Profile = a sudden revelation of a person. For the Polish poet Cyprian Norwid (a poetic influence on KW), profile was a manifestation of God, for we can't see our Creator face-to-face. 'Beauty, like lightening, illuminates the many profiles of God' (1982:14). In KW's Cyrenean cycle, the Son of God is met in profile, not face-to-face. This cycle contains 14 profiles - a car factory worker, a girl disappointed in love, a schizoid etc, and each faces themselves as if for the first time against the cross they have to carry. The last profile in the cycle is the Cyrenean himself. JP notes that there is perhaps an analogy between KW's 14 profiles in the cycle and the 14 stations of the cross (which are usually made in relief), and that the stations, as they follow one another, form a sequence of profiles.
Source: Collected Poems 1982, Hutchinson, trans and intro by Jerzy Peterkiewicz
Etymology of the word PROFILE:
ReplyDelete1650s, "a drawing of the outline of anything," from It. profilo "a drawing in outline," from profilare "to draw in outline," from pro- "forth" (see pro-) + filare "draw out, spin," from L.L. filare "to spin, draw out a line," from filum "thread" (see file (v.)). Meaning "biographical sketch, character study" is from 1734. The verb is 1715, "to represent in profile," from the noun. Meaning "to summarize a person in writing" is from 1948. Profiling in the racial/ethnic stereotyping sense is recorded from c.1991.
Sarah thank you this is a wonderful light on the idea of profile writing and on these in particular. I had sometimes worried that the profiles I had written might be considered caricatures, which I was unhappy about as it is a genre I find reductionist and sometimes unkind. Instead you speak here of drawing out a humanising thread, and in JP II’s case, especially, one that relates each person to the redeeming hope of their own cross. Beautiful. Inspires me to write more...which is what all good art does – awaken the spirit.
ReplyDeleteSarah de Nordwall
sarahdenordwall.blogspost.com
a bard with a bard school
I was struck how have been drawn to write profile poems of less than lovely characters - Judas, the thief on the cross, Cain ... as a friend pointed out, perhaps such poems provide a way of doing essential shadow work ... or to put it another way, what can be learnt from those who failed to carry their cross? Does glimpsing their profiles help me to see where I may be failing? KW's profiles in Cyrenean cycle starts with the poem 'before I could discern many profiles'. Wow, we can't even see people before we can see ourselves right. And there is only one way to see. He says 'the profile always starts alongside the other Man.' The second poem is ' now I begin to discern individual profiles' and then Melancholic begins: "I would not carry it' ... It is this poem that ends with the advice 'push aside the terror of things to be done' ... and though the poem describes someone enclosed in pain, it contains the trembling possibility of achieving some kind of balance; 'there is a life so great and simple, and its depth does not end in me'. To break out of the cycle of despair and 'walk on, at the daily pace of hours'. Tremendously put isn't it?
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