The Robinson Jeffers-Charles Bukowski Connection
It must have been via one of Charles Bukowski’s many interviews that I got a lead to Robinson Jeffers of Carmel-Big Sur, California. Jeffers was not a figure I had encountered at prep school or at college. I am delighted to bring him up now, prompted by Justin Raimondo’s informative article in the December 17th print edition of The American Conservative, entitled “Robinson Jeffers: Peace Poet”. It has been awhile since I have read anything about Jeffers, and I had almost come to the conclusion that this great man was lost and forgotten.
You will not find Robinson Jeffers in the poetry section of your local book store. Trust me. Call one up and see. There are plenty of other poets, but not Jeffers. He’s got to be special-ordered. This for a man who was on the cover of Time in the 1920’s and who had a U.S. postage stamp issued with his portrait on it in 1973. Of course, Amazon has him. To be recommended is the slim Vintage paperback, a collection which evidently has not changed in format one iota since being published in 1965.
Stanford University Press came out with a new, outsized 776-page selection of poems in 2001. The three online reviews of this latest volume are most worthwhile as a primer to the man and his poetry. I could also recommend Professor Helen Vendler’s “Huge Pits of Darkness, High Peaks of Light” in The New Yorker of December 26th, 1988, but it’s not online. Professor Vendler begins, “The poet Robinson Jeffers is periodically resurrected.” It looks like Justin Raimondo’s piece is the latest resurrection. Wonderful.
Justin naturally focuses upon the Old Right, anti-war aspects of Jeffers, which may very well be the most approachable aspects. I do not think Jeffers could be termed a pacifist, but he definitely was against the U.S. interventions in World Wars I and II. Take a look at his “Wilson in Hell” written in 1942, one of the ten poems suppressed by Bennett Cerf at Random House in the 1946 publication of The Double Axe…
Roosevelt died and met Wilson; who said “I
blundered into it
Through honest error, and conscience cut me so deep that
I died
In the vain effort to prevent future wars. But you
Blew on the coal-bed, and when it kindled you deliberately
Sabotaged every fire-wall that even the men who denied
My hope had built. You have too much murder on your
hands. I will not
Speak of the lies and connivings. I cannot understand the
Mercy
That permits us to meet in the same heaven. --Or is this
my hell?”
Then there is “So Many Blood-Lakes” written on May 12, 1944 during the closing hours of World War II:
We have now won two world-wars, neither of
which concerned us, we were slipped in.
We have leveled the powers
Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble
and dependence. We have won two wars and a
third is coming…
--As for me: laugh at me. I agree with you. it is a foolish
business to see the future and screech at it.
One should watch and not speak. And patriotism has run
the world through so many blood-lakes: and we
always fall in.
Exactly a decade earlier, Jeffers had written in “Shine, Republic"…
There is a stubborn torch that flames from Marathon to
Concord, its dangerous beauty binding three ages
Into one time; the waves of barbarism and civilization
have eclipsed but have never quenched it.
For the Greeks the love of beauty, for Rome of ruling;
for the present age the passionate love of discovery;
But in one noble passion we are one; and Washington,
Luther, Tacitus, Aeschylus, one kind of man…
Jeffers was an American patriot as well as an Old Right “isolationist”. This is looking narrowly, of course, at what we call “politics”. But Jeffers poetry transcends all politics. How so? You have to read it. Here’s what William Everson thoughtfully had to say in the the foreword to The Double Axe in trying to explain Jeffers’ outlook, “The breed [mankind] has something botched about it, and whoever would follow its tendencies walks with devils.... Nineteenth-century science had presented Nietzsche with a universe in which there was no place left for God. Twentieth-century science presented Jeffers with a universe in which there is no place left for man.”
There is a Jeffers-Bukowski connection. In Septuagenarian Stew (1990) Bukowski has a poem entitled simply “Jeffers”, which is a tribute. “His voice was dark, a rock-slab pronouncement, a voice not distracted by the ordinary forces of greed, cunning and need.” Then there is the Robinson Jeffers Newsletter # 90, in the Spring of 1994:
“On 9 March 1994, Los Angeles poet laureate, prolific writer, rough-hewn autobiographical poet, short story writer, novelist, center figure of the feature film, “Barfly”, died of leukemia at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital.... It would be difficult to find two poets more separated in subject matter, technique and world-view than Charles Bukowski and Robinison Jeffers. Yet he was a man dedicated to, indeed almost obsessed by Jeffers.... In a 1970 interview...Bukowski identifies Jeffers as a poet who generally influenced him, who ‘turned him on’.... Bukowski: he was not a Jeffers disciple, we must say, but an admirer. Despairing of the Carmel poet’s divine macrocosm, which evidently said nothing to him, he [Bukowski] spoke for those caught in the blind, meaningless, desolate, violent, isolated process which to him was life.”
May I add, getting back to “politics”, that Bukowski completely shared Jeffers’ “anti-war” views with respect to American involvement in foreign wars. In my correspondence with Bukowski (some of which is contained in Reach for the Sun, Selected Letters of Charles Bukowski, Volume 3, 1978-1994) I wrote him a note on January 11th, 1991 during the run-up to Gulf War I. My note concerned a particularly insufferable and hypocritical column by N.Y. Times writer A. M. Rosenthal in the International Herald Tribune entitled “Mideastern Fairy Tales”. True to form, Abe was braying for “regime change” in Iraq back then.
I had written a letter to the editor, pointing out what nonsense it all was, and sent Bukowski a copy. He had already responded enthusiastically to my essay “The Second World War and its Aftermath”. Bukowski shot back a comment by return mail: “Fine reply to the Rosenthal bullshit. If there is a good fight you are fighting it. Yes, it looks like this country is in for another one. The idiot concepts of our leaders are endless. It all makes me sick straight on through. Nothing has been learned from the past. Just new bodies, new waste, new hell. Always a new excuse for more war...yes, I am sick with it all. It sits in my gut churning and they go on ahead. Plenty best, Buk”.
For the record, here’s the text of my unpublished letter to the International Herald Tribune, dated October 28th, 1990 on the subject of the first Gulf War, to be code-named Operation Desert Storm:
“Is A.M. Rosenthal confused or just trying to confuse the rest of us? (’Mideastern Fairy Tales’, IHT, October 27th). One wonders where he acquired such contempt, nay hatred, for all things Arab. If the Saudis, the Kuwaitis et al. are so contemptible, then why should American lives be put on the line to protect them from their fellow Arabs in Iraq?
“Simply put, Mr. Rosenthal wants the United States to take out Saddam Hussein. ‘As long as he rules, he will be a threat to his Arab neighbors, and us.’ Come again? After heaping considerable scorn upon the Arabs, is the reader suppose to believe that Rosenthal gives a damn when one Arab state threatens another? Of course not. And who are the “and us” Rosenthal refers to? Is he thinking about his fellow Americans, or about his compatriots in Israel? Despite the current hysteria and hoopla, Iraq poses no threat whatever to America or to the West, and only a potential threat to Israel down the road, should Israel attack Iraq, or cause Iraq to be attacked, or continue indefinitely to deny the Palestinians a homeland in Palestine alongside the Jews of the world.
“Pundits like Abe Rosenthal and Bill Safire have let their uncritical infatuation with Israel and their irrational hatred of the Arabs destroy their common sense. Beating the drums of war in service to their own private agenda is unseemly. As for the larger prospects of the U.S. injecting itself militarily into an intra-Arab border dispute, that policy would be so shot through with hypocrisy that it can only end in tragedy or a fiasco.”
Well, we have had a belly-full of tragedy and fiascos in and around Iraq since 1991, as well as in New York and Washington, D.C. Nowadays, Operation Desert Storm is looked upon, in some circles, as the smart or reasonable war, when compared to the present nightmare, code-named Operation Iraqi Freedom, concocted by Dick Cheney, Bush Jr. and their “neocon” brain-trust. But both Gulf wars are the same war, just like World War I and World War II were the same European war. The idea for America should have been to avoid all of them, right from the start, while endeavoring to mediate honestly and even-handedly. Just the opposite took place. Yes, there are so many blood-lakes, and we always jump in. With regard to history and “politics”, Jeffers and Bukowski understood what was happening to America as it happened, not in retrospect. This is important.
Comments
Thanks to both Justin and Patrick Foy for writing pieces on the great Robinson Jeffers. Late one night I was talking with a professional author, who specializes in literary biographies and I mentioned Robinson Jeffers. The author (not an American) had never heard of him and was astounded that such a once famous poet could go down the memory hole. I explained that Jeffers had opposed the entry of the US into both World Wars and the light went on in the author’s mind. In the post World War of Ex-America, our Prophets are treated to the trash heap.
For all of you out there who are interested in American literature or even just in American history, read up on Robinson Jeffers. I doubt you will be disappointed. Here as an example is a short poem by Jeffers written in I think the 1930s or perhaps earlier.
Ave Caesar
No bitterness: our ancestors did it.
They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too.
Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or rather--for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists--
Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who’ll keep
Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive,
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,
Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries.
Robinson Jeffers
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“...Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who’ll keep...”
holy cow! Jeffers predicted a Giuliani presidency!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
One of the major “environmental” groups adopted a line from one of Jeffers poems (The Answer) for one of its slogans. The phrase “Not Man Apart” was adopted to argue that man shouldn’t be divided from or against nature. But as one can see from the poem itself, posted below, The Answer addresses more than the reality of mankind’s dependence on nature and the need for organic wholeness. It is also addressing our current predicament in regard to the collapse of our civilization, a process that has been ongoing for some time.
The Answer
Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history… for contemplation or in fact…
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
Robinson Jeffers
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Here is another one by Jeffers. He could see what was coming and refers to his own prediction, just after American entry into the 2nd World War that American would win that war (he even predicted the year, 1945, in which the war would end. But he also saw more wars in future for the dying Republic.
We Are Those People
I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars, laughed at the frightened
And forecast victory; never one moment’s doubt.
But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next
Great war’s column of dust and fire writhes
Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer
What others have, the brutal horror of defeat—
Or if not in the next, then in the next—therefore watch Germany
And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women
Would die like biting rats in the cellars, our men like wolves on the mountain:
It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;
Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors for bits of chocolate.
Robinson Jeffers
Click to flag this comment as abusive
True, Jeffers was one of the best and wisest American poets of the 20th century, one whom I admire despite disagreeing on the necessity for America to enter WWII (and to support Britain in 1940). Even in
times of necessary wars, the sanity of the nation requires a few dissident voices to speak as “consciences” of the nation, lest it grow too fond of war. Jeffers wrote as a conscience of the nation, not as a Nazi apologist.
But Bukowski, on the other hand, was
Nazi-apologist scum, and it’s tendentious to extrapolate from Bukowski’s admiration of Jeffers to imply some kind of close identity between their “anti-war” views.
Bukowski’s admiration of Jeffers imputes no more identity between their characters and ideas and sentiments, than the neocons’ frequently professed admiration of FDR. Both equations are tendentious rubbish, hijacking the biographies and honourable characters of good men for dishonest and evil purposes.
As I’ve said before, if the American so-called “Right” consists only Trotskyites like Frum and Crypto-Nazis like Bukowski and his acolytes and apologists for Nazi-fifth-columnists like Lindbergh and Joe Kennedy, then a plague on both their houses.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
John Ball cut out with your Nazi bullshit with everyone you don’t agree with.Hitler was a mass murderer and so was your hero Churchill. He personally was a warmonger his whole life from India,Sudan and South Africa in the 1890’s Through WW1 and as the butcher of Gallopi.He set up Iraq as colonial secretary and ordered poison gas used against rebelling tribesmen.He was in the pocket of the zionists who supported his lavish lifestyle, to thank him for pushing the Balfour declaration to its fruition by opening Palistine to zionist settlements, also as colonial secretary.He turned down a peace offer from Hitler in 1940,which could have led to the saving of many Jewish lives.
The Jewish antizionist group Naturi Karta has documented this on their websites.He was a butcher with his unconditional war, bombing of Dressden,and selling out eastern Europe among many other crimes.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Why do we need to re-fight World War II? Cannot we
discuss the current situation without looking for
metaphors, even if strained, and historical parallels
if they do not apply?
It is one thing to remeber, as John Lukacs does, that
the Right was shot full of nationalists and Germanophiles,
Anglophobes, and regrettably Nazi sympathizers, and that
it took it a while to shed the most unpalatable members
I had hopes that the paleoconservative movement had
something to offer, but it looks depressingly as a
shelter for those unpalatable elements who now sit
and bemoan that History has passed them by.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
It isn’t defending the crimes of Hitler to point out the crimes of Churchill, Stalin and and Roosevelt. The neocons are always using Churchill as some kind of god to justify another war.
The zionists threw away the lives of fellow Jews by demanding that all refugees go to Palistine.Hitler wanted to get rid of all the Jews in his empire but he didn’t start the Final Solution untill 1942 when he saw there was no chance of a peace agreement with the West.The reason that there were 750,000 alive in Germany at the end of the war was because Hitler was using the Jews as hostages even till the end, the worse the war went the more he killed.
By demanding unconditional surrender we didn’t give the anti nazi opposition anything to work with.Wilson’s 14 points were a brilliant stategy of undermining the German will to resist.If they had been followed I believe Hitler never would have come to power.This in no way justify’s Wilson’s bringing us into WW1.If Wison had offerd to be a honest broker of peace in early 1917 instead of a warmonger for the British and French I believe the war would have ended at that time.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
John Ball is a Leftist, way, way out in Left field. How else can one describe a person who claims FDR was “honorable.”
It should also be noted that those who semared Jeffers when he was alive and sent him down the memory hole after he died were FDRites.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Adriana,
Amen; a pox on both their houses.
The Jeffers I studied/taught back in grad school was labeled an “anti-humanist.” His fierce love for the power and beauty of nature was often contrasted with his contempt for the vacillating mendacity of men.
From “Hurt Hawks” (from memory)
“I’d sooner kill a man than a hawk;
But the great red-tail had nothing left but unable misery.
I gave him the lead gift in the twilight.
. . .
The night herons by the flooded river cried out at its rising,
before it was quite unsheathed from reality.”
Rest in peace, Jeffers, and may your love for God’s wild creation find its fulfillment in the eternal Kingdom.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I think the term used to describe Jeffers philosophy was “in-humanist” rather than “anti-humanist” (note Jeffers coined the term “inhumanist” himself). Jeffers wasn’t against mankind; he was against man separated from his rightful place inside nature and part of it.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.