"In a Dark Time" genre: Contemporary
	lo fi play (dial-up) hi fi play (broadband) download (15.1 MB)	email track to a friend	add to My.MP3
	A setting of Theodore Roethke's masterpiece, "In a Dark Time" for choir and chamber ensemble.
	Story Behind the Song IN A DARK TIME, possibly the best of Theodore Roethke's mature works, is a deeply religious poem about the "dark time" of inner conflict and doubt - the confrontation between a man and his darker self ( his "shadow") as well as between the individual and the world. The moral question is so powerfully stated: "What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?" Images of light and dark, self versus self, and madness versus reason play off one another. And at the very height of agitation the image of an eclipse ("And in broad day the midnight come again!") awakens deep, primeval fears. What frightens him is that, among this confusion of separate and divided selves, he may have no true identity. What makes him whole again is the recognition that he is a "fallen man." To embrace this realization is to overcome the fear of death, and the separation between mind and God is dissolved in the mystery of interpenetration. I first set this text in 1976-78, during my student years. I was drawn to it again in summer of 1989 and decided to create a new setting for it with what is, I hope, a deeper vision of the poem's meaning. Lyrics In a Dark Time In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood - A lord of nature weeping to a tree. I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks - is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have. A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is - Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind. "In a Dark Time" by Theodore Roethke Copyright © 1960 by Beatrice Roethke Adminstratrix of the Estate of Theodore Roethke Published by Doubleday & Co., Inc. Used with permission

Copyright notice. All material on MP3.com is protected by copyright law and by international treaties. You may download this material and make reasonable number of copies of this material only for your own personal use. You may not otherwise reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, or create derivative works of this material, unless authorized by the appropriate copyright owner(s).