William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams has long fascinated me. I recently read a poem of his called Libertad! Igualdad! Fraternidad! that talked about dreams: "it is dreams that have destroyed us...dreams are not a bad thing".

It reminds me of something I read from the Iliad: καὶ γάρ τ' ὄναρ ἐκ Διός ἐστιν, "Dreams, too, come from Zeus".  I know very little about Greek, but I think that is the meaning. In any case, Williams would have been fairly contemptuous of any Classical allusion. That is a line that has always stayed with me since I read it, although I don't know if I have the idiom or the meaning when I think about it. Nevertheless, I think about the words as they appear to me, and in different ways.

First, I think of our aspirations and inspirations as being special, and high in value, a power of which we should be appreciative. We should not waste our sparks of thought or long-held wishes, rather we should value them and structure our lives around them.  Perhaps that is fairy-cake nonsense: that is certainly a risk when you talk about dreams.

In another and less saccharine sense, our dreams and hopes seem part of a shared greater experience that is a degree separated from us and the worldly. It is not just because they are dreams or hopes and not reality that they are different from reality. Nightmares of the Real Real and visions of true happiness are perfect only because they are remote from possibility while at the same time seeming possible because we can imagine them: we can have our consuming horror or consuming pleasure and not be consumed by it; we can have our cake and not be eaten by it, too.

In another way, the phrase feels like a kindly smile on hopeless hope, a benediction on the unattainable dream. That may be the simplest sense, but in a way also the most difficult. Is there not something sickening about false hope but also something uplifting? Is it not grimily ignoble while also being noble?

This is a quick drawing, Indian ink with watercolour tint, that I did of William Carlos Williams from a picture of him that I saw on the Internet.