Southern Bookman

Robert Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead" and St. Gaudens' Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw

I've discovered an interesting divergence between two works of art: Augustus St. Gaudens' Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw, located on the border of the Boston Common directly across Beacon Street from the Massashusetts State House, and Robert Lowell's poem inspired by the sculpture, "For the Union Dead."

On a recent visit to Boston, I heard a U.S. Park Ranger give a lecture about St. Gaudens' sculpture, which honors Shaw and his black 54th Massaschusetts Regiment. Shaw and many of the black soliders were killed in an attack on Fort Wagner in South Carolina. The park ranger cited the motto on the top right corner of the monument as saying, if I heard him correctly, "they give up everything to serve the republic."  I've recently learned through a commentary on Lowell's poem in the Norton Anthology of Poetry that the motto on the sculpture is actually "He gives up everything to serve the republic," (Omnia relinquit servare rem publicam, the Latin motto of the Society of Cincinnati). Shaw's father chose the motto for the piece, dedicated in 1897.

But Lowell makes a significant change in the motto, using it as the epigraph for his poem. Matching wat the Park Ranger said, Lowell renders the motto as "Relinquunt omnia servare rem publicam," or "they give up everything to serve the republic," according to the anthology's editors. So, while the original motto limits the honorific to Shaw, Lowell extends it to all of the members of the regiment. Lowell's change to make the motto apply to all of the soldiers has apparently been adapted by the Park Service.

I don't know enough about Latin to explain the change in the syntax of the sentence. Perhaps it's necessary to give it the new meaning. It's also interesting that the pronoun change is apparently accomplished by changing the verb tense. Also significant is that in both cases, the verb is in the present tense, not gave, but he gives and they give. The message is that the sacrifice is eternal, and perpetually challenges the living toto try to follow the heroic example of Shaw and the 54th.

Following the great man school of history, the sculpture centrally honors Shaw's heroism, although the black soldiers are depicted on the statue. It's called the "Robert Gould Shaw Memorial," and he alone is shown mounted on a horse, dynamically at the center of the bronze relief, with his soldiers on either side, marching under his leadership. In what the park ranger interpreted as a sign of high honor for the soldiers, they are depicted realistically, with distinctive Negro features, not  abstractly stylized or stereotyped. Still, in what might be considered an example of 19th century paternalism, Shaw dominates and is essentially the one person honored.

In his poem contrasting Boston's historic era of heroism with the modern era of cars and parking garages, Lowell wonderfully describes the sculpture.  "Two months after marching through Boston,/half the regiment was dead;/at the dedication,/William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe."

Lowell also contrasts the age of personal military valor with the modern fear of nuclear annhiliation, the total warfare that would make such heroism as Shaw's impossble, except of course for the type of suicidal plane ride depicted in "Dr. Strangelove." Since all would be destroyed, no one would be there to dedicate memorials, or remember.

In the poem, Lowell cites the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and states "There are no statues for the last war here." Broadening the range of the motto also allows Lowell to celebrate the young heroes of the 1960s civil rights movement, which he says as a last vestige of the old heroism.

St. Gaudens's statue and Lowell's poem, a wonderful example of ekphrasis (poetry inspired by works of art), memorialize their historic eras, and transcend the past, allowing us to reflect upon our own time. The park service is to be commended by echoing Lowell and honoring the entire regiment, although the bronze memorial will always remain "He gives up everything to serve the republic."

A Visit to Beacon HIll

On a warm Saturday afternoon, remembering Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead," I returned to St. Gaudens' memorial sculpture to the Mass. 54th Regiment. The memorial on the ridge overlooking the Boston Commons and across Beacon Street from the Massachusetts Statehouse is one of the great works of America's heroic age. Recalling Lowell's poem, I also saluted its bookend, Allen Tate's "For the Confederate Dead."

At the statue, I discovered a group of Civil War enactors dressed like the brave soldiers of the 54th. It turned out that the day, July 17, was the anniversary of the 54th's assault on Fort Wagner, S.C. Unfortunately, I'd missed a special ceremony in honor of the event. But I was moved at seeing the black men dressed in blue Union uniforms, and a lady dressed in 19th century gingham, and a man in a farmer's straw hat. 

Then a young park ranger appeared and announced a tour of Beacon HIll, which would delve into the abolitionist movement and the black civil rights movement in 19th century Boston. The young ranger gave an in-depth analysis of St. Gaudens' sculpture, pointing out the "angel of death" floating above Robert Gould Shaw on horseback. He also mentioned the realistic portrayal of the black men's faces, along with the pine cone in the corner, the symbol of Massachusetts. A pine cone also shines from atop the statehouse's gold dome.

The tour of Beacon Hill was informative and inspiring. How brave were the black men who sheltered fugitive slaves and fought off slave hunters from the old South. We saw several historic houses where these black heroes lived, and finished the tour at an architecturally interesting building, the old African-American meeting house. The ranger took us on a walk through alleys that the slaves used for escape; and I could feel the excitement and terror they must have felt.

After the tour, I limped back to the Boston Commons and sat on a shady bench. Some young students were there, pulling off a prank of some kind. A young man sat on the bench, reading a newspaper in which he had punched a hole, to eye young lovelies going past, I assume. A young woman wore a moustache. They passed out joke brochures. I wasn't sure of the purpose, but they seemed trying to make some kind of absurdist statement.

Recovered, I wandered away from the young woman with her long dress, tennis shoes and moustache. I thought again about the park ranger, translating the Latin inscription on the St. Gaudens statue, "they gave their all in the service of the republic."

"Fences" A Magical Day of Theater

I was supremely lucky to acquire a ticket for the revival of August Wilson's "Fences" at the venerable Cort Theater in New York City. The classic Broadway play made me remember why I fell in love with the theater all of those years ago.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis are superb in the starring roles, and the rest of the cast is splendid. Washington radiates power in the dynamic role of Troy Maxson, first made famous by James Earl Jones. As John Lahr said in The New Yorker, the audience at first loves him as a star, but in the end admires him as an actor. Viola Davis as the sensual, giving, heartbroken Rose gives one of the all-time great Broadway performances. Also marvelous are Stephen McKinley Henderson, Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson, and Chris Chalk. The young Eden-Duncan Smith captivated my heart as the little girl Raynell.

As the performance kept delivering higher and higher levels of dramatic power, I found my admiration soaring for director Kenny Leon, one of Atlanta's artistic treasures. Leon understands the play's subtleties, and the actors are perfectly attuned. The set by Santo Loquasto was breathtaking, and Branford Marsalis' bluesy music captured the mood of the 1950s black culture in Pittsburgh.

Towering above all was August Wilson's script. Regrettably, I'd never before read or seen any of his work, although I was aware of his stature. The play, full of wonderful lines, unexpected turns, and finely modulated plot elements, was that of a master artist. I'm looking forward to immersing myself deeply in  his work.

David Middleton's "Beyond the Chandeleurs" Illuminates Oil Spill's Threat

The heartbreaking oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the serious threat it poses to marine life on Louisiana and Mississippi's barrier islands recalled David Middleton's fine poem "Beyond the Chandeleurs," the title work in a virtuouso collection published by LSU Press in 1990.

The collection richly displays Middleton's mastery of the classical poetic techniques of rhyme and meter. Middleton writes on a range of subjects, from the profound to  the quotidian, showing a traditional belief in poetry's suitability for a variety of subjects of human communication.

The collection looks at a number of Louisiana places, suffused with a stong love and understanding of the state's northern and southern parts. Northern and Southern Louisiana are seen as cultural opposites, but Middleton finds their shared values while respecting their uniqueness.

The poem "Beyond the Chandeleurs" is colored by a complex understanding of the islands,a gulf estuary and  the nesting place for marine birds, now threated by a floating smear of oil. Middleton looks back at the French explorers' arrival at the islands, and their ecological, cultural and historical treasures. The poem's subtitle shows the islands' heritage and their irreplaceable value: "islands reached and named by Iberville, 2 February 1699."

The poem goes on to trace the ancient origin of the islands, their colonial history, and their sacredness  for us today. To show the poem's excellence, here is the second stanza:

"And now, three hundred years from Iberville
This frigid winter dawn the very day
Whose name he gave those shores toward which we sail,
We cross the sound to find the Chandeleurs
So luminous in moonlight, crescent dunes,
Bleak beaches without islands, miles from land,
Forever washed by waves that crash across
Their narrow breadth, channeling in the sand.
And as we pass by slowly, south-southwest,
We see in mingled gleams of moon and sun
Bubbling over the salt in windblown foam
The play of shape and chaos, our true home."

Scott L. Mingus Sr. Contemplates Gettysburg's Legacy

   

Scott Mingus

  

During a visit to Gettysburg several years ago, I was deeply moved by a plaque atop Cemetery Hill marking the farthest spot reached by the famed Louisiana Tigers in their twilight attack against Union defenses on July 2, 1863. As a native Louisianian, I felt the ghostly presence of Brig. Gen. Harry T. Hays’ men reaching across the years.

     Because of my interest in the Tigers, I knew that I had to read Scott L. Mingus Sr.’s “The Louisiana Tigers in the Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863” when I saw that it had been published by LSU Press. I told my wife that “The Louisiana Tigers” was on my holidays-book wish list, and happily I found it beneath the tree on Christmas morning.

    The book fulfilled my expectations, not only providing impressive details about the broad sweep of the Tigers’ Gettysburg campaign but giving fascinating personal vignettes of many of the brigade’s soldiers. Unlike other books that concentrate on the Tigers’ July 2 actions in the Battle of Gettysburg itself, Mingus’ work looks at their day-by-day activities from the moment they left Virginia on Gen. Robert E. Lee’s foray into Northern territory to when they returned to Confederate soil, battered but still full of fighting spirit.

    I discovered many new details about Gettysburg, especially concerning events before and after the epic struggle, which receives more attention than any other battle in the war. Mingus combines an impressive attention to detailed research and vivid storytelling ability. The stories of individual acts of heroism and tragedy, and the Tigers’ sometimes abrasive interactions with the civilian population, display a narrative immediacy reminiscent of “The Illiad” and other imaginative works about war.

   Mingus, the author of several other books on Gettysburg, lives in York, Pa., where the Tigers camped en route to their fateful encounter on Cemetery Hill. After finishing the book, I happened to make his acquaintance via the amazing Internet and request that he participate in a Southern Bookman interview. I am glad that he agreed to the following discussion on Gettysburg and Civil War history.

 

1.   Your Northern ancestors fought against the Louisiana Tigers at Gettysburg. Why have you chosen to write books about Confederate outfits such as the Tigers and Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon’s Georgia Infantry (the subject of another book) rather than about Northern outfits such as your ancestors’ Gibraltar Brigade?

 

     My ancestors indeed fought in the Union Army, including several relatives who were in the 7th West Virginia that attacked the Louisiana Tigers on July 2, 1863, on Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg. I moved from my native Ohio in 2001 to York County, Pa., where I quickly became immersed in the local Civil War history, much of which had not been retold to a national audience. Jubal Early's division occupied York, the largest Northern town to fall to the Confederates in the entire war, and John B. Gordon's Georgia brigade played a critical role in that expedition, marching on to the Susquehanna River before being denied access by state militia to the river crossing. The La. Tigers camped in York, and there are so many stories about them locally that they were a natural extension of my book on Gordon (coupled with the fact that my ancestors fought against them). Perhaps someday I will finish Early's division by writing books on Avery's and Smith's brigades in the Gettysburg Campaign.

2.   You live in York, Pa., 30 miles from Gettysburg and visited by the Tigers during the Gettysburg Campaign. How was it growing up and living in a place, especially in a Union state, so steeped in Civil War history?

I grew up in southeastern Ohio, an area also rich in Civil War history. Phil Sheridan was born less than 10 miles from my hometown, and I frequently passed by the impressive equestrian statue of “Little Phil” in Somerset, Ohio. William T. Sherman was born and raised another 20 miles west on U.S. Route 22, and Morgan's Raiders passed through my home area south of Zanesville, Ohio, in  their July 1863 raid. Custer, Grant, and so many other prominent Union generals came from Ohio, so the state is steeped in Civil War history. Moving to York in 2001 gave me the opportunity to learn more about Pennsylvania's history, and I found out that it's far more than just Gettysburg.   Chambersburg, Carlisle, Hanover, York ‑ all played key roles in the campaign. Recently I have been collecting the oral traditions and verbal memories from the senior citizens of the county, those who remember what their grandparents told them about the Rebel occupation. These will form a new book.

3.  Out of all the Civil War battles, why is Gettysburg the most fascinating and interesting for succeeding generations?

The fact that it was the closest major battlefield to the Northern population centers made it readily accessible, and the early monumentation cemented it as a tourist attraction. History books of the late 19th century and early 20th century often made Gettysburg a focal point of the Civil War sections, so succeeding generations from their youth were made aware of the place's historical importance. Throw in the monuments, the sweeping vistas, the awesomeness of Devil's Den, Little Round Top and Culp's Hill, and there's a special aura that the battlefield has that is hard to duplicate. The rise of tourism and good transportation routes perpetuated the popularity of Gettysburg, and then of course in the 1990s came the movie “Gettysburg,” which exposed an entire new generation to the battle and battlefield. 

4. I have read a number of big, sweeping histories of Gettysburg , but I learned a lot that was new from your examination of one brigade’s experience. Why have you been drawn to a smaller focus? Do you ever see yourself writing a broad, comprehensive examination of Gettysburg?

There are so many books on the battle itself (by some estimates more than a thousand) that I doubt if I will ever write a broader book on the entire battle. In the business world, there is a sage old saying that you should "find a need, and fill it." What was missing from the Gettysburg lineup was a comprehensive look at how the Rebels got there. My two books on Early's division fill some of that gap, as well as recent books on Rodes' division and Jenkins' brigade (upcoming). Other popular books recently have also focused on particular brigades or actions (for example, Lance J. Herdegen's excellent book on the Iron Brigade and Ironclad Publishing's book on Hancock saving the Union center). These "microhistories" fill a niche and enrich the general understanding of the Battle of Gettysburg in a way that the sweeping general commentaries cannot. 

5. Your book raised many of the kind of intriguing questions that historians love to argue about. A couple of related ones stand out. First, why weren’t the Tigers and the unused brigades of Rodes and Gordon used in the third day of the battle, in tandem with Pickett’s Charge? You point out that the Tigers suffered serious casualties on their attack on Cemetery Ridge, but still seemed ready for more action. And, Rodes and Gordon’s units didn’t back them up and were not used the second day and could have been ready for action. And, why did Lee feel it necessary to retreat, and not try yet another attack?

While the Louisiana Tigers emotionally were ready for another go at the Yanks, they were down nearly a third of their number and frankly were played out. Rodes and Gordon were in much better shape, but should have been better used on the night of July 2. Lee gambled to take the Union center on July 3, but he kept much of the II Corps out of the action to follow up on any successful breakthrough, and to counter any unexpected Yankee movements. At times I have wargamed an all-out CSA assault, and the results get much bloodier, but do not often translate into driving Meade back into Maryland. By July 4, I think Lee realized that he did not have enough fresh firepower to risk yet another assault without destroying his army's ability to prolong the war. Retreat was his best option, because keep in mind the War Department in Richmond was concerned about protecting the capital in the event of a Union counterstrike if Lee's army was rendered impotent. Meade does not often get enough credit. I think Lee was hoping on July 2, 3, and 4 that like some previous commanders, Meade would withdraw to preserve his forces. Instead, he stayed put, and it was Lee that had to marshal and conserve his army during a retreat. 

6. Interest in the Civil War blossomed in our generation. Do you believe young people today have the same interest in the war, especially since the teaching of American history is reportedly declining in our high schools?

I think that the interest may have declined somewhat in recent years, because less history is taught in some school districts and there are more diverse interests. That being said, WWII video games sell extremely well (Call of Duty, etc.) to the under-30 crowd, visitation to Gettysburg remains strong despite the recession, and enrollment in history classes at many colleges remains strong. My oldest son is a college history professor and has close ties to the education community in south-central Pennsylvania. There are a lot of activities aimed at school kids (field trips, hands-on learning experiences, etc.). One of the local high schools has a weekend-long Civil War encampment every spring where the students wear blue or gray T-shirts, listen to Civil War lectures and music, camp outside with uniformed re-enactors, and then participate in strategy sessions that culminate in the kids doing a largescale sham battle on Sunday to wrap up the weekend. We need much more of this kind of learning experiences, however, as the average school has cut back the history of the United States prior to the 20th century.

7. What’s your next project?  

I have another book of human interest stories coming out this year from Ten Roads Publishing (“Gettysburg Glimpses II: More True Stories from the Battlefield”). I am also co-writing a historical novel on the Gettysburg Campaign that should be quite popular, we believe, and am editing a diary of an

Ohio soldier for future publication. Another of my wargaming scenario books comes out this autumn, so gaming, book writing, and my work as an executive in the global papermaking industry keep me hopping.

      

 

Emily Grosholz on Poetry, Mathematics, Philosophy ... and Garrison Keillor and Honey Crisp Apples

I met Emily Grosholz, professor of philosopy at Penn State University and a distinguished poet and essayist, at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where I was in her poetry workshop in 1991 and 1992.  In the first year, the inaugural of the writers’ conference, she read my fledgling poems, and I was grateful for her kindness and instructive suggestions. Along with her deep learning in philosophy, poetry and matematics, I was delighted to discover that she is also well-versed in baseball, and if I remember correctly, tennis. We also shared anecdotes, stories and information about our then young families. I remember as well her calm, quiet presence in the workshops, which she conducted along with two roaring lions of American poetry, Howard Nemerov the first year, and John Hollander the second.

Over the years, I’ve followed Emily’s work in The Hudson Review, where she is an advisory editor. Her work in the the journal displays an astonishing versatility, including poetry, essays, criticism and travel pieces. The autumn 2009 issue includes Emily’s probing essay on the poet Anne Stevenson. The issue also includes a poignant poem by Stevenson about teaching her sons to swim at Walden Pond. I particularly enjoyed the poem because I  in the summer of 2008 visited the site of Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond, amused and impressed to discover that the pond is a public swimming beach, as Stevenson evokes.

With my warm memories of Emily,  I asked her to participate in a Southern Bookman interview, and she graciously agreed. I have decided to run her response in two sections that to me constitute two separate essays that I am pleased to share with The Southern Bookman's growing group of readers. In the first, which apply to my first four questions, she intersperses personal experiences and witty observations with wide-ranging thoughts on poetry and philosophy. In the second section, she presents an in-depth consideration of the relationship between poetry and mathematics 

One other thought: In the spirit of Emily's allusions to different texts, her citation of Aristotle’s comment that “a swallow does not a summer make”  reminded me of Robert Lowell’s reference to this in his poem “Fall 1961,” which can be found in his “For the Union Dead.” Looking back at Lowell’s poem, I found it still relevant to this troubling “Fall 2009.”

 Part 1: On Philosophy and Poetry, and Walks Through Fields

1. As a philosopher and poet, what do you feel is the relationship between philosophy and poetry?

2. To follow up on the first question, you are also an accomplished editor, essayist and critic. Such varied interests are said to be rare in our age of specialization. What is the source and inspiration for your versatility?

3. Your comments in your essay on the poet Anne Stevenson in the current Hudson Review well-expressed my reactions to many of your poems. A quote stands out: “A lyric poem’s or a sonata’s action on the world and in the world has various effects; the circling back of time is one of them. Speak, memory, or sing.” In re-reading “Shores and Headlands” and reading some of your poems I found online, I was struck at how your poems often evoke a first-person narrator or self recalling events in the past in a present moment of seclusion; as you said in regard to Stevenson, your poems make the past present. How do you think your comments on Stevenson apply to your own poems?

4. After Sept. 11, 2001, many in the United States sought solace in poetry. Do you believe that philosophy can provide similar understanding and insight into such overwhelming events? One of my favorite poems of yours is “Nietzsche in the Box of Straws,” in which a cook understands the narrator’s explanation of Nietzsche, affirming the relevance of philosophy to average people.

 

Barnes & Noble has a new series of modestly priced hardcover books they call, “Rediscovers,” which “brings back into print books of special merit in history, literature, philosophy, religion, the arts and science.” One of them, no doubt included because of Darwin’s bicentenary, is “Darwin’s Century” by Loren Eiseley, whose meditations on natural history, “The Immense Journey,” forever changed my understanding of reality when I was still in high school. Only two books in the series are written by women, Suzanne Langer’s "Philosophical Sketches," and Frances Yates’ "Theatre of the World,"  though one, writings by Roland Barthes, is edited by Susan Sontag.  Finding them in the series led me to look for Langer in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, where she is missing, though there is a nice essay on Ernst Cassirer, whose “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms”  inspired her best work.

The reason I mention this series is because it includes George Santayana's “Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, Goethe," which also inspired me in high school, though I have since lost my dog-eared paperback copy, and so was glad to pick up a new one at Barnes & Noble, where I went to buy Garrison Keillor’s latest book for my eldest son Benjamin, who is studying classics and mathematics at the University of Chicago. He wasn't home for Thanksgiving, so I sent him a book instead of a turkey, as well as two packages of  hawthorn-berry tea. The only place in town  where I can get that kind of tea is The Granary, a health food store run by Lena Scholton, a friend of mine who is Finnish and grew up in Helsinki. I just submitted a poem to George Core for The Sewanee Review about saying goodbye to my eldest son as he flew off to Chicago in September, after taking a long walk with him in the fields that happen to stretch between my house and Harner Farm (whose orchard produces the best apples in the world — honey crisp is the variety) and The Granary.

I gave Lena a copy of my “Letter from Helsinki” when it was published in The Hudson Review a couple of years ago, because I wrote it in part on the basis of good practical, architectural, and gastronomical advice Lena and Hudson Review Editor Paula Deitz gave me. I was also inspired by four philosophers whom I know and talked to there: Jakko Hintikka (also a logician), Matti Sintonen (also the father of a rock star and a businesswoman), Osmo Pekonen (also a mathematician) and Jyrki Siukonen (also an artist and former rock musician).

Finally, apropos this morning’s errands, a review of a new biography of Cassirer that Paula Deitz and Managing Editor Ron Koury persuaded me to write is coming out shortly in The Hudson Review, and so is a poem about walking in the fields at night with my other children, directly inspired by Loren Eiseley: it evokes the last ice age, and ends with a large tree completely covered in fireflies. Note that my prose style here echoes Garrison Keillor. It is after all Saturday (“Prairie Home Companion” day) and I've recently returned from the Twin Cities, where I visited my best friend from high school, Ruth Geyer Shaw, who is a botanist and an evolutionary geneticist, and whose novel statistical method expounded in her three latest co-authored papers (also inspired by her statistician brother Charlie and informed by her mathematician husband Frank) constitute the case study of a philosophy of science paper I'm giving in Louvain, Belgium. I wrote a poem about her and her plantlets (then Salvia lyrata, now Echinacea angustifolia, with Arabidopsis thaliana in between) that appeared in my second book "Shores and Headlands.” I spent all morning, before I went out to do errands, reading Charlie's newly minted essay “A Philosophical Look at Aster Models” written for people who only have some college level statistics. So you could say that I find solace in poetry and philosophy in everyday life.

However, following Keillor, I have wandered away from George Santayana. Over the years at Penn State, I have been able to teach the philosophical poems of Lucretius, Dante and Goethe, as well as Boethius, and quite a bit of Plato and Aristotle. Here is how I think the relation between poetry and philosophy shapes up in the work of those two Greek philosophers. (I won't give my speech about Lucretius, Dante and Goethe, however, because you can read about them in Santayana's book, though I do disagree with him here and there.) As everyone knows, Plato banished the poets from the ideal city described in “The Republic,” where the kings are philosophers, sort of like the United States ever since last winter, except that we elected ours and he’s from the law school at the University of Chicago, not the philosophy department. However, right in the middle of “The Republic,” Plato presents the famous simile of the Divided Line, which provides a schema for the structure of each dialogue, including the one it shows up in. Good philosophizing takes you (a small group of interested parties) up the Divided Line, from the realm of gossip and rumor, populated by shadows, echoes, and myths, to the realm of  common sense, populated by ordinary physical objects: stones, trees, cows, people, chairs, houses. Philosophy being what it is, we don’t stop there, but continue up from the realm of  Becoming into the Realm of Being, moving via the realm of mathematics (inhabited by figures and numbers) to the realm of philosophy (inhabited in one sense by the Ideas or Forms, though in

another sense they are off the Line). Because a Platonic dialogue does not end in a conclusion, you have to somehow connect the top of the line with the bottom and start all over, and what  connects the top and the bottom is… myths! The Platonic myths are the most gorgeously poetic parts of the dialogues, and the most important. So go figure. Also, Platonic dialogues are sprinkled with quotes from Homer.

Most of this I learned from my fellow University of Chicago philosopher, Paul Kahn, now director of the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. He was inspired in turn by his teacher Herman Sinaiko. (If you go to the University of Chicago magazine online (November-December 2009) you will see Herman wearing a “Herman Sinaiko is a Rock Star” T-shirt, which is the title of a Facebook group set up in 2005 by former students; wearing a T-shirt is completely atypical of him because he always wears turtlenecks and doesn't talk about himself when he's teaching.) Paul's wife, Cathy Iino, was my best friend in graduate school, when we were in the same poetry writing group, and is now the mayor (technically, the first selectman) of Killingworth, Connecticut! I hope that she is elected to a second term, and then runs for the Senate, ousting Joe Lieberman, and then for president, so she can be our first Asian-American and woman president. I also learned about the Divided Line from Jamie Redfield, who was my Greek professor at the University of Chicago, and is writing a book on Plato and Socrates, where he argues that Plato is not a philosopher in the ordinary sense because he never comes to conclusions, and perhaps not a philosopher at all! Perhaps he is a poet. There are poems for Cathy (homesick, from Germany) and Jamie (scholarly, from a library) in my first book of poems "The River Painter. "

Aristotle is another matter. I read the “Nichomachean Ethics” together with the "Rhetoric” and the “Politics" on the one hand, and the "Poetics" on the other. Another of my former teachers, Eugene Garver, has written a number of distinguished books on Aristotle, and in a recent e-mail wondered how I see connection between the "Nichomachean Ethics" and "the Poetics." The connection I see is only the obvious: poetry is (according to Aristotle) the imitation of human action, and he gives us the schema for narrative: beginning, middle, end, as he gives us the schema for argument: premise, premise, conclusion. And ethics is the study of how human action can be virtuous, which requires us to focus on character, the second most important term in “The Poetics,” after plot. (I wrote an essay about this in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, whose latest issue is devoted to poetry and philosophy, and begins with a poem by John Ashbery!)

Aristotle shows that when tragedy arises, the deed is either done or not done, and, done in ignorance or done knowingly; the main issue in “The Ethics” is the question of the relation between knowing and doing. Socrates claims that if I could only know what is right, I would do it; vice is ignorance. Aristotle shows at length that character is built up over a long period of time by repeated actions, taken in the midst of the repetitive patterns of social life, and changes just as slowly, so that though I may know the good, I may be unwilling to do it if my character is ill-formed. He also observes that happiness depends not only on virtue but also on good luck; tragic heroes are doomed not only by flawed character but also by misfortune. So for Aristotle, there’s not much tension between philosophy and poetry, though oddly he himself never writes poetically (and the textual basis for his philosophy is lecture notes), except occasionally: “One swallow doth not a summer make.” That reminds me of a philosophical poem I just wrote, and a good philosophical joke that I sometimes tell my undergraduates (usually I am the only one who laughs at it) because it is not off color; however, there is not enough room in the margin to write it here.

Part 2: On Poetry and Mathematics, Empson and Housman

 

5. According to your Penn State Web site, one of your projects is “mathematics and poetry” in which you say poetry stands in the same relation to the humanities as  mathematics stands to the sciences.” Could you go into this further?

When I applied to the University of Chicago 40 years ago, I said that my topic was poetry and mathematics, and almost as soon as I arrived, my adviser David Smigelskis put into my hands Scott Buchanan's wonderful "Poetry and Mathematics." It gave me permission to structure my intellectual life in the way I wanted, and has guided me ever since; the book I plan to write one of these years, "Mathematics and Poetry," will be an answer to his, one that has been in preparation for many decades.

 

My apprenticeship has been three monographs and an edited collection of essays on the history and philosophy of mathematics, and four books of poetry and more than 50 items of literary criticism —essays and essay-reviews. A couple of years ago, I wrote what will become one of the proposed book’s initial chapters, “The Uses of Periodicity in English Verse,” published in The Hudson Review, which like the “Letter from Helsinki,” can be found on FindArticles. One chapter may address texts written by Leibniz and Goethe (apropos the Italienische Reise that changed the life and work of each); another may be about the way in which abstract form brings the finite and the infinite into relation in the work of Rilke and Hilbert; another might be about temporality, and the way it both resists and lends itself to representation by mathematical form and by narrative.

In any case, the book “Mathematics and Poetry” must have two dimensions. One is epistemological. Human understanding hovers between the timeless realm of concepts, propositions, and arguments that stand in inferential relations tracked by logic and rhetoric, and the historical realm in which discoveries are made and projects framed on the basis of earlier results and in light of as-yet-unsolved problems. A name or concept pulls something that exists out of the flux of time, and by imposing the universal on the particular gives it a kind of local immortality. (This happens quite a bit in Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”)

 

Arguments organize thoughts so that they can be rehearsed and examined; narratives organize human actions so that they can be revisited and their meaning reconsidered. A scientific experiment on the one hand and a theatrical drama on the other deliberately represent situations both as having happened once — physically or dramatically real — and as meant to be repeated — universally true. In mathematics and poetry, the tension on this duality is especially strong. The study of mathematical knowledge and poetic knowledge is therefore central to philosophical epistemology; the dialogues of Plato testify to this. My work in the philosophy of mathematics take its inspiration from the 20^th century European tradition that begins with Poincaré, Hilbert, and early Husserl, and tries to explain mathematical rationality as an interplay between logical necessity and historical contingency. My literary work locates human action and utterance at the crossroads between the constraints of moral law and the fatal accomplishments of history, and the free play of artistic form and anarchic will, always imagining”what if...?”

The other dimension is aesthetic. Art (including poetic art) and mathematics characteristically generate beautiful forms that express human action on the one hand, and on the other hand the stable systems and dynamic processes of nature. In my book “Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences” (directly influenced by William Empson’s “Seven Types of Ambiguity”), I examine how demonstrations proceed when they occur, as they so often do, at the intersection of heterogeneous domains. When one domain is brought in to augment the resources of another, each with its own tradition of representation, the result is the combination, superposition and metamorphosis of a variety of modes of representation that often produce new mathematical entities. I call into question standard accounts of theory reduction (because I argue that reductive strategies do not reduce the number of idioms that express a problem situation, but rather multiply them, and that is why they work well), and moreover present striking examples of constructive ambiguity. What Empson shows so brilliantly, how poets exploit the semantic field of dictionary definitions or a given spectrum of cultural associations, also holds true for the mathematician.

So, for example, the ellipse in Proposition XI of Newton’s “Principia” must be read as a trajectory, as a figure derived from Euclid and Apollonius, as a dynamic nexus determined by a central force and (after the work of Leibniz inspired by Newton) as the solution to a differential equation; its internal articulation must also be read as both finite and infinitesimal. The proof of the proposition hinges on Newton’s exploitation of the controlled ambiguity of the ellipse.

In poetry, the line embedded in stanzas and organized by rules of meter and rhyme (or studied violations of them) creates a formal counterpoint of superimposed periodicities that deepens and complicates what it means. Thus in a poem a thought is suspended at the end of a line even if it is also continued, by enjambment and grammar, on to the next line, or by the logical structure of an argument to the next stanza. This formal construction of ambiguity, which exploits aural patterns of repeated sound and beat, grammatical structure, poetic lineation, metrical structure and logical structure, shows that a poem is not just a string of words but a two-dimensional, planar array which composes a rich plurality of modes of representation.

In the essay on Housman mentioned above,  “The Uses of Periodicity in English Verse,”  I show that this formal ambiguity mirrors the ambiguity of human intention: whenever we act, we are aware of what we might have chosen but in fact did not choose, and those unrealized possibilities remain with us as part of the meaning of  what we did. We act at the crossroads of necessity and freedom, and of the visible and the invisible. And poor Housman: his whole life was lived among the unrealized possibles that Spinoza denied and Leibniz multiplied, making them infinitely infinite in all those possible worlds that are not the best, like ours. This reminds me of a poem I wrote when I was in Jerusalem many years ago, visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and suddenly realized that Voltaire misunderstood Leibniz. Leibniz’s claim that this is the best of all possible worlds is not naïve optimism, but is rather a tragic insight: God had the choice to create this world, with all its suffering, or not to create anything at all. So he made us, because existence is better than nothingness, and then he had to live with and through us, our errors, our troubles, our tragedies, and our periodic beauties.