A Rake among Scholars

 

Great Grandparents of a host of rakes and a few scholars

COMMON RAKE

UNCOMMON SCHOLAR 

“He was a rake among scholars and a scholar among rakes.”

The sardonic description of a certain person by Thomas Babington McAuley, 19^th Century British politician, historian and essayist, could apply to nearly everyone. It’s the social equivalent of the Theory of Relativity; the esteem in which you’re held—or not—depends on what company you’re in at any given time.

We are never satisfied with better, bigger, smarter or more competent; we long to know what or who is best, biggest, smartest or most competent of all. Olympics, the Oscars, sports playoffs, etc. respond to that need. If we can’t determine who’s at the peak by measuring, we devise ways to steer public opinion to a conclusion of greatness ... or mediocrity. Fact is, this mentality not only defines who’s the “scholar” in the paradigm, but also who are the many who are clearly “rakes.”

We visited the Louvre while in Paris and stood in line to see the storied Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. She was roped off to keep viewers back and she’s only 30” X 21,” so our examination was short ... and distant. I’ve seen copies of the painting often and, trust me, it’s only as great as we make it out to be because we say it is. (I took an Art Appreciation half course at the University of Alberta long ago, so on this subject, I’m at least a scholar among rakes.)

Suppose the lead female actor in a local theatre company does a fantastic job of characterizing condescension, more nuanced and memorable than Maggie Smith (rest her soul) playing the Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey. One will win a BAFTA award and heaps of money; the other will wait on tables in a chain restaurant so she can pay the rent.

“Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen, /and waste its sweetness on the desert air.” Wrote Tomas Gray in Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Gray’s pensive ruminations in the cemetery (published in 1751) are still studied and honoured. For each of the poets we’ve declared “great,” there are probably ten thousand who have picked up a pen and sought to express their insights through that medium. Count me as one. Full many a one was born to prate unheard, /and waste their insights on the desert air.” (Pardon my faulty plagiarism, Thomas Gray.)

 
You might well imagine that there’s no mystery here; that humans can’t all be kings, not even princes, not even butlers or footmen … nor scholars; that only the village “rakery” position is freely offered to anyone who happens to land on earth unheralded, un-preordained to anything else.

 We who are neither among the rakiest of rakes, nor the scholarliest of scholars, are destined (like everybody else) for all our short lives to be who we are, content with—or chafing at—the restrictions of our time and place in the serendipity of life.

A confession: I have aspired long to master prose writing like, for instance, Herman Melville in Moby-Dick. I have friends who aspire to the extraordinary in quilting, singing, playing an instrument, wood turning, baking, etc. So far I haven’t opened a booth at the town fair for selling what I’ve laboured over, but like those who do, I will put one “wooden bowl” of a poem on display. It’s not an elegy written in a churchyard, but is an elegy written after a visit to a dying father:

THOSE WILL BE PEARLS©

 

i know my

(how do you feel, dad?

are you better today, dad?)

sounds like offer of a lozenge

to a hungry man. but forgive me if you can

my grief for you is trivialized by stammered words

 i know. i feel it.

your deep-lined face, pale bony hands

are answers to

my rote-learn’d clumsy questions

—what use are words to us?

 

no one remembers signing up for sterile halls,

and stark white walls like these

i think we know, my friends, that

somewhere in the index of what’s truly real

where truth lies ‘prisoned-like …

we all enrolled by being born.

 

“full fathom five grandfathers lie

those are pearls that were their eyes.”

 

you smile little, say less

perhaps you understand me after all these years

and what you see … amuses you?

the dying seldom make long speeches

grant you that

and that was ever you

you answer slowly, “ever is a long time, dave.”

(later I’ll think, “why, ever is no time at all.”) 

 

I have to go.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I truly am
sorry for you, 

but were I honest like we used to be

I’d also raise a prayer of thanks:

thank god it’s me, today,
who smells the coming rain
hears children laughing just across the street
can start his car and drive to any place
and work and make and break
with these still-steady hands.
praise god

and then the sky pours down in sheets of rain and hail

I throttle down my car, my thoughts, my world

and weep.

“full fathom five my Dad will lie;/those will be pearls that once were his eyes.”^[1]

 

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[1] Adapted from The Tempest I,ii,474-477