Sinister: Dreaming of loving on the graves of dead strangers

[Ruvi Simmons]

Although I am far removed from being a pious man, I feel it my duty, my
sacred obligation, if you will, to inform you all that this is not merely
the Feast Day of St. Valentine, but also of St. Cyril and his brother
Methodius. These two individuals were instrumental in the translation of
Catholic liturgies from the traditional Latin into the Slavic vernacular,
and thus more generally, in propogating the idea that Church services could
be performed in the local language. Therefore, I propose, for all you
disaffected, solitary lovers in exile, disenfranchised from a lover whom you
may not have met, give praise, not to St. Valentine, but to St. Cyril. I am
aware, of course, that it is probably not as interesting to praise the
translation of liturgies as it is to present gifts to a lover in the hope
of, later, receiving something in return, but one must make do with what one
can have.

Alternatively, I have contrived a different approach. The living are capable
of resistance, evasion and response. Those who have passed on are not
blessed with the same capacity. Therefore, select a corpse to make love to
(figuratively speaking, that is). They can't reject, spurn or scorn your
advances, they can only remain silent which, as every sweaty palmed lech
knows, is as good as consent. In this spirit, I have poured over persons
deceased to try and select someone to make My Valentine. The person who
sprang immediately to mind was Sylvia Plath. I have been besotted with that
particular dysfunctional poet for years now, since I read the Bell Jar and
felt an enormous, alas frustrated, compulsion to seize her and spirit her
away from the hack poets, the uninspired, and the listless. Take her away
from and elevate her above the level of tawdry society. I see myself having
my cheek bitten by her colonnades of opalescent teeth, not that of the
dreadful, adulterous Ted Hughes, and I feel a stab of bitter ecstasy strike
my heart. But no, she will not be my dead Valentine.

...So who shall it be? Mary Shelley? Poor, gentle Mary Shelley was, for all
her talents as a writer, all her intellect, compassion and spirit, as ugly
as sin. That is terrible, isn't it? I would give, not just my right arm, but
all four limbs to receive the opportunity to converse with sincere,
passionate minds and to commune with luminous spirits, yet I reject poor
horse-faced Mary Shelley on the most trivial of reasons. But, regardless, it
cannot be her. George Eliot? She looked like a Church of England
schoolteacher. Bette Davis? An elegant smoker, peculiarly beautiful, yet, I
suspect, as dim-witted and tedious as everyone else who has the patience and
lack of inspiration to devote their lives to the pursuit of fame. Lady Agnew
of Lochnaw springs to mind, but all I know about her is the Sargent
painting, in which she reclines languidly, her muslin dress rustling about
her shapely legs like the foam out of which Aphrodite was born, her lips
smiling mysteriously as her large eyes hypnotise the viewer with their
strong, sensual gaze. But that is all I know and, much as I would like it to
be otherwise, it is not enough.

I think the problem is that pretty girls do not make great thinkers. That is
probably an even more deplorable statement than the one made about Mary
Shelley. Yet I cannot help thinking it is true. Women in possession of
physical beauty need not worry about their future, for it is assured; they
need not struggle with their intellectual demons, because everywhere they
turn they are told that the most important thing in life is aesthetic
appearances. Thus they skim over the surface of life, tripping along with
delicious gaits, sultry pouts, and empty heads. The ugly girls, on the other
hand, the shunned, disaffected and lonely, they turn, perhaps first in
dismay but later with sincere ardour, to intellectual expansion. They have
no hope of meeting a dashing man, they who stand at a lower level in this
obscene society of fleeting images which are gone before we see them rot,
and thus they turn inwards in the hope of solace.

It seems rather sad and pathetic that, even when trawling through history in
search of some dead lover, I come up with nothing, doesn't it? Yet, I think
I have found something, but like with most things in life, when one
surmounts and impasse or finds a means of solving a problem, it is not
merely one option that presents itself, but myriad. So, from nothing, I have
a wealth of potential Valentine's on my hands. What is more, it is to
Eastern Europe I turn, that once home of revolution, that land mass where
many turned in hope of finding a solution to the problems of the world and
where I, more humbly yet no less ardently, now turn in search of deceased
lovers. Although those in hope of humanity's redemption may have been
disappointed, I have not. I have found Anna Akhmatova, an elegant poetess,
Wislawa Szymborska (who, I might add, is actually still alive, although for
all her chances of seeing this she is as good as dead to me though
thankfully not to herself) and, best of all, Marina Tsvetaeva. Beautifuly,
demure yet passionate, a placid lake with a dizzying undertow. And so, in
the spirit, not of St. Cyril, but St. Valentine, I give her own lines back
to her in praise:

          Don't think that there's any grave here,
          Or that I'll come and throw you out ...
          I myself was too much given
          To laughing when one ought not.

          The blood hurtled to my complexion,
          My curls wound in flourishes ...
          I was, passer-by, I existed!
          Passer-by, stop here, please.

          And take, pluck a stem of wildness,
          The fruit that comes with its fall --
          It's true that graveyard strawberries
          Are the biggest and sweetest of all.

There was a lesson in all of this, of that I am quite sure. But, on the
advise of my dear father, I will not tell. I will remain aloof from
moralising and let whoever has borne with me to this point decide for
themselves which is, after all, far more fun anyway. In the meantime, I
realise I really ought to stem this tide for both my sake and whatever eyes
have been so indulgent and patient with me. So, I wish you all, living and
dead, a happy Valentine's Day.

Ruvi.

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