“The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!
The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking
Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
Break, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges
This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.”
~ Paul Valery, “The Graveyard by the Sea”
I would like to say I’m a poetry buff that came across this in the original French while I sipped tea made from the mint I grew in my own garden, but that would be a lie. I heard just one line of this poem in Hayao Miyazaki’s final film, “The Wind Rises” (it’s lovely, I highly recommend it). The film frequently referred back to the first line of the stanza quoted above, “The wind is rising!...We must try to live!” The line stuck in my mind and rose sharply from the depths in my quiet moments, so I had to know its context. It occurs in the beginning of the very last stanza of a poem by Paul Valery called “The Graveyard by the Sea”.
The poem ebbs and flows like the sea but begins with a spiral into hopelessness.
“Zeno, Zeno, cruel philosopher Zeno,
Have you then pierced me with your feathered arrow
That hums and flies, yet does not fly! The sounding
Shaft gives me life, the arrow kills. Oh, sun! --
Oh, what a tortoise-shadow to outrun
My soul, Achilles' giant stride left standing!”
Here, the poet references Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. The gist of it is that a tortoise has a head start against Achilles in a race, let’s say that it is one mile ahead of him. In order to catch up, Achilles must go half a mile and, in order to go half a mile, he must first go a half of that distance and so on ad infinitum. Achilles will never catch up to the tortoise because he has an infinite distance to traverse, all his attempts to do so would be futile. The poet is seized by the inevitability of death and feels that an unavoidable end renders his life (seemingly) pointless. It is not an unusual feeling. The feeling that no matter how much progress is made, we are destined to be thrown back, our efforts rendered useless. So why even try? The world is a continuous cycle of crumbling and rebuilding, do our actions matter? What difference does one person’s life make.
“No, no! Arise! The future years unfold.
Shatter, O body, meditation's mould!
And, O my breast, drink in the wind's reviving!
A freshness, exhalation of the sea,
Restores my soul . . . Salt-breathing potency!
Let's run at the waves and be hurled back to living!”
This stanza immediately follows the one quoted in the previous paragraph. A sharp turn for no apparent reason than a rush of wind in the lungs. There are deep reasons to live, books have been written about it but there is something in this simple tie to nature that seems fitting for us now. There is the feeling that forces are against you and there is a height of that feeling that is painful beyond belief. The utter despair of complete hopelessness. How can you fight when everything you must fight is so overwhelming?
I don’t have an answer for you. I could say that God has something planned for everyone and though that is probably true, I draw no comfort from it. I don’t even know what it means. I do know that the sea smooths and shapes and dissolves in its continuous motion. The wind can topple any structure, natural or man-made, new or thousands of years old, in one tearing gale. The world is uncertainty how am I to know that a force cannot be toppled? How am I to know that I cannot withstand it? I cannot know until the very moment it crushes me. Even if that were to happen, how am I to classify defeat? The only clear defeat is giving in. To live is a deeply difficult calling. Choose victory, choose to live. You do not stand alone.
“The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!”
