{"id":7666,"date":"2023-02-08T16:03:10","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T16:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=7666"},"modified":"2023-02-08T16:07:31","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T16:07:31","slug":"the-drunken-silenus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/08\/the-drunken-silenus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Drunken Silenus"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Blowing Up the House<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Morgan Meis\u2019s highly unusual collection of essays upends expectations in precisely the right ways.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by J.C. Scharl
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A lot of the craft of reviewing a book is artfully describing that book in terms of other books. The reviewer says, \u201cSo-and-so\u2019s debut is equal parts This Book and That Book,\u201d or \u201cThis-and-Such\u2019s book bridges the gap between You-Know-Who and Who-The-Heck,\u201d and that helps readers decide if they want to read the book or not. The reviewer writes lots of other things too, but it\u2019s often the references to other books that guide people towards buying (or not buying) a book. That\u2019s because part of what we want a book to do for us to make us feel simultaneously at home and on an adventure; we want the book to tie in to the places we already know and love while expanding the walls and opening up new windows to see from.<\/p>

It\u2019s difficult to imagine a reader whose literary \u201chome\u201d has a place prepared for The Drunken Silenus, <\/em>the first book in Morgan Meis\u2019s \u201cThree Paintings\u201d trilogy. This book doesn\u2019t do the things we usually like books to do. It doesn\u2019t make us feel more at home, and it doesn\u2019t expand our imaginative dwelling place. Instead, it blows it up\u2014and proves to us that this explosion is exactly what we needed.<\/p>

The Drunken Silenus <\/em>does not fit comfortably into a genre. It is a series of essays that circle around the central spectacle of the eponymous painting by Peter Paul Rubens. The circles are sometimes vast, sweeping back to 1200 BC before arcing back to Silenus the god as depicted in Ruben\u2019s painting of him, and sometimes so small they seem more like singularities than circles, as when Meis dwells at absurd length on the personal history of Jan Rubens, father of Peter Paul. If I had to choose a core question, or theme, or notion, or image, I would say that the book is about Silenus\u2019s answer to King Midas\u2019s question, \u201cWhat is the best thing for man?\u201d Silenus, the tutor of Dionysius, the teacher of the gods themselves, replies that the best thing for man is not to have been born. That moment\u2014a philosophical moment? historical? mythic? religious? all of these?\u2014is a rock thrown. This book tries to trace the ripples before they fade.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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These essays are closely linked; they overlap and intertwine, sometimes uncomfortably so.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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These essays have a poetic immediacy. As with poems, it is impossible to explain what any particular essay in The Drunken Silenus <\/em>is \u201cabout,\u201d because the words themselves are the meaning. Just as Robert Frost, when asked what one of his poems was about, simply reread the poem from start to finish, The Drunken Silenus <\/em>is its own best summary.<\/p>

All I can offer is a little guidance. These essays are closely linked; they overlap and intertwine, sometimes uncomfortably so. At times, the author repeats himself with the earnestness of a college sophomore at a party. It makes readers nervous; it made me nervous with, at least, the nervousness of the audience when an actor in a play forgets his lines and looks up blank, straight into the lights. We want our writers, our actors, our mythmakers and story-tellers to be poised, and when they seem to crack, we crack with them; when they implode, they bring us down with them.<\/p>

Of course, the repetition, the stumble, the earnestness, is part of Meis\u2019s art. That doesn\u2019t mean it is fake; rather, it is part of the experience of the whole that Meis is trying to represent. The Drunken Silenus <\/em>has cracks in it because it wants the reader to crack; it feels like it is moments from imploding because it wants the reader to implode. That is the whole point, because cracking and imploding are part of reality. That is, really, the theme of the book: reality, all of reality, which includes the cracks. The subtitle is, after all, \u201cOn Gods, Goats, and the Cracks in Reality.\u201d<\/p>

Meis writes about Nietzsche, but not like most people write about Nietzsche; he writes about Nietzsche not with awe, nor with rancor, but with tenderness and a reasonable amount of pity. You might even say he writes about Nietzsche with love. He writes about King Midas, not as a myth but as a historical figure at a terrible moment in time, a champion of civilization who fails. Meis spends a lot of time with Peter Paul Rubens, but even more time with Jan Rubens, the painter\u2019s father, who with one passionate mistake wrecked his whole life but also maybe saved it. He writes about Dionysian cult practices, not as curios of the past, but as exhibitions of longings that persist in each one of us.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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These are difficult sayings; to begin with them is to reduce them to platitudes.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Every subject Meis handles, he transforms. He turns his subjects over and over, showing them from side after side until we are dizzy with the turning, stumbling, disoriented. Only then are we somehow ready to attend to Meis\u2019s claims, such as when he says, \u201cRubens painted the way that Silenus existed. It is a lament about eternity and death. But not just a lament. A promise. Death is the only answer. Death, somehow, is an answer.\u201d These are difficult sayings; to begin with them is to reduce them to platitudes. But to stumble upon them without warning somewhere in the dizzying universe is to behold them as revelations.<\/p>

It is difficult to compare The Drunken Silenus <\/em>to other books. So instead, let me offer a few examples of the chapter titles, which can be savored in their own right as aphorisms.<\/p>