Douglas Mercer
June 9 2024
When a poet is seized and overcome by the god he begins to produce a series of lyrics which nominally and ostensibly expresses his thoughts and ideas. However, the poets in these cases are not necessarily the author of these words but he nevertheless speaks with authority as he has been authorized.
Once there was a way
To get back homeward
Once there was a way
To get back home
Martin Heidegger is the philosopher of inception, of inceptual thinking which posits that in the youth of the Aryan race we still were in close contact with the mirroring of the fourfold of earth, sky, gods and man, that there was a harmony among them. The pre-socratic philosophers were the last to be in touch with this, speaking of the beginning where men were home with the gods. With the advent of rationation and Western Metaphysics (Plato, followed by the Jewish religion) man split himself in two and began to dream of a supersensory world above the one we see and this fatal bifurcation rendered man incapable of thinking inceptually. The “God” was now exclusively a remote sky god, and the hills and dales or streams of brooks of the nymphs or the fairies had been banished, and the earth, water, and fire had become banal or mundane. This is Weber’s famous disenchantment of the world and led to man’s homelessness on earth and his alienation; but within man remained the residue of remembrance of the lost homeland expressed in myths and legends such as that of Atlantis and the Hyperboreans of the icy North, Heidegger states that the lost home is now no longer behind us but is in our future when once man begins to dream of it and to recognize the god. So now the beginning (our home) will come at the end, the destiny is to take a passage toward that from which we left (in my end is my beginning Eliot 1948). In the middle of this passage we know that we used to possess the key to this magical kingdom (once there was a way to get back home) but it has been lost in the mists of time. Recovering this lost homeland is the task of ourselves as we wish and will the god into being. The poet in question plays on this theme incessantly: “we are on our way home, we’re going home.” “Get back to where you once belonged.” In time’s looking glass we see the future as if in a rearview mirror. “There was as time before we were born/if someone asks that is where we’ll be” Byrne 1984. Homecoming, Remembrance Holderlin 1803
Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby
From the loss of the native and rightful homeland ensues alienation, anxiety, sorrow and mourning. The answer to this is the sleep of the dream vision and the saying of the nursery rhyme or fable or lullaby. The dream and sleep of eternity will be one of returning and joy (smiles awake you when you rise, golden slumbers greet your eyes), of jubilation and celebration (also: cerebration). The feast of the gods in the land of their hearth will be one of streaming elation, euphoria and ecstasy.
Written some half century ago the song is a lament—once there was a way to get back home—and the solution is a fabulous nursery rhyme meant to enchant and entrance into the sleep of the dream vision. But time marches on and the lament is out of place now; no longer is it true to say that once there was a way; now there is a way; for time’s processes bring with them new meaning and new knowledge; and the inner workings of the legends and the soaring imagination of the Aryan race have been explicated; now there is way to get back home: indeed, the transportation is here. Just follow the energized words in their myriad meanings and you will see and feel the former vacancy filled with the vibration.
***
Notes:
Golden Slumbers is based on the poem Cradle Song from the play Patient Grissel, a lullaby by the dramatist Thomas Dekker.
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby
Rock them, rock them, lullaby
Cat's Cradle
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world
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Douglas Mercer
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10963
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
