The Formalists and the Human Condition

One of the questions that we posed on the very first day of class was, "Does literature help us understand what it means to be human?" Does studying literature allow us to reflect on the condition of our shared humanity? My instinctual response to this question after reading the work of some of the formalist critics is "no," but I hope to explore this idea more deeply through reflecting upon it.

In Eliot's essay, "Tradition and Individual Talent", he describes how poets both actively acquire and create tradition through training and the catalyst of the poet's mind. While the romantics envisioned the creation of a poem as the bubbling over of the poet's deepest thoughts and emotions, or "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility" (as Wordsworth famously said), Eliot conceives of the process in a completely different way. When tradition and experience combine in the receptacle of the poet's mind, a poem emerges, pressurized and transmuted into a whole greater than the sum of its two parts. Eliot almost seems to advocate a sterilizing of the poet's true, embarrassing emotion and experience so that a loftier, more meaningful significance may come out. Is this new emotion then a reflection of the human condition, or is it only significant because it enlightens us beyond the confines of our humanity?

Eliot writes, "There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know when there is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done."

Does this impersonality which Eliot aspires to automatically negate the suggestion that poetry could help us understand what it is to be human? Or, conversely, is this impersonality the only means by which we might get at the human condition-- when we separate our subjective selves from our words and allow a deeper meaning to take root? Is the "significant emotion" that Eliot writes about reflective of true human emotion and experience, or is it somehow greater than the usual limitations of our humanity?

I tend to think that formalists would not concern themselves with the question of whether or not literature helps us understand the human condition. For this very reason, I struggle to appreciate formalist critique as I feel that it takes the excitement of discovering human connectedness out of reading. C.S. Lewis' words ring true to me: "We read to know that we are not alone." It is that feeling of deep soul-satisfaction that one gets when reading someone else's words and relating to an experience, or observation, or thought process. It is one of our only ways of confirming our sanity, our normalcy-- of confirming that what goes on in our own heads actually goes on in other peoples' heads too. When the author and reader are removed from the equation and the work stands alone, it seems inevitable that this process of recognizing our shared humanity becomes constrained.

The Active Life

In Emerson's address, "The American Scholar," he outlines the three major ways in which he believes a scholar should be educated: "by nature, by books, and by action." He exhorts his audience to not consider themselves mere thinkers but rather "Men Thinking" (or "humans thinking", if he had lived in our linguistically inclusive world). Emerson wants the scholars of his day to nurture active souls, which see and utter absolute truth, create, and do not rely solely on past ideas in the continued search for brilliance and revelation. I found it interesting that Emerson places high importance on scholars getting out and living life, being "covetous of action" and not wasting the precious daylight studying "other men's transcripts of their readings" when they themselves "can read God directly."

Emerson writes:
"Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble of thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not."

and

"If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town, -- in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the other end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or splendor of his speech."

I really tend to resonate with Emerson's insistence on the dual worth of an active and contemplative life. So often our mental image of a scholar or a writer is that of a person chained to his desk or library table, pouring over books and manuscripts: the stereotypical recluse. Yet, Emerson seems to believe that living life and interacting with people and nature are essential to the scholar's ability to perceive. In the moment in which we are living life, we are unable to know the meaning of what we are feeling and absorbing. It is only later, in contemplation, that that truth begins to take form and observation unfolds into insight. Emerson says that without action, a scholar is "not yet man" and that "the true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power." Perhaps then, our shared humanity is only understood in our experiences and our action; only in these moments are the farmers linked to the tradesmen, and the priests, and attorneys, and mechanics, and sailors. Once scholars takes their places in "the ring to suffer and work", they begin to assume the necessary vocabulary of life lived in order to fulfill their roles as seers, thinkers, and creators.

My personal vision of how scholars, poets, or writers become thinking men and women who provide words of beauty and truth is much aligned with Emerson's. I believe that the American scholar should not only set out to study, but also to garner as many life experiences as possible. Scholars should be drooling for opportunities to travel, to challenge their world view, to meet people from every different station of life, to hold various occupations, to daily place themselves in new and stretching settings in order that their words might possess profound perspective. I also believe that in the United States we tend to narrowly define the sectors of society, or the types of people, that we can learn from. While intellectuals, experts, and historical greats encompass an invaluable base of knowledge, often the people that we least expect to learn from provide us with the most piercing words of wisdom: children, the homeless and disenfranchised, the mentally ill or disabled, etc. So, if I were writing a similar address concerning the modern American scholar, I would, like Emerson, encourage a life of action, but I would also stress a keen attention to our potential to learn from every single person that we encounter.