Sentinel
Poetry (Online) #36 – November 2005 Online Magazine Monthly…since
December 2002. ISSN 1479-425X
Editorial
Truth
and Poetry
Biblical mythology is replete with examples of the
efficacy of the word. The world was spoken into existence; it is reported that
the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us – a rather esoteric idea but
one which we can understand in our secular world to mean that the word is a
potent and magical item; that it carries in its kernel the idea of truth; that
it is a creative force; it brings things or ideas into existence and it shapes
objective reality. This magical quality
is evident in traditional cultures where words are spoken – as in
incantations – to effect miraculous changes to reality. Again in the
Bible the word is spoken to effect spiritual healing. And in esoteric religions
like Hinduism or Buddhism we find that the word is central to the shaping of
consciousness as in mantra meditation. The long and the short of it is that the
word is a powerful tool in shaping objective and subjective reality, and truth
is its motor. That candour in poetry cannot be compromised for anything else
– be it craft or stylistics. What gives poetry its charm is its overall
truth-telling effect beyond all the other conceits it is very much capable of.
It is the truth-value within the poem that shines through and envelopes the
poem in an aura of ‘facticity’ a la Jean-Paul Sartre.
The efficacy of most poetry derives from their weight
and precision in addressing the truth. When a poet begins to lie in his work or
personal life that gift of poetry, that inner ballast which propels things
outwards from him deserts the poet. To expand on this a bit, when in poetics
the lie is presented as truth or honesty is subverted by career or inordinate
ambition the writer losses his strength of conviction; in fact he becomes a
source of darkness and confusion instead of being a light to the faculties. An
example is Joseph Conrad in Heart of
Darkness. The argument and dissent generated by that lying book, which
demonised
In applying the all-encompassing expression,
‘poetics’ here one includes the essay, novels, plays, philosophy
– even art, since the visual artist replaces the word with graphics or
symbolic objects – and all writing
generally within the purview of ‘the word’; necessarily so: it is
not only in poetry that lies can kill the spirit and cause mayhem. The
nineteenth century eugenics movement was a huge lie. The ‘word’ was
perverted to construct a world of lies and it led to confusion and racism.
Again nineteenth century race theorists in
Avant-garde modernist art eschews the
petit-bourgeoisie political and moral laxity of conservative modernists.
Dadaism, in fact marked the beginning of the postmodernist in art, since the
movement coincided with the Great War, which for the Dadaist signaled the
failure of tradition and of all modernist art. So art-for-art’s sake in
this instance became a slogan to break away from a tradition that insisted on
an allegiance to schools, academic principles or the tastes of the public. In short
it was a symbolic demand and a reaching for freedom of self-expression, and an
effort to escape the ‘tyranny’ of meaning and purpose. Ironically
art-for-art’s sake in modern art was counter-productive because the
bourgeoisie affectations it railed against claimed it in the way in which that
art came to be discussed – only in formalist terms. Critics adjusted and
ignored the political or moral impetus in progressive modernist art.
Avant-gardism played into the hands of the system because it did not show
felicity to truth. It was too reactionary because it almost entirely insisted
on aesthetic beauty or sometimes on meaninglessness – especially in
abstract painting; its behaviour reflects the tired saying, ‘cutting the
nose to spite the face’, the nose in this case being the truth
principle– observations of political and moral truths within the body
politic, for example, not just that kind of navel-gazing that should be left to
mystics. It is after all a secular world. The same reactionism can be found in
modern music, where the ear-drums are tortured with screeches, scratches,
demonic howls, in short airy nothings!
The idea of the Romantic Artist in nineteenth century
industrialised
At best what the poet can aspire to is a marrying of
truth and beauty. There should be a unifying tension where both strain against
the other and where, through such straining, the force of the word shines
through. Wilfred Owen wrote his war poems from the raw heart of conviction. And
they still resonate today from the trenches and cannon fire of history. The moral
force – to use that word, moral, not in its religious sense – of
most poetry derives from a solicitous engagement with the truth. One good
example of such poetry is Dennis Brutus’, whose desire to capture the
terror of apartheid was nevertheless balanced by the most elegant and lyrical
poetry. He was addressing the truth of the horror of inhuman behaviour. A love
poem with him was not just a love poem. It was a cry of shame at humanity. Good
examples can be found in Letters to
Martha, written from the urgency of Prison.
This importance of the truth principle is exemplified
by Odia Ofeimun’s The Poet Lied.
There is a sharp reprimand in the titling; a poet should not lie! And lying
takes several forms – personal, private, public or a pretension to
literary talents; the poetaster, is the worst kind of liar – or it could
be a simple ignoring of the ills in the poet’s immediate and far
surrounding. He or she is the conscience
of his or her environment and should function so.
Lacan insists that language is structured like a
language. The word then has a direct impact on the unconscious in the way we
speak it. If the poet does not adhere to the truth language begins to speak
him, that is, he or she does not have efficacy anymore. There is the classic example of Rimbaud, the
French symbolist poet, who became a slave trader due to economic pressures and
could not write poetry thereafter. He dried up! Although this might seem a
rather radical reading of him but Gerald Manley Hopkins intuitively understood
the need for truth in poetry. His work is a quintessence of the marrying of
aesthetic beauty -in his experiments with sound- and the truth principle. This
gives to his poetry a vibrancy that is always fresh. It is instructive that he
was a poet-priest. Hear him:
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
As king fishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow
swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying
What I do is me: for that I came.
I
say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is…
- Gerard
Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
As
Amatoritsero Ede
Writer-in-Residence