Huge subject, obviously. But I've been thinking about it and wonder what others think.

I'll give you my take--as of today, at 10 a.m. Tomorrow, I'd no doubt choose something else to say about it.

Both philosophy and poetry aim for--or should aim for--obedience to truth. Only the terms they use are different: philosophy uses abstract language and reason, usually, whereas poetry for the most part uses imagination and figurative language. The philosopher aims to state truth apart from the stamp of his or her personality, the poet's truth has personality stamped into the language itself.

Real philosophy doesn't seek truth as theoretical and abstract--that's for professional academicians, not philosophers--but truth as direct and actual. "Truth as such," as they say.

Both poetry and philosophy aim at truth as a destination still unknown.

My own favorite poets, Dante and Yeats, are explicitly philosophical, but I doubt there is such a thing as a poem without some philosophy in it.

Here's something that Wallace Stevens says on the subject. I don't really agree with it completely but it might be food for thought:

The truth that we experience when we are in agreement with reality is the truth of fact. In consequence, when men, baffled by philosophic truth, turn to poetic truth, they return to their starting point, they return to fact, not, it ought to be clear, to bare fact (or call it absolute fact), but to fact possibly beyond their perception in the first instance and outside the range of their sensibility. What we have called elevation and elation on the part of the poet, which he communicates to the reader, may not be so much elevation as an incandescence of the intelligence and so more than ever a triumph over the incredible.--from "The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet," in The Necessary Angel

The part I don't agree with is that this has to do with poetry only, not philosophy too.




[This message has been edited by Andrew Frisardi (edited August 28, 2008).]

It is indeed a huge subject but the very breadth opens a discourse to many directions.

Aware of my many knowledge gaps,I hesitate open this commentary, but I will say, that over the years I have been inspired to writing poetry (and sometimes fiction) by reading both philosophy and poetry. Sometimes the result acquired had a form and content wherein only I would recognize the source of the poem. I am not claiming that the results have been brilliant, but the impetus has certainly been provided by philosophy as well as by reading other poets.

I am going to think more about this and will return with something more concrete (if "concrete" is an acceptable term in this context. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif.) Names and thoughts and inspiration is what I mean.

I know that Eratosphere has many scholarly members who can make outstanding comments on the subject. I'm certainly looking forward to following the progression of this thread.

This was so well-put, Andrew.

Thanks, Janice. That's interesting what you say about embedding the philosophical background in your writing so that it's more or less invisible on the surface (I think that's what you meant in your posting). Many good writers do that. I'm thinking of Richard Wilbur right now but there are lots. In his famous poem "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World," the only explicit trace of philosophical reading is in the title itself, which is a quote from Augustine. But the rest is a concretization of the idea, an embodiment of it. That's why, although I enjoy reading philosophy, I like poetry more--embodied thought leaves a much more vivid impression. At the same time, philosophy can help to vaporize what's too concrete.

The alchemical formula "dissolve and coagulate" might be seen as describing the tension between thought and representation.

Editing back in to add: I know what you mean about gaps in knowledge! Christ, I'm more gaps than knowledge in this. I'm just fishing around in GT to get some leads!



[This message has been edited by Andrew Frisardi (edited August 28, 2008).]

There are at least two kinds of philosophical poem. The first kind advances a particular philosophy or ideal. The second expresses a love of wisdom. Some poems do both. The metaphysical sense, the sense of essence—that which Stevens labels "incandescence of the intelligence"—is impossible, I think, without philosophía, without the expression of love.

Stevens is a great poet, but I often think the philosophy in his poems expresses not so much a love of wisdom as a lust—a barely contained craving for psychical beauty. There is a sense in which the sometimes genteel surfaces of his poems really are surfaces only.

One of the high points of philosophical poetry for me is Frost's My November Guest. Having once read it immediately after finishing Boethius' Consolation, I have never been able to read it since without being moved to tears.

I think it was my early, sort've obsessive readings in both western
and eastern philosophy brought me to poetry, too. In recent years when I'm in high lyric
mode, when I'm just ambushed by the poem -- I find myself moving from
observation to assertion, and feeling afterwards that I've touched
closer to my own sense of aesthetic. At the very least I feel less
wariness of producing what might be called lyrical argument. It's a
heady feeling and one I suspect Stevens became addicted to. Lust, vs
love of wisdom is a wonderful way to put it. Still, if it's assumed
the lyric and the mystic and inquiry are of the same origins, it's helpful to
remember that the greatest mystics were serious philosophers/teachers, and not
just observers of the world, as poets ( ie 'witnesses') often are.
Frost and Wilbur both strike me as grounded in, and transcendent of,
philosophy. Andrew, while I'm here, I've been meaning to tell you I
simply relished the History of Light. A marvelous book with images and ideas I'm still absorbing.

I confess a tendency toward reading the ded, so I wonder who it is
that people here would consider the credible living philosophers.
Annie Dillard, (no fluff nature-writer, she) springs to my mind,
though I can't emphasize enough that I don't mean her poems, or the
novels.

Glad you liked that History of Light book, Wendy.

Thanks for that Frost reference, Mike.

About philosophers at present, I don't know. I do like Annie Dillard. Of 20th century philosophers Heidegger and Husserl are best for poetry. Also Gaston Bachelard!

Yeats wrote at the end of his life, "Man can embody truth but he cannot know it." For me, that sums it up. Thinking with the marrow bone.

I like philosophy that can help me do that better.

Ah, philosophy!

So precious little of it around these days.

Thank you, Andrew, for this thread.

We are all philosophers and metaphysicians, but many of us in an inchoate, even unconscious way.

It is usually accepted that western philosophy more or less starts with Plato (although many earlier Greek thinkers are also significant). And who does Plato most quote and argue with in the Dialogues? A poet.

"Homer is by far the most quoted author in the dialoges: of the 296 quotations listed by L Brandwood in his "Word Index to Plato" for the 28 dialogues I include in my tetralogies, 131 come from Homer, 93 of which come from the Iliad, and 38 come from the Odyssey (explicit quotations as well as obviously homeric expressions); far behind, we find, aside from Protagoras whose statement on "man-measure" is quoted or alluded to 19 times, Hesiod and Euripides, with 16 quotations each, then Pindar, with 13 quotations and Aeschylus with 12 quotations; the remaining quotations come from a multitude of known and unknown authors, only a few of whom are quoted more than once. Aside from explicit quotations and use of homeric expressions, the name of Homer appears 164 times in the dialogues."
http://plato-dialogues.org/biblio.htm

And so one could argue that, since Plato builds his philosophical system on and around Homer, western philosophy begins with poetry.

Somewhere along the way, poetry and philosophy parted company, but I think they belong together.

Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.
-Claude Levi-Strauss

Yes, Andrew, Bachelard is a must read philosopher for poets! I am often startled by how many people have never heard of him. And I agree about Heidegger as well, whose writing I think is often unintelligible to all but poets.

Goethe is another explicitly philosophical poet.
And Holderlin, though more eccentrically so.

Nemo

The main trouble with philosophy today is that it concerns only half of the human condition – the intellectual, rational or “spiritual” part of our being. But while many today would prefer to think that we are only our rational minds, the fact is our emotional, sensual body is left out of the picture. What poetry adds to philosophy is this missing half.

One of my all-time favourite philosophical poems is the Tao Te Ching, and its
“polar vision” – the Yin and Yang of experience.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other. (2)


We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the centre hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it liveable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use. (11)


This poem teaches the necessity of this fundamental polarity in life – that the Yang intellect needs to acknowledge its Yin counterpole in the somatic psyche. Poetry integrates and completes abstract philosophy.

Mark, I'm not sure which modern philosophers you refer to. These mentioned above are not thinkers for whom intuition is not, as they say, the mind's piston.

I guess there are no relevant living philosophers... Let me get in another plug for Dillard then, who I think shows signs of greatness, if only she'd stop writing poems. I recommend her strange little book, "For the Time Being". Abandon all expectation.

I'm surprised too, that modern poets don't drink more from the philosopher's well. As poets interested in rhythms and meters (which is music which is math, which is reason which is order which exists as brother to chaos), I'm especially surprised.

I think it's the contemporary aversion to granting the intellect any credence, as though doing so might sully the spirit, as if the two were in competition. As if the immortals were not in possession of both reason and intuition ! I would speculate that our emphasis on interpretation has brought modern poets to take Positions, rather than embody life's complexities in ever-evolving philosophies. One would hardly call Yeats, Frost, RPW, or ED didactic, and yet they touch many of us as teachers, with philosophic leanings. I wouldn't call them poets of witness, but poets for whom witnessing has formed not just a unique poetry, but what might be called a philosophy in motion. The term 'voice' is the new stand-in for the whole shebang, which sort've implies, rather bloodlessly and mindlessly, it seems to me, song without flesh, or instrument. Or to go back to Andrew's Yeats quote, vibration with no deep string, no marrow bone. I remind myself of these kinds of thoughts each time I produce what I call a float away poem.

Might be interesting to see samples of contemporary poems people perceive as well wedded to philosophy ...

Hi Wendy - I love philosophy, and I love reading certain philosophers. So, yes, I'm drinking from the well, every chance I get. Susan Howe, Bachelard, and Nietzsche are three of my faves.

“I think it's the contemporary aversion to granting the intellect any credence, as though doing so might sully the spirit, as if the two were in competition.”


Wendy, yes, hardly in competition – in fact, I see “intellect” and “spirit” as synonyms.

In the standard Western metaphysic, we have the polarity of “mind” and “matter”, and all that is abstract, rational, spiritual, belongs on the “mind’ side, and all that is gross, material, earthy, etc., is on the “matter” side. So "spirit" and "intellect" are a continuum.

Why I like James Hillman’s version of Neoplatonism, is that it reinstates the “metaxy”, the middle realm between abstract “mind” and concrete “matter”, by positing psyche, or “soul” as the middle realm, joining the other two poles.

So we have: Body (matter), Soul psyche, and Mind (Spirit).

The middle realm, the realm of the psyche, is the realm of imagination, as distinct from rational, logical thought. And psyche is where poetry is born. Well, in the interaction between Spirit and Psyche, and Matter, I would say. But the images of poetry originate in the psychic realm.

However, in modern times, this middle term has vanished from our cultural consciousness – we moderns and postmoderns have, in short, lost our souls – our emotional intelligence. No wonder poetry is almost dead in the wider culture.

Mark,

I agree with everything you say (and I love the Tao te Ching quote), except your point that poetry necessarily completes abstract philosophy. The things that the Tao says in that quote are also said by some of the best philosophers who wrote in more abstract terms--for instance, John Scotus Eriugena, whose writings were banned by the Church in the Middle Ages because of their pantheistic implications. Or Plato in his very difficult dialogue the Parmenides. Or Heidegger. I agree with Wendy's point that reason and intuition and revelation--the whole shebang--should be brought into the mix. I should specify that I mean inspired reason, reason that has dipped into the Muses' well. Certainly reason as a mere function of ego and the limited horizontal perspective cannot go very far in philosophy. I don't think that poetry is what the greatest philosophers would have written if they could have. To each their calling.

Wendy made a good suggestion: contemporary philosophical poems. Mary mentioned Susan Howe, whose work I don't know. Robert Hass has written some good poetry in a philosophical vein, although I don't have anything of his onhand to quote from.

In my opinion, much of postmodern philosophy has kicked the shit out of philosophy as a discipline. It has cut it off at the roots, leaving it to dry out. Philosophy reduced to clever manipulation of words and notions. The attack on post-Enlightenment reason has in fact been a hyper-rationalistic enterprise.

I completely agree with Mark about emotional intelligence, the middle realm of soul that Hillman talked about, the imaginal, as Henry Corbin called it, where meaning takes on form and form takes on meaning. It needs to be revived, and poetry can play a part in that. But philosophers can too: Mark, as you know, intellect is not the same as reason, in ancient and medieval philosophy; it refers to intuitive, immediate grasp of things, essential things. That's necessary too, and for that there has to be a metaphysical discourse, not only poetry per se.

A recent, though not contemporary, philosophical poet was Robert Duncan (a favorite of Hillman's, by the way):

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun's going down

whose secret we see in a children's game
of ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.




[This message has been edited by Andrew Frisardi (edited August 29, 2008).]

Oh, yes, Andrew, I agree that the higher reaches of reason, the spiritual realm of Nous, is one of direct unmediated knowing. It is the descent of this spirit into the psychic middle realm - the marriage of spirit and soul - which produces "inspired" poetry.

This poem (a fragment here) seems to concern this realm of direct knowing. And in my reading, it confirms the Heraclitean saying that "the way up and the way down are the same" - the "gods" (or archetypes) are the both the highest and the lowest.

From "The Labyrinth"

- Edwin Muir (1887-1959)


Since I emerged that day from the labyrinth,
Dazed with the tall and echoing passages,
The swift recoils, so many I almost feared
I’d meet myself returning at some smooth corner,
Myself or my ghost, for all there was unreal
After the straw ceased rustling and the bull
Lay dead upon the straw and I remained ...

I could not live if this were not illusion.
It is a world, perhaps; but there’s another.
For once in a dream or trance I saw the gods
Each sitting on the top of his mountain-isle,
While down below the little ships sailed by.
Toy multitudes swarmed in the harbours, shepherds drove
Their tiny flocks to the pastures, marriage feasts
Went on below, small birthdays and holidays,
Ploughing and harvestingand life and death,
And all permissible, all acceptable,
Clear and secure as in a limpid dream.
But they, the gods, as large and bright as clouds,
Conversed across the sounds in tranquil voices
High in the sky above the troubled sea,
And their eternal dialogue was peace
Where all things were woven, and this our life
Was as a chord deep in this dialogue,
As easy utterance of harmonious words,
Spontaneous syllables bodying forth a world.

That was the real world; I have touched it once,
And now shall know it always. But the lie,
The maze, the wild-wood waste of falsehood, roads
That run and run and never reach an end,
Embowered in error – I’d be prisoned there
But that my soul has birdwings to fly free.

Oh these deceits are strong almost as life.
Last night I dreamt I was in the labyrinth,
And woke far on. I did not know the place.

Great quote to bring in, Mark. Edwin Muir is one of my favorite 20th-century poets. And he did experience this directly, as he describes in his autobiography. Thanks for the Heraclitus, too.

Editing back in to add an anecdote. I read this Muir poem once to a group of writers at a writers' retreat. Dead, embarrassed silence was the response. Then dismissal. We postmoderns are supposed to keep this stuff under a lid.



[This message has been edited by Andrew Frisardi (edited August 29, 2008).]

I've barely read Bonnefoy. He's far from the only French poet with a reputation for being a bit that way, but his theoretical works are of sufficient interest that he influences himself - I've read that the dividing line between his poetic and philosophical works isn't always clear.

And Wittgenstein's a stylistic inflence for some. I recall trying to sound like him.

Andrew—

Mary Midgely: there's a good living philosopher for you.

I'm with Mark to an extent regards modern philosophy. It's little more than a byname for rational enquiry. To be fair, though, the first steps on the road to reason were taken by Plato in the guise of Socrates. But Plato was an idealist. The typical modern philosopher swings the other way. Both wrongly conflate property with substance. We need more out-and-out dualists.

Mike - I hadn't heard of Mary Midgely and should have. Having now read about her at Wikipedia, I see what you mean. Anyone who takes on Dawkins is alright by me.

Andrew—

To be fair, her beef with Dawkins wasn't the prettiest affair. She didn't exactly do the anti-ultra-Darwinian camp a lot of favours. But all the same, we knew where she was coming from: Dawkins is an asshole. And almost everything else she's written is wonderful—first rate.

I like Dawkins, and Midgely's critique of The Selfish Gene was willfully obtuse:

"Genes cannot be selfish or unselfish, any more than atoms can be jealous, elephants abstract or biscuits teleological".

As Dawkins replied, that's as idiotic as explaining to a particle physicist that elementary particles cannot be charming.

I suspect she's never actually read any Dawkins.

And, incidentally, why can't elephants be abstract?

Googling about, I found this site advertising a Conference on Poetry and Philosophy from just last year. So we are not alone.

The reason why most modern philosophy is useless for poets is that it is remorselessly rationalist and nominalist. And any other mode of consciousness is sneered at as "primitive" or "magical" or something worse. The Imagination has never had a good press in the West. And the imaginal mode is still considered regressive, dangerous or childish.

Interesting about that conference in Mark's posting. Looking at the program for it brought to mind two other contemporary "philosophical" poets: Jorie Graham and Susan Stewart. I don't like Graham's poetry (some of her early stuff, actually, I like OK), and don't really know Stewart's. Adam Kirsch has been writing some philosophical stuff of late. And Tim Love mentioned Bonnefoy, a really fine poet.

That's right about recent philosophy, Mark: it's all in the head, a symptom of university politics and cultural exhaustion. With a few exceptions. Phenomenology is an aspect of modern philosophy that has a lot to do with poetry. Here's a good description of the phenomenological approach, by Henry Corbin. Corbin was the West's leading scholar of Islamic esotericism--he didn't teach "philosophy"--but by my lights, he was a true philosopher.

"The phenomenon is that which shows itself, that which is apparent and which in its appearance shows forth shoemthing which can reveal itself therein only by remaining concealed beneath the appearance. Something shows itself in the phenomenon and can show itself there only by remaining hidden. In the philosophical and religious sciences the phenomenon presents itself in those technical terms in which the element '-phany' from the Greek, figures: epiphany, theophany, hierophany, etc. The phenomenon, the Greek phainomenon, is the zâhir, the apparent, the external, the exoteric. What shows itself within this zâhir, while itself remaining concealed, is the bâtin, the interior, the esoteric. Phenomenology consists in 'saving the appearances,' saving the phenomenon, while disengaging or unveiling the hidden which shows itself beneath this appearance. The Logos or principle of the phenomenon, phenomenology, is thus to tell the hidden, the invisible present beneath the visible." (from his essay "The Concept of Comparative Philosophy," dated 1974)

This is what the poet does, even if the poem isn't explicitly "philosophical." A living poem is philosophical. Some go deeper and wider than others, but poetic rhythm, the part that can't be translated, is a breath of philosophy, of communion of some kind, regardless of the poem's surface intention.


[This message has been edited by Andrew Frisardi (edited August 30, 2008).]

Yes, Andrew, I agree, Corbin is a significant figure and the source of much in Hillman.

And I also agree that "A living poem is philosophical."

Here, Emily sounds like Hillman, who echoes Keats and Blake:


Now I lay thee down to Sleep --
I pray the Lord thy Dust to keep --
And if thou live before thou wake --
I pray the Lord thy Soul to make --

(1539).

Being alive while not quite "awake" is to live with an un-made soul.

And here she sounds like Corbin:

Perception of an object costs
Precise the Object's loss --
Perception in itself a Gain
Replying to its Price --

The Object Absolute -- is nought --
Perception sets it fair
And then upbraids a Perfectness
That situates so far --

(1071).

In great poetry, every different angle of vision implies a new metaphysic.

Poetry is indeed philosophy.

I think elephants can be abstract, but only when they're philosophers. Midgely sounds mighty interesting. Mary, thanks, I'll look into Howe.
Have enjoyed this thread. Mark and Andrew, thanks for the poems.

I agree all living poems are philosophical, and I agree with those above who say in essence, philosophy, yes, measurement, logic, reason, yes, but I prefer music, play, embodiment, revelation and intuition over abstraction and substitution. But by saying so, we assume the worst of the bloodless philosophies, and the highest of sublime poetries. I think it's poets themselves, and not any imposed or imagined establishment which under/overestimates poetry, as though when we put the instruments aside and begin to sing, the ancients and measurements
don't remain, and we aren't dancing with all we know and don't know, but hovering nearby instead.



It was a hard thing to undo this knot.
The rainbow shines, but only in the thought
Of him that looks. Yet not in that alone,
For who makes rainbows by invention ?
And many standing round a waterfall

See one bow each, yet not the same to all,
But each a hand's breadth further than the next.
The sun on falling water writes the text
Which yet is in the eye or in the thought.
It was a hard thing to undo this knot.

(GMH)


--------

----------



By silver water, fruit of gold bowed low
to free the spellbound prince from form
of tree or beast, or keep from harm
the peasant girl before whom all will bow.

What shall we do with all our magic now?
Our wands are turned to sticks to beat
each other off and school belief.
Once, our gift of meaning to our world

gave back the gift of meaning to our days.
But even still, imagination
lets all understanding happen;
even then, curiosity was praise.

- Carolyn Connors


---------


--------

There is no such thing as collective consciousness !
- JM


Snowflake

Behold:

one

by floating

one

they come,

feather like,

small, and sweet,

molecular
and oh so

like-we unique,

melting at
the child’s cheek,

lighting on
the tattered aster,

at the backs
of elder trees,

accumulating in our sleep,
chalking the slate, revising the field,
clinging to the heresies
of silence and

significance,
of gathered weight, and influence,
of sway, touch, alight, and word,
of seasonal law acquiring earth.


(wendy v)






[This message has been edited by wendy v (edited August 30, 2008).]

I really enjoyed the poem choices, Mark and Wendy.

Here's another:

Mind

Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it know what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

--Richard Wilbur

This thread might be on the way down the page, but before it disappears I wanted to add one more posting.

It has to do with ideas of beauty. What is artistic beauty for? is related to the question, What is poetry for? We work at the craft so that our poems will be well made. To what end? Is it just for diversion (nothing wrong with that!), or is it also, at times anyway, for something larger than that, something longer lasting?

What kind of knowledge is aesthetic knowledge? Emotional, obviously. And sensual. Is it also cognitive or intellectual? The Platonists talk about "intellectual beauty": what's that? What poems have it and which don't?

I've come up with a few pretty good quotations on this issue, and wonder what other Sphereans make of it.

"The Greek original of the word 'aesthetic' means perception by the senses, especially by feeling. Aesthetic experience is a facutly that we share with animals and vegetables, and is irrational. The 'aesthetic soul' is that part of our psychic makeup that 'senses' things and reacts to them: in other words, the 'sentimental' part of us. To identify our approach to art with the pursuit of these reactions is not to make art 'fine' but to apply it only to the life of pleasure and to disconnect it from the active and contemplative lives." --Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, "A Figure of Speech or a Figure of Thought?"


"It is commonplace today to speak of a 'civilization of the image' (thinking of our magazines, cinema, and television). But one wonders whether, like all commonplaces, this does not conceal a radical misunderstanding, a complete error, For instead of the image being elevated to the level of a world that would be proper to it, instead of it appearing invested with a symbolic function, leading to an internal sense, there is above all a reduction of the image to the level of sensory perception pure and simple, and thus a definitive degradation of the image. Should it not be said, therefore, that the more successful this reduction is, the more the sense of the imaginal is lost, and the more we are condemned to producing only the imaginary?" --Henry Corbin, "Mundus Imaginalis"


"Art is not talent, it is knowledge. Beauty is a form of cognition. And when beauty is debased from cognition to sensation the next step is to perversion. The perversion of this experience of beauty in our civilization is a clear fact. . . . there is nothing to remind us of a destiny which transcends our small personal life. Hence our feeling of loneliness. Hence our sense of alienation." --Cecil Collins (English painter, 1908-89)


"Poet and sculptor, do the work,
Nor let the modish painter shirk
What his great forefathers did.
Bring the soul of man to God,
Make him fill the cradles right.

"Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler phidias wrought.
Michael Angelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
proof that there's a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.

"Quattrocento put in paint
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul's at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream.
And when it's vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.
Gyres run on;
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude,
Prepared a rest for the people of God,
Palmer's phrase, but after that
Confusion fell upon our thought."

--Yeats, from "Under Ben Bulben"




[This message has been edited by Andrew Frisardi (edited August 31, 2008).]

Ah, yes, Beauty!

Thank you for raising this point, Andrew, which might even deserve its own thread.

Beauty is the great casualty of the anti-aesthetic theories of Pomo/Marxism/Feminism.

I agree with Robinson Jeffers who goes as far as saying that - "Beauty is the sole business of poetry."

But, as you ask, what is "beauty"? Is it only a sensual experience? Jeffers says, "beauty is not always lovely". It can be terrible. This relates to Romantic theories of the "sublime" (Edmund Burke). And yes, beauty (as Shelley says) can be "intellectual" - mathematicians often use the word about formulae. There can be beautiful ideas, feelings, situations, as much as beautiful objects. Any experience which causes us to draw a sharp breath is aesthesis, the aesthetic effect.

And we can't live well, or for long, without beauty.


The Beauty of Things.

- Jeffers

To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things--earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars--
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality--
For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant--to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

Yay, Jeffers! I love his work, but I'm not getting his distinction between "natural" and "noble sentiments" at the end. Aren't they both an aspect of the same thing?
I did indeed think of starting a thread with the topic Beauty--before I even thought of the philosophy one.

What is more precise than precision ? Illusion.
(MM)

Andrew, Goethe's studies on Light keep coming to mind: 'we cannot know the true essence of a thing, but only its characteristics'. If color and illumination are the characteristics of light, what then are the characteristics of beauty ? And from there we come back to embodiment, and the poet's imaginary garden. Circular thinking entices and conturbat me...

I'll try to sort out a few thoughts. ..

My sense is that modern artists have minimal interest in aesthetic horizon or foundation, but maintain a casual interest in beauty. This seems fitting to our high speed, cerebral age, our disinterest in silence, solitude, and thoughtfulness, and our general estrangement from nature. What Mark would call the anti-aesthetic, and what I might call the poet-as-witness age, appears to be the anti-solution to the challenge of the examined life. When looking At, examination comes as quickly and easily as our meals. When looking To, quite another undertaking. Immersion in nature is quite a different thing from gazing at the garden. The poet as witness is a very different creature from the poet of experience, or the wisdom writers, east and west, whose interests lie in Perceptions of beauty, and ultimately, Deed. From Thinker to Maker. From wonder and sensation to wisdom.

I don't feel beauty has vanished in the art, but her depths and deliriums, as in times past and times present, lie in wait for the brave ones. I suspect one cannot deeply examine, experience, or embody beauty without also knowing something of ugliness,and by this I mean not the looking at, but the looking to. This idea was at the core of what Gandhi called his experiments, and what might be called Jeffers' poetics.

' Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.' Emerson.


I have sympathy and understanding for many of Mark's arguments, but strongly disagree with his assumption of a long lost golden age, and the vulnerability of beauty. Mediocrity of thought has always existed, and appeared to prevail alongside the great thinkers and makers who did their work.

A genuine reverence for genuine sensation, an inquisitive, paradoxical mind, an evolving, manifested philosophy or aesthetic... Throughout the history of civilization, these have been the characteristics of our most beloved and penetrating artists. Or as Mozart would say, Love, love love. That is the soul of genius...



Many famous feet have trod
Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed
The strength they have against the strength they need;
And famous lips interrogated God
Concerning franchise in eternity;
And in many differing times and places
Truth was attained (a moment's harmony);
Yet endless mornings break on endless faces.

Gold surf of the sun, each day
Exhausted through the world, gathers and whips
Irrevocably from eclipse;
The trodden way becomes the untrodden way,
We are born each morning, shelled upon
A sheet of light that paves
The palaces of sight, and brings again
The river shining through the field of graves.

Such renewal argues down
Our unsuccessful legacies of thought,
Annals of men who fought
Untiringly to change their hearts to stone,
Or to a wafer's poverty,
Or to a flower, but never tried to learn
The difficult triple sanity
Or being wafer, stone and flower in turn.


(Larkin)




[This message has been edited by wendy v (edited August 31, 2008).]

Andrew, I am so glad to hear that you love Jeffers. Imagine how lucky is Simon (see G.A. forum) to have a tangible connection to Jeffers and his environment!

I'm not getting his distinction between "natural" and "noble sentiments" at the end. Aren't they both an aspect of the same thing?

Yes, I would say that they are. For Jeffers, nothing that human beings do or can do is "unnatural." As he says in his poem "Calm and Full the Ocean" "... even the P-38s and Flying Fortresses are as natural as horse-flies." But for Jeffers, "those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas, / The love, lust, longing ..." are side-issues, secondary distractions from the main show - the "transhuman magnificence" of Nature. These are human "reasons" for being, but not THE reason: Beauty.

Jeffers is all for the religious immanence of the Divine, not for a human transcendence toward it, as if it were somehow "outside" the universe.

For anyone listening in on our present public private correspondence, here is a link to more on Jeffers.
http://members.aol.com/PHarri5642/jeffers.htm

Double post - removed.

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited September 01, 2008).]

Mark, we crossed. The local deep ecologist/poets have insisted in recent years I take in more Jeffers. I haven't fallen under his spell, (he is incorrigibly male, I've yet to find his femme sense) though I admire his better works, and The Roan Stallion devastates me every time. Now there's a crushing allegory on humanity and beauty/divinity, yes ? I've always thought it a kind of western Ancient Mariner tale, sans the redemption.


[This message has been edited by wendy v (edited August 31, 2008).]

Too bad he's wrong about that. It goes both ways, as Plato talked about--Eros as the longing for the source of all longing. And yet immanence too. Descent and ascent, angels going up and down the ladder, etc. The spiritual realm isn't above, spatially--it is pure Being, which by definition is (ontologically) prior to "nature" in the literal, Darwinian sense, which seems to be what Jeffers means. There really isn't any need to be dualistic about it, but I think Jeffers is.

Great poet, though. And quite right about the beauty being terrifying as well, as Rilke said: every angel is terrible.




[This message has been edited by Andrew Frisardi (edited September 01, 2008).]

Yes, Wendy - I love "The Roan Stallion", and other longer poems, like "The Love and the Hate" and "The Inhumanist".

And yes, it is often hard for us males to be corriged out of our male brains.

I am not sure you will find much of a "femme" sense to Jeffers' work - depending on what you mean by that.

There really isn't any need to be dualistic about it, but I think Jeffers is.

I think he would see himself as a monist:

I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different
expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each
other, therefore parts of one organic whole.This whole is in all its parts
so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am
compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this
whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love and there is peace,
freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections
outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on
humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions--the world of spirits.

As the site I linked says:

"In Jeffers'pantheism, God is impersonal and transtheological--an undefinable power which is the source, purpose and supporting ground of all life and being. The creation itself is God, and our search for understanding this God is a search which begins by understanding our own insignificant position within the universe."

I suppose I don't really think in terms of metaphysical ideas being "true or false" - I treat them more like poems than doctrine.

I can "believe" in just about any position - for a while, at least. They come and go for me, and I don't really "believe" (in the sense of absolute commitment) in any single view. It's ALL poetry to me.

Mark,
I don't think in terms of doctrine either. Philosophy is less about knowing anyway than it is about a search for what you seek to know. Doctrines aren't knowledge but they can direct or orient you to knowledge. The quote about Jeffers, that his "God is impersonal and transtheological," would fit any truly mystical view of God. So I'm with him on that. The bit about God being identified totally with the creation is another story. I'm more with Blake: "Nature is Imagination itself." Blake criticized Wordsworth "copying" nature too much: "Wordsworth must know that what he Writes Valuable is Not to be found in Nature." And I wonder if the same point could be made about Jeffers. I don't know, since it's been a while since I read him. But Blake's point about mimesis and naturalism in art is a pretty major philosophical stance, not simply "poetic" in the sense of being "relative."

I know what you mean, Andrew, about Jeffers' pantheism.

As we writers know, truth can only appear in and through fictions, through literary artifice and construction. As with the texts which support them, the great world religions are great poems, all composed on the same topic: life, its value and meaning. This, of course, is an esoteric view of religions, and as Schuon and others have argued, there is a transcendental unity among religions at the mystical level of understanding. It is only on the exoteric level of popular understanding, when the salvation of the individual ego is at stake, with all the accompanying terrors and violence associated with fear and personal survival come to the fore, and where one religion (which is believed as literally true) is opposed to the other patently false religions. All conflict between religions comes from the non-imaginative, literalist perspective.

And while I don't feel attached to any particular mystical doctrine, I do have a preferred direction. And I agree that Jeffers' pantheism is a less satisfying poem than others I know.

Have you read anything by Roberts Avens? Like Hillman and the other post-Jungians, he puts Imagination at the centre of all religious sensibility. Here are a few quotes from his book Imagination is Reality:

"I take the view that imagination is the common ground of both Eastern and Western spiritualities in their most diverse manifestations insofar as their professed aim is to transcend all duality." p 9.

"By transcendence I do not mean going beyond duality in the direction of oneness and unity nor any other sort of ‘wholeing’, but rather an awareness of the essential polycentricity of life - seeing ontological value in the absence of ‘eternal’ values and principles. For I am convinced that there is no other way of being human and free." p 9.

"Whether we see the world predominantly as nirvana or Samsara, as Brahman or as maya, depends on our perspective, that is to say, on the power of imagination. Spiritualism and materialism are twin brothers and are the greatest sins against the soul." p 10.

I think poetry, mysticism, philosophy and beauty are radically embedded in each other. At the very least, they all sleep in the same room! I agree with Andrew O'Hagan's thought at last year's Sydney Writers' Festival:

Our power truly to imagine the world and the worlds inside us is what constitutes our moral sense. It is not the unexamined life that is not worth living, but the unimagined one.

Cally