“I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything
that was alive and I couldn’t stand it,
I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word — a cheesecloth —
to breathe through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that entered me when I breathed in.”
This is an excerpt from the poem Magdalene — The Seven Devils, part of the volume of poetry Magdalene in which Marie Howe re-envisions the biblical Mary Magdalene in modern time. Like Magdalene in the bible, the modern Magdalene is plagued by an incomprehensible mix of anxiety, guilt, shame, and the many different emotional responses that the concept of sin evoke in her.
Being a woman, her sin is sexual and defined for her by the church fathers and biblical authors alike. Both the idea of sin itself and the idea that sexuality can be a sin at all create a separation from one’s body, the soft animal that breathes naturally.
In the Gospel of Luke, seven devils were supposedly cast out of Magdalene, and, presumably with them, their breaths. I wonder if there was a distinction from the devils’ breaths inside of her and her breath. Did they mingle, were they one the same thing, or were they different?
Whereas I imagine Magdalene wishes she could protect herself from the outside world, to shield herself from the projection onto her as a sinner -and the underlying desire that comes with such a projection -, the church fathers must have imagined that they themselves needed protection from Magdalene’s supposed impurity which inevitably emanated from her through her breath as well.
For myself, I imagine that Magdalene wanted to remain pure, or at least purely herself in a world that disdained her. But it is the nature of the breath that we are exposed, vulnerable and dependent on each other equally, something the church fathers or generally people in power seem to ignore, whether in biblical times or today.
One of the reasons why Marie Howe writes poetry is to remind herself of her true place in the world. „It’s so hard to be in the present, it’s almost unbearable. But when we read a poem we come back into our body, come back into time, and forget ourselves, enough to recover ourselves.”
“Magdalene — The Seven Devils
“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out” — Luke 8:2.
The first was that I was very busy.
The second — I was different from you: whatever happened to you could
not happen to me, not like that.
The third — I worried.
The fourth — envy, disguised as compassion.
The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,
The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The mosquito too — its face. And the ant — its bifurcated body.
Ok the first was that I was so busy.
The second that I might make the wrong choice,
because I had decided to take that plane that day,
that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early
and, I shouldn’t have wanted that.
The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street
the house would blow up.
The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer
of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing.
The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living.
The sixth — if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I touched the left arm a little harder than I’d first touched the right then I had
to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.
The seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that was alive, and I couldn’t stand it.
I wanted a sieve, a mask, a — I hate this word — a cheesecloth —
to breathe through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that entered me when I breathed in.
No. That was the first one.
The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened?
How had our lives gotten like this?
The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it — distinct, separate
from me in a bowl or on a plate.
Ok. The first was that. I could never get to the end of the list.
The second was that the laundry was never finally done.
The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.
And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then
what was love?
The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t allow myself to belong
to anyone.
The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn’t know.
The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.
The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying,
the sound she made—her mouth wrenched to the right and cupped open
so as to take in as much air…the gurgling sound — so loud
we had to speak louder to hear each other over it.
And that I couldn’t stop hearing it
— years later — grocery shopping, crossing the street —
No, not the sound—it was her body’s hunger
finally evident — what our mother had hidden all her life.
For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,
the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew
underneath.
The underneath. That was the first devil. It was always with me. And that I didn’t think you — if I told you — would understand any of this—”
(Note: there are two line breaks that are different from the original, due to spacing on the blog:
The seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that/ was alive, and I couldn’t stand it.
I wanted a sieve, a mask, a — I hate this word — a cheesecloth —/to breathe through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that/entered me when I breathed in.)