That was the before times, but I think I've mentioned it before, that I've talked about the Tempest a bit in other episodes where one of the ideas there in the Tempest is that there's a relationship between revenge, fantasy and artistic creativity. So I wrote something called Poesis as Revenge Forsaken the idea that. Right. Because Prospero, he. In a way, he's in the position of the playwright and he's in magical control of all these people who end up on his island. And he's in the perfect position simply to take revenge on him. Revenge on them. But he changes his mind and then gives up his rough powers. This is also part of my why we procrastinate. Course we procrastinate. Because we want revenge. Right. So in other words, we have the moment of loss and there's a manic moment in creativity, which is kind of what I was describing with merger and poetry is, you know, the metaphor is a way of accomplishing that. But the second moment is mourning and loss. And if we don't do that, we can't get there artistically. So we have to give up the rough magic part of it. And part of the way that's done is just to give the object over to another is just to make it public and something for public scrutiny. Right. We let go of the artistic production. Does that make sense? So anyway, so that's the way I think about. Yeah, that's the way I think about here. How loss is related to this, to all that is used up. 30:32 Erin: And this is related to muffled and 30:34 Wes: dumb creatures in the world's full reserve. So when I read full reserve, I was wondering, okay, is he talking about the pre life? Right. Is he talking about the unborn? Yeah. At first I just thought, is he talking about my cat? Muffled and dumb? But then I thought, the world's full reserve. It sounds like. Because used up sounds like the dead. Oh, you think those who are part of. Or. 31:02 Erin: Yeah, that must be. It can't just be the people that have retired. 31:05 Wes: Death or people who've. Yeah. Or well, maybe people who've reached the end of their lives. Maybe not retirement, but. But reached the end of their life. But. Yeah. So in contrast to that full reserve sounds like the unborn or really those are about to be born. 31:20 Erin: That's embarrassing. I thought with muffled and dumb that reserve was something like keeping one's own countenance, but that doesn't make any sense. 31:29 Wes: Oh, okay. 31:31 Erin: The world's inexpressibility. 31:33 Wes: Right, right. Okay. Yeah. I mean. 31:35 Erin: No, no, no, no. 31:37 Wes: That's not the unsayable sums. So we have three different elements here. The used up, the unborn and the unsayable sums. Add yourself and cancel the count. So what is he adding? Add yourself to what? Which pot are you adding yourself to? 31:55 Erin: He's saying basically destroy yourself and thereby add yourself to. Somehow if you get past the fear of the void and you just decide that you're going to risk self destruction, then the void contains both the dead and the preborn, as you're suggesting. I think. So you enter back into this realm 32:17 Wes: of possibility and they may be the same. Right. As in Plato's souls, you just get recycled. 32:24 Erin: Exactly, exactly. 32:25 Wes: God is on some Schemes. 32:27 Erin: This is God's green new deal. 32:29 Wes: Yeah, this will make sense. This will make sense if the used up and the reserve are the same thing. 32:35 Erin: But. 32:35 Wes: Yeah, go ahead. 32:36 Erin: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, that will free you to both confront death, to winter through things and to emerge in spring at the same time. Right. So you go back to the cauldron where everything came from. And so if you throw yourself away, you'll find yourself in that. 32:56 Wes: Yeah. So add yourself, which is to say, I guess, embrace the realm of decline. And the canceling of the count seems to be just a matter of the fact that the used up is recycled in parallel to shattering and ringing. Right. 33:13 Erin: No, I wasn't sure if cancellation there was like both sides of the equation, like an algebraic, you know, canceling out, or if one should just stop keeping score, keeping track, you know, being very miserly, perhaps, about how much one is spending of one's energy, of one's resources. I don't know enough about math to know what exactly might be suggested there or what possibilities are being suggested. 33:42 Wes: Vernichte die Zahl seems to be the German. Yeah, I don't know. So is it an idiomatic here? 33:51 Erin: Right. 33:52 Wes: And if so, what idiom? But it sounded. Yeah, I was taking it as kind of the balancing out the sheets or. I see, again, there's a bit of a paradox here, because if we're thinking of two heaps, one used up and one in reserve, and you're being admonished to add yourself to what, to which heap they turn out to be the same heap. Heap. So they have already canceled each other out. 34:16 Erin: That's right. 34:17 Wes: And you, by adding yourself, continue the cancellation because you are recycling yourself. But more importantly, within life, by embracing the winter and the decline, you can draw inspiration. You can draw. Right. The void is also the infinite source of intense vibration. So you live more fully by drawing on this reservoir of death. Right. Because death is also rebirth. 34:46 Erin: And by giving your perfect assent to that, I think you're doing something that both. I love this. This is so helpful for me. These two piles, you are. By adding yourself to it, by actually giving your assent, you're doing something that neither pile can do. 35:02 Wes: Right. 35:02 Erin: The dead don't have a choice but to be dead, and the preborn don't have a choice because they have no will. They're pre will and the others are post will. So you can be, you know, so you can cancel the count by. With your will, choosing to cancel yourself out somehow. Right. I think that assent is important yeah, very good. 35:23 Wes: And I don't think I understood unsayable sums now here, until now, which is. Well, the word sum is evocative of count, but also it's just the innumerable number of people who have lived and will live at countless. In other words, unsayable sums as in countless. 35:40 Erin: And the sum too suggests the full circle. 35:42 Wes: Right? 35:43 Erin: Everything. 35:43 Wes: Yeah. So one adds oneself to the countless and therefore cancels the counting. I think there is something to what you were saying about that with the canceling of the counting. 35:54 Erin: Yeah. 35:55 Wes: Okay, so how does this, you know, before we end, how does this. Thought about this? With respect. You know, I guess we've addressed this with respect to Orpheus and the poetic. But can we make it relate to the death of this young girl, young woman? 36:08 Erin: I don't know, because so much of this. Well, yes, actually. 36:12 Wes: Or at least to the people who are mourning her. I guess they're in the position of Orpheus, right? 36:16 Erin: Yeah, yes, they are. And yet at the same time, right. This very quickly goes from, and I think this was my kind of confusion at the beginning, very quickly goes from this idea of like mourning a loss to sort of mourning yourself. That changes with be forever dead in Eurydice. Right. So your Orpheus and Eurydice, you have to. And I think what he's saying ultimately, just as he puts both piles in the same pile or points out that they're the same pile, anytime we mourn someone's loss, we're just mourning ourselves or we're mourning a version of ourselves with them. Right. That would make sense. But I don't like the idea that somehow like everybody's death is just a reminder of our own death. So we're only ever mourning ourselves. But if we could say that we're mourning ourselves insofar as each of us has a self conception which is related to a certain kind of community and that any loss in that community will represent some sort of a reconfiguration of our own interiority, then that is a loss to ourselves in some way that's deeper than just now. I'm scared to die because someone near me has died and it recalls my own mortality to me. Right. That seems too self centered. This is really about a whole universe, a whole configuration of ourselves and other people. Right. That is about things bigger than us. So all of that to say, I think that it starts out trying to help someone get over grief and then it evolves into this idea of getting over one's own death. So it's sort of like speaking to Vera from beyond the grave and telling us to sort of occupy that grave with Vera at the same time. So we're collapsed with her. Is that too woo woo or what? 38:00 Wes: No. 38:00 Erin: Okay. 38:01 Wes: I don't think so. It makes sense. Are we ready to add ourselves to the count? 38:07 Erin: Yeah, I gotta climb into the coffin. 38:10 Wes: Are we down for the count? 38:11 Erin: Yeah, that's right. That's right. 38:13 Wes: I think we're down for the count. 38:15 Erin: Think we are. 38:16 Wes: Okay, thank you. 38:17 Erin: Thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast, and on Twitter enjoysubtext.