"The Star's Impulse Must Wait For Eyes To Claim It Beautiful"

I presume that most of us have had thoughts similar to those expressed by Louis MacNeice in "Star-gazer" (which appeared in my previous post).  I am wilfully ignorant of science, but the idea of starlight travelling through the ages to arrive here before our eyes is of interest to me as a mortal.  The thought that tonight's starlight left its various homes untold years before I was born is wonderful, sad, and somehow comforting.  As is the thought that starlight leaving its homes tonight will arrive here untold years after I am gone.

Likewise, the possibility of some sort of connection between time-travelling starlight and love is of great interest.  Even though it is not scientifically provable.  This, of course, is the business of poetry.

                              Delay

The radiance of that star that leans on me
Was shining years ago.  The light that now
Glitters up there my eye may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent.  The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

Elizabeth Jennings, Poems (1953).

                                     Robin Tanner, "The Plough" (1973)

R. S. Thomas and "Progress": "Deciduous Language"

I had intended to leave the topic of "progress" after hearing from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Edmund Blunden in the previous two posts.  However, I then recalled a poem by R. S. Thomas that bears on the subject.  (R. S. Thomas being who he was, his thoughts -- as one might expect -- are not exactly cheery.)  With his words, we shall say farewell to "progress" for now.

          Postscript

As life improved, their poems
Grew sadder and sadder.  Was there oil
For the machine?  It was
The vinegar in the poets' cup.

The tins marched to the music
Of the conveyor belt.  A billion
Mouths opened.  Production,
Production, the wheels

Whistled.  Among the forests
Of metal the one human
Sound was the lament of
The poets for deciduous language.

                           The "Beacon of Progress": A Closer View

Edmund Blunden and "Progress": "Mere moonlight in the last green loneliness"

In the previous post, we heard Ludwig Wittgenstein express skepticism about the nature of "progress" in our time.  In the following poem, Edmund Blunden sounds a similar note:

                    Minority Report

That you have given us others endless means
To modify the dreariness of living,
Machines which even change men to machines;
That you have been most honourable in giving;
That thanks to you we roar through space at speed
Past dreams of wisest science not long since,
And listen in to news we hardly need,
And rumours which might make Horatius wince,
Of modes of sudden death devised by you,
And promising protection against those --
All this and more I know, and what is due
Of praise would offer, couched more fitly in prose.
But such incompetence and such caprice
Clog human nature that, for all your kindness,
Some shun loud-speakers as uncertain peace,
And fear flood-lighting is a form of blindness;
The televisionary world to come,
The petrol-driven world already made,
Appear not to afford these types a crumb
Of comfort.  You will win; be not dismayed.
Let those pursue their fantasy, and press
For obsolete illusion, let them seek
Mere moonlight in the last green loneliness;
Your van will be arriving there next week.

Edmund Blunden, An Elegy and Other Poems (1937).

                                         The "Beacon of Progress"
A proposed 1,500-foot-tall structure designed by a professor of architecture from MIT, circa 1900.  It was never built.

Wittgenstein and "Progress"

I admire Ludwig Wittgenstein.  I do not admire the pack of academic philosophers, theorists, and other hyenas who have systematically misunderstood and misrepresented what he actually said.  Wittgenstein noticed the initial stages of this phenomenon, and he was angered and appalled.

Given the intellectual temper of our times, things have only gotten worse.  However -- have no fear! -- I do not intend to wade into that particular morass.  For a succinct discussion of the subject, I recommend Bryan Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher (1998), which contains a chapter recounting Magee's dismay and shock at the manner in which supposedly intelligent people ignored what was staring them in the face.

All that I wish to do is to suggest that we read Wittgenstein -- and listen to what he says.  Ignore the intermediaries.  And, as background, bear in mind stray facts like these: Tolstoy and Samuel Johnson (particularly the Prayers and Meditations) were important to him; he loved to watch American movies; he avidly read American detective stories.

This passage is from a draft of Wittgenstein's foreword to Philosophical Remarks (1930):

"This book is written for those who are in sympathy with the spirit in which it is written.  This is not, I believe, the spirit of the main current of European and American civilization.  The spirit of this civilization makes itself manifest in the industry, architecture and music of our time, in its fascism and socialism, and it is alien and uncongenial to the author.  This is not a value judgment.  It is not, it is true, as though he accepted what nowadays passes for architecture as architecture, or did not approach what is called modern music with the greatest suspicion (though without understanding its language), but still, the disappearance of the arts does not justify judging disparagingly the human beings who make up this civilization.
. . . . .
I realize then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no sympathy for the current of European civilization and do not understand its goals, if it has any.  So I am really writing for friends who are scattered throughout the corners of the globe.

It is all one to me whether or not the typical western scientist understands or appreciates my work, since he will not in any case understand the spirit in which I write.  Our civilization is characterized by the word 'progress'.  Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features.  Typically it constructs.  It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure.  And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself.  For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves.

I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings.

So, I am not aiming at the same target as the scientists and my way of thinking is different from theirs."


Again, my hope is that we read Wittgenstein, and forget about his interpreters.  And, always remember: clarity and perspicuity are very important words in his thought and writing.