Original Poem：
It’s a spring morning; sun pours in the window
As I sit here drinking coffee, reading Augustine.
And finding him, as always, newly minted
From when I first encountered him in school.
Today I’m overcome with astonishment
At the way we girls denied all that was mean
In those revered philosophers we studied;
Who found us loathsome, loathsomely seductive;
Irrelevant, at best, to noble discourse
Among the sex, the only sex that counted.
Wounded, we pretended not to mind it
And wore tight sweaters to tease our shy professor.
We sat in autumn sunshine “as the clouds arose
From slimy desires of the flesh, and from
Youth’s seething spring.” Thank you, Augustine.
Attempting to seem blasé, our cheeks on fire,
It didn’t occur to us to rush from the room.
Instead we brushed aside “the briars of unclean desire”
And struggled on through mires of misogyny
Till we arrived at Kierkegaard, and began to see
That though Saint A. and S?ren had much in common
Including fear and trembling before women,
The Saint scared himself, while S?ren was scared of
us.
Had we, poor girls, been flattered by their thralldom?
Yes, it was always us, the rejected feminine
From whom temptation came. It was our flesh
With its deadly sweetness that led them on.
Yet how could we not treasure Augustine,
“Stuck fast in the bird-lime of pleasure”?
That roomful of adolescent poets manqué
Assuaged, bemused by music, let the meaning go.
Swept by those psalmic cadences, we were seduced!
Some of us tried for a while to be well-trained souls
And pious seekers, enmeshed in the Saint’s dialectic:
Responsible for our actions, yet utterly helpless.
A sensible girl would have barked like a dog before God.
We students, children still, were shocked to learn
The children these men desired were younger than we!
Augustine fancied a girl about eleven,
The age of Adeodatus, Augustine’s son.
S?ren, like Poe, eyed his girl before she was sixteen,
To impose his will on a malleable child, when
She was not equipped to withstand or understand him.
Ah, the Pygmalion instinct! Mold the clay!
Create the compliant doll that can only obey,
Expecting to be abandoned, minute by minute.
It was then I abandoned philosophy,
A minor loss, although I majored in it.
But we were a group of sunny innocents.
I don’t believe we knew what evil meant.
Now I live with a well-trained soul who deals with evil,
Including error, material or spiritual,
Easily, like changing a lock on the kitchen door.
He prays at set times and in chosen places
(At meals, in church), while I
Pray without thinking how or when to pray,
In a low mumble, several times a day,
Like running a continuous low fever;
The sexual impulse for the most part being over.
Believing I believe. Not banking on it ever.
It’s afternoon. I sit here drinking kir
And reading Kierkegaard: “All sin begins with fear.”
(True. We lie first from terror of our parents.)
In, I believe, an oblique crack at Augustine,
S?ren said by denying the erotic
It was brought to the attention of the world.
The rainbow curtain rises on the sensual:
Christians must admit it before they can deny it.
He reflected on his father’s fierce repression
Of the sexual, which had bent him out of shape;
Yet he had to pay obeisance to that power:
He chose his father when he broke with his Regina.
S?ren said by denying the erotic
It is brought to the attention of the world.
You must admit it before you can deny it.
So much for “Repetition”—another theory
Which some assume evolved from his belief
He could replay his courtship of Regina
With a happy ending. Meanwhile she’d wait for him,
Eternally faithful, eternally seventeen.
Instead, within two years, the bitch got married.
In truth, he couldn’t wait till he got rid of her,
To create from recollection, not from living;
To use the material, not the material girl.
I sip my kir, thinking of
Either/Or,
Especially
Either,
starring poor Elvira.
He must have seen
Giovanni
a score of times,
And S?ren knew the score.
He took Regina to the opera only once,
And as soon as Mozart’s overture was over,
Kierkegaard stood up and said, “Now we are leaving.
You have heard the best: the expectation of pleasure.”
In his interminable aria on the subject
S.K. insisted the performance
was
the play.
Was the overture then the foreplay? Poor Regina
Should have known she’d be left waiting in the lurch.
Though he chose a disguise in which to rhapsodize,
It was his voice too: Elvira’s beauty
Would perish soon; the deflowered quickly fade:
A night-blooming cereus after Juan’s one-night stand.
S?ren, eyes clouded by romantic mist,
Portrayed Elvira always sweet sixteen.
S.K.’s interpretation seems naive.
He didn’t seem to realize that innocent sopranos
Who are ready to sing Elvira, don’t exist.
His diva may have had it off with Leporello
Just before curtain time, believing it freed her voice
(So backstage legend has it), and weakened his.
I saw La Stupenda sing Elvira once.
Her cloak was larger than an army tent.
Would Giovanni be engulfed when she inhaled?
Would the boards shiver when she stamped her foot?
Her voice of course was great. Innocent it was not.
S?ren, long since, would have fallen in a faint.
When he, or his doppelg?nger, wrote
That best-seller, “The Diary of a Seducer,”
He showed how little he knew of true Don Juans:
Those turgid letters, machinations, and excursions,
Those tedious conversations with dull aunts,
Those convoluted efforts to get the girl!
Think of the worldly European readers
Who took S?ren seriously, did not see
His was the cynicism of the timid virgin.
Once in my youth I knew a real Don Juan
Or he knew me. He didn’t need to try,
The characteristic of a true seducer.
He seems vulnerable, shy; he hardly speaks.
Somehow, you know he will never speak of you.
You trust him—and you thrust yourself at him.
He responds with an almost absentminded grace.
Even before the consummation he’s looking past you
For the next bright yearning pretty face.
Relieved at last of anxieties and tensions
When your terrible efforts to capture him are over,
You overflow with happy/unhappy languor.
But S.K’s alter-ego believes the truly terrible
Is for you to be consoled by the love of another.
We women, deserted to a woman, have a duty
To rapidly lose our looks, decline, and die,
Our only chance of achieving romantic beauty.
So Augustine was sure, when Monica, his mother,
Made him put aside his nameless concubine
She’d get her to a nunnery, and pine.
He chose his mother when he broke with his beloved.
In S?ren’s long replay of his wrecked romance,
“Guilty/Not Guilty,” he says he must tear himself away
From earthly love, and suffer to love God.
Augustine thought better: love, human therefore flawed,
Is the way to the love of God. To deny this truth
Is to be “left outside, breathing into the dust,
Filling the eyes with earth.” We women,
Outside, breathing dust, are still the Other.
The evening sun goes down; time to fix dinner.
“
You women have no major philosophers.
” We know.
But we remain philosophic, and say with the Saint,
“Let me enter my chamber and sing my songs of love.”
Analysis and Interpretation of the Poem
This poem is a reflective and deeply personal meditation on the experience of studying classical philosophy as a young woman, particularly the works of Saint Augustine and S?ren Kierkegaard. The speaker recalls the early encounters with these revered philosophers, highlighting the misogynistic attitudes that permeated their writings and the academic environment. The poem explores themes of gender, desire, repression, and the struggle for intellectual and emotional autonomy.
The speaker describes how these male philosophers viewed women as either loathsome or dangerously seductive, excluding them from "noble discourse," which was considered the domain of men. Despite feeling wounded by this exclusion and objectification, the young women in the poem resisted by maintaining a playful defiance, such as teasing their professor and enduring the "mire of misogyny" in their studies.
The poem contrasts Augustine’s self-fear and Kierkegaard’s fear of women, revealing how both men were bound by their own anxieties and cultural constraints. The speaker also critiques the Pygmalion complex—the desire to mold women into compliant figures—and the unrealistic romantic ideals that Kierkegaard projected onto his relationships.
The poem moves from youthful innocence and confusion to a more mature understanding of evil, desire, and faith. The speaker now lives with a partner who pragmatically confronts evil, while she herself prays quietly and without ceremony, reflecting a personal and nuanced spirituality.
Finally, the poem acknowledges the absence of major female philosophers in the canon but asserts the continued philosophical spirit of women, ending with a call to embrace love and creativity despite exclusion.
Background and Author Introduction
This poem likely emerges from a feminist perspective, reflecting on the historical marginalization of women in philosophy and academia. The references to Augustine and Kierkegaard suggest the author is well-versed in classical and existential philosophy, using these figures to critique enduring patriarchal norms.
The author appears to be someone who has personally engaged with philosophy academically and emotionally, blending autobiographical elements with broader cultural critique. The poem’s tone balances bitterness, humor, and insight, characteristic of feminist literary voices that challenge traditional narratives.
Insights and Lessons for Students and Children
From this poem, students and young readers can learn several important lessons:
- Critical Thinking: The poem encourages questioning revered authorities and recognizing biases, especially gender bias, in classical texts.
- Historical Context: It provides insight into how women were historically excluded from intellectual life and how those exclusions shaped cultural attitudes.
- Emotional Awareness: The poem explores complex feelings of rejection, desire, and spiritual searching, helping readers understand the interplay between personal experience and philosophical ideas.
- Respect for Diversity: It highlights the importance of including diverse voices and perspectives in philosophy and literature.
- The Role of Women in Philosophy: The poem challenges the notion that women have no major philosophers, encouraging students to seek out and value female thinkers.
Practical Applications and Learning Points
- In Literature and Philosophy Classes: This poem can be used to discuss feminist critiques of classical philosophy and to introduce students to the works of Augustine and Kierkegaard from a new perspective.
- In Gender Studies: It serves as a case study on how gender influences interpretation and reception of philosophical ideas.
- In Personal Reflection: Readers can relate the poem’s themes to their own experiences of exclusion or misunderstanding and consider how to assert their own voices.
- Language and Expression: The poem’s rich imagery and metaphor provide material for studying poetic devices and narrative voice.
Reading Comprehension Exercises
- What is the main theme of the poem?
- How does the speaker describe the attitude of the philosophers Augustine and Kierkegaard towards women?
- What does the poem suggest about the relationship between fear and sin, according to Kierkegaard?
- Explain the meaning of the “Pygmalion instinct” as used in the poem.
- How does the speaker’s view of prayer and spirituality differ from her partner’s?
- What critique does the poem offer about romantic ideals and seduction?
- Why does the speaker say “You women have no major philosophers,” and how does she respond to this statement?
Answers
- The main theme is the experience of women confronting misogyny in classical philosophy and their struggle for intellectual and emotional identity.
- Augustine and Kierkegaard are portrayed as fearful and dismissive of women, seeing them as either morally corrupt or objects of fear and desire.
- Kierkegaard believed that all sin begins with fear, particularly fear of authority figures like parents, which leads to lies and repression.
- The “Pygmalion instinct” refers to the desire to control and mold women into obedient, compliant figures, denying their autonomy.
- The speaker prays quietly and spontaneously, without ritual, while her partner prays formally at set times and places, showing a contrast between personal and institutional spirituality.
- The poem critiques romantic ideals as naive and manipulative, revealing the painful realities behind seduction and abandonment.
- The statement reflects the historical exclusion of women from philosophy, but the speaker responds by affirming that women remain philosophic and creative despite this exclusion.
This poem offers a profound exploration of gender, philosophy, and personal growth, inviting readers to reflect on the past and envision a more inclusive intellectual future.
