| |
 Last
week there was a total lunar eclipse, and it should have been
visible where I live in Northern California in the early evening.
Unfortunately it was raining. Nevertheless, I thought it might
be interesting to see what poets have had to say about eclipses
in general.
An eclipse requires
the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth to be a straight line. A lunar
eclipse corresponds to the situation where the Earth is between
the Sun and the Moon, and in effect the Earth's shadow falls on
the Moon. A solar eclipse is the situation where the Moon is between
the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon's shadow falls on the Earth.
The Moon's shadow is significantly smaller than the Earth, and
so its shadow follows a path across the face of the Earth, outside
of which the eclipse is not visible. Actually, the there is also
a region where the Moon appears to block only a part of the Sun,
and the eclipse is said to be partial in that region. The path
of totality varies in length and breadth, because of the variation
in the geometrical details of the eclipse. The following is taken
from the Encyclopedia Britannica; and gives a more complete
description.
An eclipse of the
Sun takes place when the Moon comes between the Earth and the
Sun so that the Moon's shadow sweeps over the face of the Earth.
This shadow consists of two parts: the umbra, or total shadow,
a cone into which no direct sunlight penetrates; and the penumbra,
or half shadow, which is reached by light from only a part of
the Sun's disk. To an observer within the umbra, the Sun's disk
appears completely covered by the disk of the Moon; such an
eclipse is called total. To an observer within the penumbra,
the Moon's disk appears projected against the Sun's disk so
as to overlap it partly; the eclipse is then called partial
for that observer. The umbra cone is narrow at the distance
of the Earth, and a total eclipse is observable only within
the narrow strip of land or sea over which the umbra passes.
A partial eclipse may be seen from places within the large area
covered by the penumbra. Sometimes the Earth intercepts the
penumbra of the Moon but is missed by its umbra; only a partial
eclipse of the Sun is then observed anywhere on the Earth.
By a remarkable
coincidence, the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon are
such that they appear as very nearly the same angular size (about
0.5°) at the Earth, but their apparent sizes depend on their
distances from the Earth. The Earth revolves around the Sun
in an elliptical orbit, so that the distance of the Sun changes
slightly during a year, with a correspondingly small change
in the apparent size, the angular diameter, of the solar disk.
In a similar way, the apparent size of the Moon's disk changes
somewhat during the month because the Moon's orbit is also elliptical.
When the Sun is nearest to the Earth and the Moon is at its
greatest distance, the apparent disk of the Moon is smaller
than that of the Sun. If an eclipse of the Sun occurs at this
time, the Moon's disk passing over the Sun's disk cannot cover
it completely but will leave the rim of the Sun visible all
around it. Such an eclipse is said to be annular.
This century, there
will be 224 solar eclipses, of which 144 will be central. The
maximum length of totality is 7.5 minutes.
 Over
my life, I have seen a number of partial solar eclipses, one or
two of which resulted in a significant coverage of the Sun's disc.
However, I have seen only one total eclipse, and it was by sheer
accident. For reasons, which don't matter, I had been offered
the opportunity to spend some time at a very pleasant small hotel
in Cuernavaca , in Mexico . I selected a date more or less at
random, and on arrival another guest said, Come for the eclipse,
have you? That was the first I knew that there was to be a solar
eclipse, and I had no idea that the path of totality included
Cuernavaca . I was a little blasé about the whole thing,
remarking that I had seen a few eclipses. A total eclipse is
quite different if you haven't seen one, you have absolutely
no idea what it's like!
Over the next day
or two, more total eclipse hunters arrived, and started looking
at weather predictions: the weather was a bit unsettled in that
part of Mexico, and the majority opinion decided that the eclipse
was probably going to be obscured by cloud in Cuernavaca, and
virtually everybody departed for Oaxaca, to the south. Since we
hadn't come for the eclipse, we stayed right where we were. Sure
enough, the morning was cloudy, but just before the eclipse began
the sky cleared, and the view was perfect. My informant was right
if you haven't seen it, you have no idea! One can see why the
ancients were terrified at the moment of totality, the sky goes
black, and the solar corona appears to leap out from the Sun.
It turned out that it had rained all day in Oaxaca .
Anyway, now the poets'
view. It is worth remembering that since the footprint of the
totality is quite small, the duration is short, and the frequency
is not great, not many poets will actually have experienced a
total solar eclipse, so to some extent the images that appear
are at best second hand. However, that isn't going to put off
a good poet we had an article on poetry about the phoenix recently,
and the direct observations of that are even more scarce!
There is a poem in
the ancient Chinese classic, the Shi Jing , which mentions
a solar eclipse. It is Ode 193, and the title is translated in
the version I have as Alignment in the Tenth Month. I have
two versions of the translation: one is from the early translation
by James Legge (1815 1897); Legge was a remarkable man, and
his translation, done with the Chinese scholar Wang Tau, was completed
in 1871. The other translation is in a new edition of the translation
by Arthur Waley (1889 1966) (whose original name was Arthur
David Schloss) entitled The Book of Songs, edited by Joseph
R. Allen. Waley himself did not translate Ode 193, and Allen added
a translation himself. Here is the first stanza:
With the alignment
in the tenth month,
On the first day, xin-mao of the cycle,
The sun was eclipsed,
And it was so very frightening.
First the moon grew dim,
Then the sun grew dim too.
All the folk here below
Were in great lament.
There is some disagreement
about the exact date of these eclipses. Legge identified it as
August 29 th , 775 BCE; but Waley argued for a date of 735. I
will use the complete poem as my third poem of this week.
Archilocus (?714
676 BCE) was a Greek lyric poet, whose works survive in fragments.
One of his epigrammatic remarks that is frequently quoted is "The
fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
Another fragment is:
Nothing there is
beyond hope, nothing
That can be sworn impossible, nothing wonderful,
Since Zeus, father of the Olympians,
Made night from mid-day, hiding the light
Of the shining Sun, and sore fear came upon men.
This seems a clear
reference to a total eclipse. The phenomenon has been identified
as the eclipse on April 6, 648 BCE, which was total in the Aegean
and occurred during Archilocus' lifetime.
Small fragments survive
of other early Greek poetic descriptions of eclipses, and the
ninth paean of Pindar (?518 - ?438 BCE), addressed to the Thebans,
takes an eclipse of the Sun as its theme, as follows:
Beam of the sun!
O thou that seest afar, what wilt thou be devising? O mother
of mine eyes! O star supreme, reft from us in the daytime! Why
hast thou perplexed the power of man and the way of wisdom,
by rushing forth on a darksome track? Art thou bringing on us
some new and strange disaster? Yet, by Zeus, I implore thee,
thou swift driver divine of steeds! Do thou, O queen! Change
this world-wide portent into some painless blessing for Thebes
.
Is it because, in thine anger at the presumptuous sons of mortals,
thou art unwilling utterly to blot out the pure light of life?
But art thou bringing a sign of some war, or wasting of produce,
or an unspeakable violent snow-storm, or fatal faction, or again,
some overflowing of the sea on the plain, or frost to blind
the earth, or heat of the south-wind streaming with raging rain?
Or wilt thou, by deluging the land, cause the race of men to
begin anew? I in no wise lament whate'er I shall suffer with
all the rest
Roman history is less
replete with references to eclipses than that of Greece, but there
are several interesting references to these events in Roman writings.
One that has attracted the attention of students of astronomy
and of the Roman calendar alike is stated by Marcus Tullius Cicero
(106 43 BCE) to have occurred in what may have been the 350th
year from the founding of Rome. He also says that it was described
by the poet Quintus Ennius (239 169 BCE):
On the nones of
June the Sun was covered by the Moon and night.
 This
happening would appear to have been the total solar eclipse of
June 21, 400 BCE, which reached a total or almost total phase
at Rome a few minutes after sunset. Its recorded date seems to
show that in that year the calendar month of June began 16 days
later than it did after the Julian reform. The eclipse of the
Moon on June 2122, 168 BCE, has attracted much attention. The
Romans were at that time at war with Macedonia, and the Roman
historian Polybius (200 after 118 BCE) says that this eclipse
was interpreted as an omen of the eclipse of a king and thus encouraged
the Romans and discouraged the Macedonians.
Now we jump
forward seventeen centuries, landing, as you might suppose with
William Shakespeare (1564 1616)! He has two Sonnets making reference
to eclipses, 35 and 107. Here is Sonnet 35;
and Sonnet
107 will be our first poem of this week.
No more be grieved
at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud:
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are';
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,-
Thy adverse party is thy advocate,-
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
That I an accessary needs must be,
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.
John Milton (1608
1674) wrote a monody mourning the death of a friend of his,
Edward King, who drowned on a trip from Chester to Ireland in
1637. The title was Lycidas, who was a shepherd in Virgil's
Eclogues. Here is a fragment:
The air was calm,
and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Milton also uses the
image of a solar eclipse in Paradise Lost, Book I, line 587:
Thus far these beyond
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observ'd
Their dread Commander: he above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a Tow'r; his form had not yet lost
All her Original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than Arch Angel ruin'd and th'excess
Of Glory obscured: As when the Sun new-ris'n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with the fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs.
And also in Samson
Agonistes, where Samson is mourning his blindness (line 80):
O dark, dark, dark,
amid the blaze of noon ,
Irrevocably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792 1822) has an interesting thought in The Revolt of Islam
, canto V, stanza 23:
The little child
stood up when we came nigh;
Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan,
But on her forehead, and within her eye
Lay beauty, which makes hearts that feed thereon
Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne
She leaned; -- the King, with gathered brow, and lips
Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown
With hue like that when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
 My
second poem of the week is by William Schwenk Gilbert (1836
1911). Gilbert wrote the words while Arthur Sullivan wrote the
music for the comic operas that were so popular in the late nineteenth
century. The first of their collaborations was Thespis,
of which the score has been lost except for two numbers: Little
Maid of Arcadee, which survived because it was published as
sheet music; and Climbing Over Rocky Mountain which they
used later with some small modifications in The Pirates of
Penzance. Thespis was performed on December 26th,
1871. Their final collaboration was a failure The Grand Duk,
first performed on March 7th, 1896. Our poem of the week is Take
a Pair of Sparkling Eyes, from The Gondoliers,
their eleventh and last truly successful opera: it was performed
first on December 7th , 1889.
|
|
