On Compassion Fatigue

Compassion Fatigue (2014) by Ashley Reaks

As a full-time carer for an elderly parent, 92, with Alzheimer's, I'm intrigued by - and potentially at risk from - secondary traumatic stress (STS), or, as it's commonly known, compassion fatigue; a condition characterized by a gradual hardening of the heart and increased indifference to suffering.

For the fact is, nothing is limitless - not even love - and, sooner or later, everyone involved in providing care for the sick, the vulnerable, the poor, the feckless, or the otherwise needy and dependent, reaches the limits of their patience and concern (even if they are professionally trained to work with such people and cope with traumatic conditions).

It's little wonder then that the highest idealism often results in the most grotesque forms of abuse; for in the end, caring makes sadists of us all ... As does the endless moral insistence by the liberal elite that we in the West should assume responsibility for the entire world.

Arguably, it's not people like Donald Trump and Matteo Salvini who are inuring ordinary people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty, as some suggest. Rather, ironically, it's the bleeding-heart news media that has caused widespread compassion fatigue by constantly broadcasting graphic images of starving children, drowning migrants, and the victims of catastrophic natural events, making us all feel helpless and hopeless and, ultimately, resentful.
      

Desensitised and depressed by global suffering, it's understandable that many people eventually think fuck 'em and look away, deaf to all further cries for help, or appeals to their charity.

And it's this, I think, that explains the rise of populism; figures on the so-called alt-right understand how tired and fed up and anxious and angry people are already feeling, in a way that those on the self-righteous left refuse to. 


Note: this post was partly written in response to an article by the Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole in The Irish Times (26 June, 2018): click here to read online. Many thanks to Simon Solomon for bringing this piece to my attention.

On the Difficulty of Death for Old Ladies

Tony Luciani: Internal Reflection,
 from  Mamma: In the Meantime (2016)
(A series of photos and paintings featuring his 93-year-old mother, Elia.)

The comic actor, Steve Martin, once conceded that he'd never made a great movie. But, he went on to say, he had made several films that contained genuinely great scenes. I think something similar might be said about the verse of Michel Houellebecq; no really great poems, but many that contain genuinely great lines. 

Those critics who characterise his work as callow and clichéd, or dismiss it as insipid and ineffectual, are not so much mistaken as beside the point. For these things, of necessity, belong to a body of work that is bold enough and big enough to incorporate them; a form of writing that affirms what Nietzsche terms a general economy of the whole.

In other words, the secret of really interesting poetry, like Houellebecq's, is not the fact that it contains powerful and original elements, but that it's unafraid to make mistakes and display its weaknesses. Further, it parades intertextual indebtedness with pride and invites readers to hear echoes of other authors.
        

But this post isn't intended to be a defence of Houellebecq as an artist, nor a comprehensive review of his new dual-language selection of poems entitled Unreconciled. Rather, I want simply to indicate how some of Houellebecq's reflections on old women approaching death resonate with my own observations and experience ...

Death is difficult for old ladies who are too rich, says Houellebecq, referring to the kind of women who own antique furniture and wind up in cemeteries: Surrounded by cypresses and plastic shrubs. But, actually, death is often difficult for many women - even those whom he calls the council-flat old / Who imagine till the end that they are loved and wind up at the crematorium: In a little cabinet with a white label.

For many women - particularly mothers - simply refuse to let go and die. Men, as a rule, die sooner and with less fuss, less bitterness; they know when the game is up and they'll be best off out of it, as my father would say. Women - particularly mothers - aim to stay for as long as possible in their sordid bedrooms where they keep little objects tucked in their wardrobes - the insides of which reveal just how cruel and how futile life can be.

On and on these undying women persist; watching TV without quite catching what is said (despite the increased volume) and eating their meals without appetite (despite the added salt); growing older and increasingly feeble in mind and body: You see clearly the nothingness awaiting them / Especially in the morning when they rise, pale, / And moan for their first cup of tea.

In a very moving couple of stanzas, worth quoting in the original French, Houellebecq writes:

Les vieux savant pleurer avec un bruit minime,
Ils oublient les pensées et ils oblient les gestes
Ils ne rient plus beaucoup, et tout ce qui leur reste
Au bout de de quelques mois, avant la phase ultime,

Ce sont quelques paroles, presque tourjours les mêmes:
Merci je n'ai pas faim, mon fils viendra dimanche,
Je sens mes intestins, mon fils viendra quand même.
Et le fils n'est pas là, et leurs mains presque blanches.

This is mostly true and, sadly, often the case. Though, not wanting to be defined as a son by my absence, I'm doing what I can to provide care and ensure my mother doesn't become just another unloved body dying without mystery. It's hard work though; depressing, tiring, frustrating, boring, etc.

But so are many jobs and at least caring affords me the opportunity to listen to the little birds in the garden and read poetry on my birthday ...  


See: Michel Houellebecq, Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013, trans. Gavin Bowd, (William Heinemann, 2017). All the lines quoted, in full or part, are Bowd's translations from the French and are taken from three untitled poems, pp. 29-33. 

For those interested in the work of Tony Luciani, click here to access his website, or here for information about his exhibition, Mamma: In the Meantime, at the Loch Gallery, Toronto, Canada.