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Tuesday
Greg Olear, who writes regular Substack essays on political issues, devotes each Sunday column to a favorite poem. In his last two, he has applied the poems to current events in a way that I embrace. Two Sundays ago, he compared Donald Trump to Kubla Khan in Coleridge’s famous poem, and this past Sunday he sees Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.”
To be sure, the shoe is on the other foot. Instead of the Russians rushing suicidally towards Kyiv or Bakhmut, at the Battle of Balaclava it was they who were playing the part of the Ukrainians, picking off members of the Light Brigade as it charged “into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell.” Here’s the poem:
I Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. “Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!” he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
II “Forward, the Light Brigade!” Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew Someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
III Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred.
IV Flashed all their sabres bare, Flashed as they turned in air Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wondered. Plunged in the battery-smoke Right through the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reeled from the sabre stroke Shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred.
V Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell. They that had fought so well Came through the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred.
VI When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred!
People debate whether the poem praises or condemns war. I’ve worried that it glorifies senseless sacrifice and in doing so may have played a destructive role in World War I. Yes, I know it’s only a poem, but it may have inspired “children ardent for some desperate glory” (to quote Wilfred Owen) to surrender their lives unthinkingly. Many would have known the poem by heart and may well have repeated to themselves “cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered” as they went over the top to charge German positions.
Olear, however, counter argues that the poem captures the senselessness of the war:
But I would argue that “Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die,” quite the best lines in the poem, can also be read not as praise for valor but as condemnation of the whole sordid enterprise. Can we not “honour the Light Brigade” by learning its dread lesson and not sending our soldiers off to certain death for no good reason? The Crimean War is basically shorthand for “no good reason.”
While World War I was a stupid war, Olear writes in his column that the Crimean War was even stupider. Basically, it was Russia taking advantage of a dying Ottoman Empire to make a land grab while the Turks, French and British resisted. And if that sounds familiar, wait till you hear what the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica (quoted by Olear) says about the war’s impact on Russia at the time:
Thus Nicholas, the pillar of the European alliance, found himself isolated and at war, or potentially at war, with all of Europe. The invasion of Crimea followed, and with it a fresh revelation of the corruption and demoralization of the Russian system. At the outset Nicholas had grimly remarked that “Generals January and February” would prove his best allies. These acted, however, impartially; and if thousands of British and French soldiers perished of cold and disease in the trenches before Sevastopol, the tracks leading from the centre of Russia into the Crimea were marked by the bones of Russian dead.
I’d like to say, with Marx, that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Marx was comparing Napoleon I with Napoleon III and we could say that Putin is a wannabe Tsar Nicholas I, who actually succeeded in expanding Russia’s borders. But like Putin, Nicholas got his butt kicked in Ukraine (or at least Crimea) and may have committed passive suicide as a result. (He refused to get medical help for his pneumonia.)
Would the Light Brigade have been honored had Tennyson not written his poem? Or would it have been regarded the way that we see the Wagner mercenary group’s attacks on Bakhmut, a mission costing Russia 20,000 casualties in order to give Putin a short-term victory. I suspect the latter.
Poetry, as Plato complained, can be dangerous in that way, bamboozling through beauty. In the Republic he calls poets “deceivers” who deck out their illusions with meter, harmony, and rhythm. If we were to strip away their poetic aids, he contends, poets would make “a poor appearance” and we would see poetry for the fraud it really is.
Normally I disagree with Plato when it comes to poetry. But in this case, he may be right.
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Monday
One of the most satisfying takedowns of Donald Trump I’ve ever seen comes from one Nate White. It’s in answer to the Quora question, “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”
Perhaps I like it because of my own Bates-Fulcher-Jackson British lineage. In any event, I’m indulging myself—and hopefully you—by running it in its entirety.
I promise you a literary angle as well, however. At the end, White alludes to Frankenstein, and I have a few things to say about the novel’s applicability. First, however, here’s White’s explaining the reasons for British dislike:
A few things spring to mind…
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
–Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. –You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form. He is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
Whew!
Now to that Frankenstein allusion, which may be to the movie but applies equally well to the book. Here’s the creator’s description of his “creature.” He happens to be yellow rather than orange and his hair isn’t blond. Still…
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.
And here’s Dr. Frankenstein’s reaction, which even who outwardly support Trump secretly share::
[B]reathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavoring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams.
While the allusion to Mary Shelley’s classic–that the GOP has created an uncontrollable monster–is so commonplace that it has become a cliché, returning to the original text provides a few added insights. NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of our foremost academic authorities on fascism, notes that moneyed interests often believe that they can control authoritarian bullies, only to find that the bullies are calling the shots in the end. Along with tax cuts and labor suppression, the business community gets a trashed country. A lust for power trumps ethical considerations, which is the case as well with Dr. Frankenstein. Although he, at least, has some early reservations:
When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it.
Ultimately, however, he commits himself utterly and as a result finds himself making horrific compromises. I think of Gary Cohn, the president and COO of Goldman Sachs who became Trump’s chief economic advisor and who, despite being Jewish, was willing (in exchange for tax cuts) to overlook the president’s coddling of anti-Semitic fascists chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” (It was only one of many Faustian bargains that Republicans have made with Trump.) Dr. Frankenstein’s work is just as grubby:
Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit…. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.
And what is the result? The creature, released into the world, turns Dr. Frankenstein’s life into a living hell by killing what is most dear to him, his lovely fiancé.
Unlike the GOP, however, the scientist spends the rest of his life seeking to destroy the blight he has released upon the world. He doesn’t think the monster can be appeased or will just go away and he doesn’t count on someone else dealings with the problem. (At least he doesn’t think this after his fiancé is killed.) In this way, Dr. Frankenstein is more like those NeverTrump Republicans who now seek to undo the force they once enabled. Contrast them with those who, whether out of conviction, self-interest or fear, remain loyal to the former president.
I’ve noticed one other parallel that may hold out a little hope for us: Frankenstein’s creature ceases to be a problem once his creator dies. At that point, the monster no longer sees a reason for existing and departs into the unknown.
A narcissist’s greatest fear is that he is nothing. To be ignored confirms the insecurity that propels him. Trump becoming irrelevant—whether because of imprisonment, electoral defeat, or other means–is the consummation we should all devoutly wish for.
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Sunday
Rosh Hashanah, when Jews do a spiritual self-assessment and take upon themselves responsibility for the sins of the world, begins this Thursday. I am reposting this essay from 13 years ago on three Alicia Ostriker poems that reflect upon Judaism’s High Holy Days.
Ostriker is one who believes that poetry can make things happen. W. H. Auden has written (in “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”) that “poetry makes nothing happen,” to which Ostriker has responded that poetry “can tear at the heart with its claws, make the neural nets shiver, flood us with hope, despair, longing, ecstasy, love, anger, terror . . .”
(Incidentally, I don’t think Auden would disagree. He was just feeling gloomy about Yeats’s death and the state of the world in 1939 and Yeats’s apparent inability to change the course of Irish history.)
Ostriker sees the high holy days—the month of preparatory repentance (Elul), the Day of Judgment (Rosh Hashanah), and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)—in a similar way. We have a chance, during this holiday, to be renewed.
True, renewal means facing up to our sins and those of others, which we take collective responsibility for. As Ostriker puts it, “we destroy we break we are broken.” True, “our cells secrete anger, our minds propagate envy.” True, we are like a foolish old woman, living in a ramshackle house during a hurricane that is being struck by “guilt waves and fear waves.” Otsriker calls it right when she says we have the sense that “the walls could collapse any time.”
Longing to open up like an egg, we instead feel like the large stones that “people place on graves to make them a little heavier.” And yet. . .
And yet, against all logic we find renewal. We are Hagar and Ishmael finding water in the desert. (The exile of the two is another thing that Jews may feel the need to atone for.)
Particularly striking is the image of image of drops of rain on the windshield. Going through life can be like driving through a storm, with violent points of contact occurring regularly. Yet the water, defying gravity, flies upward, like prayers. What is our knowledge, what is our strength?” Ostriker asks, invoking ritual language, and then answers her own question with ritual reassurance: “repentance prayer and good deeds avert the stern decree.”
Like that foolish old woman, we don’t leave the house. We face the storm, not like solid and heavy grave markers, but like vulnerable and open eggs.
Here’s the poem:
Days of Awe By Alicia Ostriker
elul: psalm 27
we are told to say the following every day for a month in preparation for the days of awe:
you are my light my help when I’m with you I’m not afraid I want to live in your house
the enemies that chew my heart the enemies that break my spine I’m not afraid of them when I’m with you
all my life I have truly trusted you save me from the liars let me live in your house
*****
rosh hashanah
the birthday of adam the innocent earthling and the day hagar and ishmael found water in the desert
in memory of whom mud staining our shoes water flowing in handfuls we sniff the smell of living dying things
reach into our pockets for the bread that represents our sins, toss it in, praying release us, help us, forgive us
the river answers by swallowing our crumbs
do our prayers travel upward do they defy gravity like rain splashed on the windshield of a car speeding through storm
in ten days we will go hungrier pray harder
*****
yom kippur
we destroy we break we are broken and this is the fast you have chosen on rosh hashana it is written on yom kippur it is sealed
who shall live and who shall die which goat will have his throat cut like an unlucky Isaac
spitting a red thread and which goat will be sent alive to the pit where the crazies are thread lightly tied around its neck
who will possess diamonds and pearls and who will be killed by an addicted lover
who shall voyage the web of the world like an eagle, and who shall curl to sleep over a steam grate like a worm
who shall be photographed and whose face will disappear like smoke
this is the fast you have chosen, turn return how to turn like leaves like a page like a corner what is our knowledge, what is our strength
I am like the stones people place on graves to make them a little heavier such a stone says, in its oracular way, don’t come back or return only as grass but it is tired of being a stone, it wishes to be open, it would like to be an egg
honeybees manufacture honey, a power station generates electricity cotton plants extrude smooth fibre, and my cells secrete anger my mind propagates envy, but repentance, prayer and good deeds
avert the stern decree, I am like a ramshackle house during a hurricane struck by guilt waves and fear waves, the walls could collapse any time but the foolish old woman who lives there refuses to leave
Tenniel, illus. from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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Friday
The MAGA members of the House appear to be suffering from indictment envy and impeachment envy, so much so that they may shut down the government if Speaker McCarthy doesn’t start proceedings against President Biden. Think of them as the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, who at one point declares, “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
Of course, they’ve been like this for a while. We all remember the 2016 election, when “Lock her up!” was their rallying cry. As political scientist John Stoehr points out,
Most people understand the difference between evidence of wrongdoing and claims of wrongdoing – most people, anyway, if they have ever watched a television courtroom drama in which evidence is independent of the interests of those who enter it into the record. The accused is not guilty because the accuser says he is. He is guilty because the evidence points overwhelmingly toward guilt.
“Most people,” however, doesn’t include either the Queen of Hearts or MAGA Republicans. Stoehr points out that the latter
begin with a verdict and then work backwards, no matter how objectively cynical it may appear. They took control of the House “knowing” that Biden was guilty of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors. They have since then worked very hard to uncover reasonsreasonsreasons for why they’re right.
The crime in Alice in Wonderland is the theft of tarts, as described in the nursery rhyme that Lewis Carroll draws on:
The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All on a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, And took them quite away!”
Of course the knave, unlike Biden, is actually guilty. Still, evidence is needed to determine guilt. In Alice in Wonderland the King of Hearts, as judge, keeps trying to move past the evidence stage:
Consider your verdict,” the King said to the jury. “Not yet, not yet!” the Rabbit hastily interrupted. “There’s a great deal to come before that!”
And:
Consider your verdict,” he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice. “There’s more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,” said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry; “this paper has just been picked up.”
The paper proves to be a set of verses, but the subsequent conversation about them shows a looseness of legal reasoning that would do MAGA House members proud:
“Are they in the prisoner’s handwriting?” asked another of the jurymen. “No, they’re not,” said the White Rabbit, “and that’s the queerest thing about it.” (The jury all looked puzzled.) “He must have imitated somebody else’s hand,” said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.) “Please your Majesty,” said the Knave, “I didn’t write it, and they can’t prove I did: there’s no name signed at the end.” “If you didn’t sign it,” said the King, “that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you’d have signed your name like an honest man.” There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the King had said that day. “That proves his guilt,” said the Queen.
In this crazy world of upside-down logic, there’s only one who calls BS, and that’s Alice. And while the nonsense world doesn’t collapse like a house of cards, she exposes it for what it is:
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!” “Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple. “I won’t!” said Alice. “Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved. “Who cares for you?” said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her…
It is at this point in the book that Alice awakens from what has become a nightmare:
…she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face. “Wake up, Alice dear!” said her sister; “Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!”
It would be nice to think that unhinged MAGA Republicans are no more substantial than pieces of cardboard. I recently read an article by NeverTrumper Steve Schmidt who, interviewing Trump supporters around the country, has been discovering that many regard him, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and the others as performance artists—which, it so happens, is how the Lewis Carroll’s Gryphon sees the Queen of Hearts:
The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes: then it watched the Queen till she was out of sight: then it chuckled. “What fun!” said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice. “What is the fun?” said Alice. “Why, she,” said the Gryphon. “It’s all her fancy, that: they never executes nobody, you know. Come on!”
When I was a child, the sight of the cards flying at Alice used to terrify me but now they seem harmless enough. Unfortunately, performance artists who get hold of power can do actual damage. The question is whether these Americans will grow out of their wonderland before someone gets hurt.
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Thursday
Friend and former colleague Lois Stover alerted me to this Smithsonian article about the psychological impact of different literary elements. According to Angus Fletcher, who is a “professor of story science” at Ohio State’s Project Narrative, fictional techniques like plot twists, secret disclosures, and empathy generators can
alleviate grief, improve your problem-solving skills, dispense the anti-depressant effects of LSD, boost your creativity, provide therapy for trauma (including both kinds of PTSD), spark joy, dole out a better energy kick than caffeine, lower your odds of dying alone, and (as impossible as it sounds) increase the chance that your dreams will come true. They can even make you a more loving spouse and generous friend.
Fletcher sets forth his ideas in Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, which I have yet to read. I’m intrigued by his characterization of story elements as “inventions” and report here on the effect he believes they have.
I first like what he says about Aristo how he discusses Aristotle. In Poetics, the Greek philosopher proposed that literature was
many inventions, each constructed from an innovative use of story. Story includes the countless varieties of plot and character—and it also includes the equally various narrators that give each literary work its distinct style or voice. Those story elements, Aristotle hypothesized, could plug into our imagination, our emotions, and other parts of our psyche, troubleshooting and even improving our mental function.
In my own work with Aristotle, I look into how he saw tragedy as a way to train Greek youth in citizenship responsibilities. For his part, Fletcher singles out Aristotle’s focus on the Plot Twist, which he says can have potent psychological effects:
Who hasn’t felt a burst of wonder—or as Aristotle called it, thaumazein—when a story pivots unexpectedly? And as modern research has revealed, that wonder can be more than a heart-exciting sensation. It can stimulate what psychologists term a self-transcendent experience (or what “father of American psychology” William James more vividly termed a “spiritual” experience), increasing our overall sense of life purpose.
The other literary inventions that Fletcher mentions in his Smithsonian article are:
–The Hurt Delay
A work foreshadowing hurt to come (as in Oedipus) can “stimulate catharsis, alleviating the symptoms of post-traumatic fear.” Fletcher says he has witnessed the effect upon war veterans:
[B]y stimulating an ironic experience of foreknowledge in our brain’s perspective-taking network, the Hurt Delay can increase our self-efficacy, a kind of mental strength that makes us better able to recover from experiences of trauma.
–the Tale Told from Our Future
We are well familiar with this technique, which as Fletcher notes is the foundation of the modern thriller (think of those stories that open with a flash forward). Fletcher says that this “can have a potent neural effect: by activating the brain’s primal information-gathering network, it boosts curiosity, immediately elevating your levels of enthusiasm and energy.”
–the Secret Discloser
The “narrative revelation of an intimate character detail,” Fletcher says,
activates dopamine neurons in the brain to convey the hedonic benefits of loving and being loved, boosting your positive affect and making you more cheerful and generally glad to be alive.
He mentions Charlotte Bronte so perhaps he has in mind Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe both coming to acknowledge their love for the male protagonists (Rochester and Paul Emanuel).
–the Serenity Elevator
The storytelling element, Fletcher says, involves “a turning around of satire’s tools (including insinuation, parody and irony) so that instead of laughing at someone else, you smile at yourself.” (He cites Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as an example.) The Serenity Elevator “can have analgesic effects—and more importantly, …it can convey your brain into the serene state of feeling like it’s floating above mortal cares.”
–the Empathy Generator
This insight that we are given into “a character’s private feeling of self-critique,” Fletcher says, “stimulates empathy in our brain’s perspective-taking network,” helping nurture kindness towards others. (He gives the example of Jo March’s having regrets over accidentally burning Meg’s hair.) Fletcher traces this fictional element back to the Book of Job, which he “may have reflected the poet’s effort to promote peace in the wake of the Judah-Babylonian-Persian wars.”
–the Almighty Heart
Omniscient narration is “a story told by someone with a human heart and a god’s all-seeing eye.” Fletcher credits Homer with its invention and mentions as a more recent example the opening lines of Tale of Two Cities, which I wrote about on Tuesday (including “it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair”). He observes,
The invention works by tricking your brain into feeling like you’re chanting along with a greater human voice. And that feeling—which is also triggered by war songs and battle marches—activates the brain’s pituitary gland, stimulating an endocrine response that’s linked to psychological bravery. So, even in the winter of despair, you feel a fortifying spring of hope.
–the Anarchy Rhymer
This is “a rule-breaking element inside a larger formal structure.” To my mind, Fletcher doesn’t describe it very well, but it seems to be what all great authors do. (To do otherwise is to be formulaic and predictable.) According to Fletcher, the Anarchic Rymer activates a brain region known as the Default Mode Network, which is the region of the brain that is most active during REM sleep, daydreaming, and reading stories. The result of encountering the Rhymer is increased creativity.
I see that Sewanee’s library has a copy of the book so I’ll be checking it out and reporting on more of what Fletcher has to say.
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Wednesday
One of the best things to come out of our trip to Ireland last spring was being introduced to the poetry of Patrick Kavanaugh. Here’s a joyous September poem he wrote as he nostalgically recalls working with neighboring farms during harvest season.
I showed the poem to my wife, who was raised on a small farm in southeast Iowa, and she said it captures the experience perfectly. In her case, her own family would combine efforts with her two uncles, along with a couple of other farm families. They would move from farm to farm, and Julia recalls taking on different tasks at different ages, from driving the tractor that lifted the hay bales to collecting the hay bales in the field to receiving and stacking the bales in the barn.
When Kavanagh talks about how “we owed them a day at the threshing since last year” and how “it was a delight to be paying bills of laughter and chaffy gossip in kind,” Julia says he is spot on. She remembers the men making slightly off-color jokes, which the children barely understood. “Chaffy gossip” is a wonderful way to describe the dialogue—almost light as air and filling the atmosphere.
And then there was the “work thrown in to ballast the fantasy-soaring mind.” The work made it real, giving substance to the communal good feelings.
Julia tells me that Kavanagh’s sense that he was entering heaven’s (haggard) gate to a kind of paradise –“no earthly estate”–is no exaggeration. Being an integral part of a family and communal enterprise gave her a strong sense of being important. “Lost in unthinking joy” was what it felt like.
On an Apple-Ripe September Morning By Patrick Kavanagh
On an apple-ripe September morning Through the mist-chill fields I went With a pitch-fork on my shoulder Less for use than for devilment.
The threshing mill was set-up, I knew, In Cassidy’s haggard last night, And we owed them a day at the threshing Since last year. O it was delight
To be paying bills of laughter And chaffy gossip in kind With work thrown in to ballast The fantasy-soaring mind.
As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered As I looked into the drain If ever a summer morning should find me Shoveling up eels again.
And I thought of the wasps’ nest in the bank And how I got chased one day Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind, How I covered my face with hay.
The wet leaves of the cocksfoot Polished my boots as I Went round by the glistening bog-holes Lost in unthinking joy.
I’ll be carrying bags to-day, I mused, The best job at the mill With plenty of time to talk of our loves As we wait for the bags to fill.
Maybe Mary might call round… And then I came to the haggard gate, And I knew as I entered that I had come Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.
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Tuesday
I suspect I’m not the only American thoroughly confused by the present political climate. On the one hand, this country is doing remarkably well, not only economically but in many other realms, especially with regard to technological advances and medical breakthroughs. We also have a remarkable university system which educates those who go on to make possible many of societal and life style benefits we have come to take for granted. Millions around the world would love to emigrate here.
Yet at the same time, we regularly hear open calls for civil war from various quarters, and while an authoritarian ignoramus like Donald Trump may have lost the last election, he still commands a following in the tens of millions. At his instigation, some of these stormed the Capitol while others carry out lone wolf programs of mass shootings.
We have such a strong military that we fear no invasion—think how few countries have been able to say that in world history—and yet we never know when lethal violence will break out in this school or that church/synagogue/ mosque. Meanwhile, the same technology that allows us unprecedented mobility and comfort at contributing to extreme weather events that overwhelm us.
If ever there were a time to cite the opening lines to Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, this is it:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
Maybe I’ll just leave it there, adding only that—in the course of the novel—the human heart ultimately shines brighter than human evil and human ignorance. For all the damage caused by the “worst of times,” Dickens assures us that the destroyers don’t get the last word.
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Labor Day
Here’s a good worker poem for Labor Day. Seamus Heaney’s “The Forge” is a nostalgic look at an ancient profession. Passing by “old axles and iron hoops rusting,” the poet enters a dark room where the blacksmith, somewhat mythically, hammers upon an anvil that is “horned as a unicorn.” This is sacred space as the smith hammers upon an “altar,” “expend[ing] himself in shape and music.
And if perchance he ventures outside to view the modern world, he sees nothing worth noting: monotonous traffic flashes by where once there was a “clatter of hoofs.” Unimpressed, he returns to “beat real iron out, to work the bellows.” “Leathered aproned” with “hairs in his nose,” he stands in contrast to the anonymous, mechanized work force of our own time. He brings to mind Longfellow’s smith:
Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long, His face is like the tan; His brow is wet with honest sweat, He earns whate’er he can, And looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man.
I suspect Heaney was well acquainted with this figure from pre-industrial times.
The Forge By Seamus Heaney
All I know is a door into the dark. Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting; Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring, The unpredictable fantail of sparks Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water. The anvil must be somewhere in the center, Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square, Set there immoveable: an altar Where he expends himself in shape and music. Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose, He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows; Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
Simon Vouet, Calliope, Muse of Epic Poetry (detail)
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Sunday
I share here a talk I am giving today to our church’s Adult Forum on “Creating in God’s Image.” The topic is the relationship of God and creativity.
In her best-selling writer’s guide The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron maps out the connection she sees between God and creativity. Her ten basic principles, she says, are the bedrock on which “creative recovery and discovery can be built.” As the former alcoholic, drug addict, and agnostic sees it, connecting with God not only helped her get her life back in order but also proved to be a boon to her writing.
I begin today’s talk with Cameron’s articulation because it provides a perspective on how artists throughout history have drawn on spiritual energies in their work. My focus will be on the act of requesting divine aid, whether through prayer, ritual ceremony, meditation, or “invoking the muse,” as Homer does in the opening lines of both The Iliad and The Odyssey.
First, however, here are Cameron’s Ten Principles on how creativity has a spiritual dimension:
1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy. 2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life — including ourselves. 3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives. 4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. 5. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. 6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. 7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction. 8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected. 9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity. 10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
In choosing “Creating in God’s Image” as our Sunday Forum theme this year, our Christian Formation Committee riffed off the passage in Genesis as to how humankind was created in God’s image. As Cameron describes it, in creating we reenact the creation, fulfilling our essential purpose and, in so doing, moving toward divinity.
On the other hand, Cameron says that we experience blockage when we let our egos get in the way. We don’t allow ourselves to be conduits for God’s creativity but instead—to borrow a line from Pride and Prejudice—allow self to intrude. We don’t, as the saying is, “let go, let God.
Of course, there’s also work involved in the artistic process—it’s not just about letting go—and in a moment I’ll move into Plato’s exploration over whether art is more an artisanal craft or a divine madness. Some, reminding us of the effort required, talk about art being “10% inspiration, 90% perspiration.” But focus on that 10% for a moment. The word “inspiration” comes from the Latin “inspiratus,” meaning “breathe into.” It is as though some other worldly force is breathing into the artist, with the work of art the result.
The Romantic poets, especially Percy Bysshe Shelley, believed that a creative force blows through the universe. Shelley may have proclaimed himself an atheist while a student at Oxford but, if so, he was a particularly spiritual atheist. In “Ode to the West Wind,” he finds a metaphor for divine Imagination.
The west wind, which seems wild, untameable, and at times destructive, is also a source for new life. In the final two sections of the poem, Shelley talks of himself being carried by the west wind as though he were a dead leaf. He also imagines himself as a “swift cloud,” as a wave “pant[ing] beneath thy power,” and as an Aeolian or wind harp, with the wind blowing through him just as it blows through a forest:
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Why a dead leaf? Shelley here may be talking of how poets can find themselves cut off from the creative spirit. I recall Sparky Edgin, who taught us the poem in my junior English class at Sewanee Military Academy, pointing out that the leaf could also be the leaf or page of a book. Shelley at this point in the poem is lamenting how his adult sensibility and the cares of the world are keeping him from being as open to creativity as he was when he was a boy, “when to outstrip thy skiey speed/ Scarce seem’d a vision.” Instead, he now falls upon the “thorns of life” and bleeds.
This is a common Romantic theme, found most notably in such Wordsworth poems as Tintern Abbey and Intimations of Immortality. “Shades of the prison-house begin to close/ Upon the growing boy,” Wordsworth writes in the latter.. But Shelley then holds out a vision of hope. Perhaps the spirit is not altogether dead. Imagine those withered leaves, he says, as sparks from a fire that has not altogether gone out. And if they are still alive, maybe they will awaken the cold earth with new fire. Propelled by this divine spirit, Shelley’s words will function as a prophecy: spring will come.
To be sure, the west wind is destructive as well as creative, bringing wintry blasts as well as carrying seeds. Earlier in the poem Shelley calls it “destroyer and preserver.” For Shelley as for Lord Byron, nature isn’t only Wordsworth’s daffodils but also storms and volcanoes, what the Romantics called “the dark sublime.”
I mention this dark side of the creating spirit—the idea that this divine force can be destructive as well as life affirming—because that’s how Plato saw it. You’ve perhaps heard about how, in his ideal “republic,” he bans poets for being a disorderly influence. He wants philosopher kings, not poets, running things.
Nevertheless, Plato has some interesting thoughts about the divine source of poetic inspiration. Some of his most interesting thoughts appear in The Ion, where Socrates cross-examines a rhapsode famous for his dramatic recitations of Homer.
Ion has the ability to sway audiences with emotional renderings of (to mention instances cited by Socrates) the wrenching scene where Andromache, Hecuba and Priam mourn the death of I Hector and the heart-stopping moment when Odysseus reveals himself to the suitors. Imagine being in the audience as the greatest actor of your day recites the following passage:
You yellow dogs, you thought I’d never make it home from the land of Troy. You took my house to plunder, twisted my maids to serve your beds. You dared bid for my wife while I was still alive. Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven, contempt for what men say of you hereafter. Your last hour has come. You die in blood.
I imagine one could have heard a pin drop.
Stretching the audience to the emotional max is no problem for Ion—he revels in it as much as the spectators do—but for Plato it’s a problem. After all, if you’re wound up, that means you are not, to use his words, in your “right mind.” If Ion were applying crafted artifice in his cause, it would be okay because reason would be involved. But Plato fears that he has been inspired.
Inspired people, as Plato sees it, get swept up in their emotions. It’s a very different perspective than we find in Shelley and the other Romantics. While not opposed to Reason, they are promoting feeling to counteract what they saw as the 18th century’s overemphasis on rationality. In defense of Plato’s anxieties about emotional appeals, we must remember that he saw strong emotions propel the Athenian assembly into ruinous wars, not to mention the execution of his beloved teacher. But the main reason why I bring up The Ion is because of Plato’s exploration of divine inspiration.
To describe it, he uses two analogies, one involving a magnet, the other ecstatic dance. Here’s the first:
The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration; there is a divinity moving you, like that contained in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet, but which is commonly known as the stone of Heraclea. This stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to them a similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes you may see a number of pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another so as to form quite a long chain: and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone. In like manner the Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the inspiration.
In other words, the artist serves as a channel from the heavenly muse to the audience.
Perhaps finding magnets not dynamic enough, however, Socrates turns to another analogy, this one involving possession and Bacchanalian frenzy:
For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revelers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and meter they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind.
While Plato prefers that Apollo rather than Dionysus influence his art—in The Republic he praises Apollo’s lyre while banning Pan’s pipes—he sees divinity at work in both kinds of art. Humans are creating in the god’s image in both instances. It’s just that, in a polytheistic society, there are different gods one can draw inspiration from. In Christianity people sometimes need to resort to the religion’s unofficial second god, Satan, to explain the supernatural source for art they don’t like. Recall that, in the 1950s and 1960s, Christians like Billy Graham regarded rock and roll as “the devil’s music.”
It makes sense, given the stupendous challenge of a 24-book oral epic , that Homer would feel the need for divine assistance. “Anger be now your song, immortal one,” he says as he invokes the muse Calliope in The Iliad while in The Odyssey (to quote from Emily Wilson’s wonderful translation) he calls out,
Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost…
Milton, seeking to write a Christian epic that would rival the epics of his pagan predecessors, found his own muse in the Holy Spirit. This was the spirit that spoke to Moses on the mountain, to Jesus during his baptism, and to the disciples at Pentecost:
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse…
Milton has a heavy ask of this Heavenly Muse:
Illumine, what is low raise and support; That, to the height of this great argument, I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.
In other words, this blind, imprisoned poet is asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten him as to why God allows bad things to happen to good people.
Milton’s muse provides seemingly supernatural assistance. In Book IX, conflating Urania, the muse of astronomy, with the Holy Spirit, Milton reports that his “celestial patroness” shows up nightly. And in fact, each morning he would come to breakfast with dozens of lines in his head to pass on to his scribes. In his words, his patroness
dictates to me slumb’ring, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated Verse…
To conclude, I turn to two other request for divine aid I’ve come across my reading. Alice Walker addresses a spirit as she opens The Color Purple, although her faith tradition is unclear:
To the Spirit:
Without whose assistance Neither this book Nor I Would have been Written.
As Walker sees it, the spirit is not only working through her but has created her. She is a result of the creative process that, in turn, is using her to continue creating.
Native American novelist Leslie Marmon Silko says something similar in the opening of Ceremony, where she invokes figures from Laguna Pueblo traditions:
Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought Woman, is sitting in her room and whatever she thinks about appears.
She thought of her sisters, Nau’ts’ity’I and I’tcts’ity’I, and together they created the Universe this world and the four worlds below.
Thought-Woman, the spider, named things and as she named them they appeared.
She is sitting in her room thinking of a story now
I’m telling you the story she is thinking.
For the Laguna Pueblo, storytelling is a ceremony that links them with their mythical deities. This goes not only for their traditional stories but also for new stories arising out of the tradition. Silko makes a point throughout her novel that, in a changing environment, the stories too must evolve. That being said, however, she still grounds herself in the core traditions of her people. Thought-Woman is her muse.
It’s noteworthy that this muse is also depicted as a spider—a creature that spins its creation out of the core of its being—since the West African storytelling god Anansi is also a spider. Originating in Ghana but then brought to the Caribbean by slaves, Anansi is a trickster figure with a complicated relationship with the creator. In some stories, Anansi sounds like Prometheus, only instead of bringing down fire from the sky gods, he brings down stories. In any event, like all muse figures, he works as an intermediary between the sacred and the profane. To invoke Anansi or to tell an Anansi story is to immerse oneself in a culture sustaining process.
And here’s one last example. Lucille Clifton sometimes sees it as a mixed blessing that she is in thrall to spiritual energies. In her poem “the light that came to lucille clifton,” she talks about the moment in her life when she came to see herself not just as a mother and a wife but as a poet. In her recounting, she had been resisting that knowing but the light proved to be too insistent:
the light that came to lucille clifton came in a shift of knowing when even her fondest sureties faded away. it was the summer she understood that she had not understood and was not mistress even of her own off eye. then the man escaped throwing away his tie and the children grew legs and started walking and she could see the peril of an unexamined life. she closed her eyes, afraid to look for her authenticity but the light insists on itself in the world; a voice from the nondead past started talking, she closed her ears and it spelled out in her hand “you might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.”
Art, has countless people have noted over the centuries, is a strange mixture of the material and the otherworldly. It’s building blocks are things of this world—words, sounds, human movement, wood, stone, clay, etc.—but something spiritual enters in. Perhaps, this being a Christian forum, we can think of it as a little piece of God’s kingdom come to earth.
In my talk today I’ve given instances of artists acknowledging art’s spiritual dimension and sometimes overtly courting it. I’d be very interested in our question-and-answer period of hearing about your own experiences with artistic transcendence. If you are an artist, how do you channel spirit into your work? If you are a consumer of art, what works have lifted you out of yourself and into a different space? Where have you experienced creating in God’s image?
