In “Californian Revelations,” Azzam Shafi ’28 explores universal themes in poetry from different cultures.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
Failure is glamorous. It conjures up images of a hero being cast down in flames at the close of a quest, Icarus falling to his death after arousing Apollo’s anger. Precisely because failure can be so grand and spectacular, poets have been drawn to its image.
A far more terrifying cousin of Failure is Mediocrity, a cold and gray subject that resembles nothing but rot. Despite being quiet, Mediocrity incites a panic in poets as they grapple with the fact that they may leave no trace on the world.
No one fought the shadows of Mediocrity like 10th century poet Al-Mutanabbi. In his Egyptian poem written in 957, Al-Mutanabbi describes the pursuit of greatness as an imperative and settling for anything less as a moral failing:
“Of all the faults I have seen in people, none compares to the shortcoming of those capable of perfection.”
In another poem, Al-Mutanabbi despises the complacency of the masses and recounts its perils:
“Among people there are those content with whatever life brings with ease / their mount is their own two feet, and their garment is their own skin. / But the heart lodged between my ribs / it knows no boundary that could ever bring it to rest.”
“Cowards see incapacity as sense / But that is merely the deception of their mean nature.”
Al-Mutanabbi’s defiance is rare, and sliding into stagnation and decline is all too common. T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” revolves around a man named Prufrock who painfully realizes that he will never be extraordinary and that he is consigned to Mediocrity. More horrifying is Prufrock’s acute awareness of the passage of time as he fades:
“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; / Am an attendant lord, one that will do / To swell a progress, start a scene or two, / Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, / Deferential, glad to be of use, / Politic, cautious, and meticulous; / Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; / At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— / Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
Writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe offers a wider, more radical perspective by engaging with the concept of Die Weltseele in his poem of the same name. Weltseele, German for “world-soul,” is a 19th-century philosophical concept arguing that all phenomena of the living universe were animated by a single, all encompassing spirit. Goethe narrates how this spirit emanated from the divine and forged the cosmos:
“Go forth, now that this holy feast is done, / Into all regions of the world disperse;
Stop not in purlews with your inspiration, / Enter the All, make full the universe!
Urge ever onward then, as mighty comets; / Your course will intersect, as on it runs,
Pressing against the far and farther limits, / The labyrinth of planets and of suns.”
Goethe’s most profound insight is that life does not remain content with mere existence. When life spawns from the Weltseele, the living transcend what they were destined to become and exceed their nature:
“With godlike courage all things come to mean / A self-surpassing, whither all must strive: / The fruitless water wishes to be green / And every particle of dust is live. / And now the boundless striving flickers out, / Becomes the look that you exchange in bliss:
Thankful you turn this gift of life about — Restored the universe within us is.”
Thus, for Goethe, shaking off the yoke of normalcy is “godlike daring.” Surpassing our ordained state and rebelling against Mediocrity are commanded by the soul.
Our fear of Mediocrity drives us to perform rehearsed exceptionality. In our quest to prove ourselves, to transcend the crowd, we fall into conformity by chasing a common, hollow conception of glory. Poetry teaches us that exceptionality is not won through orbiting the paths already set before us, but by surpassing them in pursuit of higher aims.