Love on Basil Labib

The Sensuality of Rilke's Love Poems

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 09:04:40 +0530

I tell you that I have a long way to go before I am – where one begins…

These are Rilke’s first words that I read. I had no prior acquaintance with either the man or his writings, save for a curious Google search on a Cocteau Twins’ song called Rilkean Heart . And yet, I immediately felt a tug towards these words, gyrating around them, twisting and turning them in my head, trying to make sense of it. Perhaps, just perhaps, Rilke would know the storm that was raging in me?

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), an Austrian poet and novelist

I hate to read criticism first because they have a subtle and malicious effect of ruining the person, dictating my thoughts to flow in a certain way – the way the critique finds most suitable. So, I read the man. And I think I love his writings. Maybe, I am too naive to truly understand what he’s saying (reasonable because I’m only eighteen) but come to think of it, does anybody ever gets to understand anything? PS: I do read the essays afterwards to get a well-rounded education.

This post will primarily focus on his views on love, the feminine and solitude because

That is what I have read so far.
I cannot get myself to think of anything but love and solitude.
I am just plain lazy.

Probably the third point is the most relevant.

Advice & solitude among other things

On loneliness

At bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life;
this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity;
that one is alone.

Oh. Brutal but true AF.

+++

The more one is, the richer is all that one experiences.

What exactly does he mean by “more one is”? More in what respect? I think more knowledge, more wealth, more authority. Poetry comes late to a hungry stomach. As beautiful as it might be to assume the idealistic projections of life that are conjured in stories and films plays out in the real world, they don’t. But to strive to inch closer to those projections is an essential element to fulfilling one’s life which must begin with the objective of security and abundance. In those silent moments, man would be more able to experience thus making him richer and not vice versa.

+++

In the summer of 1909, he wrote:

…….. these soft
nights hold me like themselves aloft
and I lie without a lover.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. These ravenous nights filled with hollow sounds and subdued whimpers.

On the labor of love

There is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another. That it is work, day labor…God knows there is no other word for it.

Day labor. Remember.

+++

There is nothing happier than work, and love, just because it is the extreme happiness, can be nothing else but work.

“There is nothing happier than work”. For what is an idle mind if not the devil’s workshop?

Advice to young lovers

There are such relationships which must be a very great, almost unbearable happiness, but they can occur only between very rich natures and between those who, each for himself, are richly ordered and composed, they can unite only two, wide, deep, individual worlds.

(Bold text mine own)

Though, Rilke tactly pointed out what one must be, he doesn’t say anything on how to be and that has kinda pissed me. He has left the hard part of figuring that out for the reader but then I suspect the process must be unique.

+++

They must not forget, when they love, that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love – must learn love, and that (like all learning) wants peace, patience, and composure!

Only if philanders of today could understand the nobility of love. It is not an easy enterprise to be undertaken solely to get rid of boredom or to have pleasure or fun or for any other self-vested interests because to love is not to have but to give.

The sensual nature of Rilke’s poems

Sensuality, longing, solitude and an open discussion of sexuality especially the feminine is a glaring element in Rilke’s poems. His symbolism and metaphors are far from subtle and generally borders on the obvious. Yet, how he manages to express his exasperation with such ease and lyric is a source of marvel for me. Take for instance the question he asked at the beginning of a poem,

What fields are fragrant as your hands?

Those are perhaps the most tightly woven seven words that captures the masculine attitude. I have this idea that though physically it seems like the female submits to the male in union, again society has strongly influenced this mindset, yet psychologically it is the male who submits to the female. What else does a man want but to keep his wife satisfied? It is not uncommon for young lovers to patronise their partners in passion or awe or a mixture thereof, which IMHO has merits and demerits. Like everything in the matter of love, answers are not straightforward or even existent.

+++

And then in a moment of defiance, out of sheer desire, he commands:

Give me your mouth to soften, love
ah, your hair is all in idleness.

“your hair is all in idleness”. Ah.

+++

The following poem caught my attention for it’s sheer explicitness:

How I called you. This is the mute call
which within me has grown sweet awhile.
Now step after step into you I thrust all
and my semen climbs gladly like a child…

+++

And then in the July of 1924,

(Since I wrote you, sap sprang free
in the masculine blooming,
which is rich and puzzling
to my very humanity.

Do you feel, distant dear miss,
since you are reading me,
what sweetness fuses willingly
in the feminine chalice?)

+++

In the October of 1915, he wrote probably my favourite of his so-called “Seven Phallic Poems”:

You don’t know towers, with your diffidence.
Yet now you’ll become aware
of a tower in that wonderful rare
space in you. Hide your countenance.
You’ve erected it unsuspectingly,
by turn and glance and indirection,
and I, blissful one, an allowed entry.
Ah, how in there I am so tight.
Coax me to come forth to the summit:
so as to fling into your soft night,
with the soaring of a womb-dazzling rocket,
more feeling than I am quite.

Of failing love

How the too ample space has weakened you and me.
Superfluity recollects itself suddenly.
Now wormwood and absinthe trickle through silent
sieves of kisses of bitter essence.

Probably, I shouldn’t be reading depressing poems? But I can allow myself to pain a bit I think.

Love As An Illegitimate Byproduct

gs454236@gmail.com (Basil Labib) — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 10:18:22 +0530

Evolutionary biology has always fascinated me. I have marveled at the ingenuity of evolutionists drawing up elegant theories, piecing together the most bizarre of observations with a string of sound reasoning. I guess the quality of making logical sense of the alien world we find ourselves in makes evolution appeal to me.

Recently, I read Jared Diamond’s “Why Sex is Fun?”, a short book (a series of essays really) about human sexuality and how it differs so radically from every other species we know of. His words and reasoning reminded me of Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” – particularly nostalgic where the spermatozoa and oocyte structural discrepency and Zahavis’ principle of handicap signals; however, the prose was much easier to read than Selfish. Evolution is much like astronomy / cosmology in a certain way – both instills humility in a manner no other subject can.

A word of caution: Please don’t read this book if you have a certain preconceived notion of reality and would feel enraged if someone dared question it.

As I was reading through the text, I couldn’t help but confront an inescapable truth: love is an unnecessary aberration. Outrageous and scandalous as it might seem, it is an inevitable fact that follows naturally from our physiology, behavior, and of course natural selection. What makes natural selection so damn powerful is the fact that it is a single idea grounded in the most mathematical sense and yet can virtually explain every weirdness in the animal kingdom. If you have many different colored balls in a basket and you specifically took out certain colored ones, then over time, those other colored balls will increase in number. Natural selection is not a philosophers’ imagination or a physicists’ hypothesis, it is a certainty so undeniably when one sees it.

What’s funny is the fact that selection happens at the genetic level, not at the organism level. We are mere containers of convenience for those innocuous dictators who have controlled us since before we were even us.

Monogamous matrimony

Why did monogamous matrimony evolved in human societies when it is virtually non-existent in other mammal species? It is “obvious” that post-copulation male desertion of the female and successive search for other females for impregnation must be the optimal behavior for the male to ensure maximum propagation of his genes and hence, natural selection must favour it. And indeed, that is observed in the majority of mammal species. Then, what about us? It turns out, things are more involved than they seem at first glance. The human child is a relatively weak and helpless creature unable to sustain itself on its own. Further, the energy demands, food, protection from predators makes it a taxing situation for the single mother and often, they fail to raise the child. The male, thus, faced a dilemma whether to leave the mother and go on his philandering adventures regardless of the fact that his child dies (which is not favored since making those sperms and the act of copulating takes time and energy) or stay with the mother, ensure nourishment and protection but foreclose his other opportunities to spread his genes. It turns out that in humans, natural selection favored monogamy. Note that I have simplified the discussion here. There are other factors and more nuances to be considered and so on.

Concealed Ovulation

Another curious development is concealed ovulation in females. Consider female baboon who visually advertise their estrus with reddened and swelled vaginal region. But apparently, human females themselves are in the dark about their fertile phase. Why did we differ? The argument is the book is involved but equally enthralling. Actually, concealed ovulation evolved as a way to deter murderous, competitive males from killing her offsprings (who represent half of her genetic material) if they know when females are fertile in a society that was predominantly promiscous or harem-based. But when concealed, a male has to make love to her often in hopes of actually mating with her when it matters. This prevents them to be hostile to her and her kids (who an outside male sees as competition to his genes and resources) in her “dispensable” days. But afterwards when societies developed monogamy, she began using her new feature as a mean of securing a “good caveman” – monogamous, loyal, responsible who brought resources and protection for the child because he must be invested in her if he ever hopes to have a child with her.

Recreational Sex

We can comfortable chip in the bizarre practise of recreational sex here too. Other species have a narrow time to mate, not so with us. Females are sexually receptive almost through the cycle. Why? At first glance, it seems counter-productive that selection will favour an activity that is clearly a huge investment of time and energy and leaves parties vulnerable to enemies threat or starvation. But it’s the females being diplomatic. Wouldn’t it do the female good if she could ensured her husband had an incentive to stay at home and not go on his adulterous misgivings? Of course, she can keep him satisfied by offering him free sex!

This is, in fact, a normal situation in the circus of natural selection. A feature developed for one purpose might reverse, restructure even reinvent itself to some other purpose in time. Sexual strategies, like any other, evolve in response to ecological parameters and conditions. The only guiding principle for these genes is the question: How does an organism maximize its representation in the gene pool? Everything else is just details. Pretty cool way to empower females, eh?

We sit down to watch National Geographic and scowl at behaviors of other species completely oblivious to the fact that it is us who are an anomaly to them.

Where is the need for love?

The foregoing discussions were to give you a glimpse of the ruthless reasoning evolutionists employ. So, the question is: where is love in all this? Honestly, it was never meant to be. But the fact that we developed love, intimacy and a thousand more complex emotions is testimony to our superior cranial capaity. In the grand scheme of things as laid out by science (of which I have attempted to present a slice), there is no need for love songs, heartbreaks, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and poetry.

Now, before you begin to believe your author is a hard-core nihilist, let me tell you that we did find a need. Take the fact that you are reading this: probably on a webpage which was served to you via a web server. That sentence right there is remarkable in itself. We developed language, reading and writing. Arbitrary symbols scratched on paper can invoke emotions and thoughts. We ask questions. We developed science and learned how to apply it, giving birth to technology. We are powerful enough today to change our own genetic constitution (let that sink in) and have been changing the course of our planet for centuries since the Industrial Revolution. True, a couple hundred years of advances cannot rival the millions of years of instincts engrained in our genes. But we can afford to be counter-evolutionary. No other species can do that. We can love if we choose to.