This
poem developed from a thought about isolation and being forced onto one’s own
resources – even though in the present circumstances for many those resources
are extensive.
My mind went to the monk’s cell, that
featureless abode of the single holy man where the very lack of distractions was to
encourage contemplation. The theory was
good, but the practical was a little different.
Left to their own devices Monks could get bored, were afflicted with
what used to be termed Acedia, regarded as a grave sin because it denied joy in
the creation of god and it also allowed the development of sexual
thoughts. Monks needed to be kept busy
because, forced in on their own resources, too often the release was sex or at
least sexual thoughts!
Anyway, my mind moved on from monks’ cells
to The Temptation of Saint Antony – a popular subject for painters. The popularity of the subject matter was
because it allowed artists to give full scope to their imaginations. In the story of the temptation, Saint Antony
is assailed by devil and demons, but the exact form of his temptation is never
made explicit, so artists made the not unreasonable assumption that the
temptation was sexual and I have to say that in some of the depictions of the
poor saint the artists have expended a great deal of fantastic imagination and
disturbing detail on giving form to temptations which probably say a great deal
more about the psychological state of the artists than it does about their
understanding of things theological!
It is easy to find representations of The
Temptation of Saint Antony in art, just type the title into Google and bring up
the images and you will probably see examples by Dalí, Ernst, Bosch, Grünewald,
Spencer, Delvaux and Leonora Carrington and many others.
I do not think that many people have time
for contemplation – although what precisely they are actually ‘doing’ is
moot. We can amuse ourselves with almost
infinite ease: libraries, art galleries, cinemas, theatres, opera houses,
musicals, TV shows and on and on are all available at the click of a button as
long as you have money and the internet.
And then there are drinks and drugs!
The Covid-19 crisis has forced at least a
modicum of introspection on us as we have been quartered in our ‘cells’. That is hardly a fair comparison as we have
ways ‘out’ of our confinement. But for
many it is true confinement and for all of us it is a limit on our freedom.
I suppose that my final thought is that
our basic drives are not too far submerged in a civilized character and that it
doesn’t take much for the sex and monsters to rise up!
PIHW 4 Wednesday in Holy Week
Temptation
It’s always sex.
Paint slather-squeezed
on canvases,
pigmented tempera
laid down on wood.
It’s always sex.
With nubile possibility,
a-wrthe, a-squirm,
available!
It’s always sex.
It may be quite
grotesque
(the pulchritude found
in technique,
the loving detail,
sharp and clear)
the flesh-near, putative
consort
that yearns to
stretch, devour and slash
with razor claws
and sharp fanged jaws –
but, there will be
hard-nippled breasts
and coiling,
snaking, tongue-filled mouths
that search for virgin
nakedness
beneath the stout,
rough, holy cloth.
It’s always sex.
We think that we’ve
outgrown the mirror’s lie
of that false
world we see and take for truth;
we now have more
self-images to hand
than graced the
palaces of High Renaissance kings;
we move about a
world that’s ours to touch
and knowledge that
is free, at hand,
and we believe
that we are almost civilized,
until we’re not
and we are
banished to
a single cell,
where we are forced to look
inside, and find
that there be dragons and
it’s always sex. And monsters.
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