On Criticism: Pope. Spawn of the Glorious Revolution

Pope's Villa at Twickenham by J.M.W. Turner (1808)
Public Domain via Wikimedia.

An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are a number of famous phrases in this essay:

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

A little learning is a dang'rous thing.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

And I learnt a new word: "coxcomb" - an archaic term for a dandy. Pope draws on numerous place names as synonyms for The Ancients, so Aristotle is "the Stagirite"; Virgil is "the Mantuan Muse"; and,

To copy nature is to copy them.

After reading a few articles by and about Harold Bloom, having almost finished John Ruskin's On Art and Life, and having made a start on Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist, I have gained an appreciation for the work of the critic. Pope points out that Aristotle was a critic of Homer, and Maevius, known for his criticism of better writers (and of Augustus Caesar's vintage), was well-critiqued by both Virgil and Horace. Pope provides advice for the genius, too:

Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.

and

One science only will one genius fit; So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Our talent requires constant effort, and spreading ourselves too thin means:

Like kings we lose the conquests gain'd before.

Reading is important (especially to "know well" the Ancients), and we should:

Read them by day, and meditate by night.

I could feel Mortimer Adler lurking in the background, and a return to How to Read a Book revealed Pope's sentiments (p. 11):

There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read too widely and not well.

As Pope said:

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

But Pope also touches on the problem for converting sound reading into writing (which is increasingly my problem):

That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights; Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes.

Adler spoke of "coming to terms with the author", and Pope seems to be Adler's inspiration:

A perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ

Yet Pope draws on the folk tradition, too, especially in relation to the "father" of all sins, pride, "the never-failing vice of fools"; and Socrates' notion of the more we know, the more we know we don't know much ("New, distant scenes of endless science rise!"). In effect, Pope argues that pride prevents reason. If pride can be driven away, then we can use feedback from friend and foe alike to correct our faults. The Stoics, too, can be seen in the background, with echoes of Epictetus' (Discourses 3.24.17) warning that happiness and yearning for something one doesn't have are incompatible, in effect, perfectionism is desiring the impossible, reflected in:

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.

Nietzsche gets a guernsey, too, or, should I say that Nietzsche draws on Pope's Dionysian-ness ("Dennis of the Grecian stage"). There is so much in this essay that a second and third reading will be rewarding. And not just for lessons in literature and history - geography, too. As it turns out, London's Duck Lane (not the current Duck Lane, which Google Maps shows is an alley), now known as "Little Britain", was in Pope's time an area for second-hand booksellers, and before that an area for publishers, too. There is so much in Pope that is familiar, much like John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (which is like reading my own mind, the content is basically the liberal arts curriculum of a modern education). But the difference is that Pope's work requires a more thorough reading of the Great Books. While I have much more to learn about the classics, it is clear that the more familiar one is with them, then the more rewarding a reading of Pope will be.

And what about the Glorious Revolution? The Westminster political system begins with the end of the old regime in 1688, thanks to William of Orange. Alexander Pope was born in 1688. So there you go.

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Beyond Good and Evil: or, Breathing is a Virtue

Quatre danseuses et Nijinski (Four Dancers and Nijinsky) by Adolf de Meyer, circa 1914.
Public domain via Wikimedia.

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future by Friedrich Nietzsche

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The other evening, a few pages from the end of this work, I fell asleep listening to Alan Watts lecturing on virtues. I find it difficult to articulate the connection to Nietzsche, but what I comprehended as I awoke, while being in a state not dissimilar to that of Debussy's faun, was this rough recollection:

You cannot be virtuous. If you become virtuous and you are aware of being virtuous, then you are prideful and thus no longer virtuous. Virtues are not self-conscious, and you cannot consciously be virtuous. Breathing is a virtue. You don't think about it, you are not responsible for it, it happens 'un-self-consciously'. That is virtue.

I understand that Alan Watts was discussing elements of Eastern philosophy, but Nietzsche mentions Eastern philosophy numerous times. Following Mortimer Adler's guidance in How to Read a Book, I now take notes in pencil in the margins of my books. This rather short book is full of notations; Latin, French, Greek, German, and Italian words and phrases; class consciousness, waiting too long to display one's genius, "the herd"; the Will to Power; morality; and so on. Too much to summarise here appropriately. But I read in Nietzsche a critique of mediocrity, and it provides me with an awakening to the class-based cringe that has been highlighted by my reading and study over the years. Alan Watts said something like being self-conscious won't help one to be virtuous. Benjamin Franklin wrote that although he worked to consciously improve himself, using his 13-week virtues checklist, he was aware that he could never be perfect. If I take into account Nietzsche's critique of the herd morality and religion, and the privilege of rank and the position adopted by others in relation to my lowly class-based existence (which doesn't manifest itself in any meaningful way outside my own head), then the idea of "beyond good and evil" makes some intuitive sense. Nonetheless, I am far from articulating Nietzsche's ideas beyond what I can grasp from a handful of his work. I may take some solace in that Franklin couldn't be virtuous, that Adler tells me there is nothing wrong with interpreting my reading without the aid of others, that Nietzsche writes much like La Rochefoucauld, and that he thought the Stoics were wrong. This is interesting because the Stoics advocated "living according to one's nature". As it is so natural, then how can one "will" oneself to live in a way that is predestined? This is one of the most helpful explanations of the deductive method! On flicking back through my notes, two things are noticeable. First, the race elements the Nazis picked up on (thanks to Nietzsche's sister, I believe). This is no worse than Jack London, writing not that long after Nietzsche and I encountered parts that wouldn't fit with Nazism. Second, the attitude towards women. This was written before universal suffrage, but clearly, Nietzsche was no John Stuart Mill. Indeed, Nietzsche was a critic of utilitarianism. I will finish with this quote on scholars and artists (I had heavily underlined it while reading - there is always a pencil on hand these days), one that brings together in Nietzsche's words what I felt in my "faunish" moment while listening to Alan Watts (pp. 142-3):

One finds nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works that a profound longing for nobleness impels them; but this very need of nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble soul itself, and is in fact the eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof. It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank - to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning - it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. -The noble soul has reverence for itself.

It would seem that it is "beyond good and evil".

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Rilke: Coming to Terms with a Death that Doesn't Fit and other notebook entries...

Lou Andreas-Salomé with (from left) her husband Friedrich Karl Andreas, the architect August Endell and Rainer Maria Rilke in a summer house near Munich, 1897. Public Domain via Wikimedia.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This work is often regarded as the first 'modernist' novel. I find it hard to place. As far as genre is concerned, it is not quite Finnegan's Wake, that Rilke was a poet does not make this like a Bukowski novel, nor is it a work of non-fiction in the vein of Rabindranath Tagore. I enjoyed the work, but usually I write about my reading as soon as I am finished. I finished this work late last night and I am still trying to work out what happened! The Notebooks read just like notebooks. But in the first half or so, one reads about a child born into privilege at a time when the privileged classes are losing their grip. One reads about infatuation, love, wonder, ghosts. Then in the second half, it becomes something of an historical rant. Not as one might find in a novel where historical persons and events have been used as raw material for fiction, but where you are reading a fiction that is discussing historical events. This version includes end notes to the historical figures and events and highlights parts of the work that originated from Rilke's personal experiences. For example, Rilke witnessed a man with St Vitus' dance (Sydenham's chorea) who is captured in the notebooks; and his own experiences as a child are recreated in the person of young Brigge. Such historical renderings were wonderful. I must admit to not having known anything of Rilke. But like all new things, now I see him everywhere - he influenced James Joyce, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many others. Rilke seems obsessed with death, but he does it so well (pp. 5-6):

[The death of a poor person] is of course a banal one, with neither pomp nor circumstance. They are happy to find one that more or less fits. They don't mind if it's a little too large, because they can always grow into it. But it's bothersome if the front won't do up or it's tight at the throat.

I enjoyed reading this work without an introduction. If I could compare the work to anyone, it would be closest to Kafka, but without the sense of plot or chronology. And without an overblown introduction, it leaves the reader to "come to terms" with the author, as Mortimer Adler would say. But I doubt that many would find it easy to come to terms with Rilke. This might best be done with his poetry.

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