Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone — John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
It’s pre-spring, which calls for Keats. Buds out, tight with cold mid-February potential energy, little fists of pre-desire, waiting, wanting, a few weeks from ready.
As thrilling as it will be when those furry little nuggets bust open, I can’t help but want to hold on a little longer to the Before. I hear Feist’s refrain (an argument to refrain?): “The saddest part of a broken heart / isn’t the ending, so much as the start.” I don’t hear “the start of a broken heart” but rather, the beginning of the whole affair. From the very first brush of warmth, a whisper of a stringed chord across the heart, the story cuts straight to the frozen end.
Keats knew this, conjured his famous grecian urn, full of images preserved before the sad part, aka all of it.
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Fifty pages into “Swann in Love,” Swann is finally about to put an end to months of tortuous, paranoid, crazed pursuit. He follows Odette into a carriage, giving her a mild shock. They exchange some flimsy banter about the cattleya in her bodice, which is just pretext for Swann to cop a feel. He leans over her, and just as the position of her neck is offering consent and the answer to all his wanting, he pauses.
Perhaps, too, he was fixing upon the face of an Odette not yet possessed, nor even kissed by him, which he was seeing for the last time, the comprehensive gaze with which, on the way of his departure, a traveller hopes to bear away with him in memory a landscape he is leaving forever. — Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
He knows that this first kiss will end it all, and tries in the final moment to preserve the Before, the grecian urn holding his longing not yet met.
It’s with a comprehensive gaze that I seek to imprint upon my memory arguably the best season, the last days of winter. Young lovers frozen in pre-kiss, pipes frozen in pre-song, trees just about to come pliantly back to life. Because, for better or worse, I can move my fingers and toes, and the rest of my body; for as long as I live, I am not art, not a figure immortalized in pre-consummation on some ancient pottery; I pay taxes and moisturize and possess and become possessed. For better or worse, for better and worse, spring will come, and it will also end.
Or.
Put down the grumbling, the symbols, romanticism, hand wringing over truth and beauty, the promise of pain. Just take a deep breath, fill your lungs with pre-pollen.
冬越えさ 季節の変わり目さ クシャミを ひとつ 話す事は 多いけど ただ クシャミを ひとつ — 細野 晴臣、「冬越え」We’ve gotten past winter, the season is changing, One sneeze. There’s a lot to talk about, But just, one sneeze. — Haruomi Hosono, “Past Winter” (very rough translation by me)