David Castleman
ON POETRY
In an ideal world, opinions would be based on an
animal's perceptions of the actual, and would help the animal to
attain the maturity of wisdom in preparation for later things. But
alas, in our mechanical universe and in our seedy Romanesque
society, things ideal have become perverted and many of our
perceptions are based topsy-turvily on our opinions, which in turn
are based on other opinions in a sprawling tissue of lies and
nonsense, prejudice and superficialities. We tend to think a
certain way because we tend to think a certain way, and not because
we have been shown that it is right. Our illusions protect our eyes
from the light.
Ideas are naturally elusive for those of us who
are too dumb to be naturally lit, who must supplement with menial
energy a merest spark. In youth it seemed that empires might be
illumined by just a piece of our great glow, and in maturity the
light seems so faint that we become lost on the way to the
bathroom.
We like to chatter about creative proprieties,
about what in the arts is good and what bad, about what in the arts
is natural and healthy and what is neither, and if possible we'd
like to be able to pontificate on these hallowed subjects. We like
to forget that the world's true creatives are proceeding in their
endeavors and are regardless of our little words.
Every individual in every generation believes
that some very decisive motion of the train of evolution has
finally culminated in the existence and manifestation of that one
particular individual. Each human being considers itself to be a
prominent effort in the emergence of humanity, preciously if
precariously tucked into a special place and possessed of
definitive validity.
In one century this human creature preferred
that its own artistic endeavors, and preferred that the artistic
endeavors of its neighbors, assume one very specific mode of
expression, and in another century the same beast preferred a very
different mode of expression. In any century the mode preferred is
deemed the contemporary mode, the mode on the cutting edge of
contemporary esthetic and perpetual struggle.
This little beastie has always been rather
certain that only one form is correct, apt, and proper, and has
always been rather certain that any alternative forms of expression
have been chosen benightedly by fools. Our ability as an audience
is defined by our personal limits, and that which approaches us
from beyond our personal limits, frightens us because we do not
understand it, and so we declare it invalid. This is an intelligent
mechanism of defense, and it helps us to cope.
Once I had an editor explain to me that
originality was indeed a fine thing, but that in a democracy it was
important that everybody be original in the same way. This little
fellow, I am certain, could under few circumstances distinguish
between such unconnected concepts as novelty and originality. One
comes from the fancy and one from the imagination. One is from the
realm of whim and opinion, and one is from the realm of idea and
perception. One is trivial and one profound. One is the currency of
the following generations, and one is the coin counterfeit which is
produced and thrown out by each generation as a part of the job of
being alive.
The increasing sense of democracy in our social
world is in part responsible for the flight from realism and from
pattern in our arts, for as we accede to the clamor of the many
that their voice is as inspired and as relevant as is the voice of
any of the few, so we pretend that anybody may be an artist if they
choose. Television and movies and the recording industry profit
from this view, and without it they world shrivel up and die.
Best-selling novels are arranged by salesmen with computers and
glibly flapping tongues, not by lonesome drudges who brood and
weigh.
This may seem fair, and reasonable. We proclaim
that the old rules have been struck down and have been replaced by
a beautiful freedom, and we pretend that new rules do not
necessarily emerge.
But new rules do emerge, and ascend. If LEAR
were written today, it would be unpublishable, because the voice of
the shepherds of the many would proclaim that it doesn't conform to
the unmentionable rules. And because it would be unpublished, none
would he permitted to seek and penetrate the sheen of novelty, and
find the vast and awesome originality, the unerring truth of the
ordeal.
Who today would be permitted to publish THE RAPE
OF THE LOCK, or TINTERN ABBEY, or THE FAIRIE QUEEN? If a human
creature were so involved in creativity that the social dictates of
chronology were ignored, and that to create one of those four
pieces were the most natural thing in the world, that human
creature would encounter an audience of derision and implacable
silence.
The test of a poem isn't whether it fulfills the
requirements demanded by others, but whether with intense and
continual scrutiny it becomes boring. If it continues to feed our
psyches as we journey through life, then it may be said to be a
real poem. Our initial response is probably irrelevant.
Real poetry doesn't seem to come from what
are commonly called our faculties. Real poetry seems to be relayed
through the pineal gland and the nervous system, physical bases of
our electrical communications process. The poet is recipient of
impulses toward creativity, urges to capture certain sounds and to
capture rough patterns of images and concept, and the poet may
choose either to encourage and provoke such impulses, or may lazily
ignore them. Within the poetic psyche, either course is
appropriately rewarded.
Usually, throughout history, the insistence or
denial of the day's contemporary trends, is based on an alleged
dichotomy between all that has come before, and that which hovers
on the lip of current circumstance. When we insist upon general
recognition of our own personal importance, and when we know damn
well that we can't compete with those vast voices of the past, we
find it useful to dismiss those voices altogether. If pressed, we
claim that they spoke only to their times and peoples, and that
today's times and today's peoples require newer and more accurate
answers. Like any other selfaggrandizing politicians, we know that
we lie, and yet it gives us a feeling of power when we lie, and we
like to lie. Great souls have little need to lie, and we are not
great souls.
Our grandchildren will wonder that in our time
we neglected the only living peals of truth, and our grandchildren
will commit the same blunder in their time. Every age demands its
comfortable falsehoods and every age disdains the pealing
substance, and the bearers of the peal wither in solitude and
neglect.
In every area of time, that which is superficial
is preferred to that which is substantial, because it is more
accessible to nearly everybody. The superficial aspects of one time
extend into the coming and the previous times, and the points of
reference change a bit but the activity is the same. The faces and
names appear different to those who wear them, but that is only
because the perspective is blurred from too close scrutiny.
Substance, unpopular as ever, misunderstood as
ever, continues its representation also. And the substance of the
past sometimes enters into the mainstream of consciousness of the
present, and it is chattered about very comfortably by those who
misunderstand it. This is done comfortably because those folks who
unearthed the substance have been shelved back into the earth and
cannot argue and cannot explain, and in their pain they can no
longer misbehave and be embarrassing to the surface-dwellers,
common and uncommon alike.
All sensible peoples applaud the superficial and
the false, and hate the embarrassment of truth. We hate a living
genius, and we demand of genius that it have the courtesy to be
dead and uncomplaining, so that we may begin to forgive it for
impugning our reign of mediocrity.
