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Bible, Biography, College, Emile Zola, Genesis, Gore Vidal, graduation, Ian Hamilton, Old Testament, Poem, poetry, The City and the Pillar, university
Who turned the page? When I went out
Last night, his Life was left wide-open,
Half-way through, in lamplight on my desk:
The Middle years.
Now look at him. Who turned the page?
__________
Biography by Ian Hamilton.
As the penultimate line suggests, Hamilton seems to have written this cryptic lament for a certain stage of life — his “middle years”. But I read it now and reflect with great melancholy on the passage of a different period: the first year of post-college life. I graduated from the University of Virginia 365 days ago, and although I just recognized today as that anniversary, “Biography” careened into my consciousness early this morning and has been rattling around the back of my mind all day.
My friend D. sometimes recalls aloud — just as I repeat back to him — the epigraph of Gore Vidal’s great novel about youth and loss, The City and the Pillar. It is the 26th verse of Genesis 19: “But his wife looked back from behind him and she became a pillar of salt.” This is a reference to the flight made by Abraham, Sarah, Lot, and Lot’s wife from the city of Sodom, which God is said to have smote as he commanded the four to flee without glancing back. Lot’s wife turned to look, and she was frozen mid-flight. She became the pillar.
In his novel, Vidal used this image as an allegory for the idleness and destructiveness of longing for things that cannot be regained. My friend D. usually caps this reference by saying, with quiet assurance, “You can never look back. You can never look back.” (He embodies this mantra so completely that he refuses to revisit our old college town and old college friends, despite living only two hours away.)
And maybe he’s right. I like to defiantly repeat Emile Zola’s stoic incitement, “Allons travailler!” (“Get on with it!”), but in quieter moments, I’m more often staring out the window and whispering (with equal parts disbelief, amusement, and melancholy), Who turned the page?
The picture was taken in County Kerry, Ireland.
Robert Benjamin said:
Isn’t life is a continuum of turned pages?
Lovingly melancholic and gradually, almost imperceptibly, becoming the book of life.
Robert Benjamin said:
Isn’t life a continuum of turned pages?
Lovingly melancholic and gradually, almost imperceptibly, becoming the book of life.
Carl said:
It becomes worse and worse, but most of us are not strong enough to avoid looking back, for it is in front of us more and more.
jrbenjamin said:
Well phrased. It’s a difficult balance to strike, between wanting to press on and wanting to remember. My point in what I’ve said here is not so much to pour scorn on those who reflect on days gone by, but rather to remonstrate the tendency to become fixated on them.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with remembrance, so long as it’s done without an unhealthy, maladaptive attitude.
Looking forward makes one more stoic, but it wouldn’t necessarily make you more philosophical. In fact, it seems that the past is the well from which we can draw our deepest reflections about the nature of life and time. And because of that, it needs to be approached correctly.
Thanks for reading and for commenting — much appreciated.
tedrey said:
If you haven’t yet caught up with your past, what use will your future be to you?
The past can become a dead burden on your back, until you transform it into wings.
Try to live so neither your youth nor your old age need be ashamed of you.
If that makes any sense.
Christine (msgigglepants) said:
Fascinating post. Thank you so much. I’m watching this struggle play out in my own life right now.
Christine (msgigglepants) said:
…and like you, I want to say “allons travailler!! VITE!” But of course, it doesn’t work that way. :}
drgeraldstein said:
Satchel Paige, the great Negro Major Leagues pitcher, advised the following: “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you!” As you and your commentators have said, “forward-backward-in the moment” is quite a balancing act.
jrbenjamin said:
I like that quote — hadn’t heard it before. And you’re right: it is quite a balancing act.
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