PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY – A DISCUSSION
(Blackheath Philosophy Forum lunch, 15/10/11)
From a poetry perspective, this lunch topic could not have come at a more appropriate time.
Last week I attended at the Art Gallery of NSW the gala launch of what is, and will remain for many, many years, the definitive anthology of Australian poetry…Australian Poetry Since 1788, edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray (two of our country’s leading poets).
(Peter Coleman described the event in this week’s Spectator as “one of the grandest book launches I have been to”, and, having been there myself, I can testify to that. All the good and the great of Sydney culture rolled up, presaging - dare one hope? - a sorely-needed renaissance of poetry in Australia.)
Knowing I was coming to this event today, I asked my fellow club member Geoffrey Lehmann what I might say about philosophy and poetry that might be sensible, if not profound.
His reply was brief.
“Poetry and philosophy I see as rival, almost opposing, disciplines,” he said.
Not very helpful for today’s discussion. In fact, coming from him, it puts a bit of a dampener on it.
But he added, in an effort to be helpful: “The most philosophical poet in the anthology is R D FitzGerald, also Brennan and perhaps Robert Gray as well.”
Geoffrey, who must be one of the most intelligent people in Australia (I believe he topped the State when he was dux of Shore), does not like philosophy
He came to one of Lloyd and Sandra’s philosophy lunches at the Union Club last year, but did not come a second time.
So I am very interested in what is said today about the nexus between poetry and philosophy.
(I will report back to Geoffrey.)
However, I think I can see one link. Both poetry and philosophy are deeply concerned about words…
…philosophers mainly for their meaning, poets largely because of their sound and lilt.
Here, perhaps, one must quote unquestionably the most famous philosophical statement ever made by a poet.
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
As we know from our own Blackheath Philosophy talks, truth is a matter of great concern to philosophers.
“What is truth?” they ask, almost ad infinitum, even ad nauseum.
How simpler it would be for all of them if Keats were right, and all you needed to know was that truth is beauty.
But I don’t think Keats was right. Truth is more than just beauty.
Keats’s sentiment that sounded good, as poetry should, but it did not advance very far our understanding of what truth is.
(I suppose he might have intended it to raise the status of poets to nearer that of philosophers – or, more probably, to bring them down to his level.)
However, I am inclined to go with Geoffrey on this. Poetry and philosophy are oil and water.
But I don’t completely agree.
For today’s discussion can serve the purpose of raising a very important question about poetry, and one I have thought about a lot.
So I am grateful for this opportunity to air it.
I will state the matter quite simply and directly.
At bottom, is it the sound of the words of a poem – their lilt - that are most important, or their meaning – their “philosophy”, in fact?
I know what the simple answer is – both.
But that does not satisfy me, and is in fact a copout.
To illustrate the point I am trying to make, let me quote from one of my favourite poets and poems. It is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “The Windhover”.
(It is one of the greatest poems in the language.)
| I caught this morning morning's minion, king - |
| dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding |
| Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding |
| High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing |
| In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, |
| As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding |
| Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding |
| Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! |
| Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here |
| Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion |
| Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! |
| No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion |
| Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, |
| Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
|
So, what does that all mean, Alfie?
I don’t think you can extract a great deal of meaning from the mere words, which are a flight of what Hopkins called “sprung rhythm”.
(Sprung rhythm is designed to imitate the rhythm of natural speech. It is constructed from feet in which the first syllable is stressed.)
For Hopkins it was the sweep of the words, and their sound and rhythm, that he was trying to find and freeze on paper.
(And in this, I largely go along with Hopkins – I am a “sound” person rather than a “meaning” one.)
However, you could try to catch a bit of meaning from lines like:
shéer plód makes plough down sillion shine
But it’s a fleeting, futile effort.
For what can you make from the following lines?
| … and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, |
| Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
|
Yet the poem has an overall meaning, even if the individual words and lines might not.
Fortunately, Hopkins helps us.
He gave “The Windhover” a sub-title (or perhaps a dedication):
“To Christ our Lord”
(implying, perhaps, that it was in the nature of a prayer, or, more likely, a paean of praise)
The poem is in fact a succession of images, of mind-pictures, with, I think, a – for want of a better term – an over-arching philosophy.
Maybe you have to yourself supply your own choice of meaning, or message, (or philosophy) to it
What might you make of the beauty of a hovering bird, vibrating with trembling poise, on the edge of a wind?
However, as our greatest poet told us:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Poetry, I think, as well as producing pleasant and memorably-sounding words and lines, also helps us explore what those additional things are.
We would be wise, perhaps, to leave it there.