Novelists and playwrights since the beginning of modern literature have sought to prove that life is purposeful, that we are not simply rolling towards inevitable death. From Macbeth to Augie March, the great writers of English literature rebel against the notion of a meaningless life. An individual life may be rich in purpose and shrouded in principle as writers teach us, but the innate significance of a human life is but a tiny splotch in space, a small taint in time. On the emotional rollercoaster of life, we fluctuate from feeling really small to feeling very big, from grandiose to inconsequential. The poets, modern and ancient bards alike, dwell on the meaning of life not to prove divine origin or defend mankind, but to examine the tragedy, joy, heartbreak, and elation of trying to answer the universal questions of human life while recognizing the futility of one person in the face of the stars, one tree in the midst of a forest.
Virgil, whose foundational works I have discussed before, is best known for the defining epic of Ancient Rome, The Aeneid. The Aeneid follows the exploits of the supremely pious Aeneus who leads a fleet of Trojans from their burning city across the Mediterranean to eventually begin the Roman line of descent on the shores of Italy. Throughout The Aeneid, Virgil depicts a long line of foundational mythology and references countless other classical epics, especially Homer’s Odyssey. In a particularly poignant episode of The Aeneid, Aeneus and his men are caught in a raging storm sent by Juno to keep them from founding the Roman race. Aeneus bemoans that he is not to die like his kinfolk on the battlefields of the Trojan War, but in a storm at sea. However, Neptune, furious that Juno would intervene in his domain, calms the storm and helps the Trojan fleet survive.
At first glance, this passage seems to be simply a lesson in Roman pagan theology and the greatness of the gods. In fact, Aeneus is not simply a sufferer of divine wrath, but a symbol of the smallness and sorrow of even the greatest humans when faced with conflict on a universal scale. This theme is clear as Aeneus laments his fate to the raging seas:
Triply lucky were all those
To whom death came before their fathers’ eyes
Below the wall at Troy! Bravest Danaan,
Diomedes, why could I not go down
When you had hit me, and give up my life
On Ilium’s battlefield? Our Hector lies there,
Torn by Achilles’ weapon; Sarpedon,
Our giant fighter, lies there; and the river,
Simois washes down so many shields
And helmets, with strong bodies taken under!
Even Aeneus, one of the greatest Roman mythological heroes, is stymied by fate, plagued with guilt, and uncertain about his future.
If The Aeneid explores the smallness of humanity on a mythological scale, John Ashbery’s “As You Came from the Holy Land” examines human futility on a more mundane level. John Ashbery, regarded “as one of the greatest 20th-century American poets,” writes in a stark, galloping rhythm with random, varied imagery that evokes deep emotion in simple words. “As You Came from the Holy Land,” written as a modern adaptation of the poem of the same title attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, reads like a snippet from a classical epic about the lives of everyday modern Americans.
Discussing the joys, sorrows, and poetry of everyday life in biblical terms, Ashbery satirizes a person unable to recognize their own futility and accept the failure of their overdramatized ambitions. Simultaneously, Ashbery makes a serious point about the equally volatile emotions of even the most ordinary of human lives and of the tragedy of recognizing one’s own smallness. Ashbery closes his poem with these words:
out of night the token emerges
its leaves like birds alighting all at once under a tree
taken up and shaken again
put down in weak rage
knowing as the brain does that it can never come about
not here not yesterday in the past
only in the gap of today filling itself
as emptiness is distributed
in the idea of what time it is
when that time is already past
Like “The Storm” passage from The Aeneid, “As You Came from the Holy Land” is much more complex than it first appears. After countless readings, one finds in it a recognition of the small place of humanity in the vastness of time and the depth of emotion involved in every individual life. This poem is truly about the smallness of even our most vibrant hopes and dreams, an examination of the struggle to accept the fleeting nature of experience and memory.
What comes through so clearly in both classical works like Virgil’s and modern verse like that of Ashbery is the astonishing extent to which these themes ring true to every generation. Virgil and Ovid, Ashbery and Plath: each of these extraordinary poets is compelled to reflect upon the smallness of humanity and the tragedy of unrealized hopes. Each poem that touches upon these themes is filled with mysticism, metaphor, allusion, and emotion. Each one is dense yet universally understood, rhythmic and lulled into an irreverent beat of prayer. The prayer is different each time and the words take different meanings, but the themes ring true in epics of myth and Beat poetry of ordinary life.