A Rendering of Psalm 130: From the depths of the Abyss, in which You are, I call on You

Shelton Walsmith - waiters sequence; w1657

At the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, the Opus Dei, Work of God, in each of the eight prayer periods is to sing and recite the Psalms, over and over again. Much of the strangeness of these “dark sprouts and black flowers” (N. Fisher) resists even the most strenuous and imaginative attempts to perceive the workings of the Holy Ghost or figurations of the Christ in them. There’s no way around the stark violence Psalm 137:

“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”

However, the darker river that runs through the Psalms has worked well for my own Jonesian interpretation regarding the almost axiomatic presence of violence in and around the sacred. Over the years, when I have been at the Monastery, I silently continued to build my own counter-theology and radical ontology of the Psalms and Christianity in general. So much so, that I often felt a sense of blasphemous transgression at the divine offices, as if I was a wolf, with Jesus’ blood staining my teeth, praying amongst the herd of peaceful grazing sheep. All self-inflation aside, I am less and less inclined to pray at the Monastery, preferring to perform my religion in the shadows of the Chama canyon amidst the whitening bones of god, accompanied by the wandering ghosts of slaughtered ancient peoples, haunted by the vengeful Brujas and the screams of crucified Penitentes. 

Relevant to the work on Jones, I was studying Psalm 130. It is most remembered for its plaintive first line, “Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord.” KJV

I was reading a commentary by Steiner in Grammars of Creation that indicated the Hebrew could actually be translated as, “From the depths of the Abyss, in which You are, I call on You.” With regard to God’s withdrawal from the the world, the presence of an awe-full absence, and Jones’ lifelong pursuit of the Fugitive Gods, this caught my attention. 

So using this as a first line, I chose to make my own, well, a Charles Jones style, translation of Psalm 130. I also relied upon the standards, KJV, NIV, ESV and renderings by Robert Alter and Stephen Mitchell. There is a remarkable semantic tension between the various translations regarding this particular Psalm. My own rendering is born out of this. There is a pressing desire to learn Hebrew. Perhaps after I learn Sanskrit. Always, there is never enough time. 

There are few notes that follow. 

Psalm 130

The red ribbon of blood striving ever upwards:

1 From the depths of the Abyss, in which You are, I call on You.

2 Entwined Immanence, hear my voice. 

may Your mind in-gather and hold the song of my saying.

3 Were You, O Embedded Immanence, to attend to forgetting, 

O Being, who amongst us could endure?

4 For the forgiveness is Yours, 

so that You may be revered.

5 I hope for the Presence of You, my being hopes,

and for Your Word I wait.

6 My being for Your Presence—

more than the watchmen wait for the dawn,

more than the watchmen wait for the dawn.

7 Wait, O Sacred State, for this Shuddering Immanence,

for within this Luminous Presence there is mercy,

and a plentiful plenitude of redemption.

8 And all manner of things will be redeemed,

and all manner of thing will forgiven,

and all shall be be forgotten,

as we shall all be entwined again into the One. 

***

Red ribbon - Saviors of God - Kazantzakis

From the Depths - Grammars of Creation - Steiner

In-gather and hold - Question Concerning Technology - Heidegger

Could endure - Dur Desir De Durer - Eluard

My being for Your Presence - Being and Time - Heidegger

All manner of thing - Julian of Norwich, Eliot, Four Quartets

***

Psalm 130 KJV

A song of ascent 

1 Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.

2 Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

3 If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?

4 But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

5 I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.

6 My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.

7 Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.

8 And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

What Is the Saddest Music You Have Ever Heard?

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Not so long ago, when there were still record stores with album covers that were like small canvases of art, I used to occasionally ask those who worked there what they would identify as the saddest music they had ever heard. Keep in mind, this is the "album era".

Many went to the Classical world: the solemn slow layering adagios of Albinoni and Barber, the stark solitude of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Chopin's Nocturnes, the Unanswered Question by Ives, Gorecki's Third.

I always noted the slight reluctance to choose Country songs, perhaps because they have so many superficial cliches for sadness, but I was often recommended to the plaintive "I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry" of Hank Williams, George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces," Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and, thankfully, the entire catalog of Townes Van Zandt.

Most of the time, the recommendations were from Pop and Rock music: a spectrum ranging around from Ray Charles' "Georgia," Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," Roy Orbison's "Crying," Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long" to Dylan's "If You See Her, Say Hello," Simon and Garfunkle's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind," the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There," the Beach Boys' "In My Room," Zeppelin's "Since I've Been Loving You" and on up to the entire album, Nebraska, by Bruce Springsteen.

I am, for the most part, in agreement as to the sorrowful themes expressed in most of the songs I have listed. But for each of those, there was also many recommendations of "Seasons in the Sun," "Alone Again," 'Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," "Starry, Starry Night," "Mandy," and "Song Sung Blue." I was occasionally tempted to smile but realized that the subjective boundaries of sorrow are often marked with the bizarre totems: tiny putti angels, commercials for telephones, and maudlin Hallmark poetry reducing even the most resolute of stoics to tears.

Amidst all of litany from above, two genres of music were often conspicuously absent: Blues and Jazz - two of the most remarkable contributions of American Culture to the world. I have always thought it curiously ironic that the most obvious answer as to what was the saddest music, the Blues, was most often overlooked. Sadness and sorrow are the very core of what defines the Blues.

Admittedly, this is a difficult question. It is informed by difficulties of age and experience, of not being able to find sympathy with the more complicated sorrow at the heart of certain works of music. This immediately presents the contingent difficulty of being able to recognize the meaning of an expression of deep sorrow. It is certainly a sad event to have one's kitten die. I'm sure there is music that has been occasioned by such sorrow. And as hesitant as I am to diagram a scale of sorrows here, the death of a parent, a lover, would certainly sink to a deeper depth of sorrow than that of the kitten. And as difficult as these may be, they are still overwhelmed by the incomprehensible sorrow brought forth by the death and suffering of multitudes of human beings in wars, genocides and disasters. What music, what human expression, can redeem - and here the language stresses and warps under the limits of reference and grammar - but what can be done to express such an overwhelming sorrow of being in the face of such catastrophe?

I do not believe that there is any higher expression of human being than that which radiates out of music. Levi-Strauss stated that "the invention of melody is the supreme mystery in the sciences of man." Fortunately, as Eliot claimed, human being cannot bear very much reality. Our nervous system is wired to de-sensitize us over repeated exposures, to habituate us, as it were, to sorrow. But now and then, listening to music which attempts to redeem the sorrows of existence, we get a glimpse of what we are being "protected" from. Beauty rises like sparks of fire from the blackness of the Abyss.

Do I have an answer to my question? Nothing satisfactory. Obviously, the question precipitates an intensely subjective response. And even within this proscribed arena of subjectivity, experience, the knowing of the music, continually hungers for innocence, to be able to return to the first time the music unfolded within you. Music is weirdly rich with this sort of infinitesimal calculus of longing. A veil is suspended before us, shimmering with melody, tone and rhythm, presenting glimpses of the divine beyond its finely woven warp and weft. In great music, in the saddest music, there is always an intimation of something transcendent, some quality that defeats language, escapes memory. It is always as if we try to see through the veil and are continually distracted back to what is being projected upon it. Always, this longing.

As I stated earlier, I am in accord with the above recommendations. But I have a few (all links go to YouTube):

Bach - Saraband and Gavotte en Rondeau

Barber - Agnus Dei
Beck - Lost Cause
Beethoven - Funeral March, Sym. No 3, Eroica
Blaze Foley - If Only I Could Fly
Chopin - Nocturne in E Minor, Op. 72
Ry Cooder - Paris, Texas
Miles Davis - Blue in Green
Al Green - Tired of Being Alone
Ted Hawkins - The Good and the Bad
Billie Holliday - Strange Fruit
Son House - Death Letter
Iron and Wine - He Lays in the Reins
Etta James - Anything To Say You're Mine
Skip James - Hard Time Killing Floor
Blind Lemon Jefferson - Nobody's Fault But Mine
Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
Robert Johnson - Hellhounds On My Trail
Liszt - Rhapsody No. 5
Duke McVinnie - Ginny
Henry Mancini - Moon River
Stephen Micus - Music of Stones
Van Morrison - Streets of Arklow
Graham Parsons  - A Song For You
Oscar Peterson - I Love You, Porgy
Portishead - Glory Box
Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter
Joaquín Rodrigo - Concierto de Aranjuez
Schubert - Trio in E Flat, Op. 100, 2nd mov
Andres Segovia - Passacaille
Harry Dean Stanton - Cancion Mixteca 
Townes Van Zandt - Tecumseh Valley
Anne Sofie von Otter - Oblivion Soave
Tom Waits - Martha
Gillian Welch - Revelator

This list could go on and on. Omissions multiply with each new entry. I could write a book on each piece. Finally, I give the last word to George Steiner - not so much music as a meaningful sound. But I do believe that this is up there with the saddest:

A Whistle: The recording of the whistle in the painting labelled 'By the Master of the Chambèry Passion'. "It is a Crucifixion on gilded panelling which can most plausibly be dated mid-fourteenth century and ascribed to one of the workshops in the Turin area.... It is the red-headed lad in the attendant crowd [of those witnessing the Crucifixion], the fourth figure from the left, who arrests the attention. He is whistling. On two supple fingers inserted, shepherd - or street urchin style, into a corner of his full lips. Whistling either to himself or some listener - a crony, a sheep-dog, a girl - outside the scene. There can be no mistake. The whistle is a loud and joyous one, as of a thrush on a spring upland. The whistler's firm green-hosed legs tell us that, as does the merry swelling of his throat and cheeks. And though his lips are pursed, there can be no doubt as to the smile and the dawn cheer which gives them breath. Yet the young man's eyes are on the Cross, on the twisted flesh and the petals of bright blood around the nails. The eyes are unwavering as he whistles, as the pure clear merriment rises into the paschal air."