I have a plant in my room. It is overall a nice shade of green, but it is speckled because it cannot get enough light through my lacey curtains. (It is doing better than when my mom had it out in the hallway, getting no better light than the hallway could provide.)
Anyway, my point is that the plant is overall nice looking, pleasing to the eye, and it is also--and Aristotle would be proud--functional--for providing some nice oxygen in my pretty shut-up abode.
I could labor on the fact that it is speckled and that it does need some new dirt, and perhaps some Miracle Gro, but instead, I just water it, hoping that it will reach its full potential one of these days. It is still pretty. I am a critic of my plant, but a critic that hopefully aligns with Pope's standards of admiring "not th' exactness of peculiar parts;/...But the joint force and full result of all" (Part 2).
There is more to this than plants, however. T.S. Eliot is even in the mix.
Alexander Pope is a pretty old writer (1688-1744), but he captures the human condition with truisms that still capture the modern reader; when considering a youth's view toward the world, for example, he says that when we do conquer our first height, we think it is the end, but no, "Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!"
But back to criticism. It is true, as Eliot mentions, that "criticism is as inevitable as breathing" and that is what Pope is upset about. Instead of the thoughtful criticism that Eliot implies, Pope characterizes criticism in a negative light that "make the whole [of the artwork] depend upon a part" (Part 2).
Though I do like Pope's belief that a critic should not do this to a work, because we all "err [as humans]" (Part 2)--even in our artwork, but I do think that some nasty lines of dialogue, or a crappy cameraperson can ruin a production for the audience. It really depends on what the "err" is.
But what about the material itself? I enjoyed reading Eliot's explanation that art is not new in the sense that it is completely revolutionary, but rather the culmination of the past "dead poets", the current society, and the individual's "own private mind".
Every book one reads, every film viewed, video game played, imprints a distinct impression upon the audience member, which is echoed in new works. I guess I am reasserting the 'nothing is new under the sun' view, but Eliot is qualifying that statement by saying that the components are not new but the combination is; the work by the modern artist "forms a new compound".
In the realm specific to writers, Eliot outlines what emotions are within the jurisdiction of a poet: "human emotions", not new emotions. I like this view. By trying to twist emotion into some cataclysmic butter churn, poets sometimes give mental indigestion rather than smooth lines. In working with one emotion, I've found, layers of meaning, perhaps indicating other emotions may be discerned beneath. That is what is attractive--not the blatant "I feel so sad" telling phrases in some poetry offer--well, I don't buy it.
Eliot also says that "the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be consious, and coscious where he out to be unconscious". I think he is referring to the showing vs. telling argument here.
Shortly after he says, "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion." When I write my 'good' stuff, I am not crying or feeling sorry for myself; instead, I am clear-headed and cool, completely in tune with what I want to say, "conscious and deliberate". This is what makes writing attractive to me, I think. I don't want to read some lines of teenage angst, the pages crinkled from tears, but I am interested in reading a teen's reflective poem on how one copes with being a teen in current culture, devoid of lines like, "I thought it was going to be forever."
My favorite line of Eliot's essay is "the poet has, not a 'personality' to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways". The medium is what a poet/artist should hone, not necessarily the personality behind the craft.
With respect to Eliot's claim that no art is "new"...
In Intro. to Lit., we've been reading a small, fun little guidebook called "How to Read Literature Like a Professor," written by a guy named Thomas C. Foster. He claims that there is and only ever will be one Story, which all literature, culture, history, etc. contribute to. In other words, you can't really do anything in the arts without borrowing at least some small part of your product from other sources (often unconsciously).
Posted by: ChrisU at February 22, 2005 12:40 AMAmanda, your reference to dialogue and camerawork reminds me that the modern commercial film is a group effort. While the director gets creative control, he or she can only work with what the casting director, special effects people, location scouts, and individual actors, can come up with. (Oh, yeah... and the screenwriter.)
Bravo for applying Eliot to teenage angst poetry.
"When I write my 'good' stuff, I am not crying or feeling sorry for myself; instead, I am clear-headed and cool..."
Right on! I always feel ghoulish marking up a sudent's poem about love or dead grandmothers, and writing "This didn't move me." But that's the test of art. If your main purpose for writing poetry is therapy, and you are more intersted in "expressing yourself" than in learning the craft of poetry, it's going to be difficult to learn how to revise and perfect your work (and so become what Eliot terms a mature poet -- someone who writes poetry after age 25).
Thanks, Amanda, for putting it so clearly.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at February 22, 2005 12:25 PM