Dear Friends,
I am so happy to offer you
Long Ago and Far Away
Music: Jerome Kern (1885 — 1945); Lyric: Ira Gershwin (1896 — 1983)
Performed by Ishmael Wallace
Long ago and far away,
I dreamed a dream one day
And now that dream is here beside me.
Long the skies were overcast,
But now the clouds have passed:
You're here at last!
Chills run up and down my spine,
Aladdin's lamp is mine,
The dream I dreamed was not denied me.
Just one look and then I knew
That all I longed for, long ago, was you.
In our day, young men encourage one another with the phrase “wgmi”, “we are going to make it”. Not all of us will; Eichendorff describes the situation of those flowers who come up too early:
The soft breezes promised warmth, and their kisses woke the little snowbells [in English, snowdrops]; they rang out to welcome the splendor of the Spring. But field and garden were still white with snow. As the little snowbells sank down in pain, so has many a poet; the Spring which had woken him rustles above his grave.
(Schneeglöckchen, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, 1788 — 1857; my paraphrase)
The generation of whom Eichendorff was writing, the first generation of Romantics, had seen laid out before them the story we still are living. Novalis tells this story in his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen; it forms the fairy tale which concludes Book One. In this story, the Scribe, whose job it is to draw up documents for Father and Mother, has taken charge of the household. That part of the soul whose function is to grasp detail — who sees words, not as command or invocation, but letters in array — has displaced that higher part which knows what it all is for. (We can recognize this pattern as the one described by McGilchrist in The Master and His Emissary.)
As this drama unfolds in the soul, it is reflected in society: the rule of kings and priests is supplanted by that of bankers, lawyers, and journalists.
As Novalis sees, the work of the Scribe does not make sense without Father and Mother; scientific research, for example, has no meaning unless one honors truth. It’s for this reason that, in our day, so many researchers cheat. The Scribe burns Mother at the stake, but this blaze reaches up to heaven and burns out the Sun.
This collapse of the so-called Enlightenment leaves a space in which Fable can emerge. It is this emergence of Fable which takes place in our song:
That dream is here beside me…
You’re here at last!…
And, so poignantly:
The dream I dreamed was not denied me.
This merging of the worlds, the emergence of Fable into Fact, is the story told in the Gospels:
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
(Gospel of John, 1:14, King James Version)
Spring will come; in our Lord, it has already come.
Thank you so much.
With every good wish,
Ishmael
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff
steel engraving by E. Eichens