Reality presents itself as relentless movement. The accents of growth and decay leave an indelible imprint in their wake. Artistic and religious tempers revel in suggestions of ever-widening multiplicity and learn to turn inward for continuance. Philosophic and scientific tempers attach to suggestions of stasis and learn to turn outward for capture. So it is that parts of the same stream develop a rift.
Language, fissured in usage, maps these proclivities. The novelist favors words that bow to the instant, that resist sweeping trajectories, just as much as the believer favors words that brim with associations, that palpitate with the life of ages. In one and the other, language is rooted in presence and thus has a branch-like quality. It is malleable and attuned to place. The philosopher and the scientist, on the other hand, rely on words that lend themselves to substantial restrictions of reference and savor their purported eternity. Their language is rootless. It is refined and hermetic.
The poles of inwardness and outwardness guide each vision. If language in one instance overwhelms by its connotations, it is owing to the filter of personality. The ascent of movement is interpreted through verbal tics and idiosyncratic longings. Its descent, alternately, hinges on a volley of impersonal distinctions.
Growth and decay, in any case, remain accents. Reality seems partial to none. They come and go. And within the span of a lifetime it would be foolish to take one or the other as the ultimate end of this movement. As Carpenter said, “We are in somewhat the position of a mole surveying a railway track and the flight of locomotives.”
It is the poetic temper that closes the rift: not by an act of systematic reasoning, but by an act of feeling. Poets are shameless about uncertainty. They seize their portion and wrestle with the ragged details to extract music. A succession of voices—some romantic, some less so—declare in an enduring cadence that creation in harmony with the rhythmical whim is the sole duty.
Are poets, then, fundamentally at odds with revolt? Are they winged creatures, as many traditionalists would have it, unconcerned with action? The misunderstanding emerges through the connotations of harmony. From stern judges like Plato to aloof aesthetes like Stevens, there has been a tendency to relate it to contemplative states. It brings to mind the landscapes of Poussin, the melodies of Haydn, the fastidious verses of Pope. Yet within the ranks of this lineage, Leibniz proposed a more encompassing definition. In his Confessio Philosophi, he argued that the particular discords of the universe heighten its final concordance, for “it is proper to the essence of harmony that discordant variety be reduced, in a surprising manner, to an unexpected unity.” Thus, if poets are to seize far-reaching tracts of time, demanding activity is their lot.
Homer’s Iliad, Dante’s Comedy, Goethe’s Faust, Wordsworth’s Prelude have endured for generations as models of this activity. They compound instant after instant of significance, even if the inspiration requires occasional patchwork. But to imagine them the zenith of poetry is a mutilation of its richness. The “far-reaching” portion of poets does not imply length—it implies concentration of meaning. Sappho’s Lyrics, Sor Juana’s Sonnets, Dickinson’s Poems, Tsvetaeva’s Mileposts in the span of a few stanzas crystallize what roundabout epics never arrive at. They fling us into the throes of immediate revelation and cast off the dilations of development.
The epic and the lyrical illustrate the vast range of poetry, its robust allegiance to reality’s movement. In Homer, there is a relish for the painstaking advance of hours—a lilting growth and decay. The poet is a spendthrift, building hexameters to describe Achilles’ tantrum as exquisite as those dedicated to Diomedes’ inspired prowess. He mirrors reality’s marriage of triviality and gravitas, its jocund indifference to dignified circumstance, its excess of particulars. The poet is a virtuoso of bulk. Time acquires weight. In Sappho, there is sensibility to the arbitrary advent of extremes—the climax of growth or decay. The poet is spare, distributing the varying pangs of a farewell in careful pentameters. She mirrors reality’s sudden jolts, its liminal beauties suited to alert sense, its evasive outbursts. The poet is precise in the choice of frame. Time almost evaporates.
Indeed, the range widens. Reality loosens classifications. Here a poet of lyrical inclination tackles the epic; there an epic poet adjusts his cumbrous habits to delicacy. No attempt is lost, for, in Carlyle’s words, “Not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind.” To explore the pages of poetry is to garner a thorough understanding of movement. Abandoned to the plurality of measures, to the sways, the stresses, the throbs, the pauses, we are more at home within ourselves. The flow is no longer an exceedingly personal pantomime or an alien spectacle, but a surrounding pulse. It is through poetry that we navigate time.
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