In the closing chapter of Augustus by John Williams, a novel I have just finished reading for the second time, I noticed yet another passage that I criminally overlooked on the first read. This quote appears in a letter written by the elderly and reflective emperor Octavius Caesar, to his friend, the historian and philosopher, Nicolaus of Damascus (A. D. 14) and bears repeating:
The poet contemplates the chaos of experience, the confusion of accident, and the incomprehensible realms of possibility – which is to say the world in which we all so intimately live that few of us take the trouble to examine it. The fruits of that contemplation are the discovery, or the invention, of some small principle of harmony and order that may be isolated from that disorder which obscures it, and the subjection of that discovery to those poetic laws which at last make it possible. No general ever more carefully exercises his troops in their intricate formations than does the poet dispose his words to the rigorous necessity of meter; no consul more shrewdly aligns this faction against that in order to achieve his end than the poet who balances one line with another in order to display his truth; and no emperor ever so carefully organizes the disparate parts of the world that he rules so that they will constitute a whole than does the poet dispose the details of his poem so that another world, perhaps more real than the one that we so precariously inhabit, will spin in the universe of men’s minds.
It was my destiny to change the world, I said earlier. Perhaps I should have said that the world was my poem, that I undertook the task of ordering its parts into a whole, subordinating this faction to that, and adorning it with those graces appropriate to its worth. And yet if it is a poem that I have fashioned, it is one that will not for very long outlive its time.
For Augustus, the Roman Empire was his poem. For others it could be their career and there are those for whom family is everything. For a lot of people, to be a character in another person’s poem is all they ever want and sometimes it is the best they can hope for. For myself, I try not to concern myself with such highfalutin thinking, but, on occasion, the mind gets to wandering, and I end up following it with some wondering. Perhaps, the real art of living is to make the best with what you were given and try to share what you have. Whatever the case, that’s enough waxing lyrical for a Sunday afternoon.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
What I know is that what one’s project is or can be or should be evolved over time for most people. (Rimbaud was one of the exceptions but then he was one of the ones whom the gods loved. He died at 37 having left a body of work which sustains millions of us).
The project is for most of us and for the greatest time not as important as the focus on the need of a project worthy of a human life fully lived. Especially now when there are so many delicious distractions.
I also (seem to) know that a definition which includes as goal the sharing of what one has is not on point. A person who is alive vivifies everything around and people can and will take whatever they need. But a goal of sharing seems to place the emphasis in a psychologically dangerous place. Perhaps?
Augustus’ empire is gone but he lives in our minds and imaginations. He was the burning point of life in his time and his great poem survives.
Just a thought.
Reblogged this on NonchalantxFish.
I think this is the most beautiful blog post I have ever come across (except my own of course) and I am so happy I found it. Thank you for it and please do not hold back when you feel you want to let your mind loose in this world. We are all the better for it.