GENIUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL



(The conversation below between Jack Foley and Jake Berry took place via e-mail from 1/20 to 1/25/06.)

FOLEY:

This passage is from Robert Pinsky’s “Essay on Psychiatrists,” published in his book, Sadness and Happiness (Princeton, 1975). It is a tribute to his teacher, Yvor Winters.

The Old Man, addressing his class
On the first day: “I know why you are here.

You are here to laugh. You have heard of a crazy
Old man who believes that Robert Bridges
Was a good poet; who believes that Fulke

Greville was a great poet, greater than Philip
Sidney; who believes that Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Are not all that they are cracked up to be….Well,

I will tell you something: I will tell you
What this course is about. Sometime in the middle
Of the Eighteenth Century, along with the rise

Of capitalism and scientific method, the logical
Foundations of Western thought decayed and fell apart.
When they fell apart, poets were left

With emotions and experiences, and with no way
To examine them. At this time, poets and men
Of genius began to go mad. Gray went mad. Collins

Went mad. Kit Smart was mad. William Blake surely
Was a madman. Coleridge was a drug addict, with severe
Depression. My friend Hart Crane died mad. My friend

Ezra Pound is mad. But you will not go mad; you will grow up
To become happy, sentimental old college professors,
Because they were men of genius, and you

Are not; and the ideas which were vital
To them are mere amusement to you. I will not
Go mad, because I have understood those ideas….”

He drank wine and smoked his pipe more than he should;
In the end his doctors in order to prolong life
Were forced to cut away most of his tongue.

That was their business. As far as he was concerned
Suffering was life’s penalty; wisdom armed one
Against madness; speech was temporary; poetry was truth.


BERRY: Wonderful poem from Pinsky, which is a bit of a surprise considering that the three times I've seen/heard him read two of them were awful and one was pretty good. And the other poems I've read by him weren't anything to get excited about. But let me ask you this: What if the ideas that were vital to Gray and Coleridge and Crane are vital to us as well? Does that make us mad? Especially since the foundations of western thought are now mere rubble. Winters was right - it’s greed and materialism that has done us in. But should we abandon hope? I mean we are still here right? Or did we die somewhere and miss it? Or were we ever born? Are we merely a nightmare buried deep in thebrain of a robber baron? If so, I hope we're giving that son of a bitch sheer hell all night long. THE SEED alone may push him over the brink.


FOLEY: Don't worry about having to change your opinion of Pinsky. The passage I sent--which is indeed wonderful--is from a longish poem called "Essay on Psychiatrists." It's in Pinsky's first book, Sadness and Happiness--published thirty years ago. It's extraordinary to read the rest of the poem after first reading the passage I sent: it's pretty boring. The Yvor Winters passage is the only good thing in the whole poem, but it's very good and it does save the poem finally. His old teacher to the rescue!

I think Winters is absolutely right about something happening to consciousness around that time--a crisis of consciousness. Questions about the uses of art and about how we arrive at what we are, what we know. The Romantics are at the center of this problem. Poetry turns inward and begins to question everything. "Madness" becomes an issue which concerns everyone--the poet as outsider, nut. And some poets do indeed go mad. But that doesn't mean that everybody goes crazy. Wordsworth isn't crazy, Keats isn't crazy--even if Coleridge and Blake may be. (Winters doesn't even mention John Clare.) It's here, I think, that Winters is genuinely neurotic. Though he has an extremely good mind, his fear of going mad leads him into a narrowly-defined rationalism which affects his understanding of what is valuable in poetry. Interesting that the passage begins with his assertion that the students are there to see a "crazy" old man. Still, neurotic or not, he's sharp sharp sharp: I think what he says about Shakespeare's sonnets is perfectly true. I also think that the notion of "genius"—which he simply asserts in an unquestioning way—needs to be re-examined. I think that notion is part of the problem, not part of the solution. He locked horns with James Broughton. From my time line book:

James Broughton, who took Winters’ poetry course in the early thirties, disagreed with his teacher strongly. Broughton writes in his memoir, Coming Unbuttoned (City Lights, 1993),

I even concocted a spoof manifesto parodying Winters’ rigid diction in which I insisted that the only form of poetry appropriate to the present age was the Anglo-Saxon; therefore poets should write in alliteration and litotes about heroic couplings.

Winters asked Broughton to leave the class and told him, "You could not even rise to the level of Ella Wheeler Wilcox or Edgar Guest."


BERRY: I’ve excerpted bits of your last e-mail and responded:


"I think Winters is absolutely right about something happening to consciousness around that time--a crisis of consciousness. Questions about the uses of art and about how we arrive at what we are, what we know."

The industrial revolution, the migration from agricultural life to city life. When Jefferson was ambassador in Paris even while enjoying the high life, the erudition of some of his colleagues there, he despised the cities where he said people were piled upon one another. He hoped this would not happen in America. He tried to prevent it. He fought Hamilton tooth and nail over monetary policy, the national bank, centralized government - in short, Federalism. But Washington was very fond of Hamilton, who had been a brilliant soldier and appeared to be brilliant at any subject to which he turned his mind. Jefferson, on the other hand, was eccentric, had "exotic" tastes, and though obviously brilliant, was often unreliable and even contradictory in his views. Washington sided with Hamilton. By the time Jefferson became president he tried to de-federalize, but it was too late, the changes disrupted the economy so severely that he had to reinstitute the national bank. He still hoped, by way of the (unconstitutional) Louisiana purchase, to open the west for an expanding population which would establish small farms and villages - not cities. It was too late. After the Civil War the robber barons rose and unrestrained, corrupt capitalism established itself. So yeah, Winters is right. After the mid to late 19th century EVERYTHING is judged in terms of its value as capital. This lead to a depression in the 1890s and several of the wealthiest capitalists bailed the country out by purchasing bonds, financing the debt, then selling the bonds at a profit. (These days about half of the debt financing goes to overseas investors - which means that for the next 50 years or so we owe people like the Saudis, the Chinese government, etc - so the situation continues to worsen).

The whole shift from agricultural to urban economy altered the pace and content of information. The notion of the contemplative romantic poet was replaced by the hustler, advertisements, and the quick sell. Money, abstract wealth, became more important than real wealth (land, gold, etc.). Equally, arts in the abstract became more important. Painters produced an obvious product, an immediate rarity, which, value judged by the critic, could attract large sums of money. How was poetry to compete with this? Poets wrote words that could be printed or copied en mass. And if the poet performed his or her work it was even less valuable because it was immediate and gone. A resolution to this was/is audio recordings, which were also mass produced, and thereby of minimal value except to the producers of the recordings. Under these circumstances why would anyone want to be a poet. In a culture where time is money poets would literally be wasting their time, and the wasting of time is strictly forbidden in a culture driven by the work ethic. This made Whitman all the more revolutionary, and in this context, crazy.

"The Romantics are at the center of this problem. Poetry turns inward and begins to question everything. "Madness" becomes an issue which concerns everyone--the poet as outsider, nut. And some poets do indeed go mad. But that doesn't mean that everybody goes crazy. Wordsworth isn't crazy, Keats isn't crazy--even if Coleridge and Blake may be."


No, Wordsworth wasn't crazy, but he was cruel. And yes, questioning everything, Blake as prime example. I don't think Blake was crazy. He was a visionary, he was eccentric, irascible, hostile to his critics and sometimes his friends, but I think his suffering resulted from living at odds with the cultural elite. He dared be original. I suppose that this is what Winters might mean by crazy - that the poets were considered crazy because they were eccentrics. I don't think Pound was crazy until the end of his life and was driven crazy by his situation, one exacerbated by his own arrogance. Winters also doesn't mention Whitman or Dickinson.

"(Winters doesn't even mention John Clare.) It's here, I think, that Winters is genuinely neurotic."

You get that sense from this poem certainly. Paranoia, closure, rigidity. The last of these can be an asset in a teacher if you understand how to use it, as a sounding board that will almost always disapprove. It would force a young poet into a choice between either abandoning the art, trying to conform, or becoming original against a wall of criticism that he or she would probably internalize and use for the rest of their lives.

"Though he has an extremely good mind, his fear of going mad leads him into a narrowly-defined rationalism which affects his understanding of what is valuable in poetry."

That fear is all over him. He must assert that he will not go mad because he understands. I don't think that will save him from his fear, but it will allow him some confidence against it. And yes, obviously a very fine mind - unflinching and penetrating.


"Interesting that the passage begins with his assertion that the students are there to see a "crazy" old man. Still, neurotic or not, he's sharp sharp sharp: I think what he says about Shakespeare's sonnets is perfectly true. I also think that the notion of "genius"—which he simply asserts in an unquestioning way—needs to be re-examined. I think that notion is part of the problem, not part of the solution."

I think that might be part of the difficulty he is having with his contemporary world (now more so than then). He accepts conventional and broad ideas of genius. These poets were geniuses, but now that is no longer possible. It all depends on what you mean by genius. If by genius we mean individuals of incredibly high IQ who by force of intellect alone broke the world open then I think it would be difficult to apply the word to any of the people he mentions. Einstein would fit that definition, Leonardo, Newton as well. Neither of them would be restrained by capitalism or scientific method - in fact they were smart enough to exploit them, most of the time.

On the other hand, I think we have to consider genius from the Romantic/Classical perspective as an inhabiting force, an in-spirit, inspiration. In this case genius is not a condition of intellectual brilliance, though it certainly doesn't exclude it. There are many kinds of intelligence and many kinds of inspiration. A poet may be inspired, inspirited, from something outside himself, and create poems under the spell of that inspiration - and, too, the result may make him more intelligent generally since it engages his or her mind deeply. However, when confronted with the poem after the fact the poet may be no more capable of finding its meaning than any one else, and since the "spirit" came from elsewhere there is no absolute meaning. This would make the poet appear simultaneously brilliant and crazy when in fact neither could be said to be the case. The art, the poem, is brilliant, is a work of genius, and it required a particularly well attuned individual to create, or co-create, it, but the poet is not the issue, the poem is. In this sense we may say that a particular poet was possessed of genius, some poets more often than others.

To make a flat statement that a particular poet is a genius is equivalent to saying Beethoven was the greatest composer that ever lived. That may be true sometimes, under certain conditions, from a particular perspective, but it cannot be said to be absolutely true.

"James Broughton, who took Winters’ poetry course in the early thirties, disagreed with his teacher strongly."

I can only imagine what Broughton did with him. He may have indeed driven Winters crazy. I can't imagine Broughton conforming to anything, even himself. He was always shedding his skin and laughing while he did it, and inviting your laughter. Big joy! Pretty far from Winter's chill.

"Broughton, from my time line book:
'I even concocted a spoof manifesto parodying Winters’ rigid diction in which I insisted that the only form of poetry appropriate to the present age was the Anglo-Saxon; therefore poets should write in alliteration and litotes about heroic couplings.'"


I'd love to read that manifesto if I haven't already, and forgotten it along with so much else. Yes, though, of course, Anglo-Saxon, and course Anglo-Saxon at that (is there any other kind?). Indeed, heroic couplings! Rhyme beaten out on granite - that is the only possible poetry. Poetry has been thrown to the dogs so we shall produce - doggerel!

"Winters asked Broughton to leave the class and told him, 'You could not even rise to the level of Ella Wheeler Wilcox or Edgar Guest.'"

Thank god for that. I doubt he ever desired to "rise" to that level. Here again is that neurosis you speak of, "rise to the level of", that's gradation, hierarchal thinking. Perfectly suited for the structure of urban civilization. Caste and class. And again he is focusing on generalizations, on poets entire, instead of the individual works - some of which may rise quite high, others not. Shakespeare did write some crappy poetry - perhaps well decorated crap, but…


FOLEY: A word about the notion of "genius." As you know, I think that the ideology of "the individual" has been an extremely damaging one—damaging in a number of ways. I wrote at the beginning of my "Greatest Hits" volume, "I can’t get it out of my head that, though I may be ‘unique,’ I am not an ‘individual.’ The word ‘individual’ comes from the Latin individuus—indivisible, something which can no longer be ‘divided.’ If I think of myself as a political entity, then I am happy to be individuus: the rights of the individual are everywhere to be respected. If I think of myself as a thinking/feeling entity, however, I am something very different from that: I am not at all individuus; I am as divided as I can be." There are a number of alternatives to thinking of people as "individuals": one of them is Heidegger’s notion of people as "Dasein," "Being There." The notion of the "genius" as the supremely gifted individual goes back to the 18th Century, and particularly to certain notions current in German philosophy and poetry of the time. (The O.E.D. will tell you that the distinction between genius and talent—the latter another problematical term!—comes from that period.) "Genius" earlier referred to a guardian spirit received at birth (the etymological root, gen, is connected to notions of coming into birth, "genital," etc.) or to the particular spirit of a place (genius loci). How it came, via the Germans, via the English Romantics, to mean what it means today is a fascinating history which I can’t go into here. (The figure of William Shakespeare looms large in this history.) I think at this point the word has outlived its usefulness. The word has been taken over by the bourgeoisie (Heidegger’s "das Mann") as a way of referring to certain people of great "accomplishment." These people—these "geniuses"—are usually impossible in their behavior, hugely egocentric, and immensely self-destructive: they represent the artist as entertaining suicide—a spectacle the bourgeois public loves to contemplate. Bourgeois spectators will find geniuses "fascinating" in their out-of-bounds behavior (Jackson Pollack, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, Gully Jimson, the list goes on) but they will also be delighted to discover that they are not like them: they don’t tear their lives to pieces, they are not self-destructive. The message here is: Don’t try for too much. Don’t be a "genius." Look how awful their lives are! But there is more to it than that. I think the notion of the genius functions primarily to strengthen the ideology of the individual. The genius is the individual taken to the max: the "individual" intensified. In effect, a "genius" is an "individual" who is really individual! There is much more to say about this subject—the Western God is also the individual taken to the max—but, in brief: If you reject the notion of the individual, as I do, you also reject the notion of the genius. (Not to mention the "Great Man" theory of history—history as a string of "geniuses"—and various other things.) The "genius" is just that old bugaboo the ego in one more of its guises.


BERRY: You cover vast territory quickly. As call and response, what you write summons several questions and comments. You might want to answer them, but I intend them to be rhetorical as much as to you personally.

I'll excerpt the bit that summons the question/response and go from there.

"'Genius' earlier referred to a guardian spirit received at birth (the etymological root, gen, is connected to notions of coming into birth, "genital," etc.) or to the particular spirit of a place (genius loci)."

This is where my thinking about it begins - these two origins of the word - with the idea of coming into birth being anything that comes into birth, from a person to an object to an idea - and I think fundamentally, coming into presence, which I take from Heidegger, but to be more specific, the reality of a thing as opposed to a meaning projected upon it by a culture. In this we recognize it as if we'd never experienced it before. Perhaps this is a case of generative and genius loci coinciding as a single experience. The problem arises when I claim this as my experience - assert the primacy of the 'I'.

Don't the origins of this ego go back even further than monotheism to the idea of the hero? I am thinking about Gilgamesh as one of our earliest hero stories within the context of civilization. Isn't that context the ground upon which a hero, a god, a king or lord, a genius might appear? We are taught that civilization begins with city states (Sumer, Egypt, the Indus River valley and so on). In order to have a city state you have to establish some kind of hierarchy and a distribution of tasks. By contrast, in small nomadic settlements or agricultural villages, there might be individuals in the sense that one person is better at one task than another, but generally all people apply themselves to whatever task is at hand depending on the circumstances. There is no need for the heroic personality because all apply themselves to a plurality of purposes. I should also say that performing tasks, doing work, is only one set of multiples since there is also emphasis on play, and perhaps ritual as play and vice versa. In this play everyone participates. Again, there is usually some distinction made, between sexes, between initiated and uninitiated, between elders and younger people – but most of these these categories are very fluid and applied only as the need arises and might shift from one season to the next. The point being, that great forces (weather, animals) and great deeds are recognized, but they do not generate a singular heroic personality who does nothing other than be a hero or a king or anything else specific.

Doesn't the problem arise when we begin to distance ourselves from the primary obligations? By these I mean, food, clothing and shelter. In a city state these tasks are broken down into people who build, people who farm and herd, and people who make clothes. Once a person is identified with a single task he or she becomes known by that task, play becomes secondary, and also the tasks and specialists multiply. Someone needs to organize all these tasks and that becomes his or her (usually his) task. In order to affirm this organization we will need stories that promote the dedication to a single task so that even story telling becomes an individual's task and that task is to promote the individual in extreme. We need an example of the great builder, the great hunter and so forth, and these become god-forms, prototypes to which individuals must conform. Isn't this where we took a "wrong" turn, into individualized behaviors in all seasons and circumstances rather than adaptive behaviors depending on changing circumstances?

"I think the notion of the genius functions primarily to strengthen the ideology of the individual. The genius is the individual taken to the max: the 'individual' intensified."

I particularly like that phrase "the ideology of the individual." It is a kind of diagnoses of this neurotic condition that permeates civilization, particularly late western civilization from the 18th century forward. (In the east the emphasis was on community - the great man, the hero as submissive to the natural process of society - Taoism, but Confucianism as well. This creates its own set of problems, its neurosis of exclusion of the individual.) But it is important to understand this ideology for what it is: an illness. Further, it is the collective deification of that illness. We end up with a "jealous God" and a merciful savior who is at the same time the judge of our eternal fates; and now the rot of these exaggerated personalities and the extended disease of the adoration of the personality over what they did that might be useful to us, their work, which, at its best, utilizes autobiography as only one stream.

FOLEY: My "response" to all this is simply to say I agree: What you write seems to me to be accurate and eloquently put. One thing: we don't need to "get back" to something; it isn't a question of nostalgia. We can't make all that history disappear. We need to redefine, find new ways of dealing with our problems: we need to make new myths, arrive at new forms. The past is a guide, but it is only a guide. Everything remains in crisis--which seems to be the form of my lifetime.


BERRY: Right. I didn't mean to imply a return to some mythic paradise. Neither do I put much faith in progressivism. Things change, but not toward some ultimate goal, or toward anything. It’s more about adapting to circumstances.

What I think might be possible eventually is a kind of renaissance, though instead of recovering classical antiquity, rediscovering what was lost at the beginning of civilization. For instance, the Renaissance revered the ancients, but they did not reject the printing press. Perhaps we are in a similar situation. We have been forced into a state of crisis by industrialization/modernity, the rise of the "great man" idea in arts, politics, science, and we would like to recover from that affliction. However, that doesn't mean we trash our computers. Just as the printing press helped distribute the ideas of the Renaissance, the internet helps distribute the ideas of our time, including those that would retain the beneficial aspects of science and art, etc. while at the same time rediscovering what was needlessly sacrificed.