 
                         20060408.00

               One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing further, losing faster:
places and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

--Elizabeth Bishop

===================================

Elizabeth Biship does not have a monopoly on the topic.
Other authors have relected on loss and losing.

Ultimately the art of losing
is the art of living,
because it is the art of dying.
There are many ways to die as
there are many ways to live.

Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn
Und keinen Dank dazu haben,
Er ist bei uns wohl auf dem Plan
Mit seinem Geist und Gaben.
Nehmen sie den Leib,
Gut, Ehr, Kind und Weib,
Lass fahren dahin,
Sie habens kein Gewinn,
Das Reich muss uns doch bleiben.

The Word they still shall let remain
nor any thanks have for it;
He's by our side upon the plain
with His good gifts and Spirit.
And take they our life,
goods, fame, child and wife,
Let these all be gone,
they yet have nothing won;
The Kingdom ours remaineth.

==================================

     That there should be an art of losing implies at least
some similarity in the items that are reported lost.  But
when one runs down the list (catalogue) that which Elizabeth
Bishop has lost is so diverse, that what is really in issue
is not the object that is lost, but the integrity of the
individual which is threatened by that loss.  And this then
is the implication of the refrain "It's no disaster", a
protective response which secures the safety of the owner
whose property has been lost.  Until the final stanza, where
the loss of the friend, of the loved one is described in
terms of the loss of the familiar voice and gesture.  That
then _is_ a disaster, the inference, unavoidable, being that
this relationship is vital, and is more valuable than all the
other properties whose loss was, or would have been, no
disaster.

     The difference is between what may be lost with
impunity, between the loss that may be recovered or restored
maybe even by insurance, and that which is integral to the
individual.  It has been said before: What doeth it profit a
man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul.  The
voice and the gesture that are lost with the loss of the
loved one are integral to and inseparable from the spirit;
and that is why their loss is a disaster.

     The experience has been described much more explicitly
and poetically by Hoelderlin in his poem Der Abschied.  In
the poem One Art, however, the tangential quality of the
reference to the loss suggests that the poet is unable to
come to terms with it.

     The poem is tethered to words.  Art of losing; disaster
trivialized, its meaning revealed. mounting to a crescendo.
the loss of Jesus in 17th century sentimental religious
literature the loss of a child.  One art that makes even the
small losses symbolic of larger ones.  =================

The concluding stanza:

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I
shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too
hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like
disaster.

The poet prohibits me from interpreting it: Is one permitted
to ask what it means?  Does it mean what it seems to say: Is
the "you" which I lose something other than the joking voice,
the "gesture that I love?  Is my relationship to the "you"
that I purport to lose anything more than my relationship

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I
owned, two rivers, a continent.

Is the "you" that I lose more real than the two lovely
cities, the various realms I owned, the two rivers and the
continent?

If one lives in a real time, does the poem seem unreal?

Anacreontic, a play on words, teasing, provocative.  A
profound issue of style.

A reduction of experience to words: losing, disaster.
Implicit in the poem, the assumption that "losing", subject
to one art, has only one meaning. The explicit comparison of
losing door keys, a hour, a mother's watch three loved
houses, two rivers, a continent, and losing "you".  Or is the
gist of the poem a witty and sophisticated way of pointing
out that losing "you" is different, unique, is incomparable
with all the other losses.  If so, it is at the cost of
obscuring, confusing, obfuscating the experience of loss.  So
many things are subject to being lost.  One loses ones
temper, ones patience, ones mind, friends, money, credit,
reputation, ones leg or arm, one can lose ones life, and
althogu one may gain the whole world, one may lose ones soul.
One loses time, one loses his way, one loses ones purpose.
An these losses have as their common denominator, little more
than the word.

     A poem may be word-based, or based on experience.  This
poem is a sophisticated play on words.  The message of this
poem is that losing "you" is a disaster; it presumed to bring
this message without reference or explication of any other
experience of losing, and for that matter without any other
explication of disaster.  Indeed the sematic meaning of both
terms is trivialized by the broad range of their application.

     One may argue that it is the very nature of poetry to
employ language to reflect experience, and to resort to
experience to give meaning to words.  One may then find fault
with any balance, with any compromise and dismiss a poem for
an excessive subordination of experience to language, or one
may dismiss the poem for its exploitation of sentiment on an
inadequate semantic foundation.  Possibly this poem is
applauded because it has arrives at just the right balance
between feeling and form.

     Perhaps if the times are unreal, so are the readers: the
question then, can real poems, if such they are make real
their unreal readers.  This poem represents reminded me of
the venerable tradition of Anacreonta.

     Is one not making puns with the word losing when one
uses it to speak of losing ones soul, ones life, and losing
ones Kleenex.

============================

     Does not correspond to my appehension of disaster.  Does
not correspond to my experience of losing.  For me the loss
is specific to the object lost.  If I lose a letter the
quality of that loss is comprehended in the contents of that
letter.  The loss of a letter from A is comparable to a loss
of a letter from B only in so far as A is comparable to B.
The loss of a blank sheet of paper (on which I was about to
write) is qualitatively very different from the loss of a
sheet of paper on which I or someone else has written.

     Thus there is no One Art of losing in my experience; to
write about one art of losing is to reduce the experience of
losing to a word, to a term; and this reduction is in fact a
pun, a play on word the the word losing.

     Losing ones life, ones temper, ones equanimity, ones
humor, ones time, just as the loss of a family member is
specific to that person. The death of my father is a
different loss from the death of my mother.  The deaths of
friends similarly.  There is no One Art of losing in my
experience; to write about one art of losing is to reduce the
experience of losing to a word, to a term; and this reduction
is in fact a pun, a play on word the the word losing.

     This is not at all to disparage poetry that plays with
words.  This is how I have always interpreted Anacreontic
verse.  I think much Elizabethan poetry is oriented toward
words rather than emotions.  Likewise much 17th and 18th
century poetry.

     I conclude that it doesn't correspond to my experience;
it doesn't evoke thoughts or passions for me.  I am quite
willing to accept the circumstance that I don't understand
it.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
