The Intentional Fallacy

After learning about the intentional fallacy in a number of my English classes, I am no closer to fully understanding it. I understand what it is, what the poet intended is what the poem means, but I cannot wrap my mind around what that means for poetry as a whole. I think that it is absolutely legitimate to look at author intentions in order to gain insight into a poem. After all, they are the writer and creator of the work. This is not to say that I do not think that good poetry can and should stand on its own. On the contrary, I believe that the best of poetry does stand on its own. However, I think that by ignoring author intent we are laying waste to a great deal of information. I think it is important to look into author intent, but I do not feel that this should be the only information that allows readers some insight.

The most applicable example I can think to use is that of "We Wear the Mask." When looking at this poem without any knowledge of the author, his intent or background it can mean any number of things. I am sure when we participated in the class free write that everyone came up with differing beliefs about the information contained in the poem. It meant different things to all of us. When we were told about the author, it did change the way some people viewed the poem, but others continued to see the poem as a separate entity.

I personally like to think as the poem and poet as two ultimately separate things, but there is no reason to think that they cannot ever overlap. Looking at a poem only through the lens of author intent definitely cheapens it, because it then loses its many facets of meaning. In some cases the poem become less applicable and more distant to the reader. To look at "We Wear the Mask" as a poem written about African American history and slavery is fine, but it does close a lot of doors for many of the readers. In our class alone, if we were to look at the poem through this lens, the majority of us would lose our sense of relatedness to it, and our understanding as it was in our free writes would dissipate. Instead of harping on author intent as the end all and be all of a poem's meaning, I think it is better to look at poetic meaning like the layers of an onion.
One layer of meaning that cannot be ignored is that of the author's purpose. However, underneath this layer there are countless interpretations and meanings that the same poem has evoked. There should be a balance between our understanding of the poem through the "eyes" of the author, and our understanding of the poem as a separate entity. The only problem that I can find with this, is that for some it will be difficult to know about the author and restrain oneself from applying this knowledge to the poem.

I am not sure if any of this is making sense, or coming out the way I had hoped, but I simply mean to say that the meaning of good poems come from a number of sources, and one of theses sources is the author. Author intent should be tantamount to all other layers and sources of meaning.

A Confessional Smackdown

Every time I sit down to read Eliot's critical essays the confessional school of poetry comes to my mind. Everything that Eliot says about the "extinction of personality" goes against the almost painfully personal confessional poems written by Plath, Lowell, Sexton, Olds etc. The poems written by these authors are composed solely of personal experience, and the author is the intentional focal point.

So if we are to to take Eliot's assertions about poetry to be true, then it stands to reason that the confessionals can't be skilled poets. In fact, it can almost be inferred that they are not poets at all, based on Eliot's criteria.

I also think that there is a disconnect between Eliot's essay and criticism of confessional poetry. If "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry" then how is one expected to judge confessional works. The poem and the poet are inextricably intertwined. There is no way to look at such a poem objectively. To critique a confessional poem is to critique a person and their feelings and emotions. This can prove to be a problem for both the critic and the writer. Eliot calls for "continuous self-sacrifice" and this is most definitely not something found in Confessional poems. At least not in the sense that Eliot is using it. Confessionals seem to sacrifice another part of themselves, to shamelessly put their hearts on paper.

In a sense, I believe that Eliot is correct. Honest criticism really needs to look at the poem itself, however I also think that this will not always work. Confessional poems, though infused with emotion, are still skillfully written.

"The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates" (Eliot 1095). This is probably the one statement in Eliot's entire essay that completely and utterly undermines confessional poetry. In this case the mind that suffers is the mind which creates. I am currently stuck wondering if one type of poetry is better than another, or if both can simply coexist and be judged using different criteria. Though, I still run into the stumbling block of how to critique confessional poetry without making any statements about the author themselves.

The Nature of Friendship

THE TABLES TURNED
AN EVENING SCENE ON THE SAME SUBJECT

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet, 10
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness. 20

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves; 30
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

I was leafing through my romanticism book the other day, hoping to find some clues about the stance that Emerson's friends took on the subject of books and reading. I came across this poem by Wordsworth, and found it extremely relevant. Though the poem is short, it essentially argues one of Emerson's main points. "First in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature" (2). According to both men, nature and not books should be the driving force behind the creativity of man.

I also found the line "we murder to dissect" very interesting. This is consonant with Emerson's ideas in "the poet" about poetry being a record of failure. We will always fall short of true representation. Emerson was surely not alone in his ideas about books and poetry. In fact, it seems he was in very good company and that his friends shared similar beliefs. It is very interesting though, that two such skillful writers are so willing to acknowledge the shortcomings of their craft...

Book Wars

"To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own."

-Lord Foppington in The Relapse

More likely than not, any of my classmates from Romanticism have posted on a similar topic. However, as I sat reading for that class I couldn't help but notice the connections between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Lamb. The quote above is the opening quote in Lamb's "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading." It struck me as odd because it seemed as though Emerson himself would say that very thing. In Emerson's mind books are not unalterably good because reading cn encourage imitation. The activity of reading books allows for someone else's imagination to take charge of your own. Emerson viewed this as a very dangerous activity. I am of the same mind to a certain extent. I think that all of us who write have experienced what Emerson is cautioning against (at least to some extent). There have been times when I sit down to write, inspired by some "genius and creative" idea of some kind, only to read back over the work later and realize that it is the product of someone else's thought that I had read previously. I think that reading can be dangerous simply because it is very deceiving just how much we assimilate unaware. And how can we not assimilate the things we read? For an hour, a day, a week we immerse ourselves in another world and in another person. We often hear of reading as an escape or rather as an experience. This can be a very, very good thing, but it can also be a detriment. In the short time that we fit into someone else's shoes and walk around in them in another world, we are being molded and shaped. Though we can't always tell when we put down a book, we have been changed, however small those changes may seem. More often than not they are so small that they remain an undetected part of us.

So what does this mean for our creativity? Is it always tainted? Is any work really and truly original? Perhaps. I cannot say for sure, but I believe it is silly so say that anything comes out of a vaccuum. So while I agree with Emerson's arguments about reading and imitation, I also believe that imitation is not necessarily a bad thing. Some of the greatest works ever written have been influenced by those that came before. Genius need not be born from nothing. To say that is to underestimate the human mind and imagination altogether. There is something to be said for being derivative and not original. I could write something completely original and it could concievably be the worst thing ever written in the english language. Originality should not be the only thing that makes a work great.

In his essay, Charles Lamb argues for the use of books. He states "At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me." (505).

I shudder to think about Emerson's reaction upon reading something like this. This is essentially the exact thing that he feels is wrong with reading books. To lose oneself on the minds of other men, is a very dangerous idea in the mind of Emerson. Lamb was obviously not a bad writer, nor an unoriginal one, so what does this mean for Emersons argument?

Blake and Emerson

"Visions of the Daughters of Albion"
-William Blake

Then Theotormon broke his silence and he answered:

"Tell me what is the night or day to one o'erflowed with woe?
Tell me what is a thought? & of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is a joy? & in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? and upon what mountains

[plate 4]

Wave shadows of discontent? and in what houses dwell the wretched
Drunken with woe, forgotten, and shut up from cold despair?

"Tell me where dwell the thoughts, forgotten till thou call them forth?
Tell me where dwell the joys of old! & where the ancient loves?
...
Where goest thou, O thought? to what remote land is thy flight?
If thou returnest to the present moment of affliction
Wilt thou bring comforts on thy wings and dews and honey and balm,
Or poison from the desert wilds, from the eyes of the envier?

Then Bromion said, and shook the cavern with his lamentation:

"Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit;
But knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth
To gratify senses unknown? trees beasts and birds unknown:
Unknown, not unpercieved, spread in the infinite microscope,
In places yet unvisited by the voyager, and in worlds
Over another kind of seas, and in atmospheres unknown?


So that was a very long and somewhat convoluted introduction to my very first blog. You may be wondering how in the world I am going to connect Blake to Emerson. I promise that I have a point. Together, the two characters of Theotormon and Bromion parallel the arguments made by Emerson in "The Poet." Emerson states that poets are the "sayers and namers" of the world. They "turn the world to glass, and show us all things in their right series and procession" (730). He also asserts that all of humanity has the ability to see poetry, but the poets are essentially the carriers of the world's keys. Poets are born with the innate ability to "come one step nearer than any other" to the things of the world. While we can all see the beauty of the world, and think for ourselves, poets are the decoders of this beauty and thought. Theotormon could be representative of the rest of humanity. He is in need of new thought, or a new way to view his own thoughts. "The inaccessibleness of every thought but that we are in, is wonderful. What if you come near to it; you are as remote when you are nearest as when you are nearest as when you are farthest. Every thought is also a prison; every heaven is also a prison. Therefore we love the poet, the inventor, who in any form, whether in an ode or in an action or in looks or behavior, has yielded us a new thought. He unlocks our chains and admits us to a new scene" (735). Poor Theotormon just needed a "sayer" or "namer" to help him see the beauty in the world and unlock the prison of his thought. Bromion, villian that he is, resonates with Ralph Waldo Emerson's assertion regarding everyone's ability to see and sense the beauty of the world. Though we can see that which surrounds us, the unbridled potential that the world holds can only be unlocked by a poet. Things in this world are "unknown and unpercieved" but poets have the ability to remedy this.