Chapter Heading -- Ernest Hemingway

Happy new year!

(Poem #976) Chapter Heading For we have thought the longer thoughts And gone the shorter way. And we have danced to devil's tunes Shivering home to pray; To serve one master in the night, Another in the day. -- Ernest Hemingway

Note: The allusion is to Longfellow's "My Lost Youth":

   A boy's will is the wind's will,
   And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
     -- http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/heminw6.html

Today's poem exemplifies admirably Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's statement that
"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather
when there is nothing more to take away." 'Chapter Heading' is a startlingly
powerful look at the eternal conflict between the spirit and the flesh, and
man's complex relationship with God.

Part of the poem's power lies, I think, in its very sparseness - a line like
"shivering home to pray" says more in four words than many a more extended
passage might have done, and does so with far greater an impact.
Furthermore, the imagery is visceral rather than 'rational', using words like
"danced" and "shivering" to emphasise sensation over thought, evoking the
ancient fear of darkness with its reference to night and day - and,
thereby, limning the tangled framework of primitive emotions that underlies
and motivates the most rational of religions.

Links:

  A biography of Hemingway:
    http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bio.html

  The Hemingway Foundation:
    http://www.hemingway.org/

-martin