POETS Day! Lies, Damn Lies
Melodic, exotic, and factory preset to slip into a line of iambic. I flogged it to death. It became my ersatz ersatz.
Officially, the work week’s gonna be over in a few hours. What are you doing? You’re not getting anything done between now and then. Cut it out and stop pretending. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.
First, a little verse.
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“Because, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to say that, about men, poets and story-tellers are guilty of making the gravest misstatements when they tell us that wicked men are often happy, and the good miserable; and that injustice is profitable when undetected, but that justice is a man’s own loss and another’s gain—these things we shall forbid them to utter, and command them to sing and say the opposite.”
– Socrates, from Plato’s Republic, Book III
I hope you’re feeling indulgent at the moment. This week I’m playing around.
As a kid I read a snitty back and forth between writers. George Will called R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. – I’m paraphrasing – “the kind of writer who thinks archaic words are funny.” I had just read Tyrell’s introduction to Orthodoxy, an American Spectator anthology not to be confused with Chesterton’s book of the same name. Will was spot on. Tyrell’s description of his magazine’s founding brimmed with Latinisms. I learned that I was the type of reader who thinks archaic words are funny.
“In those incunabular days,” he began. Again, I’m paraphrasing. I’d just gotten over my “ersatz” fixation, a word I picked up from Tom Robbin’s Still Life with Woodpecker. I read that book because I thought my parents wouldn’t allow it. After, I shoehorned “ersatz” into every paper, test essay question, and letter I could manage. Robbins used Germanic expletives like Tyrrell did Latinisms, but despite my attempt at profane immersion I came out with “ersatz.” But… “incunabular.” Melodic, exotic, and factory preset to slip into a line of iambic. I flogged it to death. It became my ersatz ersatz.
I’m older now and more discerning, but damned if I don’t get a thrill when an opportunity to use either of those words arises.
In the Western Tradition’s incunabular days, rising with the earliest popular poets, there were critics and censors. Per Plato, Socrates wasn’t a fan of versifiers. They appealed with rhythms and elegance to emotion at reason’s expense. They put words into the mouths of gods, suggested poor motives on their part, and undermined morality. They were a bad sort.
As quoted by Plato, from the Benjamin Jowett translation of The Republic:
“In like manner the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay on the colors of the several arts, himself understanding their nature only enough to imitate them; and other people, who are as ignorant as he is, and judge only from his words, imagine that if he speaks of cobbling, or of military tactics, or of anything else, in meter and harmony and rhythm, he speaks very well—such is the sweet influence which melody and rhythm by nature have.”
“For if, my sweet Adeimantus, our youth seriously listen to such unworthy representations of the gods, instead of laughing at them as they ought, hardly will any of them deem that he himself, being but a man, can be dishonored by similar actions.”
“Popular culture is morally bankrupt, flagrantly licentious and utterly materialistic-and Madonna is the worst of all.”
One of those was actually from Tipper Gore. Can you spot it?
But Socrates biggest objection is that the poet puts forth a false image. To demonstrate he talks about gods, carpentry, painting, and bed making. At one point, cobblers get a call back.
He puts as an example a bed. The idea of the bed originates with the gods. The making of the bed is the purview of the carpenter. The painter makes an image of the bed. It’s Plato’s Cave: there’s an ideal and then the shadows of the ideal; the diffusion that we live in. A painting, and by extension a poem, is a copy of a copy, incapable of representing the whole. Like a picture that only shows one view of a physical bed, the copy doesn’t express all aspects of the original. The further from the ideal, the more is lost. The representation isn’t true.
“…the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from the truth.”
A poem, per Socrates per Plato, cannot help but misrepresent. The poets can’t help but lie. His point was clear enough. I don’t know why he felt he had to reiterate with cobblers.
He left room for Homer and the like to redeem themselves:
“We may further grant to those of her defenders who are lovers of poetry . . . the permission to speak in prose on her behalf: let them show not only that she is pleasant but also useful to States and to human life, and we will listen in kindly spirit; for if this can be proved we shall surely be the gainers—I mean, if there is a use in poetry as well as a delight?”
I don’t know that any contemporaries took up the challenge. We could argue John Keats gave it a shot, albeit not in prose, a couple of thousand years later with his famous “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” That sounds nice. It doesn’t make much sense, but it sounds nice. T.S. Eliot called the line, “grammatically meaningless.” In response, Cleanth Brooks said if you look at it sideways, it might be okay. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch got in on the debate. It was a big thing. Maybe Keats isn’t the best advocate. People love that line. It’s prettily phrased and fans an emotional want at reason’s expense. It’s a bumper sticker. If anything, his muddled phrase gave credence to the Socratic charge.
There are plenty of arguments, in prose and poetry, that do a fine job defending poetry’s honor, but cherry picking is fun. Picking on Keats, who I very much like, is more fun still. A couple of my favorite poems celebrate lying and crafting a rock-solid dishonesty.
What would Socrates make of the moderns? Here’s a poem from the bastard imperialist Kipling, whom all good people abhor at the moment.
The Lie
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)There is pleasure in the wet, wet clay,
When the artist’s hand is potting it.
There is pleasure in the wet, wet lay,
When the poet’s pad is blotting it.
There is pleasure in the shine of your picture on the line
At the Royal Acade-my;
But the pleasure felt in these is as chalk to Cheddar cheese
When it comes to a well-made Lie—
To a quite unwreckable Lie,
To a most impeccable Lie!
To a water-tight, fire-proof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time-lock, steel-faced Lie!
Not a private hansom Lie,
But a pair-and-brougham Lie,
Not a little-place-at-Tooting, but a country-house-with-shooting
And a ring-fence-deer-park Lie.
Back to Socrates: His commentary is handed down to us by Plato. If we apply the form of Socrates’s argument to Socrates’s argument, we have the ideal contention that poets spread falsehood. Socrates’s expressions of the contention here on the prime material plane would be a shadow on a cave wall. Doesn’t that make Plato’s reporting of Socrates argument thrice removed from the king and the truth?
Who’s spreading disinformation now?
I have read not a page of Xenophon nor Aristophanes. Other than Plato, those are the two major sources for the teachings of Socrates. Take this with a grain of salt: from what I’ve read, neither corroborates the criticism of poetry Plato attributes to Socrates. His is the only record to include censoriousness. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Luke’s gospel has parables that don’t make an appearance elsewhere. But… It’s pretty funny to think Plato made the poetry bit up. We’d have a thrice removed imitation of a falsehood. Would that make it true?
Robert Graves lends credence to Socrates’s fears with disarming calm and admiration. To those he adds confidence, grace, and sophistication; always does. The man tiptoes right up to the edge of oleaginous (tee-hee) but keeps fast to the well tailored side. He’s suave. It’s hard not to be enchanted, let his soft meter carry you along. Betrayal may be among the most reviled of sins, but let him explain it. Liars have craft. The best are born to it. There’s artistry involved. Nobody wants to set aside reason. Nobody wants to be susceptible. Don’t worry about that. He’s not talking about traitors and thieves. These are romantic rogues.
The Devil’s Advice to Story-Tellers
Robert Graves (1895-1985)Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue,
Keep probability – some say – in view.
But my advice to story-tellers is:
Weigh out no gross probabilities,
Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of
Known instances of virtue, crime or love.
To forge a picture that will pass for true,
Do conscientiously what liars do—
Born liars, not the lesser sort that raid
The mouths of others for their stock-in-trade:
Assemble, first, all casual bits and scraps
That may shake down into a world perhaps;
People this world, by chance created so,
With random persons whom you do not know—
The teashop sort, or travellers in a train
Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again;
Let the erratic course they steer surprise
Their own and your own and your readers’ eyes;
Sigh then, or frown, but leave (as in despair)
Motive and end and moral in the air;
Nice contradiction between fact and fact
Will make the whole read human and exact.
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]