Pieter van Laer, The Flagellants (Alte Pinakothek, Munich)
I had a dream in which this is all real,
where we rip off our masks and sing . . .
—Geoffrey Hill, "Improvisation on 'O Welt ich muss dich lassen'"*
Observe it closely. It’s out there, the "double or treble reality fused together into one line or a single word" (Hill surmises) Shakespeare saw.
You’re part of it, inside somewhere. Check your liminal ID!
Don't beat yourself up. (Although flagellants in the Middle Ages flogged themselves with whips and scourges, seeking the distinction in their hurt.)
Blood-tears? You don't need to go that far! "The only thing that matters is on this page."†
Gaze at the page—stare until you feel little drops of blood forming on your forehead.
Mop your brow; tuck your handkerchief into the breast pocket of your suit, with the maculate, incarmined tip visible, near to your heart—an aide-mémoire—as you stride over the lawn, dissonant interval! toward your destination:
O Welt, ich muss dich lassen.
* "Oh, World, I have to leave you."
Cantata by Bach, song attributed to the sixteenth-century composer Heinrich Isaac. Epigraph and Shakespeare's double or treble reality, Pindaric 16, both in Hill's collection Without Title (Yale University Press, 2007), 3, 50.
† A note to himself by Robert Caro, the heroic biographer of President Lyndon Johnson, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/rifling-through-archives-legendary-historian-robert-caro-180985956.
Friday, February 28, 2025
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