Be Angry At The Sun
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
-----Robinson Jeffers
Of Monterey, California, Robinson Jeffers created poetry which focuses on the cycle of life and death, natural forces which exceed the grasp or the understanding of men. The ebb and flow of nature astounded Jeffers, enough that he could laugh with ease at the troubles and cares of man who would never outlast the birds and the trees surrounding him. The slight, lone Cyprus tree of Monterey Bay symbolizes the major theme of Jeffer's poetry -- the simple and eternal making due in the midst of loss and decay, natural phenomena which in their inexorable beauty still mystify the one looking on.
"Be Angry at the Sun" is a defiant challenge, one which will blind the man who is blind with rage. The sun, gaseous and gargantuan, will not stop shining despite man's pleading and whining. What more can we do but bask in the warmth that we have? If the Sun, like all other stars, expands then explodes, man can do no more than make the most of the sun's glorious rays.
The title is reminiscent also of the Book of Ecclesiastes, in which the Preacher, whom scholars by tradition and inference identify as King Solomon, decries the vain toil of man and all that he does under the sun:
"Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is
grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit." (Ecclesiastes 2: 17)
Before, the Preacher identified the cycles of nature which surpass all that man can do, as even the sun rises, the oceans are filled, and nature continues along its course. For the Preacher, though, life under the sun is gruesome because in the light of the grander scheme of things, it all becomes vanity.
Yet later in his work, the Preacher stops looking at the grand scheme, reverting his attention to the simplicity of things:
"Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than
to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his
labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 8: 15)
When He acknowledges the Creator, and not just the Creation, the Preacher's focus and faith is restored. In a similar vein, the poet of "Be Angry at the Sun" outlines the rat-race of man's bitter ambitions and writhing political rivalries. The quest for truth which never ends will give end in a world that ends at some point, and therefore the speaker can laugh at the inevitable without cynical wryness.
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Jeffers dismisses the cynicism of political life "public men publish falsehoods" the root of subject and verb almost link the common nature of man and communication, which will trend toward distortion, yet this sad trend is that -- "nothing new." America is shifted into a long train of dominions, republics and empires, the cycle of the State which gets bigger and then breaks down -- corrupted by corruption and sheer enormity. Historians of diverse callings have outlined this essential and inescapable fate, and Jeffers minces no words to declare that exceptional America will not escape this cycle.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia
How can anyone lose one's temper or vent one's spleen at the sun? The raging fire of the Star in the Sky all but neutralizes the heated hate of man, who hates his lot under the sun, like the Preacher who mused that all is vanity when trained exclusively within his limited line of vision. The sun sets, the sun rises, the days and time goes on for man. No point in railing about the drawn-out shadows of the past, no reason to lament that good times and bad will follow each other for nations, for contients, for the world.
"Be angry at the sun for setting." In truth, the sun does not set, but we turn on the earth, or rather the earth revolves, and we are carried away in the turning, thus we perceive that the sun is setting. How telling a command, for us to be angry at something, when in fact our understanding is so skewed, viewing what we see as self-propelling, when in fact we are moving without being aware. We do not realize that the patterns that make night and day, that set the boundaries of who we are and what we do, yet we assume nonetheless, like the vain rooster who crowed the sun into shining, in defining our concerns that we have mastered them.
"Watch the wheel slope and turn." A wheel has no beginning and no end, but it has a maker. Why rage at a thing as vain as a wheel, which goes nowhere on its own? The nations of the world, the history-making "warriors", so convinced of their prowess on the battlefield, are mere notches in the turning.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
"Observe" stand back and watch -- the whole cycle of collective cowardice and individual initiative is commonplace. Heroics hold no standard against the grand panoply of human existence. "The cold passion for truth", "passion" is an interesting word, one the conveys emotion and sacrifice, including the inference of The Sacrifice of Christ, the Truth personified who resisted the religious gang of lies and frauds. The dialectic of man and group still means nothing, the exchange of one man against the world distills itself into a frayed and fizzled fight in the light of eternity, in the cycle of empires which wind up then whither away.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
In this stanza, the poet scans the poetry, the political discourse, and the warlike passions of Rome, both Ancient and Renaissance-era. "The crude sketches of Caesar" refer not just to the satires of the Latin poet Catullus, or even of the Florentine Dante -- who skewered many political figures while outlining the Divine order of the universe in his epic
La Commedia Divina. Modern dictators, empty demagogues, who still preach the empty praise of state and nation against God and man's limited role in this grand universe, these are the faded photos of fanatics and fascists long-gone, men who through force of arms would established empires for a thousand years, which would last for a few decades, nothing more. Indeed, we are far removed from these "political hatreds", engrossed in laughing at what does not matter, making light of the mere nothing that political discourse has come, where men and women no longer challenge the established order, but spend away what little remains for the political classes of well-connected interest groups.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
"Yours is not theirs." Whatever you have, you who are informed of the calm reality of a relentless universe in the face of unrelenting man, you have no need to get caught up in the cycles of men trying to break out in their own way "Let boys want pleasure" -- both desire and lack wrapped up in one word. How reminiscent again of the Preacher:
"All things
are full of labour; man cannot utter
it: the eye is not
satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." (Ecclesiastes 1: 8)
This verse then points to the fullness of time, when the Spirit fulfills in man what he cannot get through his own fill:
"For all that
is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." (1 John 2: 16)
Jeffers has channeled the eternal tempo of man's failure to find life through his own means. "Let boys want pleasure." Immaturity reigns in the one who seeks solace in the immediacy of the moment, the lust of the flesh, a work which breeds disease and death. "Men struggle for power." The pride of life is on full display for the man of "higher" pursuits, frustrated like a vain peacock whose feathers then dress the fan of a drunken lord lulling on a stained couch. "Women perhaps for fame," the lust of the eye moves the women, not just theirs but those who look upon them. Beauty in the eye of beholder, the lard of animals draped on women who seek power and prestige through the men whom they seduce, yet all of these groping and yearnings does the poet reduce to nothing:
"And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be doped."
Repeating the same trope of noun and verb unified in the same root -- just like "public men publish falsehoods" -- the poet indicts man who seeks to define himself by what he does, rather than who he is, will only fall into the same empty cascade of cosmic decay, with nothing determined or decent remaining for him to stand on.
"Theirs is not yours." Their pursuits, their pleasures, their panderings for position and purpose, those do not have to be yours. Why rage at a vain thing? Why yell at the sun, whose glow gets you through one day, and one day at a time is the greatest worth.
The quiet cynicism of this poem transforms into a serene calm, like the Holocaust Survivor in "Shoah", a cheerful man who could recount the horrors of Auschwitz without losing his wit or will:
"What do you want me to do, cry? As long as I am alive, I choose to laugh."
He chose not to be angry at the movements and troubles that shook the world -- and neither should we!
