Joseph Kreydt

Tag: poe

  • The Beauty of Virtue

    Vice is a virtue these days. Indulgence, lavishness, and vanity are held up as some of the highest goods. Phrases like “retail therapy,” “guilty pleasure,” and “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” are almost viewed as positive values. On the other hand, virtue is seen as a drag. We hear, “go big or go home,” “nice guys finish last,” and “don’t be a buzzkill.”

    While there is an ounce of truth to each of these phrases, the bigger idea behind them—that virtue is a bummer or a bore or a waste of life—is a misconception. The truth is, virtue is beautiful, and it leads to the best possible life.

    Before we can see why virtue leads to a better life, we have to understand what virtue actually is—something ordered, proportioned, and aligned with reality, much like beauty itself.

    Let’s consider beauty. If you’ve ever used word processing software, you’re probably familiar with line justification. If you set the software to right-justify, all of the lines are lined up along the right side of the page. To justify lines on a page is to order them a certain way. In order for this to happen, there needs to be a boundary around the page—the margins—for the lines to be ordered against.

    These two attributes—borders and justification—go a long way in producing a beautiful representation of text on the page. In fact, these two attributes are important components of anything beautiful. Take a look at this lithograph, titled “The Good Shepherd,” by Gebhard Fugel.

    Most obviously, there is the rectangular boundary that makes up the outer edges of the image. All of the main elements within the border—Christ, the sheep, the clouds, etc—are justified in relation to both the border and to one another. When these elements are well-ordered, clearly defined, and proportional, the image is more beautiful. There is a certain balance, a certain uniformity, to the whole scene.

    The uniformity is not perfect, but this doesn’t diminish the beauty of the image. In fact, if the image was perfectly uniform, it would lack another important component of beauty: variety. According to Edgar Allan Poe, “the “Uniformity” is the principle: — the “Variety” is but the principle’s natural safeguard from self-destruction by excess of self.”

    These two central components of beauty—uniformity and variety—are aligned with the very nature of reality. Iain McGilchrist, considered by many to be one of the greatest neuroscientists and philosophers of our time, comes to a similar conclusion about the nature of reality as Poe does about the nature of beauty.

    In an extraordinary lecture, titled “Division and Union,” at Ralston University, McGilchrist explained that both division and union are important, and that it is “the business of the unfolding of the cosmos to make [distinction within sameness] grow and flourish—an eternal creative unfolding of generality into uniqueness. It’s what we mean by there being anything at all.”

    He used snowflakes as an example. “No two snowflakes have the same structure. But interestingly, each arm of the snowflake obeys the same pattern that each other arm of the six arms of the snowflake obey…They seem to me to be a beautiful example of beauty and complexity that give rise to things that are unified and unique, and yet have interesting parts that make them the whole that they are.”

    Photos by Wilson Alwyn Bentley.

    So, in beauty and in the very nature of the universe, there is uniformity and variety. These are determined, in large part, by the borders and justification of its components.

    Let’s look at justification again. The word, justification, comes from Late Latin iustificationem. It means, “administration of justice.” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=justification) We generally think of justice in terms of laws and the legal system. A judge serves justice. But on a deeper level, it is much like justification in word processing software.

    Justice, in the legal sense, means a boundary is set and enforced, a line is drawn in a place deemed fair or right. Justice in terms of beauty is, similarly, all about forming the boundaries of the materials in the right relationship to themselves and to other boundaries, giving them uniformity and variety. Think back to justification in word processing software. It’s all about lining things up a certain way, relative to specific boundaries.

    Ultimately, though, justice is not just a legal term or a component of a beautiful document. It is a virtue, a way of being in alignment with the true nature of reality.

    It is the virtue of justice that underlies all of these other fields we call justice. According to Aristotle, virtue is “the golden mean between two vices,” and “means doing the right thing, in relation to the right person, at the right time, to the right extent, in the right manner, and for the right purpose.”

    When Poe spoke of variety being the natural safeguard from uniformity’s self-destruction by excess of self, he was talking about a “golden mean between two vices.” Variety prevents uniformity from being excessively uniform, and uniformity prevents variety from being chaotic. These virtues compose beauty. Their excesses, which are vices, produce ugliness—disproportionality, injustice, disorder, etc.

    In the same way, the promotion of indulgence, lavishness, and vanity, as the highest goods is vicious. Indulgence is the excess of temperance (deprivation is its deficiency, the other end of the golden mean of temperance). Lavishness is an excess of spending and consuming (stinginess is its deficiency) while generosity is the mean. And vanity, in our culture, is the excess of self-worth (low self-esteem is its deficiency).

    On a surface level, indulgence sounds great. It means I get to eat all the ice cream I want. But in reality, it’s a shallow, unrealistic approach to consumption. Sure, limiting myself to one scoop of ice cream might feel restrictive in the moment, but the true buzzkill is the lethargy and health issues that follow excess. Temperance leads to a better, more beautiful life.

    To favor vice is really just to take a shallow view, to aim lower, to miss the bigger picture. It is to not understand the true values of things, or to understand them but still fail to put them in the right order. To live virtuously is to put things in their proper place just the way a painter does with strokes on a canvas. To live virtuously is to live beautifully.

    To do so, we must learn the nature of reality and align our actions with the highest values. Then, we are in a position to live our best lives. It’s time to stop settling for less. It’s time to raise ourselves beyond the limited ways of vice.

  • Poe on Poetry: The Poetic Principle

    Edgar Allen Poe’s two essays on poetry (The Poetic Principle and The Rationale of Verse) are a couple of my favorite essays of all time. He explains poetry in simple terms and showcases its beauty. Below are my favorite parts of The Poetic Principle.

    On the Length of a Poem

    “I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.”

    “I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags — fails — a revulsion ensues — and then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such.”

    “On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief…A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.”

    On the Object (Purpose/Goal) of Poetry

    Truth or Goodness as the Objects of Poetry

    “…we find [the bias toward epic-length poems] succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresy of The Didactic. It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral; and by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged.”

    “With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of man, I would nevertheless, limit, in some measure, its modes of inculcation…In enforcing a truth, we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical.”

    “Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense…Just as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful while the Moral Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the obligation, and Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying the charms: — waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity — her disproportion — her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious — in a word, to Beauty.”

    Beauty as the Object of Poetry

    “An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful…And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and sentiments, which greet him in common with all mankind — he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us — but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above…And thus when by Poetry, —or when by Music, the most entrancing of the Poetic moods — we find ourselves melted into tears — we weep then — not as the Abbaté Gravina supposes — through excess of pleasure, but through a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.”

    The Poetic Principle: The Struggle to Apprehend God’s Love

    “The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness — this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted — has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic.”

    Music as a Special Form of Poetry

    “The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modes — in Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance — very especially in Music — and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the composition position of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected — is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles — the creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact. We are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in the union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesingers had advantages which we do not possess — and Thomas Moore, singing his own songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems.”

    Poetry Defined

    “To recapitulate, then: — I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.”

    Truth and Goodness as Components of a Poem

    “It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve, incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: — but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beautywhich is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.”

    On the Poetry of Thomas Moore (Catholic poet, but different person than Saint Thomas More)

    “Among the “Melodies” of Thomas Moore, is one whose distinguished character as a poem proper, seems to have been singularly left out of view. I allude to his lines beginning — “Come, rest in this bosom.” The intense energy of their expression is not surpassed by anything in Byron. There are two of the lines in which a sentiment is conveyed that embodies the all in all of the divine passion of Love — a sentiment which, perhaps, has found its echo in more, and in more passionate, human hearts than any other single sentiment ever embodied in words:”

    Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer,

    Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here;

    Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o’ercast,

    And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.

    Oh! what was love made for, if ‘tis not the same

    Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?

    I know not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,

    I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.

    Thou hast call’d me thy Angel in moments of bliss,

    And thy Angel I’ll be, ‘mid the horrors of this, —

    Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,

    And shield thee, and save thee, — or perish there too!

    “It has been the fashion, of late days, to deny Moore Imagination, while granting him Fancy — a distinction originating with Coleridge — than whom no man more fully comprehended the great powers of Moore. The fact is, that the fancy of this poet so far predominates over all his other faculties, and over the fancy of all other men, as to have induced, very naturally, the idea that he is fanciful only. But never was there a greater mistake. Never was a grosser wrong done the fame of a true poet. In the compass of the English language I can call to mind no poem more profoundly — more wierdly [[weirdly]] imaginative, in the best sense, than the lines commencing — “I would I were by that dim lake” — which are the composition of Thomas Moore. I regret that I am unable to remember them.”

    Reiterating the Poetic Principle

    Definition of the Poetic Principle

    “Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, I have endeavored to convey to you my conception of the Poetic Principle. It has been my purpose to suggest that, while this Principle itself is, strictly and simply, the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of the Principle is always found in an elevating excitement of the Soul — quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the Heart — or of that Truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For, in regard to Passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade, rather than to elevate the Soul. Love, on the contrary — Love — the true, the divine Eros — the Uranian, as distinguished from the Dionæan Venus — is unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes. And in regard to Truth — if, to be sure, through the attainment of a truth, we are led to perceive a harmony where none was apparent before, we experience, at once, the true poetical effect — but this effect is referable to the harmony alone, and not in the least degree to the truth which merely served to render the harmony manifest.”

    Examples of the Poetic Principle

    “We shall reach, however, more immediately a distinct conception of what the true Poetry is, by mere reference to a few of the simple elements which induce in the Poet himself the true poetical effect He recognizes the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in waving of the grain-fields — in the slanting of tall, Eastern trees — in the blue distance of mountains — in the grouping of clouds — in the twinkling of half-hidden brooks — in the gleaming of silver rivers — in the repose of sequestered lakes — in the star-mirroring depths of lonely wells. He perceives it in the songs of birds — in the harp of Æolus — in the sighing of the night-wind — in the repining voice of the forest — in the surf that complains to the shore — in the fresh breath of the woods — in the scent of the violet — in the voluptuous perfume of the hyacinth — in the suggestive odor that comes to him, at eventide, from far-distant, undiscovered islands, over dim oceans, illimitable and unexplored. He owns it in all noble thoughts — in all unworldly motives — in all holy impulses — in all chivalrous, generous, and self-sacrificing deeds. He feels it in the beauty of woman — in the grace of her step — in the lustre of her eye — in the melody of her voice — in her soft laughter — in her sigh — in the harmony of the rustling of her robes. He deeply feels it in her winning endearments — in her burning enthusiasms — in her gentle charities — in her meek and devotional endurances — but above all — ah, far above all — he kneels to it — he worships it in the faith, in the purity, in the strength, in the altogether divine majesty — of her love.”