Apparently a school of critics knocked Robert Frost because Frost did not consistently adhere to any specific, named ideology. I skipped literary criticism in college, but even I can tell that that is kind of his point. You can’t identify with any particular dogma without more or less declaring that every other school of thought is wrong. The argument must automatically be a priori since you cannot disprove every other system of thought unless you know everything about everything.
The only way to keep intellectual integrity, then, is to treat every systematic hypothesis with the same attitude of generous skepticism. Thus it’s hard to blame Frost for giving inconsistent answers when different people asked him which preconceptions he carries around. Maybe you find Bergsonian vitalism terribly compelling. You could read or experience something tomorrow that helps to see that it is kind of stupid. It’s hardly lying to give another interviewer a different answer some years later. It’s the only way to be intellectually honest! Below the flip I’ve reprinted one of his, The White Tailed Hornet, that I think illustrates my point.
Might as well link this to something relevant. Good on E.D. Kain for not bothering to defend whether he fits into one arbitrary category or another. What the hell does ‘conservative’ mean any more? Newt Gingrich just proposed that Congress federalize lower Manhattan so that Feds can get between a private group, its private property rights and its freedom of religion. Gingrich is conservative. Right? If thats not what Barry Goldwater would have done then I don’t know what is.
Not so thrilled that someone would still flirt with with voting ( R) when the party basically promised to do nothing but harm if they win enough seats, but, hell, John didn’t flip in a day either. Have patience and try logic.
***Update***
Re-posted the missing last third of Frost’s poem.
THE WHITE-TAILED HORNET
The white-tailed hornet lives in a balloon
That floats against the ceiling of the woodshed.
The exit he comes out at like a bullet
Is like the pupil of a pointed gun.
And having power to change his aim in flight,
He comes out more unerring than a bullet.
Verse could be written on the certainty
With which he penetrates my best defense
Of whirling hands and arms about the head
To stab me in the sneeze-nerve of a nostril.
Such is the instinct of it I allow.
Yet how about the insect certainty
That in the neighborhood of home and children
!s such an execrable judge of motives
As not to recognize in me the exception
I like to think I am in everything
One who would never hang above a bookcase
His Japanese crepe-paper globe for trophy?
He stung me first and stung me afterward.
He rolled me off the field head over heels,
And would not listen to my explanations.
That’s when I went as visitor to his house.
As visitor at my house he is better.
Hawking for flies about the kitchen door,
In at one door perhaps and out another,
Trust him then not to put you in the wrong.
He won’t misunderstand your freest movements.
Let him light on your skin unless you mind
So many prickly grappling feet at once.
He’s after the domesticated fly
To feed his thumping grubs as big as he is.
Here he is at his best, but even here-
I watched him where he swooped, he pounced, he
struck;
But what he found he had was just a nailhead.
He struck a second time. Another nailhead.
‘Those are just nailheads. Those are fastened down/
Then disconcerted and not unannoyed,
He stooped and struck a little huckleberry
The way a player curls around a football.
‘Wrong shape, wrong color, and wrong scent/ 1 said.
The huckleberry rolled him on his head.
At last it was a fly. He shot and missed;
And the fly circled round him in derision.
But for the fly he might have made me think
He had been at his poetry, comparing
Nailhead with fly and fly with huckleberry:
How like a fly, how very like a fly.
But the real fly he missed would never do;
The missed fly made me dangerously skeptic.
Won’t this whole instinct matter bear revision?
Won’t almost any theory bear revision?
To err is human, not to, animal.
Or so we pay the compliment to instinct,
Only too liberal of our compliment
That really takes away instead of gives.
Our worship, humor, conscientiousness
Went long since to the dogs under the table.
And served us right for having instituted
Downward comparisons. As long on earth
As our comparisons were stoutly upward
With gods and angels, we were men at least,
But little lower than the gods and angels.
But once comparisons were yielded downward,
Once we began to see our images
Reflected in the mud and even dust,
‘Twas disillusion upon disillusion.
We were lost piecemeal to the animals,
Like people thrown out to delay the wolves.
Nothing but fallibility was left us,
And this day ‘ s work made even that seem doubtful.
General Stuck
One day I gazed my navel
and saw small things of interest
So I asked myself as to why
I wondered of such things
When all around were
falling parts of sky
taken for granted
and never questioned
why
El Cid
Of course, sometimes people who seem to be convinced by many of the same principles and arguments want to get together, maybe to discuss things, sometimes to do things, and even sometimes participate in governance by political parties. It might help sometimes if they used a name for such types as themselves who happened to be persuaded by certain arguments about moral principles or empirical realities, though this needn’t necessarily mean an absolute dumbfoundedness to contrary arguments, though many times it can and has.
General Stuck
Then I look at things like this and realize there is so much I do not know.
SiubhanDuinne
@General Stuck: Breathtaking photo of an exquisite little creature. Your hummer pix always make me feel better about things. Thank you.
Mark S.
Isn’t there some news network where the second biggest shareholder is a Saudi? I remember hearing something about that last week.
At least with Sarah Palin, you don’t have people like Joe Klein talking about how she is just brimming with interesting ideas. NEWT IS A DIPSHIT. The people who think he’s smart are the same people who think David Brooks is an intellectual.
constantlurker
@General Stuck:
love. love. love. your photos. thank you.
WereBear (itouch)
Maybe poets don’t want to be bothered by questions about things they aren’t passionate about.
Violet
@General Stuck:
Your photos are so gorgeous. I’ve got hummingbirds right now at the feeders. They are such aggressive little things. One sits perched on a tree limb by the feeder and attacks any other hummingbird that tries to get in on the two (TWO!) feeders. How one hummingbird is going to be at two feeders at once is beyond me, but he (or she) doesn’t want to share the nectar, that’s for sure.
Chad N Freude
Intellectual honesty? Logic? What are you talking about? What are these things? They sure as hell sound sociaIistic and communistic to me. Why do you and Robert Frost hate America?
Gingrich is a genuine, certified intellectual. He just forgets the honest part. His Saudi money statement is beyond human comprehension. Well, mine anyway. How do you deal with the hypocrisy and lies when people like Chuck Todd and David Gregory either deliberately or ignorantly ignore them?
General Stuck
Thanks all.
Linda Featheringill
Hey! It’s Tim! Where ya been? Missed you.
Greenhouse Guy
Completely off topic comment…
but even I can tell that that is kind of his point
Is that that common usage around the globe in other languages? It just seems odd, but I get it.
Chad N Freude
@<a href="#commentCosta Rica, one of the places I visited as an awe-struck turista was a farm or ranch or finca or whatever where hummingbirds and butterflies are raised. Absolutely amazing.
Chad N Freude
@Violet: A few years ago on a trip to Costa Rica, one of the places I visited as an awe-struck turista was a farm or finca or whatever where they raised hummingbirds and butterflies. Unbelievably gorgeous.
Nylund
This is pretty much why I’m agnostic.
Chad N Freude
@Greenhouse Guy: The construct exists in Spanish, but the two usages of “that” are different words. Yo sé que (that) ese (that) es el punto.
Edited to correct a typo in la frase española.
Ben
Newt continues to demonstrate with ease just how easy it is to play right-wing politics when things suck in the country. Democrats seem to have the inability to play politics when they’re in power. Why the hell are they so mum? Are they just waiting or are they wanting to lose? And, I can’t understand for the life of me why some on the left are going to stay home this November fully aware of what a Republican Congress could bring. Depressing.
Anne Laurie
I would like to add that, in the clips Tim links, Gingrich is looking more and more like Haley Barbour — the Compleat Big White-Haired Southrun Bigot-Bidnismin. This is cheering, because even if America is ready to install a live-action Foghorn Leghorn in the Oval Office, any competition between Gingrich and Barbour can only weaken them both, which is a net positive both nationally and globally.
Chad N Freude
@Anne Laurie:
Oh how I wish I’d thought of that.
Warren Terra
Good to have you drop by, Tim. I miss your photoblogging.
Jewish Steel
@Greenhouse Guy:
Charmingly used in Built to Spill’s “Big Dipper”
@ Tim F :
I have no Lit Crit either but I do have a good dose of Continental philosophy and that tells me that the self is an illusion and the idea that we choose our ideological affiliation doubly so.
Anne Laurie
@Nylund:
__
Dunno. Maybe it’s because I moved from a very high-authoritarianism credo (my parents’ Roman Catholicism) to the ultimate low-A credo (animism), but to me the religious issue has always felt more like picking a branch of science to pursue. An excellent engineer might make a lousy physicist, and neither of them would be happy as a biologist, but that doesn’t mean that physics isn’t as ‘scientific’ as engineering or that biology shouldn’t be allowed space in the science curriculum.
jrg
“Radical Islamists are people who want to impose on the rest of us Sharia, which is a form of medieval law which would fundamentally end America as we’ve known it,” Gingrich said.
Yes. They will come ashore with their amphibious aqua-camels and their Kalashnikovs, and invade the Norfolk Navy Base. They will then use that as a staging area to invade the rest of the United States, and impose Sharia.
I’m shitting myself in fear. We better outlaw every religion but Fundamentalist Christianity, lest we be placed under some other form of medieval law.
Chad N Freude
@jrg: What we really need in this country is an American Inquisition, like the Spanish one only without Catholics.
Chad N Freude
Please don’t ban me for this, but it’s running through my head and I have to get it out.
Stephen Sondheim is pounding on my door screaming something about killing me.
Jewish Steel
@Chad N Freude:
Seriously dude, how could you?
funluvn
Having a moniker of liberal or conservative these daze seems to be all the rage. Not having either of those identifiers hanging over your head seems to be more and more something one can be proud of, while still working hard, even behind the scenes, to better the nation they love.
Perhaps more beer summits and less abject bullshit would be a start? Maybe just being real would allow us all to discard the card carrying simplicity of being either/or progressive or conservative in our base nature that our failing/failed corporate sponsored media seems to need to attach to each person they find the time to talk to or make up in their hurried rush to be the first to say the SAME DAMNED THING they said yesterday, and the day before?
Each of us is an individual; unique in our experiences and even more unique in our take from those previously lived moments in time. That we can be at the same place at the same time and still come away with different perspectives on the situation means only one thing.
We are still worth saving. Now, work hard and save us from those that cannot think for themselves.
Chad N Freude
@jrg: On reflection, it occurs to me that America as we’ve known it has already fundamentally ended. That’s why all those people are screaming they want their country back. And how much irony is there in his use of fundamentally (for no grammatical purpose)?
morzer
@Chad N Freude:
“How do you solve a problem like Sharia…”
If you need another musical reference to cheer you up…
Chad N Freude
@Jewish Steel: It comes naturally. I think it’s probably a birth defect. It has served me well in keeping social relationships at bay.
Chad N Freude
@morzer: Very good. I was so entranced by my own wit that I failed to explore other possibilities.
funluvn
@Chad N Freude: How can you want something back that isn’t real or has never been real?
They want Teh Beav and Wally to pop out of the woodwork and say “Geez”?
Even these doof’s never said “Geez”….
Chad N Freude
@funluvn: It’s real in their minds (I use the word for lack of a more descriptive term). They were taught about it when they were children, and that made it just as real as Peter Pan’s Never Land, Alice’s Wonderland, and Dorothy’s Oz.
Joey Maloney in paradise
OT, is anyone else seeing the layout get fuxx0rzed starting at comment #13?
Chad N Freude
@morzer: Delayed reaction. Please don’t try to Trapp me into a punning war.
Linkmeister
@Chad N Freude: Even more: They call the wind Sharia.
Chad N Freude
@Linkmeister: Bzzt! Sorry. The name of the wind has a long I. But nice try, and thank you for playing.
Linkmeister
@Chad N Freude: You’ve never heard people mispronounce words? I envy you, sir!
Chad N Freude
@Linkmeister: I have. And I always point them out, which has made me greatly beloved in the community.
ETA: Dude, you are dealing with Pedantry Central here.
JWL
“Bergosian vitalism”?
Who are you trying to impress?
After all, you “skipped literary criticism in college..”.
funluvn
@Chad N Freude: Oz, Wonderland and America. One in the same if you just clap louder?
Pretty stupid…..
MNPundit
I think this is bullshit.
You are perfectly capable of keeping intellectual integrity by buying into a philosophy apriori of the others. Just honestly evaluate whatever information comes your way and you’ll be fine. But hey, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors right? Whatev :)
Chad N Freude
@funluvn: They all bear a strong resemblance to one another.
Chad N Freude
@JWL: The actor is doing hair care commercials?
Xenos
@Chad N Freude: I have an even worse musical refrain rattling around my brain on the subject. Think of (if you can bear it) The Knack:
‘My my my Sharia’
Joey Maloney in paradise
Repeating stuckk in moderation,
OT, is anyone else seeing the layout get fuxx0rzed starting at comment #13?
Chad N Freude
@Xenos:It’s OK, but it doesn’t rhyme.
I seem to have freed the crackin’ tonight.
Chad N Freude
@Joey Maloney in paradise: Not here.
funluvn
@Chad N Freude: True in a sense.
While some of them are entertaining, and most are fun in their place, believing in any of them is stupid.
Obviously, stupid rulz!
burnspbesq
@Mark S.:
Bull. I take the threat posed by Newt Gingrich extremely seriously.
burnspbesq
@Chad N Freude:
Why? Did the Estate of Leonard Bernstein appoint him as its enforcer?
burnspbesq
Ooh, my little pretty law,
pretty law,
when you gonna give me some crimes, Sharia
Ooh, you make my motor run,
motor run,
Stone that girl for havin’ a guy, Sharia
gnomedad
Gingrich horrifies me. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have willfully discarded every shred of integrity and not even have stupidity as an excuse. This is what “conservatism” has become: we’ll follow the Constitution except when we don’t want to.
Josh
@Chad, didn’t I write “Say it soft and it’s almost like praying” when a post here showed the anti-Park51 rally a couple weeks ago? Maybe that was another blog.
Nu, Sondheim’s embarrassed by his West Side Story lyrics, and he likes Bruce Kimmel’s parodies of his work (“Too Many Marvins”, “You Could Drive a Person to Pomona”, “Bring on the Clowns”*), so I don’t think he’d have a problem with it.
Tim F, I agree that it’s silly to try to pin an artist’s whole oeuvre down to a specific school of thought unless you have a boatload of evidence for it; but on the more general suggestion that one should “treat every systematic hypothesis with the same attitude of generous skepticism,” can anyone actually do that? We’re all operating on some systematic hypotheses by which we make sense of the world, and we often don’t articulate them, even to ourselves, unless we change them or find them challenged, no?
Maybe that point is peripheral to your argument.
*”Aint’ life a bitch?
Go eat a pear.
I like to greet people in
My underwear
Bring on the Clowns . . . ”
etc.
Chad N Freude
@burnspbesq: No, they only appointed him the lyricist. Rule #1 of blog dialog: Google before you post.
Lynnehs
Yup. Too many people want to support policies in line with their beloved isms without first asking, but would it actually work? Has it worked in the past? Has it worked elsewhere? Under what conditions? We need more people to join the reality-based community.
Chad N Freude
@Josh: I’ve been a total Sondheim fanboi since I saw “Company” during its first week in New York (a cousin was comped tickets through a business relationship), and I never knew this. Thank you for giving me something else to obsess about.
Chad N Freude
@Josh:
This is true. Some of us adopt skeptical analysis as the basic systematic hypothesis: Okay, how do I/can I know this?
ETA: I have to do this professionally, in an engineering, not philosophical, context. “How do I know that what your telling me about the virtues of your product is true?”
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: I typed “your” instead of “you’re”. I’m no better than the rest of the keyboard rabble. Which means I’ll have to be even more intellectually pretentious to mask this.
TrishB
@Xenos: You did not just do that to me. Wait, you did. A few weeks ago, I had a Sondheim earworm, this week it’s been Pat Benatar. There is no safe place.
Bob Loblaw
It’s not 1968. It’s not 1968.
Batocchio
Yeah, but you’re basically defining “dogma” here – the same isn’t true of “philosophy” or “artistic approach.” For many artists, theory informs practice and vice versa. It’s a living, evolving thing. There are artists who have a tight focus, and others may have to deal with external dictates (Soviet Realism). But even then, they don’t necessarily think all other approaches have no value (although you can find egomaniacs who do feel this way).
I agree that knocking Frost for not adhering to one style is idiotic, if anyone did that. Literary criticism is like most other fields – there’s some great stuff, decent stuff, and bullshit. Thanks for posting the poem.
gex
@Nylund: Are you pink flying unicorn agnostic too?
I’m an atheist. I’ve always wondered about people who identify as agnostic. Why in this one case must we specifically admit that there might be the existence of something we can’t prove, but not in every single other case?
Is it simply because a lot of other people insist God exists that you are unwilling to assume no unless proven otherwise?
Xenos
@TrishB: Trish – you have escaped my obnoxious attempts at wit for a couple decades, but no longer. I hope you are doing well. Any luck with the economic situation in Cincinnati?
TrishB
@Xenos: Ah, Xenos, it wasn’t as much the attempt at wit, though that is appreciated as always, it’s the earworm at issue, as I am especially prone to them these days, perhaps due to excess time on my hands. That last phrase sums up my job seeking success, or lack thereof.
I’ve interviewed for a few positions which advertised 75% travel, but in reality were closer to 99%. The jobs were not attractive in the least, and with elderly parents (oh, they would kill me if they saw that in print), not as practical as they seem at first glance. It’s odd. Continuous process improvement seems like a great career for a recession, but it’s the first area to be jettisoned.
The Knack, really? What’s next – The Bay City Rollers?
el donaldo
Richard Poirier on Frost is really the only criticism I’ve found worth reading on the poet. Poirier takes Frost’s skepticism and lack of ideological commitment as a defining characteristic – think of the deep ambivalence in “Mending Wall” or the usually under-read “Road Less Traveled.” Poirier then expands on the generosity of spirit and vision and the suspicion of grand principles, theories, and schemes the position entails and connects it to the tradition of American philosophical pragmatism that runs from Emerson through William James and Dewey that we see in Wallace Stevens whimsical agnosticism as well.
I don’t doubt that if Poirier were still alive he’d want to connect Obama to that tradition as well.
Xenos
@TrishB: Watch it. I still have a few Bay City Roller 45s in my parents’ basement. The B-side of ‘Saturday Night’ is truly craptacular, if I remember correctly.
asiangrrlMN
@gex: Well, speaking as an agnostic, I do believe there is something bigger than us–I’m just not sure what it is. And, I’m fine with that. I used to call myself an agnostic deist until I realized the latter part was no longer true.
Dr.BDH
@gex: When I stopped believing in the Christian God, I spent some time as an agnostic because it seemed the most philosophically consistent position, i.e., “I just don’t know.” But as I spoke with believers, I found that they never hesitated to deny the existence of some other god or gods. In other words, believers are atheists, too. That made me switch to calling myself an universal atheist, which makes me the generalized case of every type of believer. One could, I suppose, take the opposite approach and be a universal deist, believing in every type of god, but I think the contradictions in such an embrace would drive one crazy.
Stan of the Sawgrass
Thanks, Tim, it’s nice to see you back, and this is a great read on a Monday.
And those pix are amazing, General.
sherifffruitfly
People pushing the “you can’t know anything because you can’t know *everything*” bullshit are fucking idiots.
Tim F.
@sherifffruitfly: Indeed such people are fucking idiots. Please let me know when you find one.
Janus Daniels
@TrishB:
“Continuous process improvement seems like a great career for a recession, but it’s the first area to be jettisoned.”
It contributes to long term profits, not short term executive salaries, so why bother with it?
TrishB
@Janus Daniels: Far too true. I think it’s time to have some more cheap chardonnay and blame it on the holiday.
Blowriley
This is one reason why I’m an atheist. I just can’t be arsed to figure out which one(s) is (are) right and which one(s) is (are) wrong. As Homer Simpson once said, “suppose we picked the wrong church, every Sunday we just make God madder and madder”.