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Wednesday 30 January 2013

Glyn Maxwell's 'On Poetry' (Part 1 of 2)

written by the Judge


I was uncertain whether to write about Glyn Maxwell’s On Poetry in the form of a review or in a feature article. Ultimately I went for the latter, and this for a number of reasons. One is that our reviews section is dedicated to poetry, not to essay writing, even when it is an essay on poetry. Another is that I wanted to discuss matters that extend a little beyond Maxwell’s work, and a more general article gives me the space to go a few yards (or a few miles) out on a limb.

The final reason is that I still haven’t made up my mind what I think about Glyn Maxwell. When I first read Hide Now, one of his most recent collections, I thought I was faced with a genius. I still think of that book as the best contemporary poetry in English that I know of. But then I went on to read another of his works, The Sugar Mile, and I was left rather cold. Of course, these are only opinions – the Guardian’s critic Adam Newey sees things exactly the other way round. He also says about On Poetry that it is "the best book on poetry I have ever read".

I’d love to meet this Newey guy, because his opinions are so limpidly antithetical to my own. I imagine a dinner together would see us discussing how he likes jazz and I like classical music, he likes sushi and I like pizza, he loves cricket and I enjoy meaningful pursuits. Chances are he’d even tell me that he prefers the new Star Wars trilogy to the old one – but I digress.

For those who haven’t read it, On Poetry collects a number of thematically related essays in which Maxwell attempts to outline a theory of poetry. The titles of the various essays are, in order, White, Black, Form, Pulse, Chime, Space, Time. These are all, in his treatment, essentially aesthetic categories. The ‘White’ is the whiteness of the page where nothing is inscribed, while the ‘Black’ is that of the ink upon it. In his own words:

The nine sheets are nine battlefields. The black will win some, the white will win some, it will be silly as war and bloody as chess. If you get any poems out of it, any lines at all, pin them to your breast. If you get any white sheets, bury them with honours. Remember where you won, remember where you lost.

The paragraph pretty much encapsulates the style of the book as a whole. Maxwell relies heavily on metaphor to get his points across. He frequently brings up extracts from famous poems and proffers readings in a metaphorical form; since Maxwell is a fine poet, the metaphors work well and are colourful and enjoyable – indeed the whole book is very readable and pleasant.

So what’s the problem? Well, I wonder how many of my readers I’d alienate if I were to put it like this: none of what he says is true. I suppose a more diplomatic way of putting it would be ‘these arguments make no sense’ – I can settle on that, if you prefer. Maxwell says that ‘your meeting with a poem is like your meeting with a person. The more like that it is, the better the poem is’. That is – I really can’t find any other way of saying this – not true. It’s not a matter of my opinion or his opinion or your opinion, it’s just not true. Meeting a poem (which I assume means reading a poem for the first time) is nothing like meeting a person – except, of course, in metaphorical terms, and very abstract ones at that. It works as a poetic image, but it fails as a critical proposition.

It may be objected that I am being deliberately obtuse. Right, perhaps I should be more accommodating. But then again maybe what prompts me to be so obtuse is that I’ve seen this particular trick before, and I am getting a little tired of it. TS Eliot’s essay What is a Classic?, which Maxwell cites here with palpable admiration, is an example of the same train of thought at work. You make up your own aesthetical category (Maxwell goes for ‘black and white’, Eliot goes for ‘classic’), then you are allowed to draw the connections that you like and build a castle in the air that looks exactly how you want it to look. Since these aesthetical categories are neither verifiable nor quantifiable, and since they are not given any precise historical grounding but only one that is convenient and selective, you can pretty much say anything you like about them, and you will always be right. You can even contradict yourself, if you’re clever enough to present it as a ‘symbolic paradox’ or a ‘dramatic tension’ or what have you. I used to make use of this kind of sophistry myself back when I was into writing football journalism, precisely because it is so irresistibly seductive, and because you can look like an expert while saying almost nothing at all. A touch of good prose, or a clever use of metaphor, and you can describe the difference between Italian and English football in terms of the differences in these two countries’ drinking culture:

Like beer, English football is attractive because it exhausts and justifies itself in its own isolated turn of the wheel. It consumes itself as we consume it. Like wine, Italian football is at heart referential, never fully understood or explained, always subsisting under a shadow thrown by a shadow. 

These articles were enormously successful – one of the sites I wrote for still features a permanent link to them in the front page. But they were never meant to be true. And neither is Glyn Maxwell’s On Poetry.

Maxwell’s type of criticism has enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the twentieth century. Personally, I think the finest example remains Italo Calvino’s American Lessons, which is essentially the same book as On Poetry, but a bit more elegant and subtle in its presentation (instead of ‘black and white’ Calvino has ‘heaviness and lightness’, and you can imagine how the rest of the book goes). I use the word ‘criticism’ to describe this type of writing, but with a little reluctance. Given that the readings, connections and historical interpretations they draw are fictional and arbitrary, they have less in common with the work of someone like Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin or Northrop Frye than they do with the genre of occult literature represented by the likes of Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky or Dion Fortune. Try reading some of the texts by the latter authors, and notice the parallel in style – if anything, the attempts by the magicians are much more schematic (if more poorly written).

The problem with this line of thinking is not that it isn’t pretty, it’s just that it’s circular. I am going to borrow a phrase from Cormac McCarthy: "A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with." You cannot analyse your analytical abilities for the same reason that you cannot bite your teeth. Likewise, you cannot hope to use ‘poetic’ means to analyse poetry, because all you do is produce more poetry. And indeed Maxwell’s work, like those I quoted above, is frequently and peculiarly beautiful. No-one could deny his ability with words. What’s lacking is the willingness (perhaps even the courage) to look outside of his own ranch, at animals different than his own stock. (Rats. I used a metaphor).

Tuesday 29 January 2013

Camarade Poetry Reading: K v Ryan Van Winkle!

On Saturday 9th February, SJ Fowler presents the fourth edition of his collaboration project Camarade. 26 poets have been paired up and challenged to create something unholy incredible together. Kirsty will be joining forces with Ryan Van Winkle (investigate his book, Tomorrow We Will Live Here) on a very strange love letter.

The full line-up promises an impressive mixture of sonic, experimental, formal and free-flowing poetry. If you fancy something a little different to your average reading, get thee to Shoreditch.

Click on the flyer for more information.


Nearest tubes: Shoreditch High Street, Liverpool Street, Old Street.

Sunday 27 January 2013

Sunday Review (Winter Special Edition!): Ice / Skate

posted by the Judge


Aye aye! It's Sunday, and it's also quite cold outside. Since we're all still enveloped in the white embrace of winter, here at Dr Fulminare we're bringing you a review that is all about the cold season: two books in one go, one is called Ice, the other is called Skate, both edited by Meredith Collins, and for this special occasion they are being reviewed of course by Jon Snow.

No, hold on a second. Jon Snow was a character from Game of Thrones, the illegitimate son of Eddard Stark. The one I'm probably thinking about is Jon Stone, who works with me at this site. But come to think of it there was another character in Game of Thrones called Mya Stone, who was the illegitimate daughter of Robert Baratheon. What the heck? Are these guys all from the same family?

Never mind. Read the review by clicking on this link while I go ask Kirsten Lannister who was who.

Have a great Sunday!

Wednesday 23 January 2013

When poetry and criticism overlap (On Criticism #3)


written by the Judge. This article continues a series we started last year in December - here are links to part one and part two. Originally I meant to write a fourth and final part as well, but that one proved to be a bit hairy. It might resurface in the future, more likely in a different form. And I have no idea who Martin Lyell is.



We mentioned in our previous articles that there are two main agendas in criticism. In one of them, criticism functions as a consumer guide, informing the reader about the price, quality, category and nature of the object. Though this agenda informs, to a greater or lesser degree, reviews of almost everything, poetry criticism does not share in it at all.

The other main strand of criticism goes by the name of ‘cultural criticism’ (roughly, at least – I don’t want to start haggling with people about the precise definition and/or schools of ‘academic’ cultural criticism). This is the type of material you find in the more intellectual sites; in its purest instances, it shows no interest at all in the question of whether an item of representation is ‘good’ or not. Instead, it is dedicated to a process of analysis, breaking the text down into its constituent parts and revealing its many layers of signification. This is something very different from consumer guidance. In it, the critic is undertaking a process that the reader does not have the means, or perhaps the time, to do in person. The critic exposes him/herself to the work of art multiple times, absorbing it, looking at it in the light of different possible readings, and taking the time to research the history and references behind it; s/he is not simply reporting his/her response to the text (‘I enjoyed it’, ‘I found it boring’, etc.), but providing a new, contextualised and researched interpretation.

The primary role of this type of criticism is to extend the ideological discussion beyond the work of art itself. For many people, the experience of seeing a film ends when they walk out of the cinema. But for those with a deeper interest, engaging with a film means opening a discussion, one which is internal as much as it is social, and one which does not end after the first viewing, but rather furthers itself in many different platforms. It is, among other things, part of an ongoing desire to educate oneself.

None of this should come as some kind of novel or innovative description to anyone who knows a little bit about criticism, and it would probably not be worth writing an article about the ‘intellectual’ register were it not for the one thing that makes poetry criticism unique in this context. To put it concisely, the role of poetry criticism overlaps with that of poetry itself – more so than it does in any other art-form. What do I mean? Well, let us consider a few of the functions of intellectual criticism.

Criticism must educate the taste of the reader, not simply cater to it. It must give a voice to those who do not have one, and this includes any type of minority group; it must also point out instances in which they are being discriminated. It must make us aware of the agenda that lies behind a text, so that it must reveal both the dominant ideology and the language that said ideology uses to manipulate our preferences, choices and actions. It must provide the dispassionate perspective in a forum which may otherwise be steered by interest, money and power. Finally, it must bring our attention to smaller artists or works of art, which demonstrate promise and quality but do not have the means to promote themselves on their own.

With the exception of the very last line, everything that has been said of criticism could be said of poetry as well. Certainly much of it could be said of art in general, but it is especially true with poetry, which has a unique contiguity of form with its criticism. While film reviews are usually not made in film, and music reviews are not put down in song (though that would make for an interesting scenario), literature and literary criticism both express themselves through language. Novels are alike to their reviews in that they’re both predicated on language, but even then, the novel is essentially defined by a narrative – and that’s where it irreparably divorces itself from the review.



Poetry, by contrast, has – in purely formal terms – very much in common with criticism. In both cases, we are dealing with a compact expression of thought, communicated through language. Thus, anything that a poetry review can do, is also something that a poem can do. The opposite, however, does not hold true – though poetry already does everything that criticism can do, criticism most certainly cannot do all the things that poetry can do; and in this sense a poem can be much more than an expression of thought (it can also express, for example, emotions, values and beliefs).

From this point of view, the fact becomes of special interest that poetry is also the most self-referential of all arts. Contemporary poetry overflows with citations, paraphrase and intertextual objects coming from other poetry, both ancient and modern. In fact, often the game is precisely that of figuring out how a poet’s apparently simple statements are in reality a clever critique of other, more established modes of poetry (see the many modes and subtexts of love poetry).

In other words, to a certain extent poetry already reviews itself. This poses a convoluted challenge to the critic – how do you place your review in a discourse that is already reviewing itself? There is no straight answer (alas). A critic must always enter into a dialogue with the collection under scrutiny – and it is in every sense of the word a dialogue, in a way which, as we mentioned, no other art can replicate. But the best way to lead (and eventually report on) that dialogue is something that depends on the individual critic as well as the particular collection. It also depends on who you’re writing for and where your review is going to be published. Though this is not something I personally like to read in other people’s articles, I’ll have to say it – for this particular question, there is no right or wrong answer.

That said, although the challenges posed by the overlapping of poetry and criticism have no universal solution, there is also at least one way in which this idiosyncrasy helps us. Poetry and criticism are both responsible for providing social commentary; thus, poetry criticism is almost meta-criticism, inasmuch as it is an (ideally) socially engaged response to an (ideally) socially engaged response. This is helpful for a very simple reason: it means we can use some of the same standards when reading poetry that we usually apply to criticism.

You can say that a film is ‘entertaining’ or that a game is ‘fun’, but you wouldn’t really say such things of a good review (except perhaps hatchet jobs, but those are a special case). Instead, what seems to matter in a review is that it is informative and well-researched; those of an excellent review, that it challenges preconceptions and shows things in a new light, that it demonstrates an original, independent approach and that it is engaged with the world in which it takes place. All of those things should be true of a good poetry collection as well.

So, even though you may sometimes be a little put back by a collection’s ability to incorporate whatever argument you’re trying to make in your review, you can also use this to your advantage. If you are uncertain whether a given type of praise is adequate for a poetry book, run this little test. Ask yourself, ‘is this something that I would also say about a good piece of criticism?’ If the answer is no, as it would be for colourful but purely descriptive adjectives (this collection is ‘musical’, ‘scintillating’, ‘eclectic’, ‘sparkling’, ‘exciting’, etc.), then it might be a good idea to reconsider what type of argument you’re making.

This is not something that always and necessarily holds true, of course, and it’s not like those adjectives should be banned from reviews or anything. But it’s an amusing detail to be aware of, as it only really subsists in poetry criticism, and sometimes it can help to make things clearer: if you are building your review entirely on the descriptive terms, then you’re probably just writing film / game / music criticism that happens to be about a poetry collection. And this is something very different from genuine poetry criticism.

Sunday 20 January 2013

Sunday Review: I Am A Magenta Stick by Antony Rowland

posted by the Judge


ROCK ON LADIES AND GENTS!!!!! It's Sunday, and we're bringing you our lovely Sunday review as Judi Sutherland reviews I Am A Magenta Stick by Antony Rowland, whom you can see in the above pic in his winter outfit as he tries to fix his magenta stick (technical problems, I am told). He's a big fish, by the way - latest winner of the Manchester Poetry (assuming that prizes mean anything... see the post below this one).

Click on this link to read the review. If instead you'd rather read on the biology and control of the Mexican prickly poppy, click here.

Have a great Sunday!

Friday 18 January 2013

Blowing on the Dice: On Competition Mentality

While we might wonder at the seeming arbitrariness of judgements in poetry competitions, the lure of winning still ensures a healthy number of entries. Upwards of 30 poetry prizes are currently active in the UK alone and in recent years publishers have begun to host competitions for whole manuscripts, the winners of which receive publication with the press and often a few hundred pounds to boot. The money for the richest poetry competitions may still be far lower than that for prose and factual writing but any cash prize is attractive, particularly for such a poorly funded artform.

And the money is simply the start. Should you be fortunate enough to win the UK's National Poetry Competition, the initial effect must feel not unlike being plucked from the poetry workhouse and given a shot at becoming a gentleman. Furthermore, when entering such competitions, which are necessarily pay-to-play, you are also reminded that in doing so you are supporting the organisers and UK poetry as a while, so even if you don't win, you can console yourself with the fact that you are supporting your artform. Everybody wins, right?

Not exactly. We can stake too much on the life-changing ‘lucky strike’, just as we can fall for the myth that Being Published will automatically mean everybody stops to notice our brilliance. The one-win-solves-all idea is very seductive, but the associated cycle of hope and disappointment can be very damaging to one's self-esteem and capacity for courage. Worse yet, focusing too much on the gold medal can cause us to make unwise, desperate moves that ultimately harm us.

I wasn't published as the result of winning a competition (that came about as a big surprise during the manuscript-mulling period), but partly because I co-ran Fuselit, which led to being invited to read when I moved to London, which led to discovering and supporting the work of others, which eventually led to my now-editor, who was the first person to give me a shot on stage, commissioning my book for Salt. Now that the book is a reality it's amazing but it's hardly been a question of "You've made it. Stop here and collect acclaim."

The alternative is to do as many excellent writers do, and throw ourselves into improving and experimenting. It’s a slower process, but it pays more satisfying and sustainable dividends. Such writers produce work with tremendous character, which influences others along the way. Many have never won a prize or placed in a major competition and nobody cares one iota.

Competitions can be a very positive thing. They do raise needed funds and provide opportunities, particularly for those writers who don’t have access to London’s bustling poetry scene. But for each contest, there are a tiny number of winners, and often only one of these winners receives a financial prize. And unless you garner a whole raft of accolades at once, that glow can fade surprisingly quickly (how many past NPC winners can you name without looking them up?).

Rather than simply reiterating the statistical unlikelihood of winning in the first place, perhaps we should simply remember that prizes guarantee nothing. There are plenty of paths to success outside the awards circuit, and any endeavour which celebrates more than one person, more than once a year, and which carries as a reward something more than a single deal or clot of money, surely offers the best odds for success.

Some martial arts schools treat the gaining of grades not as a mark of achievement but as a test. Once you have been given the belt or grade, it's up to you to work out how best to continue training and developing. Instead of thinking, “Awesome. Now I’m going to write another book”, it would be good to see more victors follow the example of one group of Foyle Young Poets and say, “Awesome. Now let’s start a magazine.”

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Farzaneh Khojandi, and the English / Persian poetry relation

In November of 2012, we published a negative review of the pamphlet 'Poems' by Persian author Farzaneh Khojandi, which ended with a call for elucidations. This is the first article we have received in response, written for us by Maryam Fathollahi. The editors would like to thank her for her time and effort.


Can Persian poems be understood with effortless ease, and are their pleasures immediately accessible? They can and are with due time, but one must familiarise oneself with the culture, and mature works should be picked as a starting point. Let us discuss the issue with respect to the work of Khojandi, a contemporary poet from Tajikistan.

When I first finished the draft for this article, I forwarded it to a knowledgeable expert to have his opinion. After reading the paper, he told me “your article is full of Persian metaphors and beautiful figures of Persian speech, but translating it into fluent English would be a difficult, complicated matter. An article needs transparent and tangible words.” Our discussion on this subject encouraged me to research several aspects concerning poetry translation. First of all, it became apparent to me that poetry translators should have a strong understanding of the view, the emotion, and the culture of their readers. In addition to this, they should of course adhere to the original concepts presented in the source text and indeed they should try to reproduce the poetic form. Poetry translation is therefore much more challenging than the translation of ordinary texts.

Farzaneh Khojandi is a poet from Tajikistan; her last name derives from the name of her birthplace, Khojand. She has published several poetry books and is nowadays considered the head of poets in Tajikistan, primarily owing to her lyric poems; it is through these poems that she came to be known as “the Forough of Tajikistan”.

“Forough of Tajikistan” may refer to two distinct meanings. Firstly, “Forough” is a Persian word meaning brilliance, brightness, light and shining. It therefore signifies that Farzaneh Khojandi is like a sun shining over the literature of Tajikistan. On the other hand “Forough” reminds me of a female intellectual and prominent Iranian poet, Forough Farrokhzad, sometimes called “the Forough” in Iran.

Will Farzaneh Khojandi of Tajikistan become another Forough Farrokhzad? Will her works find a wide readership? Before tackling these questions, let us provide a brief overview on the relationship between the Persian and English languages.

In the late eighteenth-century Sir William Jones (Youns Uksfardi) noticed the existence of a close relation between certain Indo-European languages. In fact, some other scholars before Jones had already noticed that a family of languages (namely German, English, Persian, and others) share the same root. But how did they develop into their differences? I believe the primary reason has to do with their cultural evolution, relative to their individual nations. A good example of this is the interaction of culture for people who live in Iran and Tajikistan. However, Farsi is a principal joint.

Furthermore, the nineteenth-century saw the beginning of serious inspections of language. Studies of researchers show that language is a social intuition continuously altering. Given this premise, it follows that translation is a correspondently dynamic process. I tend to think that translation must import culture by conveying its concepts, but on the other hand, it will also deform the source poetry. As a result, it will mean a loss of the poetry’s original aesthetic vision.

It seems to me we need more to know about the process of translation behind Khojandi’s poems. Have the translators conveyed the meaning of her poetry under her judgement?! And have they thought of her English readers? It is necessary to hear her opinion on the matter because Iran is a land of civilization and great poets. In a not-so-distant past, many neighbouring countries of Iran – such as Tajikistan – were provinces of modern Iran. Farsi was thus the common language between them. Poets such as Rudaki, Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Rumi, Hafez and Saadi, as well as contemporary poets such as Nima Yooshij, Ahmad Shamloo, Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri are Iranians who have written Farsi poetry.

Of course, Farsi poetry consists of a variety of figures of speech. These include: rhyme, metaphor, imagery  symbolism, oxymoron, synaesthesia, personification, ambiguity, defamiliarisation and others. Through these, Persian poetry works like a painting or a film to allow readers to evince a lofty ideal from it. To be more precise, figures of Persian speech are the best aesthetic aspect of Persian poetry. And yet a correct translation of Persian poetry must be familiar with the culture and the background behind the use of certain words (in Farsi).

In the final analysis, although English is already an international language, we require an organization or an institution to include all of the world’s poets and translators in an effort to improve the process of translation. Moreover, it would be a good idea to produce an encyclopedia (by these very poets and translators) in order to simplify translation and decipher figures of speech with respect to the cultural diversity of their lands of origin. Therefore, there needs to be an endless communication with poets and translators of the world to start new studies and to better understand poetry from all countries, including the beauty of Persian poetry.

Maryam Fathollahi was born in 1982 in Tehran (capital of Iran). She has a BA and is currently studying French translation. She started writing poetry in 1997 and has won local competitions in Persian poetry in 2001 and 2005, in Tehran. Her first Persian poetry book was published in 2008, under the title The Beautiful Mares. She is also the author of a script that she completed in 2012. She is currently writing a novel and is editing her second Farsi collection, entitled The Expectation.

Sunday 13 January 2013

Sunday Review: Robert Stein's 'The Very End of Air'

posted by the Judge


It's my turn back at the reviewing board, and this Sunday I'm giving a twirl to Robert Stein's The Very End of Air. You can find the review here.

It was actually an interesting article to write. The collection itself was a mixed bag, but those aspects that I did not like were very much worth exploring, as I don't think they are exclusive to Stein at all (not even exclusive to poetry, in fact).

Have a great Sunday, or should I say, a great Sunday night!

Wednesday 9 January 2013

An Anatomy of the Spirit, Part 2


Part 2 of the article we started last week on the subject of spirituality, religion and art, written by the Judge.


The similarities, though extensive so far, do not end there. Our relation with the brand name of any given art or religion is always understood as a matter of profound intimacy, which brings with it an expectation that we should treat it with great respect. The typical case-scenario, with the arts, is that of an adolescent bringing you his / her poem or song or painting and asking for feedback. In all cases (and especially with poetry), responses will be subdued and hugely diplomatic. Similarly, when talking to a friend about religion, one tends to coat any criticism in layers of softening disclaimers: “I hope you're not offended by this, but...”. This is what Dawkins protests about in The God Delusion when he claims that cooking criticism, for example, is much harsher than anything he writes in his books, yet people still get offended by his work. But this very social norm is also what produces the inevitable dissidents and demagogues, those people who brazenly remark that this great painter or that great composer is ‘crap’, or that all religion is a load of rubbish.

The diplomatic aspect of engaging in dialogue with people about the art and religion produced by their culture is delicate in precise proportion to how distant their culture is. It is especially marked when it crosses that great (and unfathomable) geopolitical divide, that of the West and the East. It is a common cliché to say that the West is less ‘spiritual’ than the East, or at least more materialistic. What this slogan fails to consider, however, is that the discourse of the arts represents precisely the West’s forum of spirituality. Most of the discursive elements we find in, say, Buddhism or Confucianism are given voice in the West by the philosophies, critiques, models, meditations, catharses staged within the world of the arts (even if the methods and the conclusions may be very different).

The trope of spirituality is helpful when trying to understand the binding thread between art and religion. The term is chosen only for convenience, and I don’t mean for it to refer to any particularly complicated concept. Spirituality, as it is expressed in our religious and artistic discourse, refers simply to the way that we relate not to what is unknown, but to what is unknowable. The positing of an epistemological trope which is always one step beyond our available methodologies is what defines the concept of the transcendental. From this point of view, religious enthusiasts are right in saying that human beings are inherently spiritual creatures. For any form of knowledge must also be a knowledge of its own limits; and it is the projection of these limits that inevitably gives a specific form to our understanding of the transcendental.

The transition from religious to artistic discourse – for the transference of spiritual qualities from the saint onto the artist should indeed be interpreted as a transition, and not as a form of decadence or progress – can only too easily be interpreted in reductionist or dismissive terms. But to say, for instance, that art is no more than religion for those who do not believe in God (an example of an easy aphorism) would be to miss the point. Art and religion belong to the same immortal myth that fuels or provides an outlet for man / woman’s spirituality and that resists even such radical cultural processes as the ‘death of God’. By the latter Nietzschean expression I am not referring simply to a decline in church attendance or in declared faith – this subject has been mined extensively, by Dawkins among others. The meaning of the original expression refers to a process that is cultural, discursive, even memetic, and not social or sociological. It implies that the idea itself of God’s existence, of what it means for God to exist, has been culturally transformed to the point of having little or no meaning at all – in this sense God is supposedly ‘dead’.

This is best exemplified, ironically, by one of Dawkins’ most successful antagonists. Terry Eagleton’s attempt to define / describe God in his famous riposte to The God Delusion is worth quoting in full:

Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.

This, not some super-manufacturing, is what is traditionally meant by the claim that God is Creator. He is what sustains all things in being by his love; and this would still be the case even if the universe had no beginning. To say that he brought it into being ex nihilo is not a measure of how very clever he is, but to suggest that he did it out of love rather than need. The world was not the consequence of an inexorable chain of cause and effect. Like a Modernist work of art, there is no necessity about it at all, and God might well have come to regret his handiwork some aeons ago. The Creation is the original acte gratuit. God is an artist who did it for the sheer love or hell of it, not a scientist at work on a magnificently rational design that will impress his research grant body no end.

Inevitably, Eagleton concludes his tirade by throwing us back to the dichotomy of art and science. But what his finely articulated argument indirectly suggests is that the question of the existence of God has become a rhetorical one – intended as a question that allows for the exercise of rhetoric, and not one that actually necessitates or invokes answers. Theologians are dishonest who claim that this has always been the form of the question, as this cultural ‘death of God’ can only be traced to a few centuries ago, not so distantly separated from the rise of Romanticism and the production of a genuine mythology of the arts.

It has often been noted that Dawkins only divulgates arguments that were established for centuries among the intelligentsia, and this is why he is usually scoffed at by the academics. Yet amid the educated, very few people still believe in God in the original sense of the expression. Even the declared Christians normally reformat their faith in terms of a God which has no form or agency – God as some abstraction, as love, as the condition for things to exist, and so on. Thus, the expression ‘to believe in God’ is used as the platform or pretext for spiritual systems which subsist perfectly well without the notion of God (and which can even be informed by modern godless ideologies, like existentialism or socialism). More often than not, these spiritual systems will find expression in the arts, as they are elaborated in paintings or poems or films.

This invisible collapse (or transformation) of theocentric ideologies has been attended by the collapse of the religious mythologies which, in turn, have been replaced by those of art. The once-pervasive figure / myth of the saint, for example, is evanescent in modern-day culture. When was the last time that someone made a film about one? Compare this to the number of times that a movie is produced about some great writer / musician / painter / dancer, or about some kid aspiring to become one. There are always several titles per year.

Religious discourse itself is now reactive rather than proactive, a sure sign that its mythopoeic power has been dissipated. Its interpreters will take a stance against stem-cell research, against pre-marital sex, against abortion, against, against, against. And while there is much going on within the confines of religion itself, its activity remains nonetheless endocentric – that is to say, while discoveries in science will affect literature and developments in music will affect fashion, religious discourse affects no other discourse outside of itself – if not in repressive terms.

Artistic discourse is, however, no more adequate than traditional religious discourse as a spiritual platform. It promotes false gods in equal measure, so much so that an artistic ambition in a young person – something that is usually celebrated, cherished and admired by the surrounding adults – can actually be a symptom of psychological ill-health. Only too frequently, it can lead to attitudes of elitism and narcissism, an inability to properly develop one’s social skills (resulting from – and in – a damaging self-ostracism), and, most worryingly, a certain disinclination to engage with the social realities of one’s generation. Fortunately, these are issues that most good artists will grow out of as they mature, going to show that our spirituality is indeed something to be cultivated individually, and not imposed by doctrines or dogmas or schools – however well-meaning these may be.

Still, in fairness to artistic discourse (at least, to its vivacity and flexibility), it can be pointed out that ‘Art’ has already been questioned. In fact, postmodern artists have been questioning it for several decades, though they never really debunked it as a dominant myth. They probably won’t, at least until art as a concept becomes genuinely disassociated from spirituality. Much like war is contested by great artists from every generation, but its myth has never stopped producing endless (and sometimes wonderful) stories and books and plays and films, so the power of ‘the spirit’ as a source of inspiration remains measureless, as it is given by the primal, indispensable reality of our relationship with the transcendental. This relationship needs no more than time and sincerity to be cultivated properly, but it does exist; and an inability to understand our inherent spirituality represents the greatest failure of the New Atheists. God, for the most part, seems to have been put aside for the purposes of spiritual development. It is no stretch to say that Art could end in the same way, long before Dawkins decides to write The Art Delusion.

Sunday 6 January 2013

Sunday Review: Night Journey by Richard Lambert

The Judge is away this week, no doubt quaffing a lovely single malt on a tatami mat just south of Felixstowe or somesuch, but we're bounding right into 2012 with the Irregular Features Sunday Review. This week Harry Giles gets going with Night Journey by Richard Lambert, published by Eyewear.

Wednesday 2 January 2013

An Anatomy of the Spirit (Part 1)

written by the Judge


Richard Dawkins is one of the most important and influential modern critics of religion. Most of us are familiar, even if indirectly, with his arguments in books such as The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion, and we know or have heard of the controversy that they generated. Dawkins derives much of his resonance from his status as a prominent scientist, rather than from his (not always original) arguments, and this is something that sets him apart from more ‘journalistic’ British atheists like the late Christopher Hitchens. It also sets him up as a natural rival to religious epistemologists, as science is frequently placed in a diametrical relation with religion: the two disciplines may be seen as incompatible and conflicting, or, more diplomatically, as two different ends of a spectrum, concerned with two different branches of knowledge. From the pope’s vocal insistence on bioethics to Einstein’s and Hawking’s famous aphorisms on God, the anecdotal literature surrounding this binary system abounds.

But there is another dualistic opposition in our culture that places science at one end and a specific discipline at the other. This is the slightly vaguer opposition of science and art. We find it encapsulated in the more general dichotomy that is manifest in our education system, that of the sciences versus the humanities. A student is normally expected to orient him/herself in the direction of one of these two, with a number of congruent modules in either of the fields. Furthermore the figure of a great artist, along with that of a great scientist, is presented to us from early childhood as pretty much the purest and noblest aspiration available in this world (not necessarily to the point that we are encouraged to become one, but at the least we are taught to admire them). More importantly, they are the only two models which subsist in a dichotomous relation. No similar bridges are raised between, say, the aspirational figure of a great athlete and that of a great businessman, or that of a great statesman and a great engineer (though these are themselves celebrated). The artist and the scientist seem intuitively related, as though linked by a thread which simultaneously aligns and opposes them to each other.

This commonality between art and religion as cultural ‘others’ to science also points to a commonality in their perceived social role. As disciplines, it is obvious that art and religion are two very different things. However, our culture has developed a way of talking about them – a unified set of clichés, myths and rhetorical figures – which are at heart identical for both. What exactly is the nature of this similarity, why does it persist, and what should be done about it?

Let us begin by exploring the first question. What are the common traits between artistic and religious discourse? What is the (linguistic) emblem that describes both of them? Or, more simply, what are we talking about, traditionally, when we say either ‘art’ or ‘religion’?

To begin with, we are talking about something that is specially recognized for its preciousness; the word we use for religion tends to be ‘holy’, whereas the word we normally use for art is ‘priceless’ (both terms have a similar function – they ban any discursive element with commercial connotations). Economic considerations do not come into it and are in fact considered vile. The real man or woman who follows or engages with this discipline is always expected to think nothing of money, but rather to be wholly dedicated to the object of his / her endeavour. This is understandable, because his / her discipline is not amenable to mathematical models and has no quantifiable dimensions; rather, it defines our society’s ethical standards and helps us find the best way to live our lives, either by teaching or simply by suggesting; it explores and sometimes explains the best path(s) towards happiness, on the strict condition that we be true to ourselves (when our ‘selves’ do not correspond or agree with the work of art or with the dominant religion, this leads to conflict and paradox – as usually explored in minority discourse). As such, it is culture’s primary source of opposition to inducted values such as consumerism or materialism, acting as a stalwart against greed and superficiality. It (supposedly) trains our sensitivity and kindness as well.

Naturally this object that we are talking about is transcendental. Perhaps more significantly, it is an end in itself. Though it benefits society as a whole in a number of ways (Dawkins has contended this bit with respect to religion), it can also be done for its own sake, and indeed is primarily approached for this reason. As a self-sufficient ‘end’, and thinking on a grander scale now, it justifies the whole of humanity. It redeems it, both individually, acting on its people one by one, and also historically. A civilisation may legitimise its course and passage over the face of the earth if it leaves us with a heritage of great art or if it greatly contributes to the spreading of the Word, which is the same thing. It can also attain the same recognition if it greatly advances science – but that’s the other end of the spectrum.

Since in both the cases of art and religion we are talking about what is essentially a discipline, it only rewards in degrees commensurate to the efforts that are put in. It is of little use if it is treated casually, or if it is only thought of in passing, once every now and then. People who handle it this way are regarded with paternal benevolence by those who take it seriously instead (but with frequent encouragements to ‘practice it’ more often, be it by coming to the prayer sessions or by reading the poems of Coleridge / Milton / Neruda...). A serious commitment to this discipline demands long hours of study, a deep acquaintance with the history and culture of your specific ‘school’, and a great deal of introspection. The implicit reward of all this is a certain happiness, of course, but also a special type of wisdom. This may loosely be referred to as ‘enlightenment’, according to its manner (and maybe suddenness) of acquisition. Emphatically, depending on the subject, we may even talk of salvation.

The general conception is this – that though the reward of the discipline is available to everyone, for it is not precluded by class, sex or race, in practice only a handful of people actually attain it. The hierarchy of success, here, is aristocratic: it is defined by a special gift known as ‘talent’ in art and as ‘piety’ in religion (the importance of piety has greatly declined since the times of the legendary saints, but so has proactive religious discourse in general – more on this later). Societies go to great lengths to celebrate individuals with this special gift, and very many of our legends are woven specifically around these people (the only discourse which compares to the spiritual one for mythopoeic power, in fact, is that of war). Therefore in this discipline we find prophets and martyrs, people who see ahead of their time and reveal to us the real nature of things, sending out messages which are then misunderstood or fearfully rejected, or people who die for their commitment to their private cause, thereby becoming instant icons, worshipped past all others, even to the point of eclipsing the real value of their work. After all, they demonstrate the transcendental value of the discipline that they upheld; for is it not worth dying for? Is it not larger than life? And is not one of the greatest tropes in this discourse precisely the separation between ‘art and life’, or between the concerns of ‘after-life and life’?

The myth of the saint, which has an extensive history from the Roman Christian era to well past the middle-ages, is re-elaborated in our present age as the myth of the artist, that precociously illuminated, infinitely sensitive, candid introvert, divorced from ordinary people by virtue of the very talents that elevate him / her above the world. This character is at the heart of such works as James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kroger. Baudelaire sums up the character in the famous ending to his poem The Albatross:

The Poet is his kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.

A step below the ‘chosen ones’, the saints and great artists, the discipline then includes a whole set of subordinates whose role is to mediate and explain: religion has priests, and art has academics and / or critics. This without mentioning the legions of novices, in schools both improvised and recognised.

Keep reading in Part Two...