Big Sur as Dover Beach

I haven't read Big Sur poet Robinson Jeffers for at least 40 years, but somehow I felt he would speak to my current bleakness. In 1938, when the world teetered on the edge of war, he wrote the following poem, "The Answer," standing at Big Sur the way Matthew Arnold had stood at Dover Beach. They say Jeffers was a crusty misanthrope, with curdled vision like Shakespeare's Timon of Athens--a vision washed clean of man since inhumanity was man's only contribution to history. I think they're wrong about Jeffers. He chose the unity of life above all else, even if his own species could not perceive or participate in it. I, too, have felt this unity of late. I, too, have known, as Jeffer's wrote in 1925, "the heartbreaking beauty / will remain when there is no heart to break for it." Listen to Jeffers now and hear the surf-roar that reassured him that all, the eternal all, would be well. Belong to that, and there will be peace.

THE ANSWER

Then what is the answer?--Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence
and tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose the least
ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted and not wish for
evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams
will not be fulfilled.
To know this and know that however ugly the parts appear the whole
remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his
history . . . for contemplation or in fact . . .
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of
the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions, or drown in
despair when his days darken.