Monthly Archives: September 2014

Two Dimensions of Poetry: Dolce et Utile

Poetry

At the outset we emphasize that the title of this post points to only two of multiple dimensions of poetry, and the following observations scarcely elucidate the contours or hint at the densities of either.

1. Dolce – the pleasure in and of itself, whether in, from, through, the rhythms, rimes (and rhymes), meter – the sounds, the imagery, the internal and external enunciations, the patterns. A case in point: “Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.” With this as its concluding sentence, Nomad Exquisite (Wallace Stevens) holds inexhaustible delights, and waits for us to visit, as our spirit moves us, always there (and here) to rekindle and restore past joys that merge into present joys.

2. Utile – the mirror of, the receptacle for, the affirmation and enhancement of, our understanding; and in reverberations, what some call “soul.” A case in point: “Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” Who would dare answer? How can we know the answers, or seek to seek them, apart from the questions; and where within us emerge the impulses to revisit, to repose, the questions?

Inevitability at the Brink

Philosophy, Rhetoric

Around us, surrounding us, decisions and revisions to decisions abound. Invariably we decide “at the margin” based on where we are.  But how is it that we are where we are at decision-time, with our choices seemingly constrained by circumstances?

Now the above may strike us as  ponderous – at best – but a recognition of  its implications for public policy and comity, within and across borders, within and between groups,  is essential to an understanding that the choices presented to us, given to us, or selected by us from the data at hand, themselves reflect and emerge out of prior choices; and this emergence (ancestry) complicates and presses the moral imperative that we challenge ourselves to challenge choices at the moment.

The choices within the range, at the moment of choice, ought not to obfuscate the links that tie choices to choices.  We may need to take the past as we find it today, but we would be wise to appreciate that tomorrow’s past is today’s responsibility.

 

That’s What I Meant

Philosophy

While stepping up and down, and huffing and puffing, on a stair master at the gym, and reading this week’s New York Review of Books, a stanza from a poem I read in 1982 surfaced. Through my faulty memory I recall the stanza as:

–‘Tis hard to venture where our betters fail,
— Or lend fresh interest to a twice told tale;
— Any yet, perchance, ’tis wiser to prefer,
— A hackneyed plot then choose a new and err.

These lines reverberated as I found myself thinking, as I was reading the NY Review, “That’s what I meant. Oh, how he or she has written what I would have written had I the faculties and skill to organize and express my thoughts with such precision and grace.”

And, then, exhilaration at reading what seemed to be an excavation and presentation of latent thoughts, hidden and ineffable within my inner musings, began to sap my enthusiasm for venturing to express what predecessors and contemporaries have expressed before. The anxiety of influence? The urge for novelty? Could it be that what I have written is both good and original but, to paraphrase Johnson, the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good?

But, wait. Descent and subsistence come too soon. Our dignity, our individuality and inescapable autonomy, our will to assert, to act, to be a part, emerges, re-surges, and then reverses descent into lethargy, replaces lassitude, and propels ascent toward engagement, challenge and renewal.

Let others shrink before, and defer to, the received wisdom. I’ll take engagement any time.

Where We End Depends on Where We Begin – Ebola and International Reciprocity

Economics, Philosophy

Our observations on, and judgments of, human affairs depend, heavily, on how we frame and re-frame the subject(s) of our inquiry, and on the data we select, either purposefully or without recognition, to inform and support our views. The gravity and importance of this point bear vocalization, particularly because of forces (whether or not well-meaning) that obscure the role of selection among non-pre-ordained alternatives that, once selected, appear to lead inexorably to a conclusion cloaked in an objectivity that conceals the (un-selected) underlying alternatives.

An article in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine – “Ebola in a Stew of Fear” – powerfully relates the linkages of advances in Western medicine and healthcare to illnesses and their ravages elsewhere. I quote from the article:

“It was, in fact, a 1926 Harvard medical expedition to Liberia, undertaken on behalf of Firestone, that had brought my film team to the Liberia–Guinea border in 2014….. In 1926, the eight-member team had traveled for 4 months through the Liberian interior, collecting blood, tumors, urine, and photographs of diverse ethnic groups. Some people ran away when they saw these strangers. The routes the expedition traveled were those used by European and West African slave traders, white missionaries, and Liberian soldiers recently sent to conquer the interior. Why stick around when strangers had been such potent contributors to the local ecology of fear?…..

American medical research profited from the blood, parasites, and viruses collected on these expeditions. Such materials were the stuff of Nobel Prizes, professional prestige and fame, and medical breakthroughs that benefited people throughout the world. The 1951 Nobel Prize awarded to Max Theiler, a member of the 1926 Harvard expedition, for his work on a yellow fever vaccine, is one example. But biomedical research did little in return to help build medical knowledge and public health capacity within Liberia. When Liberian friends now post on Facebook links connecting the Ebola outbreak to past American biomedical research, they point to the history and memory of exploitation and extraction that run deep in West Africa. These roots of medical extraction in Africa contribute to the ecology of fear.

Modern medicine owes a debt to West Africans for past sacrifices made in the advancement of global health. This week’s announcement by President Barack Obama of a U.S. commitment to build 17 Ebola treatment centers in Liberia, train medical workers, provide testing kits, and offer logistic support is a welcome and needed response. It should be the start of a long-term, concerted effort to strengthen the public health infrastructure, which is critical to the region’s future stability.”

When we consider our “foreign aid,” we would do well to bear in mind that our aid is not a one-way street and the very conceptualization of “aid”, insofar as it connotes unilateral assistance, ought not to obscure the fundamental, tangible, and very real reciprocity that precedes and supports, enables and perpetuates, foreign aid.

Questioning the Every Day

Philosophy, Rhetoric

We would render ourselves inert if we were to question most of what we take for granted. But the very phrase “take for granted” presupposes our acceptance of many fundamentals granted to us by someone or something else. If a core component of power is found in one’s ability to control another, then the ultimate power is a control whose influence is so deep and pervasive as to be unnoticed by the controlled subjects. How would they bridle against, yet alone revolt against, things that they take for granted? How would they question the status quo if it is “just the way things are”?

Now, we might challenge the foregoing observations as over-broad, further observing that natural phenomenon are indeed just the way things are. The sun always rises. But notwithstanding the challenge, and giving it its full due, we can recognize that many of life’s everyday understandings and practices are not embedded in a fixed, mechanical reality. Of course, blind faith and ubiquity, and the pressing demands and inclinations to “get along,” limit our recognitions.

Once we accept the gist of the above, we can begin a (necessarily selective) consideration of the power trade-offs reflected in the every-day practices that we take for granted.

What are the origins of practices ranging from (1) what we eat and do not (such as prohibitions on pork or beef consumption); (2) historic persecution of witches; (3) criticisms of pornography, drugs, etc., (4) the scope of criminal sanctions, (5) allocations of government dollars, (6) fashion in clothes, (7) heaven and hell.

Pausing to consider who benefits and who does not from any given practice is vital to promoting and enriching our individual freedoms and to holding ourselves, our institutions and organizations accountable.

Savoring (once again) Alexander Pope – a Brief Comment on Book Reviews

Uncategorized

I read recently a book review that the reviewer must have written to exhibit his luminous intellectual prowess through ridicule of the dull author of the criticized book.

Reflecting on the thin and porous veneer of impartiality that the reviewer applied to his review, an urge to re-read and savor again Alexander Pope’s marvelous “Essay on Criticism” began to swell.

‘Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ offense
To tire our patience than mis-lead our sense…

And with the above quote, the pleasures and instructions of this poem have scarcely begun. Dolce et utile.

How often we encounter reviews patently intended, not to guide us through qualities of the work being reviewed, nor to situate the work in a coherent context, but to highlight the reviewer’s breadth of learning and perspicacity. How often we wish the reviewer followed Pope’s exhortation:

But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic’s noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.

What Pope found true in the early eighteenth century, we find true today. Would that each review came appended to a review of the review.

The Pleasures of Acknowledgements

Poetry, Rhetoric

I recently came accross a book I first read when it was a raging sensation (circa 1978) in Hyde Park, prominently positioned at all the bookstores – and there were many back then – in and around the University of Chicago. Pride in a native son.

The genesis of “A River Runs Through It” is as fascinating and inspiring as the novel itself, and I cannot think of the book without rekindling the thrill of reading the Acknowledgement. “Although it’s a little book, it took a lot of help to become a book at all. When one doesn’t start out to be an author until he has reached his biblical allotment of three score years and ten, he needs more than his own power.”

With the thrill rekindled and lingering, I find myself recalling Acknowledgements, Dedications and Author Prefaces that continue to reverberate long after I first delighted in their stirring artistry.

A few that have reverberated consistently over the years (and I rely upon an imperfect memory):

1. “All that is meant, And that will be understood, Cannot be expressed in a dedication. This book is for Claire.” A glimpse into a deep and private love. Spare and voluminous. From Bork’s “The Antitrust Paradox.”

2. “Some people, once met, simply elbow their way into a novel and sit there till the writer finds them a place. Dick is one. I am sorry I could not obey his urgent exhortation and libel him to the hilt. My cruelest efforts could not prevail against the the affectionate nature of the original.” Lines that are infused with pathos and vitality in the work that follows. From Le Carre’s “The Honorable Schoolboy.”

3. And, finally, to close out this entry, I commend the entire oeuvre of Graham Greene. Quoting Leon Bloy in “The End of the Affair”: “Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering in order that they may have existence.”

To would-be Literature PhDs in search of a dissertation topic, may I suggest, as a topic, an exploration of the jewels and gems within Acknowledgements, Dedications and Author Prefaces.