Poetica Scientia

If you are already familiar with John Senior, Josef Pieper, and other likeminded writers, this paper by Dr. Stephen McInery will be no news to you. I happened on this while searching for some biographical information about John Senior, and felt it would be worth mentioning it here for anyone for anyone who has never heard of the idea of the poetica scientia. The paper is not on that idea alone, but the notion of "poetic experience" plays an important role in the larger topic of "The End of Education." This term has a broad meaning separable from poetry proper, but it should hold an important place in any philosophical analysis of literature.
http://www.fcsaustralia.org/2007_Conference/TheEndofEducation_StephenMcInerney.pdf

Wordsworth Condemns False Liberty

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells;
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased of some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

-William Wordsworth

Traditional Catholics rightly complain about the distorted misconceptions of liberty that have played so great a role in the destruction of culture and the loss of souls. Many would be surprised to find an ally in Wordsworth, a poet who is typically associated with pantheism and with the Romantic desire to shatter all limitations placed on the spirit. Indeed, the young Wordsworth was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution, and his writings influenced popular pantheistic movements for generations including the Transcendentalists of our own New England. However, his early admiration for Liberty did not last. Wordsworth changed his mind after he learned of the mass murder that had been done in the name of "Reason." This change is on the one hand related to the cult of the passions normally associated with Romanticism, but it is also related to a revival of interest in medieval culture and religion, and thus we often find that Romantics will favor Catholic over Protestant symbolism. Obviously we cannot confuse this with a true revival of Catholic thought or morality in England, but someone who can help others recognize the Catholic Faith as being esthetically, culturally, and psychologically well-ordered within the walls of apostate England and despite the influence of the Revolution is worth considering. Though pantheism and passion-worship may be the primary influence of Wordsworth, indirectly the movement of which he was the head had a significant influence on the Oxford Movement as well as on the later literary revival we know primarily through Chesterton. For his part, Wordsworth became more and more conservative as his life went on, but the subtlety I feel distinguishes him from the stereotypical Romantic can be seen even in this early sonnet.

Concerning the poem itself: I like that it begins with the high vocation of religious life, then moves to intellectual works, manual labor, and even into the natural world, allowing us to see that the same principle is at work throughout all of nature. In applying the principle to his own task as a poet, he ultimately makes a convincing case against the chaotic tendencies that would later develop into literary modernism.

This article by Joseph Pearce is of related interest: http://www.univforum.org/pdf/378_Pierce_Revival_1003_ENG.pdf

Sustainability Will Further Alienate Us From the Land

From Josef Pieper's Essay "Learning How to See Again."

You may argue, perhaps: true, our capacity to see has diminished, but
such loss is merely the price all higher cultures have to pay. We have lost, no
doubt, the American Indian's keen sense of smell, but we also no longer need it
since we have binoculars, compass, and radar. Let me repeat: in this obviously
continuing process there exists a limit below which human nature itself is
threatened, and the very integrity of human existence is itself endangered.
Therefore, such ultimate danger can no longer be averted with technology alone.
At stake here is this: How can man be saved from becoming a totally passive
consumer of mass-produced goods and a subservient followerbeholden to every
slogan the managers may proclaim? The question really is: How can man preserve
and safeguard the foundation of his spiritual dimension and an uncorrupted
relationship to reality?

The capacity to perceive the visible world 'with our own eyes' is
indeed an essential constituent of human nature. We are talking here about man's
essential inner richness-- or, should the threat prevail, man's most abject
inner poverty. And why so? To see things is the first step toward
that primordial and basic mental grasping of reality, whic constitutes the
essence of man as a spiritual being. [...]

The diagnosis is indispensable yet only a first step. What, then, may
be proposed; what can be done?

We already mentioned simple abstention, a regimen of fasting and
abstinence, by which we would try to keep the visual noise of daily inanity at a
distance. Such an approach seems to me indeed an indispensable first step but,
all the same, no more than the removal, say, of a roadblock.

A better and more immediate remedy is this: to be active oneself
in artistic creation, producing shapes and forms for the eye to
see.

In this essay Pieper observes the increasing speed at which we are coming to interact with the world exclusively through various instruments, and therefore less directly through our own five senses. While he is no primitivist-- that is to say he does not oppose technology as such or propose a "return to nature"-- he does argue that we have come to a limit at which this process has ceased to be simply the development of helpful tools and has begun to undermine the natural proportion between man and the world. Let us reflect for a moment on how these principles might be applied to environmentalism today.

Many people I talk to seem to feel something similar to what Pieper describes, though it remains on the level of intuition. Especially among those interested in the rise of organic farming there seems to be a desire not simply to have healthier food, but to go out and interact with nature in one's own body. This often seems to be an unconscious and unreflective conviction. If it's only a matter of saying "I like how it feels to see and touch things in my own body," then it is perfectly fine for it to remain so. Pieper goes a step further in pronouncing our inability to see with our own eyes to be a danger to human nature.

To say this problem involves anything like a danger to human nature requires us to affirm that there is an established natural order that is intentional. If not, we simply have two different ways of perceiving the world, and do not have grounds for saying anything more. If it's only a matter of preferring one mode of perception, then we could aim at creating drugs to make people stop caring just as well as we could aim at teaching them to see with their own eyes again. Though many people with a newly discovered green mentality seem to feel we must get back to interacting directly with nature, such a claim is only possible if we suppose man is meant to be in this world, that there is a proportion which must be preserved. If not, then any solution, even one which further alienates us from our environment, is acceptable so long as it is sustainable. Very likely the most sustainable possibility is the option of complete alienation not only from our environment but even from our own bodies: life inside the computer.

Thus the concept of sustainability, taken on its own, could logically lead to the opposite of where the green movement expects it to take us. If there's no intention in the natural order, then the harmony between man and his environment proposed by many environmentalists is no more sensible than a total alienation from our environment. The ultimate realization of this principle would be hooking one's brain up to a computer and letting the body die, but there are any number of intermediate stages which could be proposed. These ideas are no longer pure science fiction, but are increasingly being seen as real possibilities for the future. If it's only the practical question of sustainability we are interested in, a cyber utopia along these lines might be preferable to direct interaction with the environment. It might be more efficient. It might be less harmful.

The fact that so many environmentalists seem to feel it is good not simply to make human life less damaging to the earth, but also to have people experience nature directly, suggests to me we ought to be reflecting more on these topics. If it is good, then there is an objective order to life that must be preserved, and not just the practical question of survival. Ultimately this means that only theology can truly support this mentality. It falls apart when viewed materialistically. Once we admit such an order in the world we also realize that this is a matter of preserving the integrity of a fastly distorting human nature, not simply an environmental question.

Sadly, most people who believe in natural law have focused their intention on a handful of moral controversies and completely ignored these more subtle shifts in mentality. On the other hand, many environementalists feel intuitively that there is a proportion between man and his environment which should be preserved, but lack the philosophical foundation to make this anything more than a sentiment. Soon, as the green movement becomes increasingly mainstream and our lives become more dominated by video screens we will be forced to take a hard look at these questions. Hopefully we will have the good sense to admit there are controversies here that are more than practical, but are metaphysical and moral.

If this makes any sense to you, I reiterate Pieper's advice: limit your use of technology, especially as used for inane entertainment, and engage in creative activity.

The Pope speaks on rural life: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/POPRURAL.HTM

Is Poetry Song?

The fact that poetry originated as song is referenced often and for many reasons. Some poets use this fact as an affirmation, as if it automatically makes their writing more profound or magical. “Can’t you see what I’m doing is not mere words on paper? I am weaving the Song of the Universe!” Sometimes it is brought up by people who find poetry difficult, boring, or static. From their perspective, poetry on the page is at best a helpful form of record-keeping, but ultimately an aberration when it replaces the sung or spoken word.

The right way of understanding the relationship between poetry and song is not difficult to discern. First of all, music is clearly the more fundamental art. Arguably it is the most fundamental art. All children sing. Infants have some understanding of rhythm even in the womb. A culture without music would be unnatural, a thing much worse than an illiterate civilization. Poetry is an art necessary for any fully literate people, but is secondary relative to music. I certainly have no desire to encourage illiteracy, but it would not be an assault on human nature to lose writing.

What we call poetry, arguably, was originally just lyrics written down. This origin story does not define poetry completely, but it does help us to differentiate poetry from other genres of writing. In the case of rhymed and metered poems, whether it is the normal English method of counting feet or a looser structure such as I use, there is obviously a connection to sound and rhythm more fundamental than in a work of prose. The connection to rhythm becomes more obscure in the case of free verse, but the heightened awareness of the sound of language generally remains. Thus poetry is more connected to song and speech than other forms of writing. This does not, however, mean that a written poem is a mere imitation of something that properly should be recited or sung. I give two reasons. The first is the manner of reception. A song or a recitation is always a public event, even if it’s a small public. The reading of a poem is private. Even if it is not done in physical seclusion, it is an event that takes place primarily in the mind. It may enter the mind through the eyes by reading, but it is not aimed at ocular stimulation. While retaining some significant connection to song through its heightened awareness of sound, poetry has also evolved its own use of language in a way appropriate for private meditation. Despite its being a rather poor definition, Wordsworth’s famous line about recollection is a wonderful recognition of this point. The second reason is connected to the first. Because poetry is primarily an event in the mind, and not a stimulation of the senses like other arts, its use of language also tends to be far more intricate than song. Many older forms of song, Scottish ballads for example, are more poetical than most modern music. Even so, I do not think any song tradition quite approaches the intricate language games we find in more sophisticated poetry. Poetry is connected to song not only historically but formally and can be distinguished from other literary genres by this connection, but it also has its own principles which distinguish it from song.

Lastly, I would like to point out that these distinctions rest on a continuum rather than in perfectly arranged categories. The deep musicality of a poet like Dylan Thomas begs to be read out loud, but the effect of a writer like Rilke is perhaps best understood in silent recollection, even physical solitude.

[A note about the above comment about music being the more fundamental art: Our own culture is more musical than any other in the sense that we are being almost constantly bombarded with music at work, at stores, on television, and elsewhere. Because it is through recordings the average person is actually much less musical than he would be in a more primitive situation. We are more saturated with music and less connected to it than ever before.]

Pope Blames Moral and Aesthetic Degeneracy on Liberal Priests

"Then unbelieving priests reform'd the nation,
And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;
Where Heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute,
Lest God Himself should seem too absolute:
Pulpits their sacred satire learn'd to spare,
And vice admired to find a flatterer there!
Encouraged thus, Wit's Titans braved the skies,
And the press groan'd with licensed blasphemies.
These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,
Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!"

-Alexander Pope, from Part II of the Essay on Criticism

In this passage Pope is reminding critics to be unafraid to attack poetry full of monstrous vice. This point is well worth remembering. Criticism of any art cannot limit itself to stylistic analysis, but must also take into account the likely effects on the observer and on society. Art should not be reduced to its barest moral meaning, and criticism therefore must do much illuminate the purely aesthetic, but this can never be separated from concerns about truth and goodness.

What's particularly interesting about this passage is the suggestion that degeneracy in art follows "unbelieving priests" failure to condemn vice out of a desire to make the work of salvation "pleasant" and a fear that "God Himself should seem to absolute." If we want to beautify our civilization we cannot simply love pretty things but must learn not to spare that "sacred satire," and to pray that our priests will not spare it either.

The Poet and the Philosopher

I missed the weekend by a couple days, but now I'm back with another post discussing the nature of poetry. This is going to be somewhat briefer because I'm still in the middle of editing two books, and preparing to host a young adult philosophy discussion on Thursday.

In the essay The Vocation of Poetry that appears in my book I have a section that differentiates poetry from other arts through its affinity with philosophy. This post will be a summary of that argument.

• Poetry is uniue among the arts because it does not work directly on the senses (supposing we're talking about printed poetry or poetry read in a normal voice, rather than a sung ballad). Flute-playing, architecture, painting, and baking all achieve their effects through a specific sense which they exploit. Poetry may be received either through the eyes by reading or the ears by being read to, but it does not have its full poetic effect until the imagination re-presents the images in the mind. Thus poetry is in a sense the most intellectual of the arts.
• Poetry also is a more intellectual art because it can use abstract language directly. A figure representing Justice may appear in a painting, but a poet may write an ode to Justice directly. By saying poetry is the more intellectual art I do not mean to depreciate any other medium. On some level is is to the disadvantage of poetry, because it makes it less visceral, less immediate in its effect.
• Because poetry is the more intellectual art, it is closer to philosophy.
• Because poetry is an art that by its nature is close to philosophy, it forms something of a bridge between the mind and the heart. In my essay I also describe it as "the mode of expression in which the inner unity of beauty and truth is made manifest."
• The poet and the philosopher should not try to do each other's jobs. The result turns out to be bad. We ruin poetry on the one hand by reducing it to versified philosophy, and philosophy on the other hand by undermining its need for systematic analysis. They compliment each other, but still have different ends as well as means.

I'll close this with a quotation from The Man Who was Thursday, "if the Secretary stood for the philosopher who loves the original formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light in special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon." In my essay I discuss why this is not quite accurate, but it remains a lovely meditation and a reasonable summary.

Tennyson on the overdone Love of Letters

I should hopefully be able to get back to longer posts on literary ideals this weekend. I'll be busy arranging a presentation on scholastic psychology for a young adult group next week, as well as working on poetry, but I should have time to write another post. In the meantime, I want to share this clever little poem by Tennyson titled 'Poets and their Bibliographies':

Old poets fostered under friendlier skies,
Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say,
At dawn, and lavish all the golden day
To make them wealthier in his reader's eyes;
And you, old popular Horace, you the wise
Adviser of the nine-years-ponder'd lay,
And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter bay,
Catullus, whose dead songster never dies;
If, glancing downward on the kindly sphere
That once had roll'd you round and round the sun,
You see your Art still shrined in human shelves,
You should be jubilant that you flourished here
Before the Love of Letters, overdone,
Had swampt the sacred poets with themselves.

If I have a problem with this poem, it is only that it turns poetry into something of a religion. In the essay "Christianity and Literature" printed in The Seeing Eye C.S. Lewis points out that there is a common tendency in our history to make a religion out of poetry in absence of true religion. The other side of this is that true religion on the one hand exalts poetry by declaring the Beautiful to be a true object of love ultimately suggesting Divine Beauty, and on the other hand lowers poetry to the level of a human craft by putting the burden of revealing truth and mystery elsewhere. That is to say, it puts poetry in its proper perspective.

Beyond that, I find this to be a delightful little meditation. The body of it is a somewhat run-of-the-mill restatement of the old (and still useful) norm of reverence for ancient authors, but what makes it very interesting to me is the sudden criticism of "Love of Letters, overdone," in the last two lines. I occasionally hear poetry defined in terms of a love of language, a concentration on the sound of words. This is true enough, but becomes very problematic once the love of the sound of language is put in opposition to the content of language. Certainly the form and content together form the meaning, and to love both is a true love of language. I do not know exactly what Tennyson means by "Love of Letters, overdone," but interpreting it as a self-absorbed estheticism certainly explains how it could "swampt the sacred poets with themselves." Another possibility would be that he's referring to excessive criticism at the expense of creative activity, by which process an exaggerated love of letters buries poetry in writings about poetry (I will address this problem in a later post asking whether or not poets ought to be educated). I will not claim to know exactly what Tennyson is getting at, but self-indulgent estheticism was certainly a concern of his. He makes this point brilliantly in the narrative poem 'The Palace of Art,' in which the palace crumbles after separating Beauty from Truth. On the other hand, the reference to "bibliographies" in the title suggests that he may be thinking of excessive learning about poetry by poets who should be sticking to the classics. All of these possibilities can certainly be claimed to be matters of concern for Tennyson, regardless of the exact intention of this poem.

Lastly, I think the description of Virgil is quite a lovely account of the importance of reverence for nature in forming one's talents (I would extend this to all talents, though only poetic gifts are referenced in the poem). Compare Virgil writing just ten lines in the morning to the frantic typing of Kerouac or other peddlers of unedited garbage.