The famous quote by Virginia Woolf nags in my mind: "...on or about December 1910, human character changed ... The change was not sudden or definite ... but a change there was, nonetheless"
Looking back on the 20th century, we have much evidence that she was correct. The 20th century followed the 19th century - that gilded age and the era of Romanticism in art, literature and music. Relative peace existed worldwide: the principal post-Napoleonic conflict was the U. S. Civil war, but it brought forth freedom for millions of human beings from slavery.
The 20th century brought forth mass murder on an industrial scale by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and militarist Japan, and in the bloodlands in Eastern Europe. Human beings ceased to be seen as individual people, but as a number, a part of a class, and a bit of a nation. The passport system imposed regulations on free travel. "Your papers, please" became the stock bureaucratic and police greeting nearly worldwide. Even supposedly free America, a government ID is now required for much previously free activity.
In a now famous literary critical essay on the Metaphysical Poets of the 17th century, T. S. Eliot wrote: "In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we never recovered ..." [Note 1; today's word of the day is "sensibility"]. He was postulating that sometime in the mid 17th century, "life [was] no longer felt to be a moral struggle and morality itself became abstract." [Note 2]
This seems to have happened again. Beyond the historical facts of the 20th century, consider today. Commonplace dialog now examines almost every public statement as that of the rich or the poor, or the blacks or whites, or Hispanics or whatever class. People are viewed as numbers or members of a class. Jobs and school admissions are assigned by racial/ethnic groups. Public debate has degraded to sloganeering and propaganda sound bites. Realpolitik is pervasive. Simple efforts for human rights receive snickers. Efforts to bring some moral (or religious) feelings into arguments are met with screeches about "inclusiveness", when such actions are meant to exclude morality from legitimate debate.
We need to have a debate on where we want to go as a nation and a world; morality and human (meaning individual) happiness must again become part of the debate. We cannot fix our short and long term problems without knowing the end point - the eschaton - of our efforts. The path must be chosen to go to the right place. Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan said, we want to go to the Shining City on the Hill where cumulative individual happiness is optimal, not to the Dark City in the Swamp where we all are numbered parts of a cruel machine.
Note 1: Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, The Metaphysical Poets, page 64.
Note 2: Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot, page 54 mid.
Word of the Day
"Sensibility" - noun [$10]
Sensibility means 1. a. openness to emotional impressions, susceptibility, sensitiveness (sensibility to kindness); 1. b. (archaic) an exceptional or excessive degree of this (sense and sensibility); 2. a. (in plural) emotional capacities or feelings (was limited in his sensibilities); 2. b. (in sing. or pl.) a person's moral, emotional, or aesthetic ideas or standards; 3. sensitivity to sensory stimuli [USAGE: Sensibility should not be used in standard English as a noun corresponding to "sense" or "sensible"; it does not mean possession of common sense. Use sensibleness for that meaning.]
Sentence: On or about December 1910, much of humanity underwent a dissociation of sensibility, as it began to lose its moral compass for seeing each person as an individual person. Can we regain our sensibility?
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
A Hodge-Podge Day
When I was a boy & my parents were going out to dinner with friends or or to the horse races in Wheeling, West Virginia, they would declare a "hodge-podge" night, meaning that my brothers & I could make whatever we wanted for our dinner (usually my grandmother would provide a bit of adult supervision). That often meant peanut butter sandwiches with chocolate instant pudding for dessert, or something tasty like that.
"Hodge-podge" - noun [$2] - means a mixture of diverse ingredients.
Today is a hodge-podge blog day.
More on Public Employee Unions
A public employee union "bargaining" for anything represents Taxation without Representation and the stripping of power of the legislature. How can a bargain be struck that deprives the people of the power to legislate spending and taxation ? That's what a backroom bargain over wages or pensions or anything means. The union bosses and their cronies in the executive get together to put the State or City into a binding contract. What role does the people have ? Nothing. The government gets bound into a contract requiring it to PAY. And from where does that money come? Taxes.
When the contract is executed, the legislature finds itself having to vote taxes to fund it or be violating the contract and subject to various judicial confiscations. This is inherently taxation without representation. People getting no benefits have thus been forced to pay for endless retirement and health benefits of long retired state workers who might no longer even live in the state. This is involuntary servitude - a form of serfdom.
No legislature can bind another - no people can bind another - without their own legislature having FINAL say. That mean NO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS for public employee unions. Those are a violation of democracy and the principles of the nation and a republican form of government as mandated by the Constitution.
A Thought on Libertarianism
Here's a fine quote I read yesterday in an essay by T. S. Eliot on the writings of the philosopher, Francis Herbert Bradley [in this case comparing his thoughts to Matthew Arnold]: "For Utilitarianism was, as every reader of Arnold knows, a great temple in Philistia", meaning that if all value to humanity is measured by "utility", then where do moral or social or fraternal values fit? All becomes decadence, hedonism, the "values" of the Philistine rule. And what is almost synonymous with Utilitarianism? Libertarianism. Thus to modernize the thought:
Libertarianism is a great temple in Philistia.
Tea party adherents, beware. You are going down a path of darkness.
An Intensive Course on Literature
Simultaneously read multiple works of the following:
T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, H. L. Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis.
Those are three Novel laureates writers in the English and American languages and a hugely influential, entertaining and literate newspaper columnist. All wrote in the period roughly from 1890 to 1940, a period that created the foundation of the modern world. The first three have wonderful vocabularies; Lewis provides crucial societal scenes of America we can still recognize today.
Those writers cover poetry, essays, plays, critical prose, polemical prose, imaginative novels, etc. As one reads more and more, your ability to understand them grows. They complement each other.
Post World War II writing is thin gruel compared to their works. Why bother with it at all?
Word of the Day
"Miasma" - noun [$10] hmmm a card from high school days.
Miasma means a pervasive influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt.
Sentence: The multi-decadal miasma brought by State Boards of Education to American schools has infected secondary education in science and literature with gangrenous tissue causing the whole limbs of the body of student knowledge to rot.
"Hodge-podge" - noun [$2] - means a mixture of diverse ingredients.
Today is a hodge-podge blog day.
More on Public Employee Unions
A public employee union "bargaining" for anything represents Taxation without Representation and the stripping of power of the legislature. How can a bargain be struck that deprives the people of the power to legislate spending and taxation ? That's what a backroom bargain over wages or pensions or anything means. The union bosses and their cronies in the executive get together to put the State or City into a binding contract. What role does the people have ? Nothing. The government gets bound into a contract requiring it to PAY. And from where does that money come? Taxes.
When the contract is executed, the legislature finds itself having to vote taxes to fund it or be violating the contract and subject to various judicial confiscations. This is inherently taxation without representation. People getting no benefits have thus been forced to pay for endless retirement and health benefits of long retired state workers who might no longer even live in the state. This is involuntary servitude - a form of serfdom.
No legislature can bind another - no people can bind another - without their own legislature having FINAL say. That mean NO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS for public employee unions. Those are a violation of democracy and the principles of the nation and a republican form of government as mandated by the Constitution.
A Thought on Libertarianism
Here's a fine quote I read yesterday in an essay by T. S. Eliot on the writings of the philosopher, Francis Herbert Bradley [in this case comparing his thoughts to Matthew Arnold]: "For Utilitarianism was, as every reader of Arnold knows, a great temple in Philistia", meaning that if all value to humanity is measured by "utility", then where do moral or social or fraternal values fit? All becomes decadence, hedonism, the "values" of the Philistine rule. And what is almost synonymous with Utilitarianism? Libertarianism. Thus to modernize the thought:
Libertarianism is a great temple in Philistia.
Tea party adherents, beware. You are going down a path of darkness.
An Intensive Course on Literature
Simultaneously read multiple works of the following:
T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, H. L. Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis.
Those are three Novel laureates writers in the English and American languages and a hugely influential, entertaining and literate newspaper columnist. All wrote in the period roughly from 1890 to 1940, a period that created the foundation of the modern world. The first three have wonderful vocabularies; Lewis provides crucial societal scenes of America we can still recognize today.
Those writers cover poetry, essays, plays, critical prose, polemical prose, imaginative novels, etc. As one reads more and more, your ability to understand them grows. They complement each other.
Post World War II writing is thin gruel compared to their works. Why bother with it at all?
Word of the Day
"Miasma" - noun [$10] hmmm a card from high school days.
Miasma means a pervasive influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt.
Sentence: The multi-decadal miasma brought by State Boards of Education to American schools has infected secondary education in science and literature with gangrenous tissue causing the whole limbs of the body of student knowledge to rot.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Problems in Poetry
Modern poetry has lost its bearings. One can't even call many published poems poetry anymore. They read more like prose arranged to fit a visual pattern, and perhaps are more like a form of word art now. They lack any rhyme or meter or internal poetic structures such as alliteration, assonance or consonance. The verses and stanzas seems unconnected to their clause or sentence structures, as visual word patterns govern.
Here's an example from a poem in this quarter's Paris Review: I quote the last line and first line of two stanzas.
From stanzas #1 to #2 -
...
against a stranger. Looming
looming up through
...
From stanzas #2 to #3 -
...
the Thames, at once
murky and aflame, I watched
...
Now why is the stanza broken there - intra sentence? Normally one would pause reading in such a break. But from the words and thoughts, there is no reason or rational or even emotion to cause a pause. My last clause [bold, italics] was more poetic that than the poem, having both alliteration and rhyme. Much modern poetry seems to be just prose arranged in a visual pattern, like crappy modern art.
Poetry should be the best words in the best places. Poetry is anchored by how it sounds when read or spoken, not how the words look on a page. Thus much "modern" poetry is not poetry at all.
An original modern poem like T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land contains much intricate rhyming and is littered with poetic devices, as well as meanings and allusions. Prose can have meanings via metaphors or allegory and make allusions for emphasis, but it's still prose until structured with poetic devices to sound good when read.
Calling a bunch of words of prose arranged on a page, a "poem", does not make it a poem. Poets: learn some prosody and read your poems aloud. If it sounds like a poem, it's a poem. If not, you're just writing visually artistic prose.
Word of the Day
"Caesura" - noun (plural caesuras) [$10] Prosody
Caesura means 1. (in Greek or Latin verse) a break between words within a metrical foot; 2. (in modern verse) a pause near the middle of the line. [shown on a page as the second part of the line being dropped down to the next line]
Here's an example from Wordsworth's famous poem, Tintern Abbey (I put in underlines to fill the space as the blog editor automatically strips out spaces beginning a line):
...
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
___________________Nor perhance
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
...
There's a reason for that break: the prior thought/sentence ends and a new one begins midline. It's a real pause in the reading, not simply a visual construct.
Sentence: Too many modern poets use caesura for visual reasons when the construct should be confined to aural purposes.
Here's an example from a poem in this quarter's Paris Review: I quote the last line and first line of two stanzas.
From stanzas #1 to #2 -
...
against a stranger. Looming
looming up through
...
From stanzas #2 to #3 -
...
the Thames, at once
murky and aflame, I watched
...
Now why is the stanza broken there - intra sentence? Normally one would pause reading in such a break. But from the words and thoughts, there is no reason or rational or even emotion to cause a pause. My last clause [bold, italics] was more poetic that than the poem, having both alliteration and rhyme. Much modern poetry seems to be just prose arranged in a visual pattern, like crappy modern art.
Poetry should be the best words in the best places. Poetry is anchored by how it sounds when read or spoken, not how the words look on a page. Thus much "modern" poetry is not poetry at all.
An original modern poem like T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land contains much intricate rhyming and is littered with poetic devices, as well as meanings and allusions. Prose can have meanings via metaphors or allegory and make allusions for emphasis, but it's still prose until structured with poetic devices to sound good when read.
Calling a bunch of words of prose arranged on a page, a "poem", does not make it a poem. Poets: learn some prosody and read your poems aloud. If it sounds like a poem, it's a poem. If not, you're just writing visually artistic prose.
Word of the Day
"Caesura" - noun (plural caesuras) [$10] Prosody
Caesura means 1. (in Greek or Latin verse) a break between words within a metrical foot; 2. (in modern verse) a pause near the middle of the line. [shown on a page as the second part of the line being dropped down to the next line]
Here's an example from Wordsworth's famous poem, Tintern Abbey (I put in underlines to fill the space as the blog editor automatically strips out spaces beginning a line):
...
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
___________________Nor perhance
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
...
There's a reason for that break: the prior thought/sentence ends and a new one begins midline. It's a real pause in the reading, not simply a visual construct.
Sentence: Too many modern poets use caesura for visual reasons when the construct should be confined to aural purposes.
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