In That Great River: A Supernatural Notebook

header: the oxbow - thomas cole (1836)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

In That Great River: A Notebook by Anna Kamienska | Poetry Magazine

The inner life of one of the great poet-mystics.

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

I dreamed that we were together in some old-fashioned room. I read at the table. On the other side, J. lay on a wide bed, also reading in his favorite position. Through a window directly across from him, the light of the rising sun fell on his body. I buttoned up some kind of white bathrobe and ran to kiss him. —I greet you with the rising sun! I called out. We never speak like that in life.

In dreams artificial, literary formulas sometimes turn up.

It seems that the dead always appear in our dreams just before we wake. In this way they remain somehow half real.

In my dreams his body is always phosphorescent blue.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

I want to be earth. Be earth. To hold you closely in my embrace. Always.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

Bernanos: “The miracle of our empty hands.”

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

Is the earth steeped in wise men’s ashes any wiser?

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

I remembered the bombardment and the great light that preceded it. At first it fell from above, that beautiful, blinding, greenish light, so bright that it seemed to illuminate the earth’s every wrinkle. That light illuminates every person, every cell, vein, artery like an x-ray; everything is ready for death. It irradiates and exposes all that is hidden most deeply—terror, the body’s animal terror.

The light unmasks, cruelly, before killing. And that is why after the air raid a person rises ashamed: he hasn’t died, he’s still alive. It’s stripped him bare, to the death; that light has ripped the last confession from his body, but he hasn’t measured up, he couldn’t die. He lives on, duplicitous and frightened.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

I remembered the bombardment and the great light that preceded it. At first it fell from above, that beautiful, blinding, greenish light, so bright that it seemed to illuminate the earth’s every wrinkle. That light illuminates every person, every cell, vein, artery like an x-ray; everything is ready for death. It irradiates and exposes all that is hidden most deeply—terror, the body’s animal terror.

The light unmasks, cruelly, before killing. And that is why after the air raid a person rises ashamed: he hasn’t died, he’s still alive. It’s stripped him bare, to the death; that light has ripped the last confession from his body, but he hasn’t measured up, he couldn’t die. He lives on, duplicitous and frightened.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

Christ’s most beautiful miracle is the multiplying bread and the next is the calming of the storm at sea. The immanent element in miracles is the faith of those who acknowledge them.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

The proximity of distance.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

From the start I had a great desire to change the language, for example, to replace the word “grace” with something else. I was annoyed by the word “humility” and many other words, which I hadn’t used in a long while. It seemed to me that “faith” was also a matter for the dictionary. Of course, language is a system of metaphors and contains the whole experience of farming communities, migrant peoples, various social orders, monarchy, slavery, serfdom. We’ve grown used to many words, forgetting that they’re only metaphors, though in their own time they were actively metaphoric, new discoveries. I thought that ceaseless linguistic invention was required even in the realm of faith. Thinkers must be poets.

I’m slowly relinquishing my claims in linguistic matters, though, and I humbly return to faith and to humility, since these are word-vessels so saturated with content through ages of thought and use that to abandon them would be the act of a heedless parvenu.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

Sacred stone,

Sacred roadside stone,

you, who have become hammer and ax and home.                      

And tomb.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

The hell of unwritten poems.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

St. Theresa of the Child Jesus: “I choose all.”

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[ivytwines]

Context: "when perfection was set before me, I understood that to become a saint one had to suffer much… Then, as in the days of my childhood, I cried out: “My God ‘I choose all!’ I don’t want to be a saint by halves, I’m not afraid to suffer for you, I fear only one thing: to keep my own will; so take it, for ‘I choose all!’ that you will!”

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

St. Theresa of the Child Jesus: “I choose all.”

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

My task is to rebuild the world—after the world’s end.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

He wrote: it’s a great art—to fall so as to rise again.

               How will you rise now?

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)

[inthatgreatsupernatural]

Mother whom I never called mother. Mother of the chalk mountain, of the lime pit. Let’s make a pact. I’ll give you Him, dead. You give me His dreams, the child’s cries, the boy’s anxieties.

"In That Great River: A Notebook" - Anna Kamienska (tr. Clare Cavanagh)