2019 marks the 100th anniversary of one of CAS' best poems, "Transcendence", which of course is available for reading right here on The Eldritch Dark:

[www.eldritchdark.com]

Although not as well-known as "The Hashish-Eater", "Nero", etc. it's quite a powerful work and well-worth at least one reading. I blogged my own comments on "Transcendence" this morning:

[www.desertdweller.net]

If you have thoughts of your own on this impressive sonnet, I'd love to hear them in this thread!

Upon three or four readings, this short poem strikes me thus:

It is basically offering a bargain. If you want "lordship" over the pains of love, grief, etc., you may have it. The price is that you determine, in advance, that all values are illusions. When you make this bargain, you may "transcend" the pains of the human condition. It is a good example of may-saying, certainly; behind all that seems there is really nothing but nothing.

I think there's a misprint in this line:

Any in the poppy-pod the poppy-flower

That "Any" should be "And," right?

…..I checked out your comment on the poem. "To say that a dream interrupted can be "dominated" by the dreamer has an element of hubris, and thus introduces a note of disbelief in all that has been stated in the previous lines. CAS seems to be both endorsing and mocking the detached attitude expressed by narrator" certainly is plausible.

The title might sound the keynote of irony right away, since it suggests there is no detachment from illusion possible to us that would open us to a transcendent realm: there is no such realm.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 7 Oct 19 | 02:08PM by Dale Nelson.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think there's a misprint in this line:
>
> Any in the poppy-pod the poppy-flower
>
> That "Any" should be "And," right?


You're quite correct about the typo in the version of this poem here on The Eldritch Dark - the line should indeed read as:

Quote:

And in the poppy-pod the poppy-flower:—

> The title might sound the keynote of irony right
> away, since it suggests there is no detachment
> from illusion possible to us that would open us to
> a transcendent realm: there is no such realm.


This is a very perceptive comment, and strikes at the heart of what makes the poem so interesting for me. The narrator in "Transcendence" is simultaneously mapping a certain path while acknowledging that very path leads nowhere. If CAS was indeed a "nay-sayer", this poem strikes a different note for me than an attitude as bleak as nihilism or defeatism. And yet the outlook expressed in these lines is neither exactly in sympathy with something like the Buddhist path towards Nirvana and the accompanying escape from the cycle of death and rebirth.

All of which i to say that it's a poem that fascinates and intrigues me!

Oldjoe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dale Nelson Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I think there's a misprint in this line:
> >
> > Any in the poppy-pod the poppy-flower
> >
> > That "Any" should be "And," right?
>
>
> You're quite correct about the typo in the version
> of this poem here on The Eldritch Dark - the line
> should indeed read as:
>
> And in the poppy-pod the poppy-flower:—
>
>
> > The title might sound the keynote of irony
> right
> > away, since it suggests there is no detachment
> > from illusion possible to us that would open us
> to
> > a transcendent realm: there is no such realm.
>
>
> This is a very perceptive comment, and strikes at
> the heart of what makes the poem so interesting
> for me. The narrator in "Transcendence" is
> simultaneously mapping a certain path while
> acknowledging that very path leads nowhere. If
> CAS was indeed a "nay-sayer", this poem strikes a
> different note for me than an attitude as bleak as
> nihilism or defeatism. And yet the outlook
> expressed in these lines is neither exactly in
> sympathy with something like the Buddhist path
> towards Nirvana and the accompanying escape from
> the cycle of death and rebirth.
>
> All of which i to say that it's a poem that
> fascinates and intrigues me!

Reading thru many very perceptive and deeply thoughtful comments regarding the spiritual/mystical as opposed to the real and material it occurs to me that the dynamic is a sort of unresolvable paradox: there's a sort of *need* for the spiritual, and yet no actual indication that anything *other than the need* exists.

Ahem! Now for the part that will get me excommunicated...

This is why intoxicants take hold in humanity. They permit imagined access to the non-existent. It is not necessarily a full entry, and is often only a glimpse from just outside.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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