Romanticism and imagination

[WICKES]

There is a fascinating discussion on youtube between the British intellectual and comedian Stephen Fry and the British journalist Christopher Hitchens about religion, blaspheny etc. At the end Fry says (in reference to E M Forster) something like "most human failure involves a failure of imagination" , that a world without religion is in need of imagination more than ever.

I have also been reading Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the accompanying notes refer continually to the importance of 'imagination' for Blake and the Romantics. What is meant by imagination in these contexts? When I think of imagination I think of Narnia or Tolkein's Middle Earth. It clearly entails much more than fantasy or day dreaming though...

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yeah, Stephen Fry is cool, I am a fan of Fry, I have seen the clip you are talking about but I think it is in a different context to that of the Romantics though.

When it comes to imagination in the Romantic sense of the word there are several factors with make imagination important to them. Firstly, imagination can be seen as a reaction against the ever increasing mechanization of the Industrial Revolution. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Everywhere in the works of the Romantic poets the strong resistance to it can be found in at least every other poem. The love and embrace of nature, especially in Wordsworth and Keats, can be strongly read as a reaction against this soul destroying machine, especially when you consider the harsh conditions, long hours and the use of child labour (something Blake wrote extensively about).

Imagination can also be linked to the importance of the individual and the concept of the self. Traditional structures are beginning to breakdown, the revolutions in France and America help to place more importance upon the individual and the idea of imagination plays into that concept. Thirdly, there is the fact that imagination is the antithesis of the order and logic of the Neo-classicists. The solid or traditional structures found in the likes of Pope are replaced with something much more flexible and varying. I am oversimplifying things, no doubt, but imagination can be seen as the underlying driving force behind it all, behind the whole movement. I hope that helps in some way.

[mono]

When it comes to imagination in the Romantic sense of the word there are several factors with make imagination important to them. Firstly, imagination can be seen as a reaction against the ever increasing mechanization of the Industrial Revolution. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Everywhere in the works of the Romantic poets the strong resistance to it can be found in at least every other poem. The love and embrace of nature, especially in Wordsworth and Keats, can be strongly read as a reaction against this soul destroying machine, especially when you consider the harsh conditions, long hours and the use of child labour (something Blake wrote extensively about).

Imagination can also be linked to the importance of the individual and the concept of the self. Traditional structures are beginning to breakdown, the revolutions in France and America help to place more importance upon the individual and the idea of imagination plays into that concept. Thirdly, there is the fact that imagination is the antithesis of the order and logic of the Neo-classicists. The solid or traditional structures found in the likes of Pope are replaced with something much more flexible and varying. I am oversimplifying things, no doubt, but imagination can be seen as the underlying driving force behind it all, behind the whole movement. I hope that helps in some way.
I think you have once again hit the nail on the head, Neely - well done!
I find it important to place emphasis upon the fact that imagination does not always have to involve things we could not possibly perceive with at least one of our five senses. In reference to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein, they wrote solely from the imagination, but of things not of this world - witches, talking lions, orcs, nymphs, etc. Imagination has a much more broad base to it, literary-wise, than to restrict it entirely to genres such as fantasy and science fiction.
Again, I think Neely got it right when he claimed that the use of the imagination in Romanticism partially seemed a reaction against the upcoming Industrial Revolution. The world obsessed and raved over trains, automobiles, mining, etc., but Romantic literature went back to nature, humanity, thought, human ability, and emotion; where imagination plays an immense role - the writers and poets represented these qualities constantly through metaphors, similes, and playings through ancient mythology (mostly Greek), sometimes parodies.
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a relatively short philosophical work entitled Imagination, in which he describes the two ways something can come to one's consciousness, through direct perception (with one of the five senses) or imagination. Human perception, I think it safe to say, has many limitations; if one sees a loaf of bread on the grocery store shelf, one sees it fixated in that time from that specific angle. One week later, if we go to search for it in the same grocery store, we ought not to feel surprised to see it no longer there; we can only imagine it, at that point, either consumed or molded and thrown away. In other words, imagination seems so much more whole; we can picture the loaf of bread from every angle on the grocery store shelf, the baker preparing it before it got there, what its buyer used it for, or what trash can it got thrown into after no one purchased it. In conjunction with the imagination, however, we require knowledge and a few assumptions; we will subconsciously compare this loaf of bread with others we have seen and base its existence upon others - its shape from another angle, its smell, its preservation time. In this sense, we make imagined objects how we want them - the Romantic poets did this constantly, in referring to past literary works, such as Greek mythology, and would sometimes remove them from their context for their own purposes and benefits, like Goethe did to Helen of Troy in the second act of Faust.

[mono]

Oh, by the way, who could not love Stephen Fry? I read The Liar many years ago, and laughed the entire way through it! To any other Fry readers, where would you recommend going from there, if I wanted to read more of him?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hey, thanks for your kind words.

I’ll have to check out that essay by Sartre sometime it sounds interesting, but philosophy of that kind often blows my mind, I often feel that I need something more solid in literature – at least I can often feel the philosophy through literature better, but interesting stuff nevertheless. I also now fancy a crusty farmhouse loaf, thanks for that. ;) Though yes I would agree strongly about what you said about humanity. This would especially be the case for me in Lyrical Ballads where Wordsworth embraces common humanity in the language of the everyday.

Yes I've read Liar and I have got it sticking out of the bottom shelf of my bookcase. I though it was funny and enjoyable but not altogether a great piece, but fun non the same. I think the only other Fry I have read is his autobiography MOAB, that is very touching and humble and I would recommend that greatly but as to his other fiction I wouldn't know, though I think anything by him would be quite good. I've heard that his Ode Less Travelled is quite informative and fun too. Thanks again.

[JBI]

Both Fry and Hitchens are mediocre writers, Hitchens worse than Frye (Fry is at least a decent comic). I wouldn't take anything they have to say seriously. In terms of failure of imagination, Hitchens is one of the least imaginative people I have encountered while reading, and Frye declares himself an aspect of The Enlightenment, the least imaginative movement in art in the history of the world. Both, in terms of perspective, are just mediocre humanists, Hitchens more so, as he has no real ideas, and simply just builds schemes to get cash from the stupid wanna-be polemic Americans.

[Hank Stamper]

Both Fry and Hitchens are mediocre writers, Hitchens worse than Frye (Fry is at least a decent comic). I wouldn't take anything they have to say seriously. In terms of failure of imagination, Hitchens is one of the least imaginative people I have encountered while reading, and Frye declares himself an aspect of The Enlightenment, the least imaginative movement in art in the history of the world. Both, in terms of perspective, are just mediocre humanists, Hitchens more so, as he has no real ideas, and simply just builds schemes to get cash from the stupid wanna-be polemic Americans.

SHOCK! HORROR! JBI finds something mediocre...

:YAWN

quite ironic in a thread about imagination...

[JBI]

SHOCK! HORROR! JBI finds something mediocre...

:YAWN

quite ironic in a thread about imagination...

How unimaginative...


Seriously, what's more ridiculous than the concept of a "failure of the imagination"? Knowing Wordsworth back to front, I know that the imagination in Wordsworth is inherent in all humans. Just read his Ode. The concept of the romantic imagination is an embrace of the paradise lost by the coming of age (a transplant of the myth of the fall). The imagination then, is reawakened through the experience of the natural world.

Now how does this apply to art today? There are as many great poets who belief as don't belief, in fact, most major literary authors seem to be unbelievers more than believers, or at least skeptical. It would be difficult to find a poet with George Herbert's conviction today.

Does that mean we have no imagination? No, it means that Hitchens and Fry probably only read poetry, or literature in general, from the past (which I think somewhat true, given both their views on poetry, Fry's expressed in his Ode Less traveled) and simply cannot know anything about literature as a whole, as no one really can. If they knew Foster better, they would interpret this to be an aspect of the modernist sensibility, and the loss of imagination as the dissatisfaction with the world's destruction in and between the Wars, as expressed also by Eliot, the most important poet of the age.

But they really don't. In fact, I don't think any of them have any significant insight on literature. Fry describes himself as a product of the enlightenment, as I have said, which shows he is somewhat out of touch with contemporary literary thought. Hitchens clearly doesn't - otherwise he would be a better writer, and less of a polemic opportunist. Fry perhaps knows about the past. His BA in English from Cambridge must have given him a little grounding, but seriously, you're looking at the guy who did the voice for Harry Potter Audiobooks. If there is a failure of imagination, that is it. Not only is he supporting the "reading" of unimaginative books, he is supporting people's lack of desire to read at all.


As for the influence of religion on art - perhaps in some ways authors can get inspiration from artwork, but there have been major artists, poets, novelist and all, who have been secular, or even atheist. My favorite poet, Giacomo Leopardi, for instance, was in essence a Nihilist (though I don't know if the term had been coined by then (my OED sights it from 1836)). There is no connection.

Hitchens is obsessed with his own anti-theist pseudo-intellectual neo-conservative radicalism, that seeks to abolish religion, as it stands as a thread to American supremacy over the world, by asserting a sense of the communal over a given space, thereby rendering the space less vulnerable. He sells books to an American public, and therefore writes to sell to an American public, giving them the mass-American version of pseudo-philosophical nonsense, which hits the top of American best seller lists. Fry is a popular comedian, and has done some great stuff, but an authority on either religion, or the romantic imagination? I doubt it.


There's no such thing as a failure of imagination. The decadence comes from a failure of culture, because of sociopolitical grounds, or because of State intervention and censorship (though the latter more often than not can produce great literature). The whole idea of religion being central to the imagination is also false, as the "dark ages" are probably the most religious in the Western Christian World's history. Though there are a few sparse works, the bulk of good stuff didn't really kick off until the mid 12th century, and then finally just melted into the Renaissance. What happened during those times?

Well, one suggestion is the lack of literacy, but from what I understand, literacy rates were no lower in ancient Greece or the Roman Empire. Why then, are so few works preserved, and of them, so few worth something? Ironically, because those preserving them were not scholars, but Benedictine Monks, who perhaps had a "repression of the imagination". They could have answered the question like that, had they known anything, but seriously, they really aren't scholars or in general people who are involved in the history of artwork.

[Hank Stamper]

Look around you. Failure of imagination is everywhere - and nowhere more so than in popular culture. How would you describe reality TV other than a complete and utter failure of imagination. How would you describe the obsession with celebrity culture other than a failure of imagination. And even you yourself think Harry Potter is 'unimaginative', so by association, reading Harry Potter would (by your reckoning) imply a failure of imagination.

and please define 'contemporary literary thought' - as if there can only be a current way (your way, no doubt) to interpret literature..
you accuse Fry of only reading literature from the past. he is hardly going to read literature from the future is he? reading contemporary literature (as I assume you are driving at) does not mean you have any more authority to interpret literature than somebody who styles themselves as a product of the enlightenment.

I have never read Hitchens but it seems to me you generally have a bitter resentment towards anybody who makes money out of literature and who espouses ideas that you don't agree with.. and you seem to dismiss Fry as an 'authority' simply because he took a cheque for reading some books that you don't like..

However I do agree with one of your points, that imagination has nothing to do with religion.

[wessexgirl]

Fry perhaps knows about the past. His BA in English from Cambridge must have given him a little grounding, but seriously, you're looking at the guy who did the voice for Harry Potter Audiobooks. If there is a failure of imagination, that is it. Not only is he supporting the "reading" of unimaginative books, he is supporting people's lack of desire to read at all.



You're in serious danger of sounding like a literary snob JBI, and I don't see that as something good. Harry Potter may not be to your taste, but it is to many people. And I for one don't dismiss audiobooks, or the fact that Fry has lent his considerable talents to them. As someone whose working life is spent trying to engage children with literature and books, they can be a godsend. Many of our students are less able, either through lack of ability or through visual impairment or other special needs to actually read a book, so your dig at Fry supporting people's lack of desire to read is below the belt and uncalled for. Why should you, who is lucky enough to be able to read and analyse (sometimes ad nauseum if I may be so bold), sneer at attempts to bring some joy of books into other, often less fortunate, peoples lives? No doubt you will retort that HP is for children. Yes, it may have been written for them. But it does NOT stop adults enjoying them if they so wish. After all, would we attempt to stop a particularly gifted child reading things which are deemed beyond their years? I don't think so. It works both ways. And while there is a distinction between "literary" fare, or mere "popular" stuff, it doesn't mean that you have to deride those who lean towards the latter. It may not be your choice, but it is someone else's. And as someone who is extremely articulate, well-educated and knowledgeable, I think your dismissal of Fry as someone playing to the ill-educated and uninformed is petty. Oh and by the way , it's Forster, not Foster, and Fry, not Frye.

[JBI]

You're in serious danger of sounding like a literary snob JBI, and I don't see that as something good. Harry Potter may not be to your taste, but it is to many people. And I for one don't dismiss audiobooks, or the fact that Fry has lent his considerable talents to them. As someone whose working life is spent trying to engage children with literature and books, they can be a godsend. Many of our students are less able, either through lack of ability or through visual impairment or other special needs to actually read a book, so your dig at Fry supporting people's lack of desire to read is below the belt and uncalled for. Why should you, who is lucky enough to be able to read and analyse (sometimes ad nauseum if I may be so bold), sneer at attempts to bring some joy of books into other, often less fortunate, peoples lives? No doubt you will retort that HP is for children. Yes, it may have been written for them. But it does NOT stop adults enjoying them if they so wish. After all, would we attempt to stop a particularly gifted child reading things which are deemed beyond their years? I don't think so. It works both ways. And while there is a distinction between "literary" fare, or mere "popular" stuff, it doesn't mean that you have to deride those who lean towards the latter. It may not be your choice, but it is someone else's. And as someone who is extremely articulate, well-educated and knowledgeable, I think your dismissal of Fry as someone playing to the ill-educated and uninformed is petty. Oh and by the way , it's Forster, not Foster, and Fry, not Frye.

It's the point that his opinion is being taken. It's like going on the street and asking questions. What can he possibly know about the contemporary imagination? I trust he must read in multiple languages, and texts from multiple countries?

To really know contemporary art, you really have to study it. Chances are, if he was really involved, the most he could know was about contemporary English art, a small piece in the puzzle. It's not a stretch to consider him not an authority on the contemporary imagination. You're asking the hamburger flipper his thoughts on the art of cooking in contemporary society.



I don't care if people make money from writing, but lets be honest, have any of you read anything Hitchens has written? The guys a bafoon. A jingoistic neo-con, who makes money on the side bashing religion, and going on tours "Debating" people across America. He's someone who thinks that only an idiot would be apposed to the War in Iraq going on right now, and that America should invade countries that they don't agree with. In short, he is a neo-fascist, posing as a liberal.



All of you pretend that mass culture is a problem, but you are looking at things from limited perspectives. There are numerous countries in the world, where art, especially literature, is being written where it generally wasn't written before. There are numerous new styles and experimental works, pushing the boundaries of literature forward. There is no failure of the imagination. Perhaps a failure of the British imagination, or the American imagination, though I wouldn't go that far, but that doesn't speak for the world. In India, and China, and the Middle East for instance, there is a giant upsurge in great literature being written. Africa too, is growing quickly, in terms of output, and I would argue, the world is preparing itself for, and is in the process of, passing post-modernism fully, and entering the next stage of literary development. The climate for literature seems better today than, for instance, 5 years ago, or even ten years ago. Certainly the advancements in Chinese economics have paved the way for an unforeseeable amount of great authors, and, if what is projected comes to pass, and the Chinese censors slacken, as it is projected they will, that output will be even stronger.


There is no failure of the imagination, and those who think so just have too narrow a scope of reading. The "literary imagination" cannot be blamed for people on these forums preferring to discuss Twilight over Mahmoud Darwish (who I started a thread about right when he died, which, if I recall, got one post).


There are those who know what they are talking about (I don't consider myself one who even feels comfortable commenting as a real authority on the subject) and those who don't know what they are talking about.

Hitchens isn't a real scholar, nor a very good Intellectual, and his works aren't really peer reviewed, or written in a scholarly fashion. He is not an authority on politics, and he's even a worse authority on contemporary literature and art.

Fry is an excellent comic, but not a literary critic or academic. He is not engaged in the contemporary literary discussion, the same way, for instance, a member of the Nobel Academy may be. If someone asked him what he thought of comedy today, then he probably would be able to give a great answer. That is his area of specialty, not contemporary literature.


Seriously, our astoundly well learned panel failed to even mention the fact that Forster's novel was written in 1910, right before Modernism kicked off and redefined literature - right before Joyce, Eliot, Montale, and the rest of them.

[Hank Stamper]

It's the point that his opinion is being taken. It's like going on the street and asking questions. What can he possibly know about the contemporary imagination?

I think it is possible to have insight on contemporary imagination without being a serious scholar. One only has to open his/her eyes. If you are looking into the imagination of the past, then yes, you need to have some academic credentials, but it is slightly arrogant to suggest that somebody can't possibly know anything about the contemporary imagination, just because they don't study it directly..



I don't care if people make money from writing, but lets be honest, have any of you read anything Hitchens has written? The guys a bafoon. A jingoistic neo-con, who makes money on the side bashing religion, and going on tours "Debating" people across America.

The fact you think him a buffoon shows that you are letting personal opinion cloud your judgement.. although as I said I have never read anything by Hitchens so I can't really comment, although your argument errs on the side of polemic (the very thing you deride in him), rather than offering any 'significant insight' into why he is a bad writer



All of you pretend that mass culture is a problem, but you are looking at things from limited perspectives. There are numerous countries in the world, where art, especially literature, is being written where it generally wasn't written before. There are numerous new styles and experimental works, pushing the boundaries of literature forward. There is no failure of the imagination. Perhaps a failure of the British imagination, or the American imagination, though I wouldn't go that far, but that doesn't speak for the world.

And you do? I am not denying imagination exists, of course it does. But there also exists a failure of imagination.. you are right that there are people pushing the boundaries of art and literature - but that doesn't mean imagination is omnipresent, you will always have people experimenting, just as you will always have people who are happy to veg on their sofa and watch hours of mind-numbingly tedious TV, where imagination is notable only for its absence (and this is not just a Western phenomenon)



There are those who know what they are talking about (I don't consider myself one who even feels comfortable commenting as a real authority on the subject) and those who don't know what they are talking about.

So you admit you don't know what you are talking about?



Fry is an excellent comic, but not a literary critic or academic. He is not engaged in the contemporary literary discussion, the same way, for instance, a member of the Nobel Academy may be. If someone asked him what he thought of comedy today, then he probably would be able to give a great answer. That is his area of specialty, not contemporary literature.

and we come back to the 'contemporary' discussion.. as a 'contemporary' author, I think Fry is heavily (and unavoidably) engaged with the question of contemporary literature, more so than you..

I am intrigued about this 'contemporary literary discussion' though - you talk of it as if it is some kind of closed forum whereby YOU can monitor who is talking about it and who isn't..

and Wessexgirl makes a very good point, re. audiobooks.. my 80-year-old Gran is partially sighted and so relies on the excellent audiobook market to satiate her lifelong love of literature.. audiobooks are a valuable literary source for a huge number of people, and such ill-informed debunking serves only to illustrate your ignorance towards the world of literature outside academia

[Hank Stamper]

You're asking the hamburger flipper his thoughts on the art of cooking in contemporary society.

I liked this analogy though

[JBI]

Let's put it this way, if the homeless person on the street next to the bank in my neighborhood was giving advice on the economy, we wouldn't listen. There needs to be some validation of opinion. Neither of these people are public intellectuals, and Fry would probably admit that. I think he knows that he is first and foremost, a comic. Hitchens on the other hand pretends to be, and pretends to actually know something about art, and sociology. In actuality, he seems an aspect of a colonial age, islamophobic, ethnocentric, and imbued with self superiority, in truth, something very unimaginative.

Anyone who has any brain, can see that somewhere in the world, there is always imaginative art being created. The "failure of the imagination" is a better term for the failure of the occidental colonial perspective, brought about by the failures of the world wars, and of Vietnam.


There was a poll on this website, where it was shown that the bulk of this forum primarily reads classics. In truth, 90% of the discussion forums here are about classic authors, the vast majority English language, and beyond that, novels.

WICKES defined herself the imagination as pertaining to, *gasp*, Lewis and Tolkien. Certainly that isn't how we see imaginative literature, is it? One ripped off the Norse Sagas, the other the Bible, and neither of those books seem fresh or new.

We can discuss Gatsby here, but I doubt any of you have even heard of La Belle Bete (accent on first e, translated as Mad Shadows) by Marie-Claire Blais, despite the fact that it is a seminal work of French Canadian fiction, and highly imaginative, bringing a new sort of French Canadian Gothic flavor. Wilson Harris isn't discussed, yet he is one of the strongest voices in contemporary prose. I'm yet to see much discussion on anything Italian, besides the odd Dante comment, or French for that matter. I, in truth, am limited.

Is there a failure of the imagination? Does that even make sense? What is the imagination? How much is imagination, and how much is tradition? I would argue 90% tradition, 10% innovation, and that is what we call imagination. Do either of these people answer that question? No.

To get back to the original question though, if you have any question about the Romantic imagination, just take out Fearful symmetry by Northrop Frye, or The Mirror and the Lamp by Abrams, or perhaps Yeats's A Vision, or Arthur Symons's "The Symbolist Movement in Literature".

[Hank Stamper]

Let's put it this way, if the homeless person on the street next to the bank in my neighborhood was giving advice on the economy, we wouldn't listen. There needs to be some validation of opinion. Neither of these people are public intellectuals, and Fry would probably admit that. I think he knows that he is first and foremost, a comic. Hitchens on the other hand pretends to be, and pretends to actually know something about art, and sociology. In actuality, he seems an aspect of a colonial age, islamophobic, ethnocentric, and imbued with self superiority, in truth, something very unimaginative.

Well, yes, that is the simplistic way of looking at it (although so-called financial experts have proven they know very little about the economy anyway, so being an 'expert' or an 'authority' doesn't necessarily mean anything).. I understand your point, but you are saying that one can only form a valid opinion on something if one has studied it at length.. I argue that you can form a valid opinion on something - particularly something contemporaneous - without having to be a scholar... this message board is a prime example, there are plenty of people on here, yourself included, who have some valid ideas and opinions, but who are not 'authorities' on the subject in question.. I think it is a bit narrow minded to assume that the only person with a valid opinion is a scholar who has spent his/her whole life studying just one subject.. I think Fry's opinions are genuinely valid (can't comment on Hitchens).. it doesn't necessarily mean I have to agree with them, just as I wouldn't blindly agree with a scholar just because of their so-called credibility


Anyone who has any brain, can see that somewhere in the world, there is always imaginative art being created. The "failure of the imagination" is a better term for the failure of the occidental colonial perspective, brought about by the failures of the world wars, and of Vietnam.

I have never disputed that somewhere in the world imaginative art is being produced, but that doesn't mean imagination is not absent elsewhere.. I'm not sure what Vietnam has to do with it (nothing?)


We can discuss Gatsby here, but I doubt any of you have even heard of La Belle Bete (accent on first e, translated as Mad Shadows) by Marie-Claire Blais, despite the fact that it is a seminal work of French Canadian fiction, and highly imaginative, bringing a new sort of French Canadian Gothic flavor. Wilson Harris isn't discussed, yet he is one of the strongest voices in contemporary prose. I'm yet to see much discussion on anything Italian, besides the odd Dante comment, or French for that matter. I, in truth, am limited.

I'm not sure what you are saying here. That because there is not much discussion on anything Italian (or French-Canadian), we have a lack of imagination? Fine. You have contradicted your own argument - the absence of discussing Italian literature constitutes a failure of the imagination.


Is there a failure of the imagination? Does that even make sense? What is the imagination? How much is imagination, and how much is tradition? I would argue 90% tradition, 10% innovation, and that is what we call imagination. Do either of these people answer that question? No.

Imagination.. yes, innovation, the ability to think creatively, pushing boundaries, experimenting... these qualities are not ubiquitous

[Quark]

I think it is possible to have insight on contemporary imagination without being a serious scholar.

I don't think any of them have any significant insight on literature. Fry describes himself as a product of the enlightenment, as I have said, which shows he is somewhat out of touch with contemporary literary thought. Hitchens clearly doesn't - otherwise he would be a better writer, and less of a polemic opportunist.

I would have to agree with JBI that Fry and Hitchens are not great literary historians, nor should their opinions be cited as evidence of broad literary trends--like the rise and fall of imagination. The only way Hank is able to even suggest this is by misusing the word "valid", as in "I argue that you can form a valid opinion on something - particularly something contemporaneous - without having to be a scholar". Everyone, of course, can form a valid opinion on something, but it's only valid in a certain sense. It could be my opinion that the sky is green, and it would be valid in the sense that it is a valid reflection of my own thoughts. It wouldn't be valid, though, as a comment on the actual color of the sky. Whenever anyone says anything it's "valid" of "something", but it shouldn't necessarily be given as evidence to back up a claim of yours.

Of course, just because someone isn't a literary historian, doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to talk about the imagination in literature, past and present. JBI, scholar to the last, seemed to indicate in his first post


Both Fry and Hitchens are mediocre writers, Hitchens worse than Frye (Fry is at least a decent comic). I wouldn't take anything they have to say seriously. In terms of failure of imagination, Hitchens is one of the least imaginative people I have encountered while reading, and Frye declares himself an aspect of The Enlightenment, the least imaginative movement in art in the history of the world. Both, in terms of perspective, are just mediocre humanists, Hitchens more so, as he has no real ideas, and simply just builds schemes to get cash from the stupid wanna-be polemic Americans.

that simply because Fry and Hitchens are "mediocre writers" and "mediocre humanists" they can't suggest anything about literature broadly. Hank is probably right to argue that, no, just because someone is "mediocre" doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong. To say that there isn't a poverty of imagination--merely because Hitchens says there is and Hitchens is "mediocre"--is poor reasoning. I think JBI comes closer to refuting the idea when he (it is "he", right? Avatars tell me so little) brings up examples from world literature which run contrary to what Hitchens tries to prove.

[Hank Stamper]

ok substitute the word valid for something else - my argument still stands, that one can form a credible opinion without being a scholar... and that we can listen to Fry and Hitchens and make up our own minds whether to give their ideas credence or not, just as I would if it were an eminent literary historian/critic..

History has proved countless times that people who are considered experts are often anything but... theorists are just that - theorists..

Just because you devote your whole life to something doesn't make you right.. Ptolemy was once considered the foremost authority on astronomy (with some justification I should add).. but he didn't exactly get his theory right did he?

[andave_ya]

If I may be so bold - what about using imagination stylistically as well? I'm not very familiar with the poetry of the Romantics, but in my literature textbook I'm currently reading the Romantics and there is much imagination in their use of metaphors and similes. Shelley's "To a Skylark" is mostly elegantly stated metaphors:

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

Or Byron:

...A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd and unknown.

And so on.

[Quark]

Just because you devote your whole life to something doesn't make you right.. Ptolemy was once considered the foremost authority on astronomy (with some justification I should add).. but he didn't exactly get his theory right did he?

Agreed. In fact, I think that's a very good example. Ptolemy, who was not just an authority but the authority on cosmology, was eventually overturned. One could say that he was only replaced by another authority, Copernicus, but you have to remember that it was church which called for Copernicus's revolution. It was lay astronomers who noticed that Ptolemy's system didn't fit with observation.

I think what JBI may have been responding to, though, was the use of Hitchens and Fry as evidence. The opening post tells us that imagination is important because Fry, Blake, Forster told us so.


If I may be so bold - what about using imagination stylistically as well?

Yeah, I don't think it's been completely explained what is meant by "imagination". I think the first post mentions CS Lewis and Tolkein which makes it sound like they are referring to imaginative fantasy. They also bring up Blake and the Romantics, but it's not entirely clear where they're going with that.

[JBI]

Imagination is a fancy word for hardwork and or personal experience, and nerve. Had Wordsworth not gone to Tintern Abbey, how different would the imaginations of all English poets who followed be? In romantic terms, the imagination is the state of childhood, and is revisited after The Fall, in this case a transplant of the Garden of Eden myth, which occurs once one grows up. For Wordsworth, it is the revisiting of memory and reawakening of that experience which is "Imagination. For Shelley, poetry is the ash of the Charcoal burning within the poet. I think he is less convincing, but it's the idea that the overpowering emotions within can somehow, in as a remnant, be communicated through poetry, allowing a sharing between reader and poet.

For Blake, though I am nowhere near an expert on him, or very confident on this analysis I must warn, it would seem imagination is associated with fire, and crafted out of the Prometheus myth. We see this first in the Tiger, and later embodied in the God Orc, who goes against the orderly to create a sort of Dionysian creation. The beautiful Tiger, Blake tells us, is also violent and destructive, and the imagination is the same way - a crumbling of the Old Testament God's authority by liberating oneself from following orders, best summed up by Milton's Satan.

For Keats, the imagination would seem to be a disassociation with reality. His negative capability, and obsession with suspension of disbelief seem to elude to this. The mythical sphere surrounding the two lovers in The Eve of St. Agnes seems to be a temporary break from the realistic world, symbolized in the poem by the hall for the man, and the chapel for the woman. The space is also interesting, when considered against the nightscape of Ode To a Nightingale, and the night's clouding of the realities of his condition, allowing him to feel the incorruptible beauty of the nightingale song (which in itself gestures back to the Philomela myth from Ovid). To detach from reality, I would think, to Keats, is to embrace a more real and magical reality, created by emotions over logic. The knight in La Belle Dame sans Merci tries to bring the visioned girl back to the real space, but is unable - the vision is created by the missing reality, not by the actual reality. He is seeking the vision, but unable to approach it.


What's the imagination to others? I don't know - imagination seems a word thrown around, which means little outside of the romantic context. That is why you generally see people with Romantic sensibilities (critics I mean) using the word moreso than anyone else. In a post-structuralist age of thought (soon to be post-post-structuralist, under some other name), I am unsure at all what the term can possibly mean.

Thereby, a failure of the imagination, seems to me rather silly, as imagination, in regard to the creates of art, doesn't seem to have a coherent meaning. Zola said that the imagination wasn't very important in novel writing, and that careful observing of society, and dissection of it was more important.

In terms of writing though, generally poets achieve great things by simple trial and error. They take past models, play around with them, throw in a tinge of madness, and, if they are truly good, create something which appears to not resemble what came before.

Jubilate Agno, perhaps the most radical poem, in terms of variant from the tradition, was essentially composed by crossing religious conviction and teaching, and madness. Smart didn't imagine his cat, he merely took the form of the King James Bible, and ran with it.

Imagination in itself seems a strange word now, even when I think about it. Inspiration is perhaps a better word, and I think one that Dante and Petrarch would have been more comfortable with.

The notion of imagination comes essentially with the rise in thought on sincerity. Lionel Trilling actually wrote a very interesting work on Sincerity and Authenticity in literature, which shows the rise of those two things as central to the art work. I can't help but think that sincerity caused the notion of the imagination to take the front. For the romantics, I think ultimately Nature is the source of the imagination, but I can't help but feel that nature has nothing to do with it.

What poetry originally, and still does try to answer, is in essence, one question: What does it mean to be creative (I stole this from one of my professors, I didn't come up with it). That's the question. Wordsworth simply answered the question, by saying being creative is to be reunited with the paradisaical state of childhood, and since then we have been building on his notion.

Of course, one also must look at his first volume of poetry, which, in essence, was a crappy replica of the prevalent styles of mid-late 18th century England. The whole romantic notion seems to be manufactured, and certainly the division of interests between Coleridge and Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads shows some sort of innovation, over the professed imagination. Either way, what resulted was great poetry, and that is what matters.

[kasie]

I think Imagination meant something different to the writers of what we term the Romantic era than it does to readers in the twenty-first century: Coleridge devotes a considerable amount of space in Biographia Literaria to the discussion of the nature of Imagination. Briefly, he considered Imagination to be the ability to think, as opposed to the ability merely to react to Sensation: the thoughtful man would retire and contemplate the effects of events on his Sensations (emotions), rather than act immediately upon them. '...Where ideas are vivid...there exists an endless power of combining and modifying them...' he wrote. He was of the opinion that the reflective man should be in the habit of taking experiences and making a relationship between them by connecting them in his 'imagination': the connection exists by his inward thoughts and deductions, rather than by any outward physical nature.

This would be reflected in Forster's injunction, 'Only connect...' He is requiring people to use their Imagination to make a pattern out of their experiences: they must make the connections for themselves, using the power of their minds, their Imagination. I think Forster in the quote about the failure of Imagination was perhaps regretting the inability to make this leap of Imagination to understand the governing thoughts and motives behind the actions of others. In another age this attempt to understand the motivating force behind the actions of another might have been called Charity, in the sense of Understanding. In an age when religion was seen to be in decline, Forster was perhaps making a plea for the use of Imagination (intuition, perhaps) to take the place of Charity (Loving Kindness, gentle tolerance) in our dealings with others. The failure of Imagination is a failure even to begin to understand the other person, no ability to piece together his line of thought, still less to make allowances for or tolerate him/her.

[mono]

If I may be so bold - what about using imagination stylistically as well? I'm not very familiar with the poetry of the Romantics, but in my literature textbook I'm currently reading the Romantics and there is much imagination in their use of metaphors and similes. Shelley's "To a Skylark" is mostly elegantly stated metaphors:

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
Or Byron:

...A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd and unknown.
And so on.
The style in use of words, I agree, andave ya, seemed also very imaginative, innovative, and what some may call 'fluffy.' Shelley and Byron seem two prime examples, as well as Keats, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and they wrote in ways designed both for reading and reciting to appeal to both the mind and the ear. This did not disappear in the Victorian era, but the consistency of poetry changed immensely, for better or worse. We can compare the writing styles of Tennyson and the Brownings with Goethe, but their styles in subjects of poetry will differ greatly - amazing what only a few decades of literature will do to style . . . :p

I think Imagination meant something different to the writers of what we term the Romantic era than it does to readers in the twenty-first century: Coleridge devotes a considerable amount of space in Biographia Literaria to the discussion of the nature of Imagination. Briefly, he considered Imagination to be the ability to think, as opposed to the ability merely to react to Sensation: the thoughtful man would retire and contemplate the effects of events on his Sensations (emotions), rather than act immediately upon them. '...Where ideas are vivid...there exists an endless power of combining and modifying them...' he wrote. He was of the opinion that the reflective man should be in the habit of taking experiences and making a relationship between them by connecting them in his 'imagination': the connection exists by his inward thoughts and deductions, rather than by any outward physical nature.
Wow, thank you for sharing that, kasie - very inspiring. :nod:

[JBI]

It's interesting to note though, that romanticism essentially failed as soon as it started in English. I mean, the French revolution promised so much, but ultimately, what it came down to was that Napoleon was merely just another tyrant. The spirit of the age was built essentially on a false pretext of revolutionary spirit.

For romantics now, I seem to read more Keats than anything, though one of my good friends and I enjoy reading Wordsworth together (her English skills are not too apt, and she finds many other poets too difficult for her to understand without much work). Keats doesn't seem to have any false beliefs, and I think that is what makes The Ode to a Nightingale so profound, the fact that he knows he is going to die, but for that brief moment within the night, he can feel the overpowering of the beauty within the world.

One would think that if there is any driving force behind romanticism (in general) and in England, it would have to be Rousseau. But even so, what is the imagination to Rousseau if there is no human nature? Certainly it must be constructed through experience - but in that sense, is poetry nothing more than just the relation of experience? Is the poet nothing more than someone who is able to convey experience within words, or to trap some of his thoughts in a creative manner?

These questions seem troubling - the spirit of the age seems disillusioned in a sense, in its own superiority, yet ultimately the romanticism kicked off by the French revolution culminated in a series of wars, both colonial and within Europe, eventually culminating in WW1 and WW2. The century itself seems to be the time of a great construct of self-superiority, from all sides, that eventually exploded, much like the culture constructs of the 1950s exploded in the 60s.

Perhaps that is what imagination is - the dissent from order into sudden chaos, and then back into order. certainly the "orderliness" of the 18th century culminated in violence, and certainly the new ideal, which took off to new levels in the 19th century culminated in violence as well. Who knows - could one go back further and make earlier cases? Is the history of literary innovation just one big round dialectic?