Shelley, Adorno, and Zimbardo: Poetry After Auschwitz

After several failed attempts to find an online copy in English of Theodor Adorno's 1949 essay, "Cultural Criticism in Society" in which he asserts that "to still write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric," I write this post with the knowledge that I am terribly uninformed about the actual meaning behind Adorno's words. I am also ignorant to the history of the discussion which has taken place about poetry after Auschwitz, but I will foolishly forge on in an attempt to further reflect upon the question that was raised in class.

In "A Defence of Poetry," Shelley asserts that, "The presence or absence of poetry in its most perfect and universal form has been found to be connected with good and evil in conduct and habit." Shelley believes that when a people are unethical, it is because they are not reading poetry. Poetry innately has the ability to enlarge and awaken the mind, "rendering it a receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought." Shelley grants to poetry the enormous responsibility of being the barometer by which we measure the health of a society. Since poetry teaches us to use our imagination, it essentially teaches us to live, giving us a new ethical foundation.

Yet, the Nazis, the executors of one of the most horrific genocides in the 20th century, were men "enlightened" by poetry (that which, according to Shelley, "makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world"). How is it that men of high class cultivation, exposed to the classics and the refining, redemptive words of poetry, could commit unimaginably atrocious acts against humanity? How is it that these people, the ones which Shelley trusts are subject to the majestic, transformational power of poetry to develop and inspire, have exemplified evil and depravity? In this sense, Adorno's assessment that it is nothing less than "barbaric" to seek out meaning in the reading and writing of poetry seems validated.

In another sense, I don't think that poetry has to be abandoned after Auschwitz for falling short of its understood aim of bettering humankind and expressing "the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds." We only need to reevaluate the lofty societal role that Shelley places upon poetry. While poetry may ultimately still have the potential to save the world, reflect the condition of a civilization, and inspire in us an imagination which leads to critical thinking and ethical living, it is not the sole medium which can achieve these things. The shortcomings of poetry cannot be held responsible for the horrific atrocities of the holocaust. The problem of evil, and the question of why good people can be led to do evil things, surpasses the power of poetry to provide our moral compass. I believe that poetry still possesses the potential for good and is not immoral, as others would suggest, but that it does not govern the health of a society. By all means should we continue producing and studying poetry for some of the very reasons that Shelley points out, but in pursuing the truth and beauty of poetry, we must not mistake poetry's role. It leads us to enlightenment, it enlarges our minds, and it develops imagination, but it does not solve or account for the problem of evil. It is not the sole measure of the goodness of a society. It cannot save us from ourselves or from the manipulable human condition.

In another class I am taking this semester, we read the introduction to a book by Philip Zimbardo, the famous psychologist behind the Standford Prison Experiment, entitled The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. I thought immediately of this text when we began discussing the notion of "After Auschwitz: No Poetry," and I believe that the situational forces that Zimbardo identifies behind evil do more to diagnose the health of a society than the presence or absence of poetry. In this introduction, Zimbardo lies out his thesis that people are motivated to do evil often times because of situational, rather than dispositional, forces. Whereas the traditional view assumed in order to understand the reasons behind evil acts has focused on "genetic makeup, personality traits, character, free will, and other dispositions," Zimbardo emphasizes the strong situational forces at work that may compel anyone to do evil. These forces include the transmission of powerful, top-down, dominant ideology through corruptive systems and the creation of an imagined "enemy" or "other" through stereotypes and dehumanizing techniques. While it may seem strange to mention Zimbardo while discussing Shelley's "Defence of Poetry," I think that it is important to acknowledge that even if poetry fulfilled the grandiose, essential societal role that Shelley ascribes to it, it alone could never overcome human weakness and susceptibility to manipulative situational forces. Poetry still might indeed have been "[adding] beauty to that which is most deformed", in Shelley's words, in the educated and elite Nazi society which produced the unthinkable evils of Auschwitz. Yet, the presence of poetry was not an adequate reflection of that society's health, let alone the sole, most important barometer which Shelley suggests. Any ethical foundation or imagination that poetry instills us with is subject to change under the correct combination of corruptive situational forces.

Emerson and Wilde

Last semester in Victorian Literature class, we studied Oscar Wilde's The Decay of Lying, and Wilde's belief that life imitates art left a deep impression on me. It seemed like such a counter-intuitive yet strangely intriguing notion, and I think of it now every time that I see a sunset, a sight traditionally revered as beautiful and awe-inspiring. Wilde contends that natural sunsets are "quite old-fashioned," falling far short of the remarkable renderings of colorful skies painted by artist J.M.W. Turner. He asserts that a modern sunset is "simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all of the painter's worst faults exaggerated and over-emphasized." In Wilde's opinion, which reflects the belief of other authors who wrote during "The Decadence," or the end of the Victorian age, Nature is vastly inferior to Art, and Art expresses itself alone, not some shallow mimicry of imperfect and uninspiring Nature.

I could not help but remember this interpretation and note how drastically it differed from Emerson's understanding of the relationship between the poet and nature in his essay "The Poet." While Emerson represents a voice of the transcendentalist movement, a current of thought which holds that every single thing that we experience is a symbol or opportunity to see through to an ideal world, and while Wilde speaks as a representative of the Decadence, which glorifies experiencing art and exulting in the sensual effect that it has upon you, these authors promote completely contrasting opinions on the worth of nature in the life and work of an artist.

Emerson seems to see nature as an invaluable and unifying source of beauty and inspiration which humankind does not sufficiently appreciate. The poet is the one who can interpret nature for us, who can use nature as a muse that continually renews, amazes, and points us to deeper truth. Nature contains endless symbols which lead us to divine understanding, and Emerson would suggest that we all can sense this mystical potential within nature. He writes:

"...every man is so far a poet as to be susceptible of these enchantments of nature; for all men have the thoughts whereof the universe is the celebration. I find that the fascination resides in the symbol. Who loves nature? Who does not? Is it only poets, and men of leisure and cultivation, who live with her? No, but also hunters, farmers, grooms, and butchers, though they express heir affection in their choice of life and not in their choice of words. The writer wonders what the coachmen or the hunter values in riding, in horses and dogs. It is not superficial qualities. When you talk with him he holds these at as slight a rate as you. His worship is sympathetic; he has no definitions, but he is commanded in nature by the living power which he feels to be there present. No imitation or playing of these things would content him; he loves the earnest of the north wind, of rain, of stone and wood and iron. A beauty not explicable is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of. It is nature the symbol, nature certifying the supernatural, body overflowed by life which he worships with coarse but sincere rites."

Thus, for Emerson, nature provokes an innate reverence even within the more simple-minded men that do not hold the esteemed position of seer, interpreter, and poet. Yet the poet, in all of his perceptive genius, falls short of perfectly expressing or transcribing the truth that he is privy to, for "poems are a corrupt version of some text in nature." I believe that Wilde would stand in direct opposition to this conception of humankind's inability to fully understand or express the truth and beauty inherent in nature. He would instead say that nature is the one which, crude and corrupted, does not measure up to the complex and limitless beauty of making and experiencing art. Wilde's character of Vivian scoffs in "The Decay of Lying,"

"Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition."

Another interesting difference between Emerson and Wilde lies in their understanding of what it means that imagination might stem from natural inspiration. Wilde goes on to say in this passage which I just quoted, "As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her." It seems that Emerson would embrace this imagination which envisions the infinite variety of nature. While Wilde conceives of this as a "cultivated blindness," Emerson believes imagination aroused by nature, or imagination that would allow for interpretation of nature's infinite varieties, to be liberating, emancipating, exhilarating, and ultimately the key to ascension, or "the passage of the soul into higher forms." Thus, Emerson might look upon the same sunset as Wilde and imagine the symbols therein to point to a surpassing ideal or truth while Wilde would see merely a bad imitation of Turner's art.

the etymology of an author

In exploring the question "what is an author?", one of the most interesting points of discussion for me is whether or not an author must produce written works. One can conceive of the "author" of a piece of art, or the "author" of an idea, but why is it that authorship is most commonly associated with writing? How did author and writer come to suggest the same idea (although there are some clear differences in how we use these terms)?

I decided to search for the etymology of the word author, and according to the online etymology dictionary:
"c.1300, autor "father," from O.Fr. auctor, from L. auctorem (nom. auctor) "enlarger, founder," lit. "one who causes to grow," agent noun from augere "to increase" (see augment). Meaning "one who sets forth written statements" is from c.1380. The -t- changed to -th- on mistaken assumption of Gk. origin. The verb is attested from 1596."

From the Old French, we can understand author to mean "father," while Latin gives us the idea of "enlarger," "founder," or literally "one who causes to grow." We see from this site that the meaning of author as "one who sets forth written statements" emerged around the year 1380, which predates the invention of the printing press by 60 years. It is also interesting to note that enlarger is not a commonly imagined synonym for our modern use of the word author. In class, we discussed words such as poet, writer, creator, inventor, artist, journalist, composer, and scribe as substitutes for the word author. "Enlarger" would have been a questionable addition to that list. While "founder" still rings true for our conception of an author as an inventor or originator, and while "father" lends itself to our idea of author as creator, "enlarger" seems to have lost its' original meaning. I wonder what the word enlarger might have indicated in the Roman context. In what sense is an author an enlarger? What exactly does an author increase, or cause to grow? Ideas? Understanding? Literal words on a page, as they expand in length? If an author is a creator, who creates something out of nothing, than does he also inherently enlarge what he has created into something worthwhile, enlightening, and edifying? Is an author one who causes our minds, our points of view, to broaden? In this sense, is that the author's responsibility?

If we focus upon the idea of an author as an enlarger, that meaning does not necessitate that the author write something. Nor does the idea of a founder or father, for that matter. I would be interested in exploring more of the history behind the development of the word author and exactly how it came to mean what it means for us today in our historical and cultural context.