Diary of a Realist: Clive James

Diary of a Realist: Clive James

Poem: “Event Horizon” (from 'Sentenced to Life' – Poems 2011-2014)

For years we fooled ourselves. Now we can tell

How everyone our age heads for the brink

Where they are drawn together into the unplumbed well,

Not to be seen again. How sad, to think

People we once loved will be with us there

And we not touch them, for it is nowhere.

But once inside, you will have no regrets,

You go where no one will remember you.

Poetic realism (or license) from a Realist?  But to see all this differently, I have chosen religious faith!   Elsewhere, the poet has a line (in 'Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven'):   

                                                                            

                                                       “ . . . .  any vision of eternity 

                                                        Is with us in the world, and beautiful . . . “

Faith also provides us with an undeniably 'earthly' vision of the hereafter, grounded nowhere if not in the here-and-now (dogma aside). How does the faith of a Realist react to the thought of “life after death”?  Eternity, by this reckoning may be visioned more as a relationship. Only a deep and sincere faith implicating the 'other' can make this relational, rather than an abstract. Else, fooled again!

The poet continues (in “Event Horizon”):

Into the singularity we fly

After a stretch in time in which we leave

Our lives behind yet know that we will die

At any moment now. A pause to grieve,

Burned by the starlight of our lives laid bare,

And then no sound, no sight, no thought. Nowhere.

What is it worth then, this insane last phase?

When everything about you goes downhill?

This much: you get to see the cosmos blaze

And feel it's grandeur, even against your will,

As it reminds you, just by being there,

That it is here we live, or else nowhere.

Diary of a Realist

“Miracles will never confound a Realist” (Dostoevsky), and the poet is more a Realist than anyone. Except, perhaps, a Realist with deep religious faith, “because it is not miracles that make a Realist turn to religion". A true Realist, if he is an unbeliever, “will always find the strength and the ability not to believe in a miracle (or mystery), and if faced with a miracle as an undeniable fact, he will sooner disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact”.

In a Realist, faith does not arise from the miracle, but the miracle from faith. The “miracle” of Jesus' Resurrection was believed by the Apostle Thomas – a Realist - “only because he wanted to believe, and maybe he already fully believed in his innermost heart even when he said, “except I shall see, I will not believe” (thoughts and quotations from reading Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”).

A True Realist

One of those crucified with Jesus, a “malefactor” who acknowledged who Jesus really was and made the request, “remember me when you come in your kingdom” (Luke 23: 42) was a Realist who deliberately elected to believe. His faith was real. In response, he was told “today, you will be with me in paradise”, that is, “remembered in Eternity”. This “good thief” chose not only to remember God with his last breath, but asked to be “remembered” by God in Eternity, in contrast to the ridiculing of the crowd and insults offered by the fellow criminal. Choosing to “fear God”, he was rewarded with “Memory Eternal” (Cf. a song or Chant from the Eastern Orthodox Christian Liturgy). The relational character of this exchange is evident in the “remembering” now, and the being “remembered” in the hereafter. Still nowhere, but Eternity? What a difference!