How we love those books which are radical, revolutionary, iconoclastic, but don't require us to lift a finger. How we hate much more traditional writings which ask us to do something, however tentative. Which of the two is more subversive?
If it is said that religion, or its successor the cult of the autonomous man, is necessary to prevent our being cruel to each other, we have only to point at the events of the historical record, asking: "Is it these that you wish to protect from the sceptical view?"
A child hums or sings some favoured tune
To blot the hissing wings of the dark
From the orange moon's pastel surface.
Senescence has evolved, some say, because genes that benefit the body during youth but have deleterious effects in age are not selected against until well after reproduction and the support of offspring. One wonders whether something similar has occurred in relation to the structures relating to our reasoning and our intuitions, our intuitions of transcedence for example. Our reason has evolved to solve problems in securing reproduction, and errors irrelevant to reproduction, because disconnected or so far subsequent in time, are simply not selected against or, at least, not until it is too late to matter.
Is it not odd that the population never requires the modern, post-monarchical State to demonstrate its virtue through self-denial? On the contrary, it is always members of the population that must provide proof, by the suppression of their wishes and by evident sacrifices, often enough sacrifices to the state. This would appear to result from the fact that the current form of State has no personal reality in the minds of population; we do not see the people composing the State, as we once did in the persons of the King or Queen and their Court. We may even naively think that the State is ourselves, an error not limited to democracies but probably more frequent within such systems than in others.
But was it really much different under a Monarch? Perhaps not, for even then the people might see themselves in the Crown, as Hobbes suggested was possible. But obviously in the 17th Century this was not always so, and sometimes the state seemed to be a competing person that the citizen must resist and even execute. In our time the opacity of the state all but completely conceals its personnel, an effect deepened by the way in which the civil service hides behind the politicians who struggle to control them.
The state is not a person, in our eyes, and is therefore excused the need to demonstrate its virtue. The virtue that we undoubtedly attribute to the state is nothing more than a reflection of our own sacrifice. It has become in many respects like a God, with the self-seeking of the priesthood screened from view, and though intermittently suspected and sometimes glimpsed, it is never at present long enough before our eyes for it to become evidently a permanent and systemic characteristic. The historical record tells us that this can and does change, sometimes very quickly.
The introduction of new thought into poetry violates the principle of externality and observability, whereby a poet is limited to what can be seen, and what can be observed introspectively. This, oddly behaviouristic position (we might call it “subjective behaviourism”) is perfectly tenable, but a great deal of literature has been written in this mode, and we perhaps have enough. More to the point, this material was written sincerely, whereas contemporary writers have to “feign anaesthesia”, to use that nice phrase of Ogden and Richards, in order to frame their work. (Craig Raine’s Martian poems would be a prime example of this.) And in any case, much of the writing of the past which seems to be objective is not so, and many parts of so-called objective poems in the present conceal weak scientific hypotheses, or ideologies. – William Carlos Williams’ soppy poem about a tree ("Trees") relies on the idea of a universe created for the glory of man. But simple immersion in a science in general is not a sufficient corrective, and some sciences are better than others. Biology forces an introduction of new material, whereas physics is so abstract that the cosmic grandeur already present in the literature of religion can easily accomodate it without transformation. In principle, a very conscientious writer might be able to get something new from physics without falling prey to miltonics, the grand style, but I am not aware of any that escape that trap. It would, I think, require a truly heroic effort and be well worth the hardship, but it is not for all individuals to attempt. I shrink from it myself. A really comprehensive knowledge of physics would be necessary, and might not be enought to prevent error. Even Peter Atkins, in his very unusual Creation Revisited, falls a prey to the poisonous romantic heritage of Wordsworth and Paradise Lost. What hope for others?
The literature of the past, particularly that of the seventeenth, often impresses us, at least in English, because it is a poetry in touch with the main body of human thought, scientific and philsophic current at the time. Literature gradually, through the 18th and 19th centuries, and right into our own time has been losing contact with the network of propositions that constitutes human science, extending, as Quine says, from mathematics on the one hand to history on the other. It is not that there are no connections, but rather that it is has fewer connections than other areas; it is relatively isolated and now it stands gradually emptying of intellectual content, or infused with a trivial philosophy designed to inflate the status of the empty-headed writer. The writer has failed the reader, not the other way around as is so often said. Poets today resemble clergymen of the Anglican order, transforming their cloisters into coffee-shops to tempt the ordinary person back into the arms of the Holy. But, and in exactly the same way, it was never the masses who were important to the church; they supported it because they were compelled by circumstance. The church has failed because it has lost the support of the intellectuals, who gave it prestige and created the compelling circumstance that made it a powerful societal phenomena. Something very similar has happened to literary poetry. The priests of both are now in the process of replacing that loss by recruiting amongst those who were never deeply interested, and amongst the muddled and the wounded. Poetry is attempting pastoral outreach, and by doing so it further degrades itself in the eyes of intellectuals. Since such people are not interested anyway it may not seem worth poetry’s while to avoid deeper contempt. However, to think this would be a mistake. The more abject the art becomes the less likely it is that any recovery can be made. The point can be brought out by contrast with lyric verse, which needs neither help nor apology; it thrives as never before in the popular song, where demanding forms and self-advertising wit earn their living from the mating habits of the young. It is not a very interesting form of life, to those looking on, but it is definitely alive and growing. Literary poetry on the other hand is in decay, and proof of this can be found in the diction of contemporary poetry, which is impoverished, and not simply because it is restricted in size, but rather because it draws its novelties from two or three sources only: from colloquial speech, from slang, and from local or provincial factual detail. I have separated colloquialism from slang since it seems to me that there may be a useful distinction between colloquial uses of items from the formal lexicon, and slang neologisms. By slang I do not, of course, mean “uneducated slang”, but that of all groups, though it will be found that poets are somewhat unadventurous in their choice of sources, generally sticking to the slang of poets and the slang of the currently fashionable underdog. Local detail is a category including product names, place names, personal names even, phrases from advertisements, and signs.
It will be immediately noticed that all these sources of novelty are what we might term casual. Reasoning that it is their duty to remain in touch with the common world, poets restrict themselves to what they think of as ordinary or non-elitist diction. This is a very strange way of going about it. Slang, in plain intention, and colloquialism accidentally, are exclusive, elitist. That's the point. The same may be said of provincial detail.
In addition I should want to say that these sources of diction are rich in quantity, but contain a great deal of redundancy, and in many cases are categorically poor; distinctions and grades are lost. Terms of approval in slang coalesce and tend to hyperbole. By trying to meet the common man, by rather inefficient means and in a place where he is not to be found, the literary poetry has turned its back on the subtleties of language, subtleties that are in fact thriving, however ephemerally, the popular lyric.
Forego speech,
And other patterns of facile mimicry.
Find satisfaction and resource in things,
Not people.
Allow the light to pass, nor hope to stop it.
13 January 1991
Blythburgh
Some years ago in Kyoto a mosquito bit me at night and settled on the sliding doors of the bedroom. I nudged it with a sock, thinking only to knock it to the floor, but it exploded there and then with a great streak of my red blood, all over the immaculate white paper. On the straw mats it lay and wriggled, so I finished it off, and there was still more blood, soaking a minute patch (it was after all only a mosquito) on the tatami floor. – I think of the floor always when reading of assassinations in Japanese stories. For the rest of the day I was worried by the incident. My own blood at so early an hour, and in another animal, had a strangely perturbing effect upon me. It was as if I had been able to look back upon my corpse and the vultures and jackals now playing round it, fighting for scraps of my carcass.
Light orange clouds across the sky,
Wisps of silk, blood-tinted by a dying sun.
Slight fibres of an ember sinking into dust.
With the exception of one line of thought, to which I will return, all philosophies require their students to engage in ceaseless reading and writing, as if there were always some extra point of value to learn or to add. Something very similar happens in some branches of the humanities that we would be wary of honouring with the term "philosophy", though they too certainly have their philosophies. English, or History, for example require an immersion in words before a degree is granted. Give the rule (Constable's Rule), that the importance of literature to a society is in inverse proportion to the number of books available, where the number is always more than zero, we should be cautious of paying much attention to the widely read, or being more than courteous to writers. Once a society has found a few texts by which to live there is no reason why it should not cease to produce more, except that societal change renders obsolete any adopted canon. Individuals may do better, but tend to be tormented with the suspicion that they do not have quite the best available; in intellectual matters we tend to prefer a lifetime of one-night stands to marriage, or, better still, a marriage supplemented by an indefinite number of affairs. Since the total eradication of the printed word is unlikely, and more than should be hoped for, there is one option: Chastity in a marriage to Scepticism, the great exception to which we all return for reinnoculation, deinfestation, and antibiosis.