Posted by malthus on August 23, 2004, at 20:24:05
In reply to Re: poem...Fusion » malthus, posted by Atticus on August 23, 2004, at 17:14:40
Atticus:
Thanks for your post. In "Fusion" I wanted to express the feeling of being so crushed by depression that the only place to find refuge from my dismal disposition, is in some celestial sphere.
I just finished re-reading The Outsider by Camus last week (first time I read it was freshman year in college some 20 years ago; not in French however.) The main character Meursalt says: "...this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world."
The poignancy of that line sums up how I feel when I'm unduly depressed; shackled to my perfunctory existence. I wanted to attach trancendentalism to the existentialism of Camus. Like you I use images to write poetry and I wanted to take the image of the stars and the kiss to transcend the sometimes hostile environment I find myself in.
It eases me to know that it felt very personal to you; that one of your former coping mechanisms was what I described in the poem: "the fantasy of it somehow helped, at least for a few moments".
malthus--the airedale with the serious puppy face
poster:malthus
thread:381399
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040729/msgs/381524.html