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This is KZSU Stanford. I'm Robert Harrison alongside Vitori Amo Bla, coming to you from the
underworld of KZSU. It's that time of year which Dante called the Shorten Day and the Great Circle of
Shade. Namely, the day when the sun travels the shortest path through the sky. In some, we're coming to you as our
North Pole reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun. The day with the least daylight and the
longest night, otherwise known as the winter solstice. The winter solstice lasts only an instant,
yet its most precarious volatile moment in the revolution of our earth around its star. In the
depths of this longest night of the year, our tilted planet comes to a momentary stand still before
taking a turn, a discreet yet decisive turn toward the light. Maybe that's why the winter
solstice is associated with St. Lucie, whose name evokes light, loosensy, from the Latin
luks. Lucy heralds the light hiding in the ultimate sea of darkness. She is the saint of the planet's
turn from its maximum tilt away from the sun toward the sun. That's why at this volatile turning point
in the Great Circle of Shade, we thought to share with you a few poems about Hyburnal Darkness.
The three poems I've chosen to recite reach us from the somber depths of the human psyche. Yet I
would ask you as you listen to keep in mind that at the far edge of darkness, a turning toward the
light can and does take place. It's the earth itself that assures us of this. I'll begin with John
Duns, an octurnal upon St. Lucie's day. This is one of the great depressive poems of the Western canon.
It begins with the speaker stating that it's the winter solstice and that the external world is all
but dead, but not nearly as dead as he is in his soul. He goes on to describe how love transformed
him into a happy and fulfilled being before changing him into a dead thing. Just after the poems halfway
point we learned that the speaker's lover has died and we gather that he died along with her,
if not physically then spiritually. The poem concludes with the speaker wishing a happy summer season
to other lovers. This poem was most likely written in the aftermath of the death of Duns beloved wife
Anne who died in 1617 just days after she gave birth to their 12th child.
Here we go with an octurnal upon St. Lucie's day.
Tis the days midnight and it is the days, Lucie's who scare seven hours for self unmasks.
The sun is spent and now his flasks, sun-forth light squibbs, no constant rays.
The world's whole sap is sunk. The general bomb, the hydropic earth hath drunk.
Wither as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk. Dead and inter, yet all these seem to laugh
compared with me who am their epitaph. Study me then, you who shall lovers be at the next world.
That is at the next spring, for I am every dead thing in whom love brought new alchemy,
for his art did express a quintessence even from nothingness,
from dull privations and lean emptiness. He ruined me and I am rebigot of absence, darkness, death, things which are not.
All others from all things draw all that's good,
life, soul, form, spirit, when stay being have,
I by love slimbec and the grave of all that's nothing. Often a flood have we too wept
and so drowned the whole world us too. Often did we grow to be two chaoses
when we did show care to ought else and often absences with true our souls and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death which were wrong, her of the first nothing the elixir grown.
Where I am and that I were one I need must know I should prefer.
If I were any beasts some ends, some means, yay plants, yay stones, detest and love,
all some properties invest. If I, an ordinary nothing were, as shadow, a light and body must be here.
But I am none nor will my son renew. You lovers for who's sake the lesser son at this time
to the goat is run, to fetch new lust and give it you. Enjoy your summer all.
Since she enjoys her long nights festival, let me prepare toward her and let me call this hour
her vigil and her Eve. Since this both the years and the days deep midnight is.
"There's a great deal one could say about this majestic palm,
but the winter solstice is not the time or the mood for commentary. What we need instead is a
mournful music of the dead season. So I'll move on to a poem by Percy Biss Shelley that was
never published during his lifetime. It's almost certainly about his first wife Harriet, who had
committed suicide by drowning in the Serpentine River near London. Nine days before the winter solstice
on December 12, 1816, the London Times reported, I quote, "A respectable female,
far advanced in pregnancy was taken out of the Serpentine River and brought to her residence in
Queen Street, Brompton, having been missing for nearly six weeks. She had a valuable ring on her finger."
It's hard to say whether this haunting melancholy poem expresses an unavowed remorse for Harriet
suicide or merely a reminiscence on the past. The poem has plenty of illusions to the suicide
with a strong presence of rivers and flowing water. What we know for sure is that Harriet left a
death letter naming Shelley as the cause of her misfortune. Shelley's owed to Harriet is full of
tenderness and affection. This, despite the fact that a few weeks after Harriet died, Shelley married
Mary Godwin. The human heart is a deep and strange place. The poem is called "Lines,
the Cold Earth, Slept Below."
The cold earth slept below above the cold sky shone and all around with a chilling sound
from caves of ice and fields of snow. The breath of night like death did flow beneath the sinking moon.
The wintry hedge was black, the green grass was not seen, the birds did rest on the bare thorns
breast whose roots beside the pathway track had bound their folds over many a crack which the
frost had made between. The eyes glowed in the glare of the moon's dying light as a fen fire's beam
on a sluggish stream gleams dimly, so the moon shone there and it yellowed the strings of
the entangled hair that shook in the wind of night. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved,
the wind made thy bosom chill, the night she shed on thy dear head, its frozen dew and
thou did sly, where the bitter breath of the naked sky might visit thee at will.
To wrap up this tribute to the winter solstice, I'll read one last poem about the dark,
so that darkness may grow. It has its origins in a poem by the Italian poet Andre as Anzo,
who died at a ripe old age about a decade ago. In Italian it's called Percicrisca.
The original is a gnarly baffling somewhat anagramatical, yet sonarously hypnotic poem,
like a thicket of twisted trees. Here are the first few lines in Italian.
Percicrisca, this is a duster of scooter. Percicrisca, this is a duster of scooter.
Venga pewscooter. Percicrisca, this is a duster of scooter.
I'll read the story of the duster of scooter.
What I'm going to read in English is not a translation of Zanzato's poem,
but rather a free adaptation of it that Matteo Perper and I collaborated on together.
Matteo Perper is a Sanford undergraduate and a student of mine.
He has a fine poetic year, and together we adapted Zanzato's poem,
or imitated if you prefer, for this occasion, so that darkness may grow.
So that darkness may grow and the darkness be right,
so that the trees, one by one, leafing in the dark, may birth and branch more radically,
and the gloom loom more darkly. Let the underworld of the worm rise into the masticating gorge
of the overhanging night and give Lambency to the shadow fruit of our dreams.
Come darkness, suck us up into your gradient generations, into your ardent propagations,
so that the gradients climb steeper,
may the fallen branches stack higher and collapse in our breastense.
Here were the darkness darkens. Here were our nook turn ends and begins again.
Let the sourcing desire ramify into in numerous genders and dark part traditions,
each with its root of darkness pushing ever more darkly out to take in the stars.
Nothing is more traditional than the association of life with light and death with darkness,
but on this winter solstice, which has always been in my favorite day of the year,
whatever the year. Let's not forget that all of life originates and germinates in the dark,
be it in the seas, the sand, the soil, the egg, or the womb. We have all come forth from the dark.
Everything that has an end has a beginning and everything that begins comes to an end.
Life emerges from the matrix of death and at the extremity of darkness,
the revolving earth takes a turn toward the light. I'm Robert Harrison for entitled opinions.
Thanks for listening.
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