The Gate by Simone Weil

The Gate 

Open the gate for us, and we shall see the orchards.

We shall drink cold water where the moon has left its trace.

The long road is burning and hostile to the strangers.

We err without knowing and we never find our place.

We want to see the flowers. Here the thirst is upon us.

Waiting and suffering, here we are before the gate.

If we must, we shall break down this gate with all our blows.

We’ll press and then we’ll push; but this barrier is too great.

We must languish and wait and we must keep watch in vain.

We look upon the gate; it is closed and too heavy.

We fix our eyes on it; we weep under the torment.

We keep it in our view; we’re crushed by time’s gravity.

The gate is before us; what’s the use of our desire?

It is better to leave and to give up on all hope.

We shall never get in. Watching it has made us tired.

So much silence came out when the gate was once opened

That neither the orchards nor the flowers have appeared;

Only the immense space of the void and of the light,

Which then became present and that overwhelmed the heart,

And bathed our eyes at last, almost blinded by the dust. 

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For the last few years, every Sunday began with poetry for me. Every Sunday, nearly a dozen people from all over the world, from different walks of life, would come online on Zoom to read and reflect on a poem. Poems sans borders. Poems that are and cannot be limited by language, culture or nationality. Every week, like modern seances, we would sit with a poem and meditate on its nuances. Some poems are direct and deceptively simple, while some are slippery and elusive. But there are some others that would pull us out of our comfort zones, out of our walled gardens or boxes, to ponder the worlds beyond our sensory grip. We zoomed in on a Gate on the latest edition of our ‘Chunk of Poetry’. ‘The Gate’ by Simone Weil. And ‘The Gate’ opens into a world that is timeless and all too familiar to all who read it. 

Simone Weil was a French philosopher, political activist, and mystic. She was born in 1909 in Paris into a wealthy Jewish family and died in 1943. In her 34 years of living, she crossed the worlds of human suffering, social justice and spirituality. She made it her mission to become the voice of the marginalised and resist the war machines of fascism and totalitarianism. Her political activism took her to factories, farms and refugee camps where she saw and perhaps helped open many gates of struggle, resistance and liberty for the common folk. But, in her career as an activist and through her writings, we can see that compassion was the force that guided her in her actions. It was an original and simple act of having concern for fellow beings. Here, we should understand that in her 34 years of living, she experienced two devastating World Wars and unspeakable crimes against life. She was witness to barbarity. She was subject to hatred. And yet, though it was easy to give in to hate and respond with violence, she chose to have concern. To arm herself with compassion and solidarity. But this does not mean she was immune to all the darkness surrounding her and her times. She, too, waged war with her own demons as she searched for meaning in a world that often crashed down onto her as alien, indifferent and too self-centred. Perhaps this is why she always strove for empathy and a genuine understanding of the world and her fellow humans. She has also explored various religious traditions in her attempt to make sense of a world going utterly senseless. 

The poem here opens by speaking about a Gate beyond which lies a land far removed from the injustice, fear, suspicion, oppression or hatred that defines the dominant realities. Beyond this gate are the orchards and the cold waters graced by the touch of the moon. Beyond this gate, there is a land that is kind and gentle to strangers, where everyone is sure to find their place. And before that mighty gate, these strangers, but travellers of the same road nonetheless, await to witness the bloom of flowers that could bear seeds of their hope. But, despite all the longing and deep desire to cross the Gate and into that ‘paradise’, their Gate of redemption remains tightly shut, leaving the travellers to suffer the very fate they’ve been running away from. 

They were migrants who were fleeing hunger, and they hoped for an orchard beyond that Gate. They were travellers lost in the road, scorched, parched and tired of polluted, toxic streams, and so dreamt of the cool, serene moon-kissed waters they shall drink from. They are refugees seeking mercy and shelter. They are also pilgrims, lost in themselves, now searching for themselves or something else. And so, the travellers are many, and so are their desires. They flock outside the impossible Gate; at first, they rejoice at its sight, and then they prey as they gently knock. As time goes by with no sight of a gatekeeper or the click of the hidden locks, they lose patience, and prayers give way to protest. Gentle taps on the gate become poundings, and joy reverts to anguish. They’ve waited for long and suffered all along, and now, all that stands between them and the life they dream of, in desperate need of, is this gate, colossal or puny, made of heavenly metals or simple plain wood. Now, the impatient mass raises their arms, ready to push or press the gate to submission, find their way to freedom, fight if they must, and finally claim their piece of paradise. But they realise they are no match for this barrier. Thus, they fall into despair, and nothing’s left to be done. Now, they begin their watch and scatter within to find that ember of hope, courage, or even grief that carried them to that gate against all odds. To see if they could keep it alive for a little longer until the gate opens their paradise. Till the moment they could enter and fulfil their desires. But time is the ruler of this realm, and time alone prevails. So even the champions of the many, the best of the best, begins to falter. Everyone now feels the heaviness of the gate. Now they have no choice but to ask, What is the point of all this? Desire and hope! 

And at that precise moment of utter and complete hopelessness, as their desires were simply crushed under the weight of that immovable gate, it flung open. But inside the gate, it was not quite what they were expecting. There were neither orchards to satiate their hunger nor moon-touched waters to quench their thirst. There, they walked into a vastness of silence. A space of nothing but light. And in that silence, as their hearts are now unburdened of many desires and shone by the light, they were beginning to feel the presence of the present moment. At that moment, they realised the Gate had now opened to their homes. And this is the test of resilience, of faith, the ultimate key that could open the Gate when it’s time.  

But what exactly is this gate? And where would one have to look for it? This is the question that the poem ultimately leads us to. One thought makes me see how fascinating and miraculous humans are in many ways. We are so full of opposites, ironies, and complete disjunctures, yet we find ways to get along, survive, hold on if possible, and move on if necessary. And what enables us to be this resilient, or even defiant, is our ability to conceive and conjure ‘Gates’ that could either glimpse us on the path forward or portal us off altogether. Now, the important feature of this gate is that it is unique for every individual. One cannot see or cross the gate of another. And every desire, emotion, passion, or dream conjures a new gate. And so, in that sense, we live in a world of countless gates to our many paradise, visible only to us. Some to escape, some to live in, some to cherish, and some to hide.

This reminds me of a beautiful Italian movie I recently watched, Life is Beautiful. This Italian comedy-drama is set in Fascist Italy and narrates the story of Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner and his family and how he navigates through the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. In the movie, comical and witty Guido and his family are taken to a concentration camp, where Guido and his wife are separated during the internment. But his son stays with him along with other Jewish prisoners. But, a witty Guido then opens a ‘Gate’ of imagination for his son to shield and hide the child from the nightmares of the real world. He convinces his son Giosue that they are in for a game and that he must perform tasks to win a tank. And so, even amidst the mounts of dead bodies and the horrors of the gas chambers or the hard labour he had to endure, Guido made sure that his son continued to ‘play’ this game by doing tasks like hiding from camp guards, staying silent, not crying, or not complaining. And he maintained this act until his very last, just so his son would find the courage to look for the sunshine awaiting him beyond that gate. Here, it’s not just the gate that Guido crafted for his son but also the one he found for himself, one of his love for his wife and son. He used his humour to prepare that gate through which he saw the beauty of life and its simplicity and, most importantly, taught his son the greatest lesson a father could ever teach. The movie ends when an American Sherman tank rolls into the camp, breaking the iron gate of Nazism that has, until then, imprisoned those human lives. At that moment, after seeing that tank, another gate was opened for Giosue; he had won the game he was playing with his father. 

This is just one story, one perspective. The gate in the poem also alludes to every religion that promises a world and life beyond the one we have here, now, on this pale blue dot. And people do all sorts of things, from random acts of kindness to those utterly diabolical, for the gate to remain open for them to enter when the time comes. The desire for a luxurious afterlife drives their madness, ritualistic or systemic. And people happily blow up themselves or others, erect monuments or demolish history, and do and speak all things unholy, all for the sake of a ticket beyond that holy gate. 

The need for a ‘gate’, at least a desperate and completely fictitious idea of one, is intrinsic to human existence. Our whole life is just a trip from one gate to another and then to another. When one gate opens, we immediately begin our search for another. Suddenly, an orchard becomes insufficient as we start looking for variety. And so we continue our tryst with gates and whatever courtyards, palaces, shacks or doors we find inside. But, none ever satisfies. So, what is all this about? I think it is a test of humanity. I believe these ever-repeating patterns reveal our hubris and the need for humility, compassion and patience. With oneself and the world. And when one finally understands this principle, that there is no gate, that all that we have conjured out of thin air are but mirages, then without any of our exaggerations or embellishments, without any grandeur or divinity, a breeze that carries the trace of the moon from the cold waters would fill our hearts. In that moment of calm, we find our Gate open and ready for us. To enter and embrace the now. Heaven and hell have the same gate, but whoever remembers his breath shall not err and lose his place. And gates, what do gates do? They just open! 

    - Harishna M U