Beauty as Defiance

This essay is featured on Episode 4 of the MeadowSong Podcast. You can listen on this page, the MeadowSong Podcast website, or most major podcast platforms.

“Reluctance” by Robert Frost:

Out through the fields and the woods

   And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

   And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

   And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

   Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

   And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

   When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

   No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone aster is gone;

   The flowers of the witch hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

   But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man

   Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

   To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

   Of a love or a season?

With the spring equinox right around the corner, it may seem strange to bring forward a poem that is clearly about the end of autumn and the onset of winter. The equinox – literally meaning ‘equal night’ – is, of course, the moment when the sun is positioned directly over the Earth’s equator, resulting in twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of night. In the northern hemisphere, we have been enjoying longer days as the sun continues its northward movement across the sky. And yet, in this time of increasing daylight, it seems there is a growing darkness the world over as we continue to learn about the devastating impact of Vladimir Putin’s decision to use the Russian military to invade Ukraine.

In thinking on the astronomical phenomenon of the equinox, I’ve been considering how balance, equality, and fairness are often made manifest through open exchange between the opposites: the changing of the seasons, free negotiations between peers, the sun’s journey between the southern and northern hemispheres, and the balance of influence in our lives between opposing archetypal energies. In this sort of open-handed give-and-take, even the act of taking is done – not to hoard wealth and power – but rather simply to give once again.

The balancing of opposites suggested by the equinox also reminds me of another word with the same root, and that is equilibrium. The word equilibrium, in turn, reminds me of the psychological theories of Piaget, which are built on an understanding that the human mind desires a state of equilibrium; this is why, when we encounter new information that does not fit our current mental schema, we must accommodate this new information with new ways of understanding. This is how we learn and mature, continuing to grow and expand in our experience of the world. The other thing we can do with new information is to assimilate it into our current mental schema, like a small child who calls a racoon a ‘kitty’ because, like a cat, it is furry and walks on four legs. This assimilation of new information can be appropriate in many situations; but, when we feel our psychological equilibrium is too dramatically threatened, we might instead contract and deny the new information all together.

In the weeks leading up to the invasion of Ukraine and in the weeks since, there has been a great deal of speculation about President Valdimir Putin's mental state. In a recent episode of his podcast, Living Myth, mythologist Michael Meade offers an understanding of Putin’s psychology through the archetype of the Sick Old King. As Meade puts it, this archetype is symbolic of a once useful paradigm that has since become a block to the evolution of consciousness. The paradigm must be let go in order to allow new understanding to take root. However, fearful of his own weakness and mortality, the Sick Old King resists the waning of his power and influence by controlling (rather than blessing) his subjects and destroying anything or anyone he perceives as a threat. Meade illustrates the archetype through the Roman myth of Saturn, the king of the Titans. As the old story goes, when it becomes clear that he is to be superseded by one of his offspring, Saturn devours his children as they are born. It is Jupiter – Saturn’s “youngest” child, destined to become the next ruler of the gods – who forces his father to regurgitate his siblings before leading a victory against Saturn.

In ancient astrology, Saturn and Jupiter are understood to be (in some ways) archetypal opposites: Saturn representing contraction, restriction, limitation, and scarcity; and Jupiter representing expansion, blessing, and abundance. While Saturn is seen as inherently more negative and Jupiter as inherently more positive, both archetypes have both beneficial and detrimental aspects. Under certain circumstances, the expansive power of Jupiter can easily take the form of imperial tyranny, such as we see in Putin’s action in Ukraine. On the other hand, the discipline demanded by Saturn can also be like the pruning an apple grower might do to her trees in late winter in order to produce a greater abundance of fruit in future seasons.

Because Saturn also represents the ending of things, it seems to me that grief is among the many healthy and constructive ways to respond to this energy in our lives. The poem that we began with was first introduced to me by my father over twelve years ago. At the time, it was the beginning of winter (like it is in the poem), and I was in a deep state of grief after the end of a significant romantic relationship. While my former partner was no longer in my life, a deep impression of the love we shared still remained, and I was distraught in my attempts to reconcile that paradox.

Since then, I have ever so slowly learned just how necessary grief is to growing and developing as an individual. In fact, grief might be the most powerful natural process leading to healing and transformation of which I am aware. Significant change always comes with some type of loss; just as the archetypes of Jupiter and Saturn are inextricably linked, and sunlight increases in one hemisphere while it decreases in the other. Even the accommodation of new ways of thinking that are welcome necessitate the release of more familiar ways of being.

The poem’s title, “Reluctance,” as well as the final few lines, suggests a resistance to change. So as not to be misunderstood, I should say that, indeed, the resistance being shown by the Ukranians is not only valiant, but perhaps the only option given to them with any integrity… a Promethean response against tyranny. In stark contrast, it is clear that Putin’s War is an expression of the darker side of Saturn, a rigid authoritarianism that refuses to yield to the reality of seasonality… and a cold disconnection from human life in general. There is no give-and-take, only taking; no balance, only force; and no love (which, of course, is the purest form of give-and-take), only terror and violence.

Instead of seeing to the timely end of things, what we have is a failure to grieve, and to repress grief is to create a psycho-emotional block in consciousness that eventually becomes an obsession. How shocking it is, that (what I imagine to be) one man’s failure to grieve can spawn such destructive ignorance and the cause of so much grief for so many other people. 

While the ruthless audacity apparent in Putin’s example is unfathomable to rest of us, it also occurs to me (as Meade also points out in his discussion of the matter), that we are all experiencing a time of massive change and upheaval; and that, because the energy of the Sick Old King is archetypal, we all have the potential for it to show up in our lives when faced with significant change.

While the Sick Old King might view grief as a sign of weakness, I maintain that those open to genuine grief are infused with a unique form of spiritual power that brings with it greater wisdom and fortitude. To grieve is to understand that things will not and can never be the same as they once were, as well as to eventually approve of the end of a season, even if we cannot easily welcome it. Rather than creating blocks in consciousness, grief breaks down any such blocks and, like dead plant matter that breaks down into compost, grief enriches the spiritual soil from which new things might grow. Grief is transformational, and in this catastrophically grief-stricken moment, I hope and pray for a powerful transformation of the present situation facing the people of Ukraine.

I had planned to end the main segment of this episode with a meditation (of sorts) on the changing of seasons and the example Nature gives us of how we might be strengthened in the balance of the resulting give-and-take. However, the day I sat down to record this essay, my mother shared a video on social media - taken in Kyiv, Ukraine - that caused me to make a last minute change. The video (which I will link in the show notes) is of a Ukrainian woman sitting down to play her piano for the last time before fleeing from her house in Kyiv that has been horribly damaged by artillery shells. In the video you see her remove the cover from the piano - which is covered in dust and debris - before opening the lid and brushing more dust off of the keys. She begins to play a piece (Schubert’s Impromtu in E-flat) and plays it quite well, but when she misses a few notes, it is apparent how emotionally difficult the moment is for her. She tries a different piece: Chopin’s Etude Opus 25 Number 1. As she plays, the person holding the camera moves throughout the house, showing us the damage the war has caused to their home: shattered doors and windows, smashed flower pots, holes in the walls, debris covering every square foot of the floor.

The juxtaposition between the beautiful playing and the domestic destruction is crushing. I also can’t help but juxtapose the video with my own home; with my family having just brought a piano into our home - a piano that I already love dearly - it is heart-breaking to watch this woman play her goodbye on what I imagine to be another beloved instrument. The piece she is playing is nicknamed the “Aeolian Harp.” Classical musicians might recognize the word aeolian as referring to music written in a minor key; however, this etude is not in a minor key. It just so happens that the word Aeolian also refers to the movement and action of the wind, as in Aeolus, Greek god of the wind. Coincidently, the meditation with which I had planned to end this episode was also about the wind… the way it often represents change and the way it strengthens the roots of trees as they gracefully yield to the wind. After watching the video of the Ukrainian women at her piano, such a meditation feels to me to be trite at best and perhaps even an insult to those who are experiencing such devastating loss.

Sometimes suffering is just suffering, and there’s nothing more to make of it. The woman's choice to play her piano before leaving, I imagine, was an act of grieving and perhaps a momentary catharsis. Let my imagination about that moment wander a bit further, I wonder, too, if it might have also been an act of defiance - an insistence to create something beautiful in the face of the violence and heartlessness, and a testament to the resilience of the Human Spirit.

NOTES

Episode 269 of Living Myth: https://www.mosaicvoices.org/episode-269-the-edge-of-nobility-and-despair

Women playing her piano in Kyiv: https://fb.watch/bLEjPyiFLg/