Wednesday, January 23, 2013

waste of breath

Speaking of that (fucking TERRIBLE) book, there's a really odd little moment in it -- when her family buries Lucie's ashes, her sister has two little silver plaques with the first lines of "Lucie's favourite poem" on them - Yeats's "An Irish Airman foresees his Death," which seems a strange choice for a twenty-one-year-old girl without much education whose parents were interested in, respectively, woowoo and yachting. Absolutely nothing is said about what this might mean, which is also odd because it's a very haunting poem -- it speaks of exile, passivity, suspension in limbo, and that seemingly goes with the odd rootless freedom so many Westerners in Japan describe in the book (and which is fetishized in pop culture like, say, Lost in Translation).

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,        
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, 
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind 
In balance with this life, this death.