The steady shape of the mind

A few quotations from the foreword of Jacob Bronowski's wonderful book The Poet's Defence, which I have referred to before, a book in which he “tried to write criticism as reasoned as geometry.” [p. 8]. 

“One belief is that poetry is worthy in itself. Another is that this worth must be judged, not measured. That is, this worth cannot be abstracted from the poem like the wavelength of a light from its colour, and given a measure. It must be judged, as it must be made, by the whole soul of a man. That is why great criticism, like great poems, has not been written by little men.” [pp. 8‒9]

He observes there has been a historical development of ideas against this belief, a denial of the belief “by Coleridge and now by his pupil I.A. Richards” who hold the contrary “unspoken belief that only that can be judged which can be measured. It is the belief that science is the only way to knowledge. This belief has grown as science has grown wider. From the hopes of the Augustans it has grown to the boundless pride of to-day. I do not think that it is chance that poets have grown so much worse in the same time.” [p.9]

Bronowski, a passionate advocate for the role of science in the world, and famous for his TV Series The Ascent of Man, stands for the distinct form of truth which poetry strives for, distinct from the kinds of truth accessible by science. 

“In science, that is true which can be checked by others. Science therefore finds its knowledge of the world by mass measurement, that is by social means. It finds it through the senses, and what it finds is never true but more and more nearly true. This holds of physics, of history, and also of psychology.” [p.10]

The kind of truth that poetry can access is of a different order: “I believe that the mind of man has a steady shape which is the truth. We know the truth about the mind by looking from this a priori truth outward.” [p.10]

“Great poets have thought that poetry is its own end. Had they thought otherwise they would have turned to something which is an end. Only small poets like Shelley have held to poetry although they have not thought it an end.” [p.16]

Baedeker poetry?

Kris Hemensley in a recent post looking at an essay by Petra White zeroes in on her use of term 'Baedeker poetry' - specifically in the context of her question "Can we write about the effect a place has on us, avoiding Baedecker poetry?". The derogatory import here of the term 'baedeker poetry' would perhaps seek to invalidate one of the occasions for poetry; and it is tempting to see all poetry as occasional. Laurie Duggan in a diary entry from August 2003 wrote "I’d mentioned to Kris that I’ve started to see myself as a kind of ‘occasional’ poet – no less a seriousness about poetry, just an awareness of its contingency". Duggan's recent poem on Milan and those poems John Forbes wrote while in Rome seem Baedekerish, but they are good poems. To disparage poems written in response to travel seems 'occasionalist'. Although of course the occasion of travel, like the occasions of love or love-gone-wrong, might inspire a lot of third-rate work, but that's another matter. Petra White has described "a dreary parade of random otherness" and this might locate the problem - poems should simply not be dreary. But if this is the crux of the objection, why the term 'baedeker poetry'?

The term was used in a 1969 paper by Vladimir Markov which was a 'reappraisal' of Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont (1867 - 1942), poet & translator of Poe and Shelley and Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Markov described Balmont's sequence Аккорды (Akkordy - Chords) as 'baedeker poetry': it contains short lyric pieces such as Пред картиной Греко В музее Прадо, в Мадриде (Before a picture of El Greco in the Prado Museum, Madrid), Английский пейзаж (English countryside), В Оксфорде (In Oxford), and Крымская картинка (Crimean picture). This is work in the same line as Wordsworth's "Memorials of a Tour in the Continent, 1820' and 'Memorials of a Tour in Italy, 1837'.

Taking a broader view we could even see the origins of pastoral being cityfolks' nostalgic descriptions of a distant country life: Theocritus scribbling his idylls amid the clamour and stench of Alexandria. And of course the nostalgia for a lost bucolic life is rendered also in the classical Laments for Adonis - elegy and pastoral meet. Here is Theocritus rendered by Barbara Hughes Fowler:

Bear violets now, O brambles, bear violets, thorns, and let
the lovely narcissus bloom on juniper trees. Let all
be opposite of all, and let the pine bear pears
since Daphnis is dying. Let the stag drag the hounds.
From mountain tops let owls sing to nightingales.

Which sets the tone of deploration for poetic grief for the next couple of thousand years:

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death!

Anyhow, as a reader who has been known to enjoy books by Bruce Chatwin or Bill Bryson or H. V. Morton, I think there's definitely a place for the undreary baedeker poem and its parade of details.