A Friend’s Umbrella
by Lawrence Raab

Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end
of his life, found the names
of familiar objects escaping him.
He wanted to say something about a window,
or a table, or a book on a table.

But the word wasn't there,
although other words could still suggest
the shape of what he meant.
Then someone, his wife perhaps,

would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry,
is there a draft?" He'd nod.
She'd rise. Once a friend dropped by
to visit, shook out his umbrella
in the hall, remarked upon the rain.

Later the word umbrella
vanished and became
the thing that strangers take away.

Paper, pen, table, book:
was it possible for a man to think
without them? To know
that he was thinking? We remember
that we forget, he'd written once,
before he started to forget.

Three times he was told
that Longfellow had died.

Without the past, the present
lay around him like the sea.
Or like a ship, becalmed,
upon the sea. He smiled

to think he was the captain then,
gazing off into whiteness,
waiting for the wind to rise.


Lawrence Raab, "A Friend's Umbrella"  from The History of Forgetting. © 2009 Lawrence Raab published by Penguin Poets . Reprinted with permission by the author. (buy now)

It's the birthday of Sigmund Freud (books by this author), born in Freiburg, Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), in 1856. He's usually associated with Vienna where he lived from the age of four until the Germans occupied it in 1938. He then moved to London where he died of throat cancer in 1939. Freud wrote several books, including The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930).

Freud started his professional life as a medical doctor, but as a Jew he knew his prospects in medicine were probably limited. He became interested in psychology, especially in a mental illness called hysteria, which caused patients to suffer from tics, tremors, convulsions, paralysis, and hallucinations. Freud learned that some doctors were using hypnosis to treat hysteria and he went to France to observe the use of hypnosis firsthand. Seeing that a patient could be talked out of his or her symptoms gave Freud the idea that the symptoms were a product of the mind and not the body. He learned the method of hypnosis himself and began to treat patients, but he had little success. Then one of Freud's colleagues told him about a patient named Anna O., whose hysterical symptoms had improved when she told stories about her life. The woman herself named this process of storytelling "the talking cure."

Over the next few years, he developed the idea that his patients were not conscious of all their desires and fears, that many of their own thoughts were hidden from them in their unconscious mind. He believed that their unconscious mind would reveal itself in various ways, through slips of the tongue, jokes, and especially dreams. What made his ideas so revolutionary and controversial was that he didn't just apply them to mentally ill patients but to all human beings, even himself.

People tend to hold very strong opinions about Freud, pro or con. He had many pupils in the early 20th century; notable among them were Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, but both of them eventually broke with Freud. Though some versions of talk therapy are still used, most psychologists and psychiatrists have rejected his theories: only about 1 per cent of people in therapy are being treated using Freudian methods. Though he's fallen out of favor in the scientific community, many of his revolutionary concepts — like the idea of the unconscious, the interpretation of dreams, and the idea of repressed feelings causing harm — have entered our culture and our literature. And even though they haven't read his books, most people are still familiar with his concepts like the Oedipus complex, the ego, the phallic symbol, and the Freudian slip.

W.H. Auden wrote a long poem called "In Memory of Sigmund Freud," which captures how deeply Freud and his ideas have permeated culture. He wrote:

“If some traces of the autocratic pose, the paternal strictness he distrusted, still clung to his utterance and features, it was a protective coloration for one who'd lived among enemies so long: if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd, to us he is no more a person now but a whole climate.”

It's the birthday of poet and critic Randall Jarrell (books by this author), born in Nashville, Tennessee (1914). He wrote many collections of poetry in his lifetime, but he was also considered one of the greatest literary critics of his generation. In his critical essays, collected and published as Poetry and the Age (1953), he revitalized the reputations of Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams. He was also one of the first critics to notice the work of Elizabeth Bishop. In a review of her first book of poems, Jarrell wrote:

"[Bishop understands that] morality, for the individual, is usually a small, personal, statistical, but heartbreaking or heartwarming affair of omissions and commissions, the greatest of which will seem infinitesimal, ludicrously beneath notice, to those who govern, rationalize, and deplore."

Randall Jarrell said, "It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life."

It's the birthday of Orson Welles, Kenosha, Wisconsin (1915). He made his Broadway debut in Romeo and Juliet at the age of 19. He founded the Mercury Theatre when he was 22. When he was 23 he came out with his famous broadcast of War of the Worlds, which caused great hysteria on the East Coast. And when he was 26 he made his masterpiece, the movie Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane didn't make much at the box office, but is now considered one of the greatest films in history.

Welles said, "I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act."

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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