Tree of World Literature, ceramic from Guadalajara, Mexico

Can you find…The Bible, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Romeo & Juliet, The Little Prince, Metamorphoses, Aladdin, Faust, Les Miserables, The Inferno, The Iliad, The Odyssey?

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

March 7, 2024

Abundance!

 

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

 

&

 

Exuberance is Beauty.

 

—William Blake

*

 

Insatiableness is good, but not ingratitude.

 

—Thomas Traherne

*

 

I was reading On Dialogue: an essay in free thought by Robert Grudin, and it got me thinking about abundance in literature and in life—about too muchness. If I had a coat of arms, this might be my motto:

 

LOVE  *  SILENCE  *  LIFE ABUNDANT!

 

I want to live my life to the full! I want my cup to runneth over! And it is! It is! I admire the fictional character Alexis Zorba, from the novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. He’s based on a man Kazantzakis knew. Zorba loved “the whole catastrophe”!

 

In Chapter 3 of On Dialogue, “The Liberty of Ideas,” Grudin talks about copia, a Latin word that means “abundance,” from which we get the words “copious” and “copiousness.”

 

Literary copiousness is a kind of “overdoing it” that gives a special kind of delight. Grudin cites Rabelais as someone who uses copia for humorous effect. An example that came to my mind is this passage from King Lear:

 

Oswald

Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.

Kent

Fellow, I know thee.

Oswald

What dost thou know me for?

Kent

A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service; and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

 

James Joyce overdid it in his novel Ulysses, and overdid overdoing it in Finnegans Wake. In Ulysses, he describes a man, “the citizen,” sitting in a pub:

 

The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble.

 

—James Joyce, Ulysses, Chapter 12, lines 151-167

 

Walt Whitman overdoes it in “Song of Myself.” I’ve always been inspired by the loud “YES!” he sings to Life—and to Death. Here are a couple excerpts:

 

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

 

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from,

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

 

&

 

I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be.

 

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,

On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,

All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.

 

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,

Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,

I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,

And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

 

Long I was hugged close—long and long.

 

Immense have been the preparations for me,

Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me.

 

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,

For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,

They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

 

For it the nebula cohered to an orb

The long slow strata piled to rest it on,

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.

 

All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,

Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

 

—Walt Whitman, from sections 24 & 44 of “Song of Myself”

 

Peace, Love & Life Abundant!

—Johnny

*

 

Here’s a poem from Will:

 

Some Tides

 

Just ooze in 

Quiet as a shadow

Rising slower than 

Old fishermen 

At seasons end.

Others come

Quick as cats

Wind-whipped, hungry

Devouring acres of mud flats

In minutes.

 

This tide today

Pulled in to our little bay

Unhurried

Drew its soft, green

 Blanket of brine

 Over beds of oysters

Barnacled blocks of rip-rap

Kelp-strewn boulders

Beaches of stones

Rounded by  

 Endless comings and goings

Then

 Tucked itself in

 To every inlet

Coming to rest at last

Beneath dark, overhanging

Fir and Cedar boughs.   

 

A family of seals arrived

Drawn no doubt 

To a feast of edibles

Within this swelling sea 

They approached my canoe

Wary but curious

Fifteen dark heads

Fifteen whiskered mouths

Fifteen pairs of eyes 

So intent, so familiar

I couldn’t help but talk to them

Watch them surface, submerge, resurface. 

 

Then, Bufflehead ducks, Mergansers, Canada geese arrived

To this watery place of plenty 

Along with those peerless hunters

Great Blue Herons, perched on a single leg

In the shallows, beaks poised waiting 

For that one careless minnow.

 

Then, far above, in a blue, cloudless sky 

A Raven flew over the brimming bay 

Its shrill cry reminding us all

That Raven made these seas to rise and fall

That Raven holds the rope to let loose their ebb

And pull forth their flood 

That he has done so since the beginning of time

“And look,” he says, in his ancient tongue  

“Caw! I have done it again today.”

 

—Will Hornyak,  February 2024

*

 

I was talking with Kim about abundance, and he thought of “lagniappe.” This is the Preface to his book of poems The Lagniappe:

 

Preface

 

The title of this book, lagniappe, is a resonant word heard in New Orleans, where it means “a little extra…a bonus…a gift.” This term was first the Quechua word yapa (“to add, to increase, to help”) heard buy the hungry conquistadores in the Inca markets of the Andes. It meant a little gift smuggled into the bargaining for potatoes or grain. They took this word to Mexico, where it became Spanish: ñapa. And then to New Orleans, where it became French: lagniappe—as in, “Why did Irene pay for our dessert?” “It’s the lagniappe.”

 

So, as I age, I seek the bonus, the little extra. I hope to become a graceful ruin, if I am lucky, lasting past my prime into the years of bending lower, withering, and yet—if I choose the path of luck—in possession of lagniappe, some gifts of insight to offer to the young.

 

Who wrote the manual for growing old with grace? Who took time to compose the encyclopedia of life’s attritions, to gather the scripture of the elder age, to list the acts of aging apostles, to pen the proverbs that might guide our passage, to proffer the gospel for the elder soul? I look around to see who has done this, or who will do this, and it appears it may be me. Hence this draft of essential terms.

 

—Kim Stafford, 70

*

Brian Doyle exemplified Blake’s aphorism: “Exuberance is Beauty.” In his enthusiasm he sometimes wrote sentences that went on and on and on. In the posthumous collection of essays One Long River of Song, the first sentence of his essay on “Pants” contains 379 words! The final essay, “Last Prayer,” teaches us about living and dying in Abundance:

 

I could complain a little here about the long years of back pain and the occasional awful heartbreak, but Lord, those things were infinitesimal against the slather of gifts You gave mere me, a muddle of a man, so often selfish and small. But no man was ever more grateful for Your profligate generosity, and here at the very end, here in my last lines, I close my eyes and weep with joy that I was alive, and blessed beyond measure, and might well be headed back home to the incomprehensible Love from which I came, mewling, many years ago.

 

—Brian Doyle, from One Long River of Song