Beyond Homer. Benjamin W. Farley
the reader’s awareness, and therefore of providing a shocking venue for an immediate self-consciousness and knowledge of the world. His way of knowing, his epistemological methodology, defied definition. Was it something I should use in my own book? It was more gestalt than logical, an all-at-once assault, a comprehension that revealed the truth, while concealing the miracle of how. Husserl attempted to “bracket the truth,” but the phenomenological character of Rilke’s approach inspired my interests. Nowhere was this more transparent than in his poem, “The Panther.” After consulting my German dictionary for words like allerkleinsten and angespannt, I translated his work as follows:
The Panther
From ever gazing through the endless bars
his sight, now dazed, has lost its focal power;
before him looms a thousand tedious bars;
behind him, a caged-in world retires.
The soft gait of his strong and supple stride
turns on the circle of the tightest point;
like a ballet dancer poised at center stage,
his mighty will stares back, stupefied.
Sometimes his pupils’ membranes blink
enough to let an image in;
it glides along his tense and quivering limbs
and dies unrecognized in his heart.
That kind of philosophy unnerved me. Yet it spoke the truth; it struck the limpid chords of my mind with somber reality. Yes! This is life. We know it in our head and in our soul. Life is dying in our hearts. Silent and stupefied, we gaze from our cage, like Rilke’s panther, our wills petrified. Our outer frame remains, but our limbs do not respond. Heidegger would label this way of knowing personal. His famous definition of Dasein, or of being, hinged on the realization that the beingness of being is always personal, mine, my own, and that it equally includes the future, my future, and all its possibilities. The Panther had no future, because he had no possibilities of choice, no place to step, save in his endless path behind the iron bars.
Such knowing requires rigorous self-analysis and unflinching self-consciousness. From this epistemological basis, Heidegger would go on to characterize human life as a troika of stringent facts: that our Dasein, or our beingness, occurs at a particular time and place, within the context of a particular culture, language, and history. He called this its facticity, which we must own and cannot deny. Second is existence. It entails the recognition that we are accountable for our lives and what we make of them. To that extent, moods of guilt and remorse are not our enemies, but our friends. They represent choices that have run amuck but which can be rectified. Lastly, comes fallenness, or forfeiture. If we do not seize upon our existence, take accountability for its past and future, and acknowledge the facticity of our time and place—that we are here and not somewhere else—then we will fall into inauthenticity and forfeit our Dasein. “The Panther” was Rilke’s symbol of fractured Dasein, long before Heidegger had taken up his pen.
It was all so clear on paper, in Heidegger’s books and mind. But how could I tell that to Madame Angleterre, or Madame Cueillier, the waitress, or Charlene, the dishwasher, or even Odette Dufavre? “Listen, all of you. Cast off your forfeiture! Come down, dear waitress from the servants’ floor; descend those steps, dishwasher girl; abandon that attic where you mold for a brighter world! And who will give you that brighter world? Why, of course, you and you alone! Yes! You, yourself. Who else did you think would give it to you?” Already their choices were compromised, their facticity defined by dishes and towels, by their failure to qualify for the école normale supérieure. Now they were faced with a thousand unyielding bars. Yet, Heidegger was right. At what point does the Panther’s blink stop sinking in its heart, forcing its fangs to bear and its lips to snarl? I walked to the windows and looked out again. A topaz sky beckoned me to come into the streets, to find reprieve from the madness of learned tomes, and to experience existence through my own feelings and moods, my own sensory preceptors and psychosphere.
Bright sunshine filled the Garden of Luxembourg’s aisles. Their flower beds and blossoming plants welcomed the radiant sun. A lemon hue bathed the refection pools and statues in languorous light. I wandered down past the central basin, where little boys skipped about the lake and watched their boats sail across the water. I found a bench in a quiet corner by the Medici Fountain. As I listened to its restful cascades, a chapel hymn from seminary days drifted through my mind:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
I am seated with my Uncle Harry on his farmhouse porch. It is spring and the lone lilac bush in his front yard bows from the weight of clusters of scented purple blossoms. Honey bees fill the air with their hum. He rocks rhythmically to and fro. I have come to celebrate his eighty-third birthday. His tanned gnarled hands grip the rocker’s arms, his faded bib-overalls are too large for him, and the crown of his sweat-darkened Stetson is stained deep red from so many years of handling. The air is cool, and he wears a dark, green, flannel-lined denim jacket.
“I’m glad you seen the light,” he says. “We Clarkes was never meant to be religious. I told your Aunt Sally, you was making a huge mistake. Maybe we’re spiritual when it comes to the land, but never religious. At least, you’ve gotten out. What triggered it?”
“The whole experience, Uncle Harry. The wasted afternoons of pastoral calls, when nobody was at home, or wanted you around. Plus the dogma. I had to make my peace with it.
I’d rather be a pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,
or hear ole Triton blow his wreathed horn,
to quote the bard,
than Sunday after Sunday preach a Jesus
I couldn’t believe in any more.”
“I figured you’d come around in time.” He began rocking thoughtfully. “When I was young and still in the Navy, I messed around with a lot of whores. Maybe they wasn’t whores, and maybe not that many, but enough. I stayed drunk most of the time. One night, when I was half-sober, half-lit, I slipped into bed with this young girl. She had the most beautiful long hair I had ever seen. She had dyed it blonde, and it fell full length around her shoulders, and about her breasts. She was slender, almost frail, and wanted to please me, since I’d paid her upfront. ‘Let’s do it doggie,’ she said. She got on her knees and I got up against her back and placed my hands on her hips. Right there, under my palms, was two tattoos, linked by rose stems across her lumbars. On the right was the tattoo of an angel, with wings swooped back and bare feet as tan as the girl’s body. On the left, under my other hand, was a cross, with the bowed head of the Christ hanging down. For months after that, I couldn’t screw anymore. Then I met Sally and fell in love. After we married, I stopped drinking, went to church for a while, but felt more comfortable here, just rocking and day-dreaming and sometimes talking to myself. But I’ve never forgotten that girl, or her tattoos. And I finally figured out what they mean. I’ve tried to live by them and offer it to you.” He stopped rocking and looked at me. “There’s not a human life that ain’t salvageable, if it wants to be. That’s what they mean. Remember that, and you’ll treat people right. It’ll be the only religion you need.”
8
That evening, during dinner, Christine smiled as she passed my table. She walked composedly to her own and sat with her back partially against the wall. That way we could glance at each other if we chose. A poster print of Le Sacré-Coeur hung on the wall behind her. Its majestic dome towered upward, filling the blue sky with its pale lemon crown. I must visit it again, I thought.
Just then, Pierre—the shorter of the two, whose table all but touched mine—came in and sat down with a peeved expression on his face. “A police inspector was here today and Madame Dufavre let him into my room. My room! And Gaston’s! The very idea! That we were the thieves.”
“You’ve