Explain yourselves, W&B

With so much attention given to the happenings of a poem after its read, seems like Wimsatt and Beardsley place much emphasis on responsible reading. But what does that entail? A reader can't derive too much meaning from the psychological origins of the poem (the intentional fallacy). Nor can a reader place too much stock in the psychological effects of the poem (the affective fallacy). And both fallacies, per W & B, end in relativism.

So the object of reading should be preserving the entity of the poem itself. Fair enough. But how? If poems belong to the public, neither authors nor critics, then meaning is left to the public. A convergence of meaning perhaps? A multi-faceted meaning? A cooperation between the poem's meaning, the poet's meaning, and the public's meaning? Would Wimsatt and Beardsley consider that legit? Probably not.

Text itself, I guess.

In a way, I agree. It'd be a shame to only read a poem's meaning within the confines of the poet's psychology. (And how are we to know that, really?) How limiting. Yet ignore the poet's intent as if it's not even valid? A nice thought, but it seems unavoidable. Can't remember the last class I took which required reading and analyzing apart from the poet's (oftentimes murky) history. Our Norton Anthologies include author bios before the readings; they're usually required, so I usually read them. But then I'm committing intentional fallacies right and left. I can't help but speculate why Poe (or Dickinson or Thoreau or, well, anyone) wrote what they wrote. What were they feeling? What were they thinking? Bad questions, apparently. Or, at least, irresponsible ones.

For a while I'll experiment with text-only reading. We'll see how long that lasts.

Another poet on the Poet

I'm reading Kathleen Norris' memoire The Cloister Walk, and I'm finding that I need some meditative space to mull over her writing. That's probably what she intended. Her thoughts come refreshingly after Emerson and Shelley, a mental break.

I was pleased to find a chapter in which she directly addresses Emerson's and Shelley's definitions of artists, poets. She, too, perceives herself as innately influenced by Romanticism, and she seems to have strong opinions on the matter:

It doesn't help that others often encourage artists to think of themselves as somehow more special, sensitive, "creative" than other mortals. This is false doctrine. There is but one creator, and "creating" is the very thing that artists cannot do. The gifts of the human imagination that artists employ operate equally in science and scholarship, teaching and philosophy, business and mathematics, ranching, preaching, engineering, mothering and fathering (Norris 40).

No doubt that artists - poets - oftentimes feel "other," and that sense of otherness can yield a compensatory self-confidence, what some read as arrogance, self-assertion. Norris makes this point later in her memoire. Yet, for me, compensatory self-confidence, a sense of responsibility for the gift of expression, doesn't equate to the Emerson-esque declaration of quasi-divine appointment. They aren't the same. The difference lies in Norris' assertion that "There is but one creator, and 'creating' is the very thing artists cannot do." Now, that's a novel idea. I hear so often of the author's creativity, his ability to generate if not new thought, then better-expressed thought. Yet here's Norris, claiming that "creating" isn't even the artist's doing. It has little to do with the artist. The agency isn't his. He's a vessel for the divine's creativity. The divine's expression. As is everyone else.

I like that.

It's easy for artists to claim for themselves, implicitly, quasi-martyr status. (Maybe that's the quasi-divine assertion's partner?) The emo, artsy/angsty leanings seem to be the modern manifestations of the tendency. Norris addresses this, too, with a positive spin:

Still, it can't be denied that artists interact strongly with their world, and that there is a measure of suffering involved as they come to a mature understanding of their communal role (Norris 40).

Communally, for the service of others. Shelley may have reached this conclusion had his thoughts not forked in the direction of artist supremacy. The mysticism and idealization of writing makes it seem so unattainable to the "common man."

For now, Norris' thoughts on the artist's role sound fitting. I appreciate her voice.

Ozick on Romanticism

During our last class discussion of Shelley's advocacy of poetry, Professor Powers dropped Cynthia Ozick's name as a decidedly non-Romantic read. I'm beginning to realize how intrinsically influenced by the Romantics I am (we are), and I'm wondering how a different perspective sounds. So I decided to investigate.

For starters, I read her essay "A Youthful Intoxication." The following excerpt best explains the catalyst for her conversion, an argument of another literary thinker:

And reading on and on in a fever of introspection, I was beginning to undergo a curious transformation: not the spirit’s visionary turning, but one willed and chosen. I had become the Ancient Mariner — only in reverse. Gazing down at the water snakes writhing below, Coleridge’s mystical sailor is all at once seized by a burst of joyous sanctification: to his transfigured senses the repulsive creatures of the sea are now revealed as blessèd things of beauty. But I, pursuing passage after passage of Baeck’s reprise of the incantatory romantic — its transports and exultations, its voluptuously nurtured sorrows, its illusory beauty anchored in nothing but vapor — I came to see it all as loathsome, no different from those mindlessly coiling water snakes. What did it lead to? The self. What did it mean? Self-pride. What did it achieve? Self-delusion and delirium. That way lay Dionysus. I chose Rabbi Baeck.

Of this "Rabbi Baeck," she refers to Leo Baeck, author of Romantic Religion, and she describes him as "consumed, beyond the vastnesses of his own multifaceted tradition, by Greek and Christian thought." She explains that his book caused her to rethink her former emphasis on "mere mood" and instead focused "on humane conduct over the perils of the loosened imagination."

To me, Ozick convincingly argues for Romanticism's tendency toward narcissism. Perhaps that explains why Emerson occasionally annoys me. Poetic beauty and literary value seem subjective to Romantic thinkers, so subjective that - paradoxically - only the liberated few attain its "illusory beauty" and achieve its divinity.

Yet Shelley seemingly argues the opposite. Rather than tend toward the self, literature/poetry/art benefit the whole of society. He argues for poetry as moral informant, as societal foundation. Apparently selfless aspirations (duties?). How refreshing that he doesn't declare himself divine...well, then again he does claim that "the passions purely evil have never formed any portion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets."

Reading about the delicate, quasi-divine natures of poets exhausts me. Perhaps that's why I find Ozick refreshing, at least for today.

A parting thought. She concludes her transformation explanation with a caveat: It is not an essay to write stories by; stories crave the wilderness of untethered feeling.

So, does she essentially denounce non-Romanticism for the sake of writing? Does she adopt an illusory beauty anchored in nothing but vapor in order to produce valuable literature? Is this the only way to produce good literature? Does poetry - all literature - necessitate some degree of Romantic thought? Or does the adherence to this specific "valuable" qualifier only confirm our post-Romantic gauge?

Emerson's poet

Fasten your seatbelts, please. I’m about to expose my ignorance.

I don’t know the first thing about literary criticism. You’d think four years of (sub)consciously doing literary criticism as an English major would clue me in to some general concept of the thing. But I guess it’s like learning to walk; eventually, you just do it, you do it well, you do it for long periods of time without concentrating on it, but the day someone asks you “Wow, which bones and muscles are you employing to do that?” or “About how many times do you contract your muscles in a single stride?” you’re clueless. (Not that anyone’s ever asked me that. Maybe that further supports the point.)

So I approach this literary criticism blog with fear and trepidation. If these thoughts sound unprocessed and elementary, well, they are.

We've been reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Poet," an essay which more or less elaborates on his beliefs concerning authorship, art, and the like. Admittedly, I find myself struggling through Emerson reads. Not because I don't like him. Actually, I quite enjoy his writing. But I struggle to practice analysis when reading Emerson; but that I mean, it's easy for me to subscribe to his beliefs and mantras because they're beautifully written. I forget to follow his concepts through to their necessary implications.

See, I'm on board with his concepts of beauty's origin - "as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God that makes things ugly" - and his belief that art repairs - or, at least, temporarily patches - "the decay of things," and even with his identification of hypocrisy in writers who don't transfer their knowledge of beauty to actions of beauty. I believe his concepts of imagination and inspiration. And his acknowledgment of the divine as art's primary influence. His conviction that writing is an epic act, having eternal value, I get that. Agree with that.

Why I'm skeptical: Emerson's transcendentalist foundation which declares that intuition is the essence of truth. (For the Christian, intuition is too much guided by the flesh and should not be trusted. Seems problematic.) Also, Emerson's belief - perhaps, "glorification" - of the poet as a quasi-divine seer. Perhaps it's the agency here which bothers me, that the poet can somehow tap into divine truth rather than the poet receiving snippets of truth from God. Coupled with a hints of arrogance (or false humility, same thing), Emerson's declaration of the poet's nobility annoys me.

Writers engage in important work, no doubt. But, c'mon Ralph. People don't love you as much as you think. Does your work enhance my liberation? Sure. But depend on your work as my emancipation? No thanks.

In Thursday's class someone asked whether authorship depends on what one writes or how one writes. Must an author generate ideas ex nihilo or must they merely express common ideas well? Seems like Emerson believes the former. Poets (authors, writers - does he include these in his definition?) illuminate truths beyond worldly-realm understanding. He must "announce that which no man foretold." I'm not sure about that. Currently, it to me seems that ideas cycle and that most writers produce beautiful - and valuable, sure - imitations of those common ideas. (My thoughts on the matter are still mid-transformation.)

Tangent for thought: last semester, after reading Emerson's "Divinity School Address," our early American literature class discussed the influence of his Unitarian commitment on his writing. Unitarians believe in the "single personality of God" (Thanks, Wikipedia), a unified divinity. (Opposite of the trinity? I'm not so sure.) Jesus is exemplary of obedience to moral authority. He might be supernatural, but not divine. What, then, is divine to the Unitarian? Adherence to higher morality? Perception of other-worldly insight? Parallel thinking to God's? Unified reason and belief (I could use more of that in my life)? And what do these beliefs indicate about Emerson's definition of authorship?

Over and out.