At exactly 2.41 a few mornings ago, I woke suddenly from a dreamless sleep. There was an eerie luminescence in the room, yet the night was moonless. As I sat up, realising that something, some sound or aberration, must have plucked me from the shades of my Deep REM phase, or whatever kind of sleep I was having at the time, I made one of those random, unaccountable mental connections that such occasions often invoke. I thought of a poem I had to learn off by heart at school.
"Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)/ Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace/ And saw, within the moonlight in his room/ Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom/ An Angel writing in a book of gold…"
The whole poem—induced no doubt by shock and a certain amount of fear (after all, what the hell had woken me? And where was the light coming from?)—came straight back to me, testimony to the profound and durable impact of punishment-assisted rote learning. That was how, for example, in the same period of my life I got a lasting hold on Byron.
"The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,/ And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;/ And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,/ When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee."
To reach that level of assurance, however, required an intense learning experience.
"Who came down, Matthews?"
"The Syrian, Brother." WHACK!
"The ASSyrian Matthews, ASS—very appropriate in your case. Came down like what, Matthews?"
"A ... tiger, Brother?" WHACK!
"A wolf Matthews, a wolf. And what were gleaming Matthews?"
His…? "Jodhpurs, Brother?" WHACK.
"Wrong continent, Matthews; wrong war. Stay in and write the whole poem out five times." And thus I gained my love of literature.
And from that same deeply buried source came the story of Abou Ben Adhem who, finding that the Angel was writing the "names of those who love the Lord" and that his was not on the list, proposed that he be recorded as "one who loves his fellow men". The Angel wrote and vanished. Returning the next night "with a great wakening light", the Angel revealed "the names whom love of God had blessed/ And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest".
This modest poetic epiphany did not, however, do anything for my predicament. The