In ‘Apology for Poetry’ Sir Philip
opines that the sciences and arts are all directed towards a single end: ‘doing
well and not well knowing only’; their ultimate goal is right action. In this
regard he gives poetry precedent over philosophy and history but it seems to me
there are limited instances when this is truly the case. Men would be better
inspired to engage in the tumult of battle by a rousing hymn sung accompanied
by pipes and drums than a dissertation on War as the continuation of Politics
or a factual narrative of battles past, at least as far as the common soldier
might be concerned, though a King might reconcile himself to battle in terms of
his politics and a general’s confidence aggrandized by the science of his
weaponry or the fame gained by his predecessors in the event of success. In most respects, however, Sir Sidney
[ petere principium], ‘begs the question’ - assumes what needs to be
proved. His flowery language is
sufficient for the main purpose which is to project himself as a “Renaissance
Man.”
Why then , in our noble lord’s
view, did Plato wish to banish poets from Athens? ‘As to him, banishing the
abuse, not the thing, not banishing it but giving due honor unto it, shall be
our patron and not our adversary.” Which is to say, in so many words- of which
Sidney has many- Plato was against bad poetry, not poetry itself, which anyone
who has read the master’s dialogues can plainly see. ‘Those who think otherwise
are braying like asses in a lion’s skin.’
At any rate, Sydney counted Divinity-
of which in that pious age of religious controversy he must have meant the
Protestant pastor’s Sunday Sermon - above philosophy, science and poetry as it
‘leads and draw us to as a high perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse
by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of.’
I might as well skip over Dryden’s
contribution to the genre except to reproduce the editor of “The Critical
Tradition’s” comment that, like Jonathan Swift’s ‘Battle of the Books’,
Dryden’s ‘Essay on Dramatic Poesy’ might
be thought as one volley in
the international controversy over the relative value of the ancient and modern
writers. Conservative thinkers
like Swift felt that the ancients -Homer, Virgil, Juvenal- could never be surpassed while others
felt that by building on the foundations of the past the present may see
further than the giants themselves. “Dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of
giants may see further than the giant’s themselves” said Dryden’s friend Isaac
Newton. They might also miss what is just at their feet.
In “ On the Sublime " by Longinus (First Century C.E.) is more
interesting, in my view. Sublimity is a special contribution of the arts which
is said to transcend all generic boundaries; it can be found in them all or
rather, its presence is definitive of art itself. He characterizes it as ekstasis, meaning a kind of ‘transport’. He is better at defining what it is
not: ‘the unpardonably tasteless tumidity of pigmy hautboys characterized by
turbid expression, confused imagery, puerility, pedantic trifling and the
immoderate wearisomeness of the purely personal. In other words, in light of
the present, all the productions
of the pundits of the popular press and most of the works that appear on the
lists of best sellers. A bit snobbish
of me to say so but then, as Leo Lowenthal remarked ,“I don't consider
the accusation of elitism an insult, but rather praise.”
The authors of the sublime make the
vastness of the world - the distance between heaven and earth-the measure of
their leaps. It is often comprised of a single thought, not of one passion
alone but a concourse of passions, an expression that captures the concert of
the discordant elements in life.
Longinus makes an example of the silence of Ajax in the Underworld-’ the
echo of a great soul more sublime than any words.’ Again, in Homer’s poem the
battle of the Greeks is suddenly veiled by mist and baffling night. Then Ajax,
at his wits end cries:
Zeus, Father, yet save thou
Achaia’s sons from beneath the gloom
And make clear day, and
vouchsafe unto us with our eyes to see!
So it be but in light,
destroy us!
This is the true attitude of Ajax,
Longinus writes. He does not pray for life, for such a petition would have
ill-beseemed a hero. But since in the hopeless darkness he can turn his valor to no noble end,
he chafes at his slackness in the fray and craves the boon of immediate light,
resolved to find a death worthy of his bravery, even though Zeus should fight
in the ranks against him.
To achieve the sublime in
literature, says Longinus, we must first presuppose a tribunal and theater of the likes of Homer or Demosthenes
for our own utterances and imagine that we are undergoing a scrutiny of our
writings before these great heroes, acting as judges and witnesses. But an even
greater incentive will be supplied if you add the question: “In what spirit
will each succeeding age listen to me who have written thus? If one shrinks
from the very thought of uttering aught that may transcend the terms of his own
life and time, the
conception of his mind must necessarily be incomplete, blind, and as it were
untimely born, once they are by no means brought to the perfection needed to
ensure a futurity of fame.”
Which reminds me of Walter
Benjamin: the measure of the present is not the past but the future.
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