Aut Insanit Homo, aut Versus Facit

Someone asked me today why I like poetry. Answering that question can either be the easiest thing in the world, or the hardest.

Poetry is the food of the soul. Giving yourself to it is like being in love, only a hundred thousand times more so. It can make you feel more alive, more vital, as though you are seeing the world through a refracting glass that makes it at once grander and more terrible, heightening the joys and intensifying the woes.

A certain wonderful symmetry this world attains; if the moment is right the words on the page gain a life of their own, an improbable perfection that seems to have come from the golden lyre of Apollo himself.

The world the verses build around you is ephemeral, perhaps, but however swiftly it is gone it has enriched your life by its touch. Teresa Macri wanders through it, forever young, forever beautiful, forever the Maid of Athens. The heroes created by a hundred generations of poets are frozen in that moment of divine glory that can come to any human being only once. Even those whose tales end in tragedy are endowed with an exquisite gravity that raises them far higher than the proudest of monarchs or warriors.

It is in these immortal verses that we know what has come before, that we can read, if we are wise, what will come after. Bone fragments and pottery shards tell you how the people of the past lived, what they ate and whether or not they had domesticated the carthorse. Their poetry speaks to you of their souls, their dearest hopes and worst fears.

Archaeologists might tell you, with a certain degree of accuracy, when the Trojan War was fought. Only Homer can tell you how Achilles felt when, having chosen eternal glory over long life, he stood on the sands of Asia Minor looking at Priam's impregnable fortress. Only Homer can make you feel it yourself.

In that he is sublime, for it is to him we turn when we want to know, not the physical substance of the ancient world, but its proud, beautiful, terrible heart. He who is blind makes us see with eyes that are something more than mortal.

This, too, is how they will remember us three thousand years from now. They will not ask what kind of clothes we wore or concern themselves unduly with whether or not phytoplankton was considered a delicacy. They will turn to the works our poets, writers and artists have left behind, and read in those our innermost souls.

On the Endless Quest

It's a somewhat depressing time for fans of fantasy at the moment. Harry Potter has ended, the Dragon has left us, and now that Children of Hurin is done with there's not much coming from Middle-Earth other than the possibility of another movie at some point in the nebulous future.

It is, in other words, a perfect time to indulge your own fantasies by setting off on an epic quest of your creation. If you're not particular about the merchandise rights actually being worth something, it isn't that hard.

You start by picking a location; for simplicity's sake I'll assume it's an earthbound location and we needn't go into the physics of faster-than-light travel. That done, you have to produce, like Mr Stevenson before you, a map. A black calligraphic pen works best. There must be a tiny village where the quest will begin, and the landscape must thereafter be covered with marshes, fens, barrows, rivers and mountains with direful names. There must also be a suggestion that if the map were to extend so much as a centimetre further in any direction it would necessitate red marks, danger signs and inscriptions such as, "Here be Hippogriffs".

Then comes the cast. As protagonist you have a young man employed as a farmer/shepherd/knives-and-boots boy and blissfully oblivious of the fact that he is about to be plunged into myriad dangers to reclaim a legacy he could probably have done without. In order to tell him all about who he really is and recount the story of the rise of the Dark Lord there has to be a mentor; elderly for choice, with robes and a cloak and abundant quantities of long white beard (pipe optional). There should also be a best friend, whose chief qualities must be courage, loyalty and willingness to come off as second-best all the time. Ideally he should be slightly obtuse as well, but this is negotiable.

There may or may not be a girl, but if there is one she must have blood of the purest cerulean and it must be understood that when she marries the hero gossips will shake their heads and talk about how she's come down in the world.

Finally there is the Dark Lord himself. Through magic too dark and evil to describe he will have rendered himself practically immortal. He will be the reason the hero was mending shoes or chasing pigs instead of lounging around being handsome and powerful. In order to destroy him, save the world and claim the girl the hero will have to wade through said marshes, ford said rivers and climb said mountains, battling monsters of ferocity and cunning and dodging guards of ferocity and stupidity. Along the way he will lose his companions to death or to an understandable unwillingness to lead such a miserable life, until at the final confrontation he stands alone.

He will receive hints from mysterious people and hear ancient prophecies that are as obscure as they can possibly be without actually being in a different language. If the mentor has not abandoned the hero by this point, he will understand everything but explain nothing. If, however, the hero stumbles upon the answer by chance or works it out somehow, the mentor will confirm that he already knew and have a very good reason for not having said anything.

At last, having performed feats of physical endurance and mental acrobatics, the hero will be face-to-face with his nemesis. He will at some time have thrown away his sword (or whatever happens to be his weapon of choice). He will realize that despite his strength he is not one-fourth as powerful as the Dark Lord, who has had decades more to learn new skills and has no compunctions about using unpleasant forms of magic. He will be, for all practical purposes, defenceless.

And, of course, he will win.