"... and me thou leavest here | Sole in these fields!"

Usually I click "New Post" and start typing away, confident I can speak my piece. But today I balk some (here in the public library, as usual, it's balky enough -- though appreciated!).

On this subject, I'm not likely to get much right, or, if I do, say only what's been said elsewhere by my betters. Still, I promised you, dear readers, and myself that I'd do it, so here goes:

Culture and Anarchy is pointed satire of British society as Matthew Arnold saw it in his day. Its tone is serious on one level, deliberately puckish on another level and stinging on still another.

Though it's written in the discursive Victorian style used in periodical writing then, the book's characteristic sniping at its academic and political targets is evenly sustained clause after clause, sentence after sentence, paragraph (some more than a page long in my edition) after paragraph, page after page, and chapter after chapter.

Most readers know the book from Chapter IV, which contains the most inspired writing. In it, Arnold contrasts what he called Hebraism with Hellenism -- twin forces of equal quality and power in Western culture, as Arnold saw it.

Hebraism, as Arnold described it, has less to do with Judaism than with what I might describe as the reforming zeal of some "Old Testament Protestants" (here my term, but one I've heard before in the South) in both religion and politics that Arnold felt had pushed society too far in a superficial direction. He wanted to balance that cultural force with Hellenism, what he saw as (my phrase again) a Socratic inquiry toward a life well-lived.

You really need to read the three chapters in front of this one to get a grasp of what Arnold means here. And you need to be there for the rest of the book, when he brings his point home.

Reading it, I admit, is a little frustrating, because Arnold keeps swinging his verbal sword at the miscues of a few long-dead politicians few people on my side of the pond have ever heard of, and he thrusts his rhetorical dirk at both them and his critics with one appositive after another, stacking the phrases into his sentences as a fisherman stacks herring. In Arnold's case, all his herrings are red.

A school inspector in England nearly all his working life, Arnold was frustrated by what he saw and was unable to change in what then passed for education of the working classes (he calls them the Populace -- contrasting them with the landed aristocratic class he calls Barbarians and the moneyed middle class he calls Philistines). He mentions the subject of education once or twice in Culture and Anarchy, but it's clearly sitting patiently at the back of his mind the whole time.

There's something else I want to mention: the effect of "Thyrsis" and the woman known only as "Marguerite." Arthur Hugh Clough and "Marguerite" were Arnold's twin inspirations while he was a poet. (I say this as a poet, not as a scholar, which I'm clearly not.) He chose Swift's "sweetness and light" as a key phrase in Culture and Anarchy, and I personally suspect these terms reminded him (unconsciously?) of Marguerite and Clough, or at least the effect they had on him.

The editor of my edition of Culture and Anarchy indicates in her introduction that Arnold's poetic inspiration left him in the mid-1860s. I instead suspect Arnold left poetry deliberately.

His monody on Clough (who died young, even by Victorian Age standards) pretty much concludes Arnold's poetic career. He issued his Poems (the collected edition, including "Thrysis," published only three years before) the same year as Culture and Anarchy. Another, I think, in that edition is his last addressed to "Marguerite," a woman he met twice in Switzerland as a younger man. Arnold also lost two of his sons the year before he published his collected poems.

Grief, estrangement and the righteous anger they can prompt make for some powerful poetic fuel. If the muse of poetry wants to use them to set you on fire, you can burn for years.

With all respect to the editor, I don't think "poetic inspiration" abandoned Matthew Arnold. She merely gave him another job to do. Culture and Anarchy is its monument, and it's living still.

Read it, if you dare.

Anarchic Culture

I can't resist (I suppose) just one or two more ... .

Just finished reading Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold. I'll have more to say about the book itself in another post, but what I want to bring up now is how I read it.

I used the Oxford World's Classics edition, around $15 in a nice, coat-pocketable paperback.

Though I posted "The Top Ten" and re-named this blog The Instauration to mark Apple including a Kindle application for its iPad, I prefer books. This is why:

When first I brought Culture and Anarchy home, I looked it over. My perusal included the cover artwork, the back cover "blurb", the table of contents, and the length of each section.

After skimming a couple of paragraphs here and there, I saw that Culture and Anarchy was less about literature and more about social commentary. I was afraid the book would be boring, so I set it aside for awhile but left it within arm's length of my reading chair.

When I decided to read it anyway a week or so later, I thought I would try a different approach in case Culture and Anarchy turned out to be as dry as it first looked.

I started by reading the Appendix (which is a response to an early version of Arnold's first chapter by philosopher/critic Henry Sidgwick), then I read the text of Culture and Anarchy at my normal snail's crawl.

After that, I read Arnold's Preface to the book. Then I read editor Jane Garnett's Introduction.

This procedure worked out for me: Sidgwick's critique provided me the introduction I needed, and the text turned out to be (for a Victorian essay, anyway) very funny and engaging without any more background than the Appendix and Garnett's Explanatory Notes (an education in themselves) provided.

Arnold (something I found out while reading Garnett's Introduction) wrote the Preface after he collected all five chapters (which first appeared in a Victorian high culture periodical of his day) into one book, so I actually found it worthwhile to read that part almost last.

A book makes the method I used very easy. I doubt it would have even occurred to me to do it that way on an electronic reader (hard or soft), and it probably would have been hard to do if it had. (Note: If you try my method on Culture and Anarchy, please do what I didn't, and read "Note on the Text" before reading the actual text. That should help.)

Also, I can also stick one book in the chair's cushion while I have another in my lap, if I need that kind of cross-reference. Ditto for the e-reader version, unless you have a lot more money than I'm ever likely to have.

When I first wrote about an electronic library some years ago (in another blog on another service), I thought it would be great to have it as a way to borrow books from an electronic repository (an e-library -- something public and local) or look at entire collections (like the eleven-volume edition of Arnold's complete works that Garnett frequently references in her notes), books I would never have the funds to buy myself or the room to store (or ever need to own in the first place).

I think books have their place. I need them, for one thing. An e-reader (hard or soft) would be for me a nice luxury. While not essential for me now, it might be someday -- especially in some public e-library form.

I also like owning hard copies of things like books and music. I think it just makes sense. So I hope both books and CDs stick around, personally. And I hope e-readers (hard and soft) continue to develop along paths that benefit the general public.

Maybe we'd have a little less anarchy that way -- and a little more culture we can share.

_____

Afternote (2/25/11): A recent episode of a popular TV show evaluating "attic" curios and "garage sale" antiques, a recent news report on the impending death of the small bookshop and a recent effort at "rolling my own" have one thing in common: a brainstorm.

It seems persons of wealth once collected books in loose-page form, each book held in a custom box made from the same type of "board" that makes hard-backed books hard -- bookboard. In the box also went items like related etchings, maps and other materials that could one day, when the collected book was "finished," be sent back to the bookseller to be custom bound. That way, the book would not only be a first edition, it would also be one of a kind. The antiques show featured one such collection, still held loose in those little fold-out boxes.

The news report detailed the rise of electronic books, the purchase of each said to be a "nail in the coffin" of the indie bookseller.

My custom-book follies include me trying to impersonate someone who knows what he is doing in taking electronic text I wrote into booklet form with a garden-variety printer and word-processing software. The result was a ridiculous and lamentable waste of paper.

So today, a brainstorm: "Why not ____ ?"

I think you can fill in the blank. (Hint: the answer would not be "better software," at least not for a book lover like me.)

Wrapping Up Note

My previous post "Our Keystone" and the four Beginning Scientific Afternotes that followed it all concerned an outmoded mindset called "modernism," not the enormous intellectual efforts of those scientists who contributed to modernism when it was still an active cultural movement.

When a cultural movement stops moving, it ossifies. So do the minds of its adherents, all of whom remain "stuck" in a dead current.

Darwin, Einstein, Freud and Marx continue to influence the living thing we call "culture," but probably not in ways even they may have foreseen. Since their contributions were made, many others have continued working on issues they raised, changing the way those issues are perceived, considered and debated.

We, as poets, need to remain alive to what's happening around us, even as we contemplate those "eternal verities" we're supposed to be wrapped up in. That effort can leave us chasing one fashion statement after another, or it can put us in a place where we can fashion statements of our own.

It's my hope that we can all do this together, however often we may debate just "what's goin' on."

It's my belief that we need to do it together, as the entries in The Top Ten can attest: they were not created in a vacuum.
_____

I'm going to need another break in posting, but I'm hoping not for too long. I plan to continue working on The Top Ten -- reading, re-reading and commenting as I feel I can.

The next milestone (which may be that giant rock I've been mentioning in my subtitles) will be Browning's The Ring and the Book. His tower poem is longer than Paradise Lost, longer by several thousand lines, and it will take me a long time to finish at any rate, especially my notorious crawl.

I also hope to post some things on the other Top Ten members, too. But these probably won't come at the pace I've been posting recently, or anything close to it.

What I'm trying to say is, "Be seeing you!" After all, this is just a village, right?

Beginning Scientific Afternote 4

"Einstein's publication of his general theory in 1916 essentially brought to a close the revolutionary period of his scientific career. In many ways, Einstein had begun to fall out of phase with the rapid changes taking place in physics during the 1920s. Even though Einstein's own work on the photoelectric effect helped set the stage for the development of quantum theory, he was never able to accept some of its concepts, particularly the uncertainty principle. ...
"At the time of his death he was the world's most widely admired scientist and his name was synonymous with genius. Yet Einstein declined to become enamored of the admiration of others. He wrote in his book, The World as I See It: 'Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. ... '"

from "Albert Einstein" by David E. Newton in Notable Mathematicians From Ancient Times to the Present, Robin Young, ed. Gale, Detroit, 1998, pp. 158-159.

Inadmissible Me

I have to admit (is this statement "admissible" or "admittable"?) making a fair copy takes more than having nice handwriting (I don't, BTW.). I found that out the hard way a few days ago, when I tried making one of a poem I'd left in draft form for a year.

My fair copy turned into a very "un"fair draft within a few lines. By the time I got to "Phoenix," she was a real mess.

At first I was embarrassed, vowing to return to the public library ASAP and delete the last three or four posts. A cooler head (if no wiser) prompted this one instead.

The problem: my poem isn't fully baked. It may never be. Some parts are still too "raw" (this conceit is getting out of hand quickly).

It also points to something else: making a fair copy takes a little more character than I wanted to admit in my earlier "Enthusiastic Me" phase. Hmmm ... .

Interesting, no?

The Life of the Poet

For those who may have read my last post, among them might have been one or two lit mag publishers. They may well have spent last night turning in their sleep over old nightmares of being inundated by scrawled felttip-on-napkin haikus, koans scribbled on Post-It notes with crayon and free verse handblocked onto a toilet roll with a golf pencil.

Creative, possibly. Submissible*, probably not. You must follow publishers' submission guidelines when sending them your work -- and that usually means (at a minimum) typed on good old 8 1/2 by 11. (Or, if you want to save trees -- that's what cloud computing's for!)

Doing so will not "kill" your poem -- that I can almost guarantee (depends on your typing skill, for one thing), any more than a band burning a CD "kills" its recorded music. What I was talking about yesterday was keeping your poem alive for you.

Gone are the days when we had to memorize all our work. Whatever may have been lost in mnemonic ability by "reducing" our poems to writing (a term that's still heard in court sometimes), we gained by not having to depend exclusively on a chain of memorizers to perpetuate them. Fair enough.

But making our own fair copies could help bridge some of that memory-reason-skill gap we sometimes experience from an overabundance of technology. (Sometimes it's just too easy!)

I remember a poem (I wish I could remember by whom) I read in a national magazine a good 20-25 years ago. It dealt with how to make a poem, and it was a dramatic monologue of some ancient bard who had to pluck a goose quill for a pen, milk a snake for some ink and skin (sorry, ladies!) a sheep for parchment. That's how he "made" a poem.

While we don't have to do that any more, it's probably a good thing to remember to put our fair copies on fairly nice paper and use fairly nice pens. (You don't have to spend a lot anymore to get "fair" materials.)

Remember, our fair copies are for us. "What for," you ask? Who knows? They may help keep the poet in us alive.

*submittable? admissible? duh ... .

Fair Deal

There's a lot of talk online these days about what role the U.S. Poet Laureate should assume.

Technically, the job is to be an adviser (-or?) to the Librarian of Congress, who appoints the laureate for, I think, a year. So, there's a lot of room for different approaches, it would seem.

Not being in academe, I am out of the loop on this one, because most published poets hereabouts are college professors. Though I do read a few things from time to time, I really have no idea how previous poets laureate have dealt with the post.

However, it seems that our art is making a comeback of sorts as a part of the general uptick in "spoken word" performance. (This is a recession, and the tickets are usually a lot cheaper than, say, a rock concert by a national act.)

So, "ride the wave" would be one approach, it seems.

But, of the many things written about the current laureate, one bit sticks with me -- and, I am sad to say, in an embarrassed way.

You see, I used to think the typewriter killed poems. No, really, that's what I thought: you could compose one in your head or write it down by hand, but once you typed it, you killed it.

OK, this was a very long time ago, and I soon went to typing my final drafts long before personal computers dropped below a grand, making that chore a cinch. Having been a journalist of one sort or another for many years, banging on a manual typewriter was natural for me, so that's what I did.

However, W.S. Merwin, according to one bio, still writes his final drafts by hand -- whether block print or cursive, I know not -- and has for many years.

This practice has a name: it's called making a "fair copy." That is to say, "fair" as in "readable" or "legible."

What makes this a deal for the poet laureate's role I can't say, except that it seems to be one commonplace thing that can bring us one step closer to the common root of our art.

I'm going to go back to making fair copies just as soon as I can. I've killed enough poems already.

Beginning Scientific Afternote 3

"Although Freud believed that he was a mere observer and was reporting accurately on his observations, he did not follow traditional scientific methods in his work. He did not generate hypotheses and test them independently, and most of his clients were middle-class women. Neither did he test people on any standardized instrument or scale. He based his ideas on conversations that he had with patients, which might have been enlightening, but were not systematic or scientific. Thus some critics would argue that all of Freud's theories are in doubt. Despite these criticisms, Freud's work continues to attract interest, and many psychologists still practice in the manner that he advocated, although many do not.
"Freud's influence is also felt in research. Numerous researchers are currently working on studies examining defense mechanisms, for example, and the evidence suggests that these devices do exist, even though they may differ in important ways from Freud's original descriptions."

from "Psychoanalysis," by Joseph M. Boden in History of Psychology, Volume I, Alan E. Kazdin, editor in chief, Grolier Educational, Danbury, Conn.: 2002, p. 65. Also see "Freud, Sigmund" by Raymond E. Fancher in Encyclopedia of Psychology, Vol. 3, Oxford University Press: 2000. Latter article includes bibliography of works from among Freud's modern critics, as well as his defenders.

Fabulous water

A closer look at Merwin's The Book of Fables shows me these prose pieces are definitely harder to classify than I suggested in the last post.

Simply slapping the label "prose poems" on the book doesn't do it justice. The jacket blurb description "enigmatic short prose" is about as close as you can get.

Likewise, calling him an "essayist" labels. Merwin's work -- prose or poetry -- is its own label.

Kind of like a watermark, wouldn't you say?

Laurels

I want to take time out from footnoting(?) to congratulate W.S. Merwin on his selection as U.S. Poet Laureate.

Merwin is a prolific poet, essayist and translator. He began writing metrical poetry early in his career and has since branched out into all modern forms, including prose poetry (a collection of them was published a couple of years ago, which the library I'm writing from shelves in the Story Collection -- and it works!).

I also commend the Librarian of Congress for this year's selection. I could not think of a better choice, personally.

Beginning Scientific Afternote 2

"Much attention has rightly been given to Marx due to the groundbreaking work of The Communist Manifesto. However, he also wrote another monumental piece, Das Kapital (1867), an economic criticism of capitalism originally penned in German. In this work, Marx focuses on the concept of surplus value and highlights that the fundamental injustice of capitalism is that it encourages employers to create profits at the expense of the employees. The economic theories outlined in Das Kapital influenced numerous followers and helped generate the science of economics. To economists, the name "Marx" has a wholly different meaning than it does to political scientists. ... While Marx wrote a great deal about social and economic conditions endured by working populations during the 19th century, his legacy is still incredibly strong today in philosophical, sociological, and political thinking."

from "Marx, Karl" by Ian Morley in The Encyclopedia of Politics, Volume One: The Left, Rodney P. Carlisle, ed., SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks: 2005, p. 303.