what does it even matter?

Today in class, we discussed Wimsatt & Beardsley's "Intentional Fallacy." In their essay, they bring up the question of whether it's legitimate to ask the poet a question sounding similar to "What did you mean by this line?"

After thinking about this query, I don't necessarily think it is always legitimate to ask such a question. Does it bring us any further revelation about the meaning of the poem itself? Not really. According to Wimsatt & Beardsley, intentional fallacy "begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism" (1388). Essentially, what these two critics are saying is if we dig too deep into what the poet was experiencing when they wrote a poem, we get only answers to what was going on in the poet's life--it doesn't add to the richness of the poem itself. We'll find out loads about the poet's personal life, great. But perhaps it doesn't really help us understand the poem any better. There is sometimes a reason that the poet keeps lines ambiguous--so that the words can mean many things to many people. Thus, in discussing all these different meanings, we create a HETEROGLOSSIA. yikes, that's more postmodern than anything I had previously mentioned. I better not cross into that realm yet...

quote taken from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2001.

misrepresenting

Do we misrepresent the human race when we write? That's the first question that came to mind after reading Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear The Mask" in class a few days ago. For further clarity in this blog, I'm going to copy the poem down here:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

If we leave out the hardships, the "cries from tortured souls," or the torn and bleeding hearts, is the poet giving a thorough picture of humanity and life? No, of course not.

Is the real meaning or picture of truth that which resides in the human condition? Yes. But we cover it up. Everything must appear as if we've arrived at perfection, when in reality doesn't the Bible say a contrite and broken spirit are as a fragrant offering to God?

Oftentimes it's hard for me to read Emerson or Shelley and really agree with them, mostly because it seems as if they believe they've achieved perfection--they are, as a matter of fact, The Poet (or so they would think). I would more quickly follow after one who admits that no, they don't have it all together, but that they are willing to learn and make mistakes--someone who admits to being human. There is just something too pompous about the way Emerson elevates himself. How can the Poet hold truth if the Poet acts inhuman?

the truth of it all

Our literary criticism class talked about the truth of literature a couple of days ago, and I had a heck of a time trying to articulate my thoughts to the class. So I am just going to do a type of freewrite now, to see if any thoughts solidify and help me form a well-worded opinion.

Shelley wrote in his essay "A Defence of Poetry" that "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" (717). In other words, poetry teaches us to use our imagination, which teaches us to live morally in society. I agree that training our imagination helps in knowing how to live morally, but I struggle with how this fits in with my Christian beliefs. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus is the only one through whom we learn how to live life abundantly. In this case, perhaps poetry (literature) is just a medium through which we derive meaning. The poetry itself is not truth. It is not intrinsically good. Jesus is intrinsically good, and through knowing him, we know truth. We know life that is moral and fulfilling--as John 10:10 states, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (NIV)

I think this is also why I struggled with Dr. Powers' discussion on Tuesday. He said that he didn't think poetry was so much a tool for truth, rather he thought it was the truth. Perhaps we had a disconnect somewhere in the conversation, but I really could not agree with him. We all have moments where we read some type of literature and jump for joy that someone else has articulated what our hearts have been hiding from our tongues. But does that make the utterance true? Does that make the word selection inherent truth?

There is still so much that I don't know. And perhaps I am still not making much sense. But that's the purpose of these blogs, is it not? To attempt to reveal what my heart is hiding from my tongue. Someday I'll figure it out.

Separated from the Poet?

Formalists would argue that a reader should not attempt to make connections between the poem and the poet, an author and the literature. Why? Because poetry should merely be read as a poem, as a work of art that has no value within the author's personal life. According to the formalist, the reader should only ask the question, "How does this structure of words, or combination of words, make a meaning?" The value of the work lies only in the written words.

I strongly disagree with this viewpoint. Literature takes on a whole new meaning when considering the background of the artist. Even the words a poet chooses to employ in a given work retain some of the poet's personality. Although she didn't write during the modern period, let's take a look at one of my favorite poets, Elizabeth Bishop, and her poem entitled "One Art."

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

With the knowledge that Bishop traveled extensively throughout her lifetime, it seems as if the poet is directing advice right to the reader. Yes, everyone has lost keys and other various random objects, but not everyone has changed homes so often that you think it's no big deal to up and lose three houses. Bishop lost those. She traveled to Brazil and Canada, and several places in-between. She lost the rivers near her homes and the cities and continents she had lived in. The last stanza, however, is the one stanza that truly stands out from the rest, in regards to personal emotion. Bishop's lover committed suicide after Bishop left the relationship--life is a terrible thing to misplace. The "---" before she begins this stanza indicates a hesitation to admit such a personal loss. We see this hesitation again at the last line: "(Write it!)"

"One Art" is only one of many poems that would lose a great deal of meaning if we could not connect it with the poet's background. I think it's impossible to write, let alone read, without including one's own history, or past actions (or current, for that matter), or thought processes (which are often influenced by our environments and culture). Therefore, I don't think I'll ever be able to read a poem in a formalist manner.

"Cult-cha, Dahling"

Culture: n. [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture]

"While I appreciate Matthew Arnold’s creation of the interrelationship between
culture and perfection in, Culture and Anarchy, I find it difficult to follow
how he arrives at such. How would he suggest we pursue total perfection, when we
are a very different people, individuals? He suggests that we allow the will of
God to prevail but sadly, the will of God is often misconstrued even by the best
of finite minds. Still, I uphold Arnold’s call to see and learn truth in an
effort to pursue both personal satisfaction and bring about culture. I wonder
whether this might realistically be a logical impossibility. Arnold’s essay,
provokes a lot of pertinent considerations, but in my mind, also leave a lot of
questions."

A classmate of mine wrote the above as a brief response to "Culture and Anarchy" by Matthew Arnold in her literary criticism blog. Her questions concerning the essay's realistic possibilities are valid. Truth be told, Matthew Arnold lived smack dab in the middle of the Victorian era, a time where lines of faith and religion were extremely blurred due to the rapidly-accepted theories of Lyell and Darwin and the ever-growing Industrial Revolution. Therefore, it's understandable for everyone, including Matthew Arnold, to have some cognitive dissonance about culture, God's will, and the such (what I'm getting at is that I don't necessarily have answers to those questions, either!).

At the time of the Victorians, the socially-elite bunch were obsessed with the kind of culture that distinguished them from the lower classes, the lifestyle that they lived. Arnold, sick of seeing the discrepancies between the extremely (few) wealthy and the extremely (plentiful) poor, decided to shake things up a bit in the socially-elite realm. He wrote that culture was not the distinction between classes, rather it was the driving force that united humanity as a whole (Arnold believed that isolation was undesirable; see “To Marguerite—Continued”). To Arnold, culture represented all that was the best of human thought and knowledge: one could say culture was a representation of all that is true in the world. With the Victorian faith crisis, what had been the established form of truth, Christianity, was negated. Therefore, Arnold’s culture became the new religion, the “sweetness and light” in the world.

Arnold’s theory of culture (literature/poetry) would match up, to a degree, with Shelley’s mindset of the ethical faculties of poetry. If all together, humanity strove towards truth and morality by means of studying literature, would it be beneficial?

Shelley's Golden Rule

Though Shelley professed to be an atheist, his views of morality did not stray far from what we now call "The Golden Rule," found in Matthew chapter 22, verse 39: "Love your neighbor as yourself." It might not be apparent initially, but loving one's neighbor as oneself requires a great amount of imagination. Shelley states that "A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many other; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own" (700).

To think of what the self wants is easy and comes naturally--but thinking beyond selfish primary instinct towards what creates happiness in others is quite abnormal to the human being. The mind must leave oneself and crawl into the body of another, taking on a new history, present, and desires. Since this exercise is foreign, there must be a method for aiding the continual practice of unselfishness, or ethical behavior.

Shelley insists that "poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb" (700). The imagination necessary to comprehend a poem helps to build the imagination necessary to place oneself in another's position and decide whether or not an action or decision is ethical. Shelley's writing may be valid in an argument regarding the validity of studying literature--our society wants us to make ethical decisions that better the our communities and governments, right? Well then, perhaps we study literature to help us understand better the mindsets of our neighbors and to act in a way that will benefit society. Emerson would most likely agree that we must study literature because the emotions and histories that take place deep within ourselves are only stated as correctly as possible by the poet. However, I would not go as far to say we can ONLY understand our neighbor by reading about them--relationships must come into play at some point, or we would never make any decisions that affect anyone.

In a diagnostic test I recently took during my literary criticism course, I was asked to define authorship. My response?

"An author is one who constructs a thought or an idea and shares their idea with others by crafting words that explain the thought processes. These words are gathered into novels, articles, short stories, poems, and other forms of literature. It is the author’s purpose to convey an idea as clearly and sometimes as creatively as possible, bringing understanding to a topic that a reader might not have grasped previously."

After reading Emerson's essay, "The Poet," I found that my definition had a few similarities to Emerson's definition of an author:

"The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune. For the experience of the age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet" (726).

The author is responsible for bringing new understanding to a unique experience. Especially since "the man is only half himself, the other half is his expression" (Emerson, 725). Emerson's words ring true for me. As an English major, I cannot begin to count the painstaking hours I spent trying to siphon out just the right word to accurately portray a personal experience. Emerson argues that many men try to pinpoint the poetic language of Nature, but only those with the most adept and skillful ears can interpret Nature's song (Emerson, 726). Yet even then, when the poet/author finally expresses an idea in the purest humanly form, the expression is still imperfect. I believe that this imperfection is the beauty of authorship--sometimes our language does not contain the best word possible for expression.

The struggle for purest expression flows out of authorship and into reading. Where the author has failed to express correctly "nature's song," the responsibility to find the best form of expression falls on the reader. Perhaps the reader will have a broader experience of the author's idea, and perhaps a broader vocabulary useful in explanation. Where does the line between author and reader fall? Is there ever a point where authors stop reading and possess only original thought, or are they always under some sort of influence of other authors (which would make them a reader)? Are readers ever only just readers, or do they take on author-like characteristics?

All quotations taken from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2001.