Correspondence

I have a faith in the power of correspondence - literary correspondence that is, but with the deeper meaning of the word given full weight - to create reality. a belief that if a letter (or even an email) expresses with sufficient skill and power the interweaving of the recipient's history, statements and opinions with one's own concerns and desires it creates a version of reality that cannot be gainsaid.

It is, I suppose, a belief little different from a belief in witchcraft spells, or in voodoo - of from a belief in, an understanding of, the power of poetry, or indeed of any form of art.

Yet it is inferior to voodoo (or witchcraft or art) in that, unlike them, it requires for its efficacy that the recipient should be a believer too. Whilst the modern sceptic dismisses the pricklings in his limbs until he rapidly and unaccountably expires, the recipient of the letter passes his eyes over it without its logic and architecture impinging upon him in the slightest. So that it is, ironically, not a lack of superstition that causes my literary witchcraft to fail, but a lack of imaginative faith in rationality and the inter-relationship of expression, thought and truth.

The heyday of my faith was probably the eighteenth century , when sense was a matter of general agreement among educated gentlemen, and the great example of the power of literary correspondence was to be found in Dr Johnson's famous epistolary rebuke to Lord Chesterfield:

"The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it."

Lord Chesterfield was so much a fellow believer that, rather than attempt the impossibility of replying to such a letter, he kept it on display and exhibited it to his friends and visitors as an outstanding work of expression.

I like to think (probably erroneously) that it was a recognition of the possibly over-weening power of expression to create its own reality that lead Dr Johnson to advise aspiring writers to strike out anything in their work that they thought particularly fine.

The eighteenth century is normally regarded as a prosaic culture, but there was something heroic in its belief in the power of rationality and human agency, which in some of its strongest authors resulted in outbursts of exuberance, malice or even madness, as one may find, for example, in Alexander Pope or Jonathan Swift. Elsewhere, as T S Eliot observed, 'It crushed a number of lesser men who thought differently but could not bear to face the fact.'

Language, especially figurative language, has the power not only to encapsulate our thoughts but to betray us, almost seamlessly, into accepting further ideas that were not part of our original perception.We all know the feeling of 'swimming against the tide': finding that our efforts do not produce the results we think they should, that they are resisted by some large force 'out there'. But the strength with which we recognise part of the metaphor can blind us to how badly the rest of it fits. Those of us who indulge in sea bathing (including Le Corbusier) know vividly that swimming against the actual tide always gives a far greater sense of achievement, of disciplined productive effort, of pleasure and progress and an enhanced fitness for further work, than does swimming with it - when you may get somewhere faster, but in something of a physical mess. Some people might even be more likely to get a few admiring glances from people on the beach. Is that the metaphor or the thought doing the work?

Atomisation 3

We are hearing much talk, post riots, of a 'feral underclass', with the two words linked seemingly inseparably together - "yoked by violence together", one might say. Yet many have pointed out that more glittering sections of our society are equally feral.

Underclass, overclass and in between, we're all feral now. Literally it means simply 'wild' or 'fierce', but we use it distinctively in the sense of having reverted to the wild - feral pigeons, feral cats, feral bankers. We certainly have a feral financial class; not just in their own undoubted (even if unaccountable) indulgence in fraud and criminality (especially, in banks, managerial fraud against shareholders as a class), but in their outright association, for straightforward material gain, with some of the heavier criminal classes at large, the drugs and arms dealers, the corrupt heads of state. The international rich are increasingly feral. Here in my village we already have a fully feral parish council and the ambitions, not just of Mr Pickles, but of Messrs Gove and Lansley promise to do much to promote the feral. One could make a good case for saying that our present government is feral, no longer feeling itself obliged to carry widespread electoral consent with it. The famous 'middle ground' is behind us all and well in the past. Internationally states have always been feral (see Randolph Bourne) and in modern times the scruples and the international moves towards regulation and restraint following two world wars in Europe now seem like a brief and fading interlude.

For all the dulcetly reasonable tones of our own Dame Liza Manningham-Buller's Reith Lectures (you could hardly hope for a greater concatenation of civilising, proper and gentilely British nouns than those six), the security services are as challenged against humane and honest norms as ever.

In this particular subject one could argue, only a little tendentiously, that the old official British refusal to recognise the existence of 'intelligence' agencies was an admission that their activities were never entirely justifiable (however occasionally - or more often - necessary), and that, once they were openly recognised and 'regulated', inevitably to some degree the unacceptable would become officially sanctioned and, in Orwellian processes, the lines of civilised behaviour become more blurred. It is an interesting speculation whether the 'security' services ('intelligence' services, 'security' agencies, 'defence' departments - we hardly even think of these terms as Orwellian) were not in practice more restrained and scrupled when they acted entirely in the shadows than they have been in recent years.

But I digress - and will again. In the face of the more open burgeoning of feral energy on all sides, the lumpen middle (high and low) of our society seems to be running out of energy fast. As I go around, on every side life seems to be running down like a clockwork toy running to a halt, entropy looms, from the state of the municipal flowerbeds to the demeanour of the people in the streets, to the quality of our higher journalism and broadcasting, to the popular participation in politics. In the last instance aided and abetted by our present government's intention to remove the compulsion on the public to co-operate with the electoral registration officer, to switch electoral registration from a household to an individual base, and to make it the Boundary Commission's sole responsibility to equalise the population size of constituencies, which, taken together, are expected to reduce electoral registration in this country from the present level of about 90 per cent to 60 or 65 per cent, so that the alien experience of the United States, where drives to increase voter registration are often the key to possible results in specific elections, will be, like so much else of which our new government is enamoured, transplanted across the Atlantic to these shores.

Yet we must not be too despondent. People still cultivate their gardens and sweep their paths (if they have any). Did we not learn a little while ago that Tesco was enforcing a dress code on its customers? No more midnight shopping in pyjamas.

In vain, in vain, — the all-composing Hour
Resistless falls: The Muse obeys the Pow'r.
She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold
Of Night Primæval, and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying Rain-bows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th'ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
See skulking Truth to her old Cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And Universal Darkness buries All.

Alexander Pope The Dunciad Book IV
 

The end

Metaphysical

"The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.”

Dr. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, ‘Cowley’ (1781)

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's Dictionary

In his celebrated Dictionary, Dr Johnson famously provided some definitions in which he both exercised his wit and reflected his personal experience. Thus a lexicographer is ‘a harmless drudge’, a patron ‘commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is paid with flattery’, and a pension ‘is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country’.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, whose lexicographical collaboration is sadly little known, regrettably overshadowed perhaps by their other activities, were never able quite to agree on the legitimacy of such indulgence. They finally resolved their disagreement by dividing their work with Dr Jekyll providing the neutrally accurate definition and Mr Hyde adding to the entries in a way which displayed his more acerbic character, often as much in the choice of particular usages defined as in the definitions themselves.

I have posted on a separate page of this blog some examples of their joint work which I believe have a particular relevance to our own times. I may add to them from time to time.

Language, thought and metaphor

Is metaphor inherently a ‘category mistake’? (Denouncing such mistakes seems to have become the new form of witch hunting.)

Thought develops consciously through language, but language is formed by cultural accretion. Within that context, linguistic expression forms an expression within its own terms. That is not necessarily true to the perception that prompted the thought. Language has its own references and autonomy. I like to think that is why Samuel Johnson advised writers to re-read their texts and to strike anything they thought ‘particularly fine’. It was, I hope, not just an aversion to purple passages, but a recognition that what seems especially linguistically satisfying is likely to have forsaken the awkward attempt to express thought, and become a linguistic creation, a work or art – or perhaps craft – in its own terms.

Metaphor challenges and upsets the linguistic integrity. It is a higher form of art in miniature. Perhaps all art is a category mistake.

Lord Chesterfield and Samuel Johnson

A little while ago I was chastised by implication on the designer-makers’ forum by a reference by a colleague to Lord Chesterfield’s (eighteenth-century aristocrat, politician and wit) letter to his son 1748, Letter XXX, February 22, later published as ‘Letters to his Son: on the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman’:

‘Some learned men, proud of their knowledge, only speak to decide, and give judgment without appeal; the consequence of which is, that mankind, provoked by the insult, and injured by the oppression, revolt; and, in order to shake off the tyranny, even call the lawful authority in question. The more you know, the modester you should be…’

'Others, to show their learning, or often from the prejudices of a school education, where they hear of nothing else, are always talking of the ancients, as something more than men, and of the moderns, as something less. They are never without a classic or two in their pockets; they stick to the old good sense; they read none of the modern trash; and will show you, plainly, that no improvement has been made, in any one art or science, these last seventeen hundred years.’

and more well observed reflections besides. No doubt amply justified as a reproach to my general character, but a bit harsh, I thought, as a comment on my particular postings.

Still, I should have kept my dusty 45 year-old Everyman copy of the Letters better thumbed. In fact I couldn’t find it on the bookshelves and had to bring project Gutenberg to my rescue.

That was rather the point. Chesterfield was writing in an age when, at least in ‘polite society’, there was heavy deference to the authority of rank and learning, and even more to the idea of politeness. We’re hardly in the same state now, when everyone has, if not a classic or two in their pockets, an equal subscription to the wisdom of Wikipedia, and the threats to thought come from an altogether different direction. Though perhaps we still suffer, in the midst of our rudeness, from a deference to some idea of politeness, or, as we like to call it, appropriateness.

I always rather sided with Samuel Johnson’s opinion. Letter XXX is a rather two-edged sword; was ever a man more careful to frame his arguments with such impressive oppression, and leave a few well-crafted insults, for later readers (although, in fairness, he did not anticipate his letters’ publication) to pick up, along the way?

Johnson’s opinion of Chesterfield was coloured by his experiences over his dictionary. Both men, as writers, strove for and achieved wit, in the eighteenth-century sense, and neither was without vanity or self-regard, but Johnson’s wit has a passion and humanity within it that makes Chesterfield look brittle and shallowly ‘polite’:

‘Seven years, my lord, have now past since I waited in your outward rooms or was repulsed from your door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before ... Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it.’

Was there ever a rebuke, justified or not, to which effective response was less possible?

Chesterfield evidently thought not, because he kept the letter displayed on his table for his friends and visitors to admire, and the two were, finally, reconciled. Yet, as Johnson said of Chesterfield, ‘This man I thought had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords!’