The Two Selves

About this poem

Each of us has two primary selves: the ‘self’ of ego consciousness and the autonomous ‘Self’ of psyche. This haiku poem makes linguistic play of words. In particular it employs the five-syllable German expression, “Auseinselbstsetzung” (“self-employment”) and translates it poetically in a manner similar to how Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian short-story writer, essayist and poet, famous for his twin self-reference as “El otro” or as “Borges y yo,” used it to refer to his other poetic authorial self, that I refer to similarly as “my other Gemini self,” having been born at the cusp, under the astrological sign of Gemini. Taken as a phrase, I translate the second line of the poem, “Jawohl, “Auseinselbstsetzung,” loosely and poetically translated in English as “emphatically self-employed” as a means of emphasizing the poem’s first line, and at the same time revealing the common trait of the Gemini personality to be introspectively inquisitive, if not annoyingly repetitively so. I hope this haiku poem brings tolerable clarity to those who are single-mindedly focused and unwavering in their concentration. This poem also plays on my complex nature of revealing two distinct selves, referred to in my poem, “A Poet’s Two Voices” and hinted at, in my poem entitled “You and” (“Du und Ich”). Another poem of mine, “In Search of Self,” is yet a further attempt of mine to bring the two selves in harmony; to obtain balance and harmony in the psyche. more »