Excess and restraint will not tear you apart
if you make quite sure you apply each modality
in a way that’s restrained, so that each plays a part
in preventing excess that distorts your totality.
That restraint should supersede excess
is a rule regarding what may pain you
should be observed for things we love, to love more less
than what’s enough according to the haggadah’s “Dayyenu,”
the opposite of the afikoman’s message,
which encourages the finder of what once had been concealed
instead of asking for some more requesting lessage,
“enough” the ace he’s hoping to him will be dealed.
Zachary Woolfe (“Astringent Modernist Meets Instrument of Old,” NYT, 3/9/11) reviews a recital at the Austrian Cultural Forum:
In the second of seven poems set by Gyorgy Kurtag for voice and cimbalom in 1981, Amy Karolyi writes, “Excess and restraint: these two will in the end tear me in two.” It’s the kind of despairing text that has always appealed to Mr. Kurtag, but it’s not true of him. His defining characteristic is to bring together excess and restraint to revel in their simultaneous presence — not to tear his work in two, but to give it unremitting tension.
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
