The Monthly magazine has become one of my favourite reads.  This September issue is rich with good writing.

The review by David Marr of Helen Garner’s This House of Grief is followed by a terrific review by Bill Henson on The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece at Bendigo Art Gallery which has scored amazing pieces of classic sculpture from the British Museum.

The last sentence of Marr’s article reads:

“I’m not going to give the game away, except to say that This House of Grief is an unflinching attack on what this wise woman calls the “sentimental fantasy of love as a condition of simple benevolence, a tranquil, sunlit region in which we are safe from our own destructive urges.”

And Henson ends his review with the wonderful (and one of my favourite) poet Cavafy’s The God Abandons Antony:

The god forsakes Antony

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear

an invisible procession going by

with exquisite music, voices,

don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,

work gone wrong, your plans

all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.

Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say

it was a dream, your ears deceived you:

don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

as is right for you who were given this kind of city,

go firmly to the window

and listen with deep emotion, but not

with the whining, the pleas of a coward;

listen—your final delectation—to the voices,

to the exquisite music of that strange procession,

and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

- Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

 Leonard Cohen must have read and re-read that poem for it echoes in the lyrics of his song, Alexandra Leaving:

 

Suddenly the night has grown colder.

The god of love preparing to depart.

Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,

They slip between the sentries of the heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,

They gain the light, they formlessly entwine;

And radiant beyond your widest measure

They fall among the voices and the wine.

It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,

A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;

Even though she wakes you with a kiss.

Do not say the moment was imagined;

Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for this to happen,

Go firmly to the window. Drink it in.

Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing.

Your firm commitments tangible again.

And you who had the honor of her evening,

And by the honor had your own restored –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving;

Alexandra leaving with her lord.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;

Even though she wakes you with a kiss.

Do not say the moment was imagined;

Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for the occasion;

In full command of every plan you wrecked –

Do not choose a coward’s explanation

that hides behind the cause and the effect.

And you who were bewildered by a meaning;

Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Both the poem and the song, and Marr’s quote – the thoughts and lineage behind them – reach as far back as  Plutarch’s story that, when Antony was besieged in Alexandria by Octavian, he heard the sounds of instruments and voices, which made its way through the city, and then passed out; the god Bacchus (Dionysus), Antony’s protector, was deserting him.

To see the story it’s in John Dryden’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives:

?http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin … up?num=674

The calls in all three of the quotes here is to face loss, life, love, death, leaving without sentimentality, to treasure the moment at the window.

Something worth while, perhaps.  M