John Stuart Mill – “What Is Poetry?”

Mill’s argument continues: both poetry and fiction contain truth, but in case of poetry the truth is about inward things, the emotions, while in in case of fiction it is about giving a true picture of life. That is why “great poets are often proverbially ignorant of life”, because they really don’t know it, they only know their own emotional life. Of course both poetry and narrative can be combined to a different degree within one work, and this is true especially for drama. Again, a dramatic poem may contain a lot of great poetry and very scanty incidents, while trashy novels from the Minerva Press may be quite good as narratives, although no poetic or emotional truth. I guess Mill indicates here quite clearly which branch of literature he prefers, and he further tips his hand when he says about Shakespeare that to the many, he is a great storyteller, while to the (select) few he’s a great poet.

What about descriptive poetry, you might ask? Description is not really poetry, nor can science be poetry, even though it could be the subject of a didactic poem, but they can give inspiration to poetry. Still, the poet’s way of describing, say, a lion, would be very different from that of a naturalist or a traveller, because poets would focus on the emotions evoked in the viewer.

Mill also discusses the two definitions of poetry he read recently, one by a rather forgotten poet (although apparently a very interesting man) Ebenezer Elliott, the other by the unsigned (as was customary then) author writing for Blackwood’s Magazine. Since Mill calls these authors “poets, and men of genius”, I assume he knew the identity of the latter and I wish the editors of the NAEL had told me if it was the case. Elliott wrote that “”poetry is impassioned truth”, the other wrote that poetry is “man’s thoughts tinged by his feelings”. These are very good definitions, says Mill, and yet, how do we make a difference between poetry and eloquence, to which they also could apply? Poetry, he thinks, is always “overheard”, it’s like eavesdropping on the poet’s thoughts, while eloquence expressly addresses (or interrogates) the listener or reader. It’s aim is to influence its recipients in some way.

John Stuart Mill – “What Is Poetry?”

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote Principles of Political Economy
Edmund Clerihew Bentley.

But today I am starting to read a more literary text, written by the then rather young Mill, who had been helped by poetry to overcome his depression, caused by his strict Utilitarian upbringing. The essay starts with dismissing the simplest, or as Mill rather wonderfully calls it, the vulgarest possible answer to the title question – poetry is not just anything with metre in it. Poetry, Mill believes, can exist both in prose and verse, and even in other branches of art, not necessarily verbal ones (he sounds a bit like the 20th-c. theoreticians who extended the meaning of “text”). Poetry, he argues, acts upon emotions and it is its main aim, as opposed to the narrative, which may contain some elements of poetry as well, but its main aim is the outward events. Children love listening to stories and are not so much interested in poetry, because they lack the emotional scope with which to respond to it. Similarly, as Mill says (somewhat jarringly for modern sensibilities), the Tartars and Arabs, and “all nations in the earliest ages” love story-tellers, and their poetry is mostly narrative ballads, the lowest form of poetry. The deep and elevated minds love poetry; the shallow ones, as Mill claims with some understatement “not those least addicted to novel-reading.” Novel-reading provides the outward excitement for those who may find it difficult to find any excitement in themselves.

John Henry Newman – “The Idea of a University” (the end)

The last fragment from The Idea… continues the discussion of the ideal gentleman: it is somebody who never inflicts pain. His presence is like a good fire and comfortable easychair, because he makes one feel comfortable. The true gentleman avoids all unpleasantness and wants everybody in his company to feel at ease, avoiding unpleasant topics. He is not egotistical and seldom speaks of himself. “He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice.” Actually I have to stop myself from copying the whole excerpt; it is very appealing to imagine a man who even when he engages in a dispute makes sure to be considerate of other side’s point of view, especially in our times, when so much of our time is occupied by promoting ourselves on social media or yelling at each other on social media or in real life. And yet, can real progress be achieved if you always make sure you don’t hurt anybody’s feelings in a dispute?

On another note, Newman doesn’t believe that the true gentleman needs to be religious, but he’s not a militant atheist and can respect religious people (so, no Richard Dawkins for him). And even when he’s not religious, he may follow his personal creed, believing in some impersonal higher power, or maybe just generally in the sublime virtues, which make him practically a Christian.

The editors of the NAEL quote also in a footnote a long passage from a later work by Newman, in which he writes about the beauty of the classics (a fragment allegedly admired by James Joyce). I’m not sure what this footnote refers to, because the pdf I am using to save my paperback volume of the NAEL from falling apart tends to omit the footnote numbers. But the fragment is really beautiful and describes how it takes time to appreciate classics: the lines people (well, middle- and upper-class men of Newman’s times) learnt in their youth and considered them pretty but unexceptional, come to their minds when they are mature and suddenly they find how piercingly beautiful Virgil’s poetry is. He thinks that maybe it is the reason why in the Middle Ages people thought Virgil was a prophet, because his poetry is the perfect expression of the pain and weariness and hope of human life. (I think Newman knew perfectly well that it’s because a line in The Aeneid was misinterpreted as foretelling the birth of Jesus, but “isn’t it pretty to think so?”_

John Henry Newman – “The Idea of a University” (ctd.)

Newman compares intellectual culture with health. Both are good in themselves, although they are so entangled with what they enable us to do that sometimes we find it hard to distinguish between their goodness and their utility. Our body can be sacrificed to some kind of work, just like our intellect can be turned to any kind of work, but the ability to do work and the work itself are not one and the same thing. So although the university teaches particular skills, its end is to build this intellectual capacity in its students. For that reason the lecture of a professor of medicine are different from that of a physician – he should see his subject in the context of the whole knowledge. University doesn’t necessarily produces geniuses, although such may be sometimes found there, nor is its aim to produce good practitioners of this or another profession, but its purpose is to produce good members of society. Here Newman gives what could be called his 1 Corinthians hymn to the ideal gentleman: somebody who knows how to find himself in every situation, be serious or jocular, accommodate himself to others, put the good of others before his own, or influence them for the general benefit. He is happy in the world and in solitude, he is a pleasant companion and dependable comrade; in short, this is the ideal man the university should create (of course Newman means only men).

John Henry Newman – “The Idea of a University” (ctd.)

The excerpts from “Discourse 7” continue Newman’s thoughts about what “useful” education means. Education for Newman is training intellect in pursuit of truth. Truth cannot be grasped at one glance, so to say, but has to be arrived at through a painstaking piecemeal process, and this process has to be learnt. It is not a mere accumulation of knowledge, so it doesn’t depend on the number of books read or hours spent in lecture rooms. And this process of training the intellect, not for one or another particular profession, but for its own sake, is what Newman calls liberal education. He pushes back against the idea (so prevalent in our times as well) that the expense of education has to be justified in producing tangible results in the form of that many engineers or doctors. “Though the usefulf is not always good, the good is always useful”, and so the proper measure of the usefulness of education is not economic benefits to society, but the increase of goodness, by the cultivation of intellects which are going to diffuse goodness as well.

John Henry Newman – “The Idea of a University” (excerpts)

While I haven’t seen all the editions of the NAEL and don’t have access to their tables of contents, my imperfect memory tells me that Newman was one of the authors who were most often tampered with: he was represented by fragments from Apologia Pro Vita Sua, these fragments were replaced by different excerpts from the same book, one edition I think dropped him (gasp!) altogether, and now he’s back with fragments from his series of lectures The Idea of a University, the published version of the lectures he delivered at the newly opened Catholic University of Ireland, of which he was the rector for a few years.

The first excerpt from “Discourse 5” is rather short but dense. The main idea is that Knowledge becomes Science or Philosophy when it is informed by Reason, or our rational faculty. Knowledge can have palpable, beneficial effects on our lives, but it doesn’t have to and education can be gaining knowledge just for its own sake. It’s a particularly human quality and Newman doesn’t believe it can apply to animals because it means being able to draw logical conclusions on the basis of your sensory perception. (Of course Newman didn’t have the chance to watch the numerous videos of extraordinarily smart animals, like this one.) That is why Newman distinguishes between education and instruction – the latter is teaching students how to do something, but education is not concerned only with its practical results.

Thomas Carlyle – “Past and Present” (the end)

Carlyle postulates a radical reorganisation of the employer-employee relationship, which should be not a purely economic exchange of money for services, but modelled on the relationship between the feudal lord and his knights, or the general and his soldiers. They are not simply mercenaries, hired for sixpence a day and ready at any point to go to somebody else who offers them seven, but they are bound by the ties of honour and loyalty. On the other hand, the lord felt honour-bound to take care of his knights, and so should the employer. Carlyle suggests that something like social care offered to army vets – retirement homes, pensions etc. – should be offered by employers to employees, binding them together. He ends his book by what is practically an anthem to the industrial army of the future, fighting to conquer the world under the leadership of their noble captains.

It is a very paternalistic and anachronistic solution, and yet I think a version of this was practiced in the halcyon days of capitalism in the second half of the 19th c., when companies offered job security, and employees were loyal maybe not so much to the employer, but to the company. I stereotypically associated it with Japanese work culture, but for instance a quick internet search revealed a number of company songs written for Western companies (the less catchy versions of “Everything Is Awesome”). They serve the same purpose as the national anthems, because they are meant to inspire the same emotions. So despite Carlyle’s paternalism, racism and a host of other questionable -isms, maybe he was onto something.

Thomas Carlyle – “Past and Present” (ctd.)

The second excerpt is taken from the last chapter of the book and is titled by the editors “Captains of Industry”, since this is what Carlyle is going to bang about. But it begins with a hopeful note: the present-day logic of capitalism where everything is dictated solely by economic gains and losses is unsustainable and has to change. If he didn’t believe so, he wouldn’t solicit any advice: governments can do only so much and in the end they are just the emanation of the will of the people, so they really cannot go completely against it. (This seems to me a bit contradictory with Carlyle’s eulogies of absolutist rulers, or did he mean that people REALLY want to be ruled with an iron hand? I guess I would have to read the whole of P&P to find out.)

But Carlyle hopes that people will realize that there are worse things than not making money, or as he puts it, different kinds of Hell; “we shall get a nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven!” Once everything stops being dictated by greed, society will become a better one. The people he pins his hope on are those “captains of industry”, or business owners. He hopes they are going finally to see that there is something more in life than just amassing money, or they are no better than Chactaws collecting scalps (he repeats this simile uncomfortably often, but I guess by this point you’ve realized that we don’t read Carlyle for enlightened views on race). So this Industrial Aristocracy has the potential, in his view, to become the new real aristocracy, because the present-day aristocracy is interested only in hunting and getting rich. And if Industrial Aristocracy doesn’t awaken from its stupor – well, maybe not now, but in two generations’ time we are going to have another French Revolution, or two, or three, or as many as needed.

Thomas Carlyle – “Past and Present” (ctd.)

Carlyle’s definition of liberty is to learn your duty in life and then follow your path, or have somebody smarter than you decide it for you, even if it means forcing you to wear a brass collar, like Gurth. We don’t let madmen jump off precipices, even if it means putting them in straitjackets, and by this logic, every stupid man should listen to those who are superior to him in intellect and energy. Sounding somewhat Ayn-Randish, Carlyle argues that those who conquer have the right to do so, because in his book might makes right – if Normans conquered Saxons, it must be because they deserved to, being truly aristoi , or the bravest and the best. William the Conqueror might have been a ruthless and harsh ruler, but according to chronicles, during his reign the public safety was so perfect, “a child… might have carried a purse of gold from end to end of England”. He certainly wouldn’t tolerate ten years of parliamentary debate over the Corn Laws, impoverishing most of the population so that a few great landowners can enjoy shooting partridges. (Somehow I doubt William would be so keen on helping the lower orders at the expense of aristocracy.) At least one thing can be said for Carlyle, he doesn’t believe in nobility of blood and he doesn’t have a good word to say about contemporary aristocracy. He hints darkly about the possibility of revolution during which the oppressed are going to shake off their “Mock-Superiors” – but where are they going to find their real superiors to show them the way?

Thomas Carlyle – “Past and Present”

Past and Present is Carlyle’s attempt to diagnose the crisis sweeping Britain in the 1840s, “the Hungry Forties”. The fragment in the NAEL is a series of dire though vague warnings of revolutions to come if Britain’s ruling class doesn’t mend its ways. The root of all evil, in Carlyle’s opinion, is the widespread laissez-faire approach to economy combined with utter indifference to the lot of those who are driven into poverty by it. Of course, life has never been easy, and history is full of battles and massacres, which he illustrates by quoting in cod-Saxon the line “Eu Sachsen, nimith euer sachses”. The editors of the NAEL seriously drop the ball here, because it is not provided with any commentary, and it took me some Googling to find out that Carlyle refers here to the so-called Treachery of the Long Knives, a British legend according to which which Saxons, led by Hengist, treacherously murdered Celts during a peace meeting, and the words were the signal for them to take out their knives, which they had previously hidden in their shoes. It’s not a super well-known story, I believe, certainly less well-known than that of William the Conqueror, who is provided with a footnote several pages later.

And yet, when Carlyle compares his present and the past, he thinks the present degradation of the working class is unprecedented. And this is because today’s people, in addition to all the usual human problems, live in social isolation. He refers here to a story he quoted earlier, from a book by a Scottish social reformer Dr William Alison, about a poor Irish widow who, having been denied support by the authorities in Edinburgh, died of typhoid fever, infecting seventeen other people as well. It’s only in such situations when our society realizes we are all brothers and sisters. Even in “Black Dahomey” people don’t treat one other this way, he says, quoting a story related by a Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who was taken care of and fed by a local woman in Africa who took pity on him. In the past, upper classes felt morally obliged to help the poor: even if the local lord forgot about it, his lady, whom Carlyle calls “loaf-giveress”, reminding his readers about the etymology of this word, would help, or the local priest. Even Gurth, a slave of Cedric in Ivanhoe, was better off than contemporary working-class people: he had decent food and lodging, a lot of fresh air during his work as a swineherd, and most importantly, he felt to be a part of society. This is where Carlyle starts to be problematic with his praises of slavery and the comparison of Britain to Africa: even though he praises the “poor Black Noble One”, his praise relies on the implicitly racist assumption that his readers would expect Africans to be less ethical than they themselves are. That kind of thinking led Carlyle several years later to write one of his most morally dubious texts “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question”