Why Was Thomas Jefferson So Dismissive of Phillis Wheatley's Writings? [Archive]

JBI

12-05-2013, 01:16 PM

Is it too obvious to mention that people were using her poetry to argue that those of African descent were capable enough to deserve freedom, and that he disagreed with that conclusion? Or is that part of him being an *** hole?

Or are you being anachronistic. The American founding fathers hand no qualms with being either racist or slavers. To think that they somehow inhabited this elevated intellectual sphere of humanity where they believed in human rights in an anachronistic reading. Ok, you can reject Jefferson, but the whole bunch were racist - not just against their slaves, but against the native Americans, French Canadians, and generally anybody not of their own racial and religious composition. Even regional hatreds were quite common.

The old world was a hateful, disturbing place, loaded with all sorts of violence between man and man. We like to romanticize it and think of it in terms of the "great liberty" or the national myth, but for the most part it was a bunch of rich white men dreaming up how to improve their status as rich white men. Reading Benjamin Franklin on the Quebec Act just about sums it up - he is on one hand one of those "anti-imperialists" but on the other hand has no qualms with British people abusing Quebecois (or Acadians for that matter). He in fact is a vocal critic about something approaching religious and cultural freedoms granted to Quebec through the Quebec act, something he writes a lot about, reproaching the government for giving the same freedoms to the Quebecois as those as the protestants who speak English.

The whole thing is a farce reinterpreted by Romantic historians. That he just didn't like her writing is quite possible, given that tastes are personal. I have seen many a list of hateful reviews by noteworthy critics. It's not a surprise that there could have been one circa. 1800.

Frostball

12-05-2013, 02:01 PM

I bow to your greater knowledge on the period. It just seemed to me that that fact of her race was an elephant that hadn't been mentioned, and I didn't know if it was too obvious and being implied by everybody, or if those here genuinely did not believe that to be a factor.

I didn't mean to hate on Jefferson. From what I know of the founders I still find them admirable, but I know they were mortals like the rest of us, replete with foibles and a product of their time.

ennison

12-06-2013, 08:45 PM

Well I meant it but the word "arsehole" excepted I was too polite to say so (Ha! Ha!) He may, however, have been annoyed by such things as her suggestion that Washington should have been enthroned. That I forgive - anachronistic?? Oh dear JBI we are on SUCH a different plane! So he may not be merely a c&@t but a reasonable man. After all what proper revolutionary wants another effing king.

JBI

12-06-2013, 11:20 PM

The real problem with her work to modern readers is actually that she is a mediocre poet writing about how great the white man is for bringing christianity and culture to the black slaves. I would think that would be the point of debate not what a founding father thought to be subpar work, which was over evaluated in its time because of the shock of seeing a literate black woman (who needed to defend authorship in court).

The problem with such poetics is that measured against the standard imposed (Pope et al.) her works are more or less rubbish verse for an uncultured audience moved more by the spectacle of culture than of culture. It's the sort of humble American uncultured audience eating up mediocrity for the reason that they hardly know better - a trend in the Americas far into the Romantic period.

Do these verses stand then with a sort of British intellectual audience in the Oxbridge sense. Not in the least I will say, and the kitsch of a Black woman writing wears off quickly.

qimissung

12-07-2013, 01:04 AM

That's a harsh assessment. I'm not sure I entirely agree, although I've only read a few of her poems. It's true that many of the founding fathers owned slaves. But Washington at least freed his upon his death, something Jefferson did with only a handful of the slaves he owned. In my opinion, he was an arsehole; at the very least he was very much a man of his time.

http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2012/12/thomas-jefferson-reviews-phillis.html

"By 1782, when Jefferson reworked that manuscript into book form, emancipation advocates like Dr. Benjamin Rush and Voltaire were using Phillis Wheatley’s poetry to argue that people of African descent had shown they were capable enough to deserve freedom.

Jefferson disagreed with that aesthetic judgment about Wheatley’s work, at least in part because he disliked the conclusion it led to. While he continued to aver that slavery was wrong, he used that book to argue that whites were biologically and intellectually superior to blacks. That included literary talent..."

Whether or not you care for her works, she is a part of the Western literary canon.

JBI

12-07-2013, 01:13 AM

astrum

12-07-2013, 01:29 AM

JBI,

Specifically why did you find her poetry subpar--in comparison to other poets of her day? Was it the vocabulary? The meter? The themes? Etc?

And how much of her poetry actually praised Westerners for Christianizing black slaves? I thought that was just one of many, many themes.

Thanks in advance.

luhsun

12-07-2013, 01:42 AM

George washington only provided for slaves to be freed after his wife's death. It was martha who emancipated them earlier. Considering that william lee(the only slave he freed outright in his will) fought with and accompanied washington during the war, it was hypocritical of washington to only free lee after washington's death. One slave less would not cause economical hardship (that was one excuse given by washington apologists), and lee's meritorius service in the war would have been more than enough to silence prevailing social opposition.

JBI

12-07-2013, 01:48 AM

On being brought from AFRICA to AMERICA.

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither fought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

The monotonous nature of the line, with its forced rhymes and boring diction lacks none of the sparkle or charm one expects in a poem written in couplets. The style is rather terse, and the topic development is rather stagnant. Couplets are a difficult form, even for experienced poets, and these display a lack of proper manipulation in the verses - there is no movement, and it seems rather preachy and forced, rather than poetic. Jefferson's comparison to the Dunciad is making the point that we are reading the poet not the poem, and because the poet is black, we are more enthralled by the novelty of the fact that a black slave woman can write (or former slave) rather than the idea that the poems themselves are good. Now, the content may be progressive for the time - instead of conceiving of black people as animals that are beyond savior, she thinks they can be beaten into white-hood to an extent - the messages are nothing valuable to the contemporary reader who does not care about history and cares only about poetry. That she seems to understand herself as a sub-par species who needs to be enslaved, and then whitewashed is a disturbing idea. That we want to praise this as somehow god's gift to art is another horror altogether.

O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive
To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare
Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.
I cease to wonder, and no more attempt
Thine height t' explore, or fathom thy profound.
But, O my soul, sink not into despair,
Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand
Would now embrace thee, hovers o'er thine head.
Fain would the heav'n-born soul with her converse,
Then seek, then court her for her promis'd bliss.

Auspicious queen, thine heav'nly pinions spread,
And lead celestial Chastity along;
Lo! now her sacred retinue descends,
Array'd in glory from the orbs above.
Attend me, Virtue, thro' my youthful years!
O leave me not to the false joys of time!
But guide my steps to endless life and bliss.

Greatness, or Goodness, say what I shall call thee,
To give an higher appellation still,
Teach me a better strain, a nobler lay,
O thou, enthron'd with Cherubs in the realms of day!

This one just reads like a mediocre psalm and doesn't even match up with the one's from the Book of Common Prayer. If we were to compare this to, lets say, John Donne's Holy Sonnets, we would note who is by far the better poet - Batter My Heart is far better than this lengthy hymnal. The language is cliche and stagnant, and the topic is a snooze. The Christianity of the words somewhat betrays a successful brainwashing to the point where now the stolen woman must beg for God to correct her inefficiencies that justified her slaver's abduction.

Her "To His Excellency, General Washington " is even worse, which reads like a sort of bad fan-fiction. Seriously, the general feeling one gets by reading this is the only appeal of her poetry is her skin color, which makes her an icon of a time when people of her racial background were not writing, or able to write, because they were stolen and turned into animals so that their rich white owners could found a new country and prosper. Reading these poems churns the stomach, in that it shows the ultimate intellectual dehumanization of an individual, to the point where they need to be "Saved" by a white man, by virtue of his bringing them god to replace their heathenish ways. I feel sick reading these poems, to be honest, the same way I feel sick reading the history of how people treat each other.

ennison

12-07-2013, 08:36 AM

JBI

12-07-2013, 09:14 AM

But it is hymnal - which is where the thought and metre originates. I would be a lot less harsh than yourself and say it stands comparison well with anything similar and is better than a good deal of her contemporaries. Footnotes are often the most interesting thing on a page.

Yes, the same way Pope immortalized those people he ridiculed, Jefferson has immortalized Wheatley as a footnote: "18th century West-African Slave turned poet, noted for her religious themes and depictions of the good whitening can do on black people who she regarded as savages in need of white saviors."

Ok, fine, I am reductionist, but how many people go out and read Pope's victims? Not many, though the footnote notes who they were. If you want to call a poet who nobody really reads the most interesting thing on the page, then so be it. As it is nobody really likes 18th century verse (well, not many anyway in comparison to other genres, as these boards attest) and very few people like to read early American verse. Perhaps the race card may get a place is a marginal(ized) canon, simply by being one of the first African American authors to be educated enough to write, yet nobody will choose these works as a particular inspiration or read them for pleasure.

Now, for those of us who are interested in literature as something somewhat separate from "historical significance" the problem is apparent - her cultural importance is unquestionable as a symbol of the revolting culture of her time. There is historic value there, if only to affirm the racist nature of the all so noble founding fathers of the United States - but any other number of things could have been used instead. For instance, you could look at any number of ship records, logs, books, or basically any depiction of race relations in the 18th century to find out how twisted and terrible the world was (and in many places still is). So perhaps we can use these works against their intent to show how the white man can brainwash the victim into believing their sort of predicament is of their own fault - the same way someone beaten long enough will think they deserve to be hit. But for literature, there is very little there.

I compared it to a hymn, but it is a poem - it is also not a good representation of the genre, as I noted the Book of Common Prayer has far better works. The hymn is a very difficult form, and this is not a particularly good one. Now if you want to hold that sort of Ode to Washington as an example of good poetry, go ahead, but I will merely just agree with Jefferson that you have no actual standards of taste.

The late Roger Ebert toward Schneider's Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo had the remark: "Your movie sucks." I say the same to these poems "These poems suck". They aren't good, and have nothing to recommend them to the reader looking for verse for the sake of the verse, and not for historical relevance.

But I assume most people are playing more the devils advocate or didn't bother doing what I did and googling for her works.

ennison

12-07-2013, 02:10 PM

Well we have different tastes and I am sure yours is very good. However Wheatley's saviour was not "white" not even a little bit peely-wally and while lots of her lines are "conventional" that does not prevent her being a poet. I read The quote from Mr J somewhat differently from you. Indeed it says a good deal more about Jefferson than Wheatley and I feel it supports my crude assessment of his character. I didn't need to Google her poetry I have rather a good selection here at home in Darkest Scotland. I may not read her often but I do and I would recommend her as a valuable reading experience. I get what she means and I do not assign meaning in the way you do. She may be doing no more than pointing out the fairly mundane realisation that good can arise from bad and that many dark clouds have silver linings but still it is a reality and she felt it a personal reality.

qimissung

12-07-2013, 07:39 PM

Who is our? She is part of a historical footnote and more phenomenon than anything else. She was still a toss poet. Nobody will read her works for enjoyment and you cannot teach her to children lest you teach them about how good slavery was to the blacks - a narrative reinforced by such works up until the civil rights movements.

Read her stuff - it is as much a white narrative as anything else - and it's progressiveness lies in its popular interpretation that black people can be saved by being reformed into white people. So ok some progressives of her time would have jumped at this - the same bunch who insisted on beating god into their slaves, but there is nothing that can instill any sense of pride, only highlight the disgusting past that is American history.

I would however put a bigger caution. There is an undercurrent American mythos that stipulates people are 'saved' by their Americanization, and these poems merely preach to that.

Either way. It's mediocre verse. It rhymes, sure, which might have been a shock for the racist American whites who thought black people animals incapable of proper English, but it is hardly good poetry.

I have never heard of this mythos that stipulates people are "saved" by their Americanization. Ever.And when I took American Literature in college and we studied Wheatley's poem that idea was never mentioned once by the professor, nor does it, to my eye, seem to be a part of the text in any way, implicitly or explicitly. Yeah, we have the idea of the "American Dream" and Lady Liberty welcoming immigrants one and all, but saved? Uh uh. We leave that to God and Christianity, which I believe is what Wheatley is referring to, and in fact, in her poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America" she seems to be chastising those who look upon the Africans with a scornful and diabolic eye. She is reminding them that they, too, are worthy of going to heaven. Certainly it was mercy that brought her here, but that was God's mercy, not the white man's.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Phillis Wheatley

OrphanPip

12-07-2013, 10:56 PM

JBI

12-07-2013, 11:22 PM

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Lets go line by line then.

Twas Mercy that brought me from Pagan land - Mercy? Really? You mean a white guy and shackles who probably lost half his cargo in the ocean when it died of any number of ailments in the bottom of a boat, where slaves were tied together and piled - we call this god's mercy eh?

Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:

Ok, again here we have it - Thank you oh slave master white man, for allowing me into heaven, and giving me god, and Jesus. We are forever in your debt as you saved our souls from their heathenish ways.

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Yup, a tragedy - running around in Africa doing your own thing, and all that time, getting ready to go to hell. Oh how tragic, if only you had known. All you had to do is be dragged onto a boat, beaten, and scorned, and then you would be "redeemed".

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Right, you guys are garbage, but with enough beating, and slavery, even a Cain-black African can be made into a good christian - here again, the reaffirming of the white savior myth - bringing Christianity to the blacks, and therefore justifying enslavement, stealing and selling people, beating and raping people, and turning a fellow human being into cattle.

Sorry if I come out a bit cynical, but I would not want to teach a child that the white man saved them from hell, and therefore justify bringing them over as a slave from Africa.

Now, I did not say Jefferson was a good person, or even a particularly good critic. But these poems are merely not good, and have very little to offer besides this savior fantasy.

JBI

12-07-2013, 11:25 PM

Pope's victims are really unjustly maligned. Colley Cibber and Eliza Haywood are by no means the greatest luminaries of their age, but they are important enough that any half decent course in eighteenth century literature beyond the introductory level has to deal with them. Cibber was the premier author of sentimental comedies in England, and Haywood by far the most important author of amatory fiction.

Historical importance and the ability to be enjoyed by non-historians are two different things. Nashe was undoubtedly an important Elizabethan prose writer, but getting through his work is difficult. We must draw the line of what the public care about, and what the academic studies.

astrum

12-08-2013, 12:30 AM

JBI,

In all fairness, Wheatley wrote scores of other poems on a variety of themes.

On another note, was she not--in a sense--also a pioneer? As I understand, there were few female poets during her time--black or white.

qimissung

12-08-2013, 12:33 AM

Lets go line by line then.

Twas Mercy that brought me from Pagan land - Mercy? Really? You mean a white guy and shackles who probably lost half his cargo in the ocean when it died of any number of ailments in the bottom of a boat, where slaves were tied together and piled - we call this god's mercy eh?

Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:

Ok, again here we have it - Thank you oh slave master white man, for allowing me into heaven, and giving me god, and Jesus. We are forever in your debt as you saved our souls from their heathenish ways.

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Yup, a tragedy - running around in Africa doing your own thing, and all that time, getting ready to go to hell. Oh how tragic, if only you had known. All you had to do is be dragged onto a boat, beaten, and scorned, and then you would be "redeemed".

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Right, you guys are garbage, but with enough beating, and slavery, even a Cain-black African can be made into a good christian - here again, the reaffirming of the white savior myth - bringing Christianity to the blacks, and therefore justifying enslavement, stealing and selling people, beating and raping people, and turning a fellow human being into cattle.

Sorry if I come out a bit cynical, but I would not want to teach a child that the white man saved them from hell, and therefore justify bringing them over as a slave from Africa.

Now, I did not say Jefferson was a good person, or even a particularly good critic. But these poems are merely not good, and have very little to offer besides this savior fantasy.

Well when you put it that way, I see exactly where you're coming from...kidding!

I just don't see anything in this poem that refers in any positive way to the slavers that kidnapped here and brought her to America. Certainly she has enough intelligence to see a difference in her life as it was before and after her enslavement; nor is there anything here with which to draw a comparison between her before and after except this brief reference to her spiritual enlightenment. We have to remember that hers was an unusual enslavement. She became a part of the Wheatley family and was educated in Greek and Latin and had a great deal of freedom. Still, given all this, she seems to understand that she is a slave with all that that entails. It is her soul that she is concerned with and her spiritual afterlife. You seem to completely disregard the last two lines which seems a stringent criticism to me. It is a straightforward, rather cutting remark aimed at those who would enslave her. Maybe they succeeded on an earthly level, but they can't have her soul-that now (and thanks to her white slave owners, yes, thus rendering it fairly ironic) belongs to God, here and in the hereafter.

JBI

12-08-2013, 12:50 AM

I noted the last lines, they are of the thought - even though we are worse, we can be saved!. There is no indictment of the mistreatment of Africans at the hands of whites, in fact, she portrays them as saviors. Ok, fine, some people are religious and therefore can use the "afterlife" as a justification, but for us cynical, modern, and non-Christian readers, it seems a pretty sad excuse for enslavement. She is in a sense, praising her salvers and saviors. That much is clear, that this religious indoctrination is worth the cost of the voyage.

stlukesguild

12-08-2013, 12:58 AM

stlukesguild

12-08-2013, 01:04 AM

astrum

12-08-2013, 01:18 AM

On another note, was she not--in a sense--also a pioneer? As I understand, there were few female poets during her time--black or white.

What does that have to do with the artistic merits... or lack thereof... of her poetry? Are we then to assume that every "first" amounts to some sort of artistic innovation? The first Chinese Albino poet? The first Jewish/Latvian-American novelist?

"On another note" is the operative phrase.

Btw, while browsing Google Books (http://books.google.com/), I stumbled upon a book containing some of Wheatley's works. Feel free to look through it, and then arrive at your own opinion about her artistic merit:

Poems on Various Subjects (http://books.google.com/books?id=KLFBAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=phillis+wheatley&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Kf6jUrnrGcXqkAfPh4CoAw&ved=0CC8Q6wEwAA#v=onepage&q=phillis%20wheatley&f=false)

Here are some other books on Miss Wheatley from Google Books (https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=phillis+wheatley#hl=en&q=phillis+wheatley&tbas=0&tbm=bks&tbs=bkt:b)

.

qimissung

12-08-2013, 02:40 AM

"That much is clear, that this religious indoctrination is worth the cost of the voyage." I think I do agree with this,JBI, but the people of that time tended to believe in God in a way that we don't so much now. And remember again, that she was not beaten, that she could both read and write. I think it was illegal for slaves to be able to write in some states, but that reading was allowed specifically so that they could read the Bible. So very kind of them. In any event, she did, it seems, believe, but as far as praising the white man, I fail to see how she could be doing that when she is also criticizing them for their narrow view of black people. It is interesting to note her use of color in this poem. When she first refers to her people they are a "sable" race. The use of this word in connection with the Negro people seems to be a positive connotation as sable was then and still is a richly colored and highly prized fur, whatever color it may be (there are variations, some lighter, some darker). Her next and last use of the word in the second to the last line refers to them as she percieves her white slave owners to see her and other slaves, "black as Cain," thorough sinners all.

The lines come off suggesting that although there may be something inherently wrong or inferior in the Black race, he or she may be "refined"... purified... made right... like the white man... and join the angelic host.

I would not say wrong, Stlukes, but inferior, yes. But I think that is her perception of the white man's perception of her race. And not an incorrect one, from everything I've seen in movies, or understood from history. And so they may equally join the angelic host. Which was a rather brave statement coming from someone with so little status. But I just don't see any praise for her white masters in there. Even though I think she loved hers. She seems to be acknowledging the prejudice that the white people (of the United States) allowed themselves to feel, and which all these many years later are still struggling to free ourselves from. We are enslaved by it, so to speak.

JBI

12-08-2013, 05:09 AM

But we are not readers of historical context. Sure, it may tell us if we are American how violent and disgusting our country's origin was (which is true in part for Canada, but usually for different reasons), however it will not suggest any aesthetic or educational merit outside of its historical background.

I would not, lets say, teach a child this poem to stop them from being racist toward their classmate (you see, even though they are a sub-species, they can be made to be loved by god too, all you need to do is preach the word of god to them). Nor would I seriously consider reading these poems pleasurable, in the way one derives pleasure from the wit, or beauty of a verse (such as Pope's or the up and coming at the time Coleridge-Wordsworth duo).

When we read history we are doing something different than when we read literature. Reading history looks to understand the past as it was, whereas reading literature does not. There are any number of authors who are historically relevant, or can shed light on the past, but very few that can be read for the reasons outside of history - namely and primarily to be enjoyed.

Verse is not history, and history is not art. Sometimes there can be art in history, but that is not usually its focus. These poems are historically relevant in the history of "slave narrative" and "African American literary history" - true. These poems are good works that can be cherished - well, much harder to convince me of that one, I see very little here.

IF we wish to look at a different sort of take on this subject, William Blake wrote a much better poem.

JCamilo

12-08-2013, 05:12 AM

well, she seems like an american writer, not africa, what the Achebe of life would point in his attacks that there was no african literature, but western literature views on africa. She seems colonized. It is good to notice religious conversion was sometimes a solace, not a rebellion.

I saw this poem

HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies
She shines supreme, while hated faction dies:
Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd,
Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd;
Thus from the splendors of the morning light
The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.
No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain,
No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?
Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd
That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due,
And thee we ask thy favours to renew,
Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before,
To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore.
May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give
To all thy works, and thou for ever live
Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame,
Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name,
But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane,
May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain,
And bear thee upwards to that blest abode,
Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.

She seems aware of the negativity of her slavery, but she was also a woman of her time. There is no energy to face religion doctrination. But her rhymes, the couplets, do seem outdated, perhaps a product of her education, artificial. Made me think of brazilian poets of the period, Arcadisms, they also seemed too artificial copying european classicism which was outdated. We can see what Wordsworth-Coleridge are aiming and why Byron was actually good to return to it and seems original. Even Voltaire's couplet seems a bit like that, we save a few, but not all poem... perhaps maybe her case.

ennison

12-08-2013, 09:44 AM

No she doesn't talk or refer to them as her saviours and the Mercy is not theirs.

JBI

12-08-2013, 10:18 AM

No she doesn't talk or refer to them as her saviours and the Mercy is not theirs.

I've said all I need to say. Turn to the poem for my answer, it's all there. This debate is getting silly. I will just assume you are being either deliberately block-headed, or simply do not read what is on the page. I suspect it is the latter, but even so, even good readers have been known to remain stubborn in their judgment in the face of overwhelming evidence.

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too

If you wish to believe that God is the one who brings her from the pagan land, and god is the one who teaches that there is a god (meaning religious teaching and perhaps reading/writing, or basic cultural understanding) so be it. However, the poem suggests otherwise. To describe the voyage as mercy is the point I am going at. Even so, these sort of religious arguments do not do much to sway the unbeliever. I am Jewish, and if you wanted to call the Spanish Inquisition a mercy for forcing Jews from their heathenish ways, so be it, but I will hardly prescribe. The experience of slavery was far more severe, an experience, and as such, even I who am revolted by such Christian propaganda can only barely scratch the surface of an ingrained inferiority and dehumanization, not to mention cultural genocide and thorough indoctrination that can cause a black woman to praise the "mercy" of the slaver. Sure, she thinks we should be a bit fairer to our slaves, maybe, but that is almost secondary.

ennison

12-08-2013, 10:30 AM

Qmissuing understands what Wheatley is about. Even smart folk can get the wrong end of the stick JBI and this time you have but it is of no great significance as you will get the right end more often .

luhsun

12-08-2013, 10:33 AM

A slave bought at 7 by a wealthy tailor. Was she analogically a talented pet dog taught to write poems so that mary and her parents could have a black novelty to show to society? We modern people went gaga over a horse that could spell (although it was later proven a hoax).
On emancipation, she married a grocer. Living in the household of a successful tailor, it seemed to be most strange that someone who could be taught literature did not have any financial common sense.

So perhaps i can explain why jdi got it wrong this time. The poet was just an idiot savant who can copy writing poetry and probably never streetwise. A perpetual 12 year old who can innocently worship washington or think it was god's mercy that she and the blacks were in amerika!. She would not have the intellect to accept that it was the white slavers who enslaved her. Or maybe she did not have the moral courage- but moral courage, alas, is probably the attribute of privileged free men and women who could afford to be principled.

ennison

12-08-2013, 10:36 AM

A horse that could spell? I feel a cartoon coming on!

luhsun

12-08-2013, 10:48 AM

Sorry, i meant the hoax where the horse could do maths i.e. clever hans and the von olsten hoax

mona amon

12-08-2013, 10:49 AM

I'm with JBI on this one. You can't possibly teach this poem to kids in school, and that's because there is something in the sentiments expressed that makes the modern reader cringe. Heck, you can't even teach this in Sunday School!

astrum

12-08-2013, 11:14 AM

Eiseabhal

12-08-2013, 11:36 AM

I would hope no poet would be excluded from a Scottish school on the basis that she was a Christian - the underlying hostility to her here. If you want to find what Wheatley thought of slavery then you can read her letters. She had a tragic life ( Though I'm sure could she speak again she would disagree with that statement) and the tragedy was greatest in the years after she was emancipated. A very good poet without being one of the greats. More than a very good Christian poet. Her panegyric on Washington was run-of-the-mill. But then I guess the Americans DID think a lot of the cove.

mona amon

12-08-2013, 11:53 AM

Can we really judge her literary merit on the basis of a single poem?

.

I'm not doing that. I'm only expressing my opinion about this particular poem.

JCamilo

12-08-2013, 12:14 PM

It is not about being innocent. Someone talk about her importance as the first slave writting. But in the few poems I saw, JBI points seems to stand. Also, she does not sound as it. If she did, she would probally be more interesting. She seems constrained, as if writting about Africa from a library. She sounds like a dead white male. Even her religious musing - I do not doubt she is genuine, but the voice in her poems is dominated by her education and not the former-slavery identidy (i guess that is why blues sound more real 100 years in the future), but as I said, her religious feeling is also a bit constrained. Donne, Neruda, Whitman, Blake, Dickinson would appear to be more genuine.

Think of Kipling or Borges, as much doctrined by the metropolis they are, you can see their colony side to be genuine. This enrich their poems, give them a theme. Her style demands a theme. Pope survives because his witty, his irony and because he is building arguments (as false they can be). She is talking about feelings, but caged them, as it maybe she didnt learn something behind it and americans are still way behind to "guess" romanticism.

luhsun

12-08-2013, 12:34 PM

Pope suffered being a catholic in england, and tuberculosis made him a deformed little runt-the intellect goaded by anger at all the world's wrong..if we were to exclude the unhappy years after emancipation, she had the reverse fate.. hence the simplistic nature in her works... but then again, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing when theorizing psychologically

stlukesguild

12-08-2013, 12:54 PM

Qmissuing understands what Wheatley is about.

Whether Qimi is right or wrong as to what Wheatley's intention is is irrelevant to how her work is interpreted today and how good it is as poetry. Quite honestly I'll tend to trust JBI (who is one of the few obsessive readers of poetry her) when it comes to an insightful reading of poetry... as well as myself, for that matter.

stlukesguild

12-08-2013, 01:29 PM

It seems that some who are championing Wheatley as a poet are falling prey to the "cult of personality"... in other words, their knowledge of the poet's biography or personal history... as well as the history of slavery in general... are clouding over their ability to judge the poem purely on artistic grounds. I suspect that if JBI or someone else were to toss up a little known mediocre or worse poem... by another unknown (albeit white) poet... perhaps even by the likes of William McGonagall... there would still be an effort to defend it and interpret it in light of Wheatley's history.

JCamilo

12-08-2013, 03:01 PM

Frankly, make me think of South American Literature before Borges and Machado de Assis gave a real face to it (of course, a few others). If you get Horácio Quiroga - not poems, but short stories - you see he is a Poe-Maupassant copy. It was necessary Borges to add something new. Or Goncalves Dias compared to Claudio Manoel or Thomas Gonzaga. With Goncalves Dias there is a brazilian theme, despite the obvious european influence (even attempts to epic forms). That is my impression from a complete outsider viewer.

qimissung

12-08-2013, 03:03 PM

JBI

12-08-2013, 03:59 PM

I agree that her writing seems constrained. Very much so. As a work of art it is not something that is going to shed light on the still shadowy lives of those who were enslaved. Still I am curious as to why you don't think this should be taught in schools, Mona? Actually, I think the word "taught" is not useful in this context. But I think it would be very appropriate to introduce this poem at a juncture with the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. I think it would be a good starting place to discuss race and freedom and war and how those concepts have played out in our country.

By the way, I also don't think it's helpful to use the words "right" or "wrong" in this discussion. I'm really more for exploring issues and ideas.To examine and present an argument on literature one must look to the text and provide evidence from that text to support one's argument. I think that was done on all sides. I think that it's interesting to see that as Wheatley was unable to extricate herself from her own time, so do we find it difficult to do so. The idea of a discussion is not to prove someone right or wrong, but that you have a valid point. I also like the idea that it can challenge us to know what we believe and why. So, kudos all around for a spirited debate.

I personally meant taught to a child as a model poem, the same way we (hopefully) force kids to read the greats (though I would wish children to be taught to read classic poetry at a younger age, the way they more or less are taught in Japan or China, or even Vietnam), yet I could not put this poem in the same context without doing a disservice. I guess the big problem with the context is the material that actually exists.

Frankly put 18th century Black Experience seems rather limited in terms of depiction and composition. Very few African Slaves, or their descendents were able to be educated, and even fewer had the chance to write, especially at a time when parchment itself was a scarce thing. As for white experience or depiction, generally it is hard to find anybody who would fit our current description as model humanist.

Simply put, if I am looking for tolerance in literature, there seems very little development from Erasmus and Montaigne through to the modern era. We may find our "progressive for their time" heroes, in maybe Mark Twain, or Abraham Lincoln, or various other abolitionists, or suffragists, but from the perspective of today, we must always footnote these things with "though they were against slavery, they still regarded black skinned people as inferior.

The general biggest fear in Western cultural history of the past 500 years (the so called renaissance through discovery period) has been a perpetual fear of miscegenation, particularly of the idea of a white woman with anything other than a white man. This has often been extended religiously, or nationally, but the principle remains the same. Though the slave master may rape or even legally marry his slaves or a free black woman, a conceived child, both legally and socially would undoubtedly be regarded in racial lines as non-white. Such rhetoric resurfaces in this idea that Obama is an African American, when in reality, his father's African heritage is only part of his familial history that saw him educated mostly in South East Asia by a White mother and Asian stepfather. That he is extended as "African American" merely demonstrates the ingrained racial identity that pervades American concepts of identity. It would be far more interesting to suggest he is a "Multi-cultural" president, or even better, to ignore his ethnic background. But, western people remained fixated on this concept of race. This fear, however, can be extended to history, when considering those who we suggest as progressive are still light years away from what we deem "acceptable" today. That tolerance is at times a progressive thing is merely one of the graces of history, and a testament not to the benevolence of "white" culture, but to the struggle and determination of counterculture and civil rights development. Sure there were white milestones along the way - like Lincoln, but for the most part, whites remained, and for many still remain, inherently self-superior while considering racial issues.

These poems therefore can be read as somewhat progressive for their time - they show that an African American "can" be educated, and also by extension "can" be saved, or hold patriotic ties, and religious ties on par with her white slavers. Yet as a piece of literature, it fails for me to step out of its context, the same way reading much of historical material fails to excite the reader beyond its value in structuring an historical narrative. As Literary history, a genre very much apart from literary aesthetics, is considered, such works are ultimately important. The same can be said of the god-awful Confederation Poets of Canada (for the most part, though Lampman encourages some times) who are read in every Canadian Literary History book simply because they were writing English Canadian landscape verse first.

Now, we can ask our selves, what is the actual importance of historical significance in the evaluation of a poem for a common reader. I personally tend to think poems should speak for themselves outside of a context. Surely the scratches of Shakespeare biography we have give us very little in reading his sonnets. Likewise, knowing Wordsworth's biography does not particularly make his Ode any more or less profound. Knowing that he is eulogizing his brother in Elegiac Stanzas does not change or add much to the interpretation of the poem.

I think if a white man were to write most of these poems, they would be completely disregarded. But like Wheatley's contemporaries, we current readers seem to be thrilled by the spectacle of an African born former slave writing verse, as if it is somewhat shocking that such a thing is possible. With a white man's name beside the verse, these would be unpublishable. But because of the descent of their author, they become something of a collector's item.

astrum

12-09-2013, 02:48 AM

Below is the poem she wrote in praise of George Washington:

Celestial choir! enthron'd in realms of light,
Columbia's scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom's cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring's fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven's revolving light
Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!

The Goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel binds Her golden hair:
Wherever shines this native of the skies,
Unnumber'd charms and recent graces rise.

Muse! Bow propitious while my pen relates
How pour her armies through a thousand gates,
As when Eolus heaven's fair face deforms,
Enwrapp'd in tempest and a night of storms;
Astonish'd ocean feels the wild uproar,
The refluent surges beat the sounding shore;
Or think as leaves in Autumn's golden reign,
Such, and so many, moves the warrior's train.
In bright array they seek the work of war,
Where high unfurl'd the ensign waves in air.
Shall I to Washington their praise recite?
Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight.
Thee, first in peace and honors—we demand
The grace and glory of thy martial band.
Fam'd for thy valour, for thy virtues more,
Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!

One century scarce perform'd its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia's fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom's heaven-defended race!
Fix'd are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia's arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! Cruel blindness to Columbia's state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev'ry action let the Goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! Be thine.

She also wrote some poems eulogizing Benjamin Franklin, but those are lost to history.

JBI

12-09-2013, 04:12 AM

I already mentioned that work, which is god awful. Seriously, it isn't even worth commenting on how mediocre it is.

mona amon

12-09-2013, 09:06 AM

Still I am curious as to why you don't think this should be taught in schools, Mona? Actually, I think the word "taught" is not useful in this context. But I think it would be very appropriate to introduce this poem at a juncture with the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. I think it would be a good starting place to discuss race and freedom and war and how those concepts have played out in our country.

I found it very objectionable on many counts - the idea that it is OK to be kidnapped and enslaved because that is the only way she could have found God, that there's something wrong with her own land because it doesn't know the Christian God, the plea that they really aren't that bad after all because they can be refined by Christianity - maybe mine was a superficial reading, without taking into account historical background or anything, but I'm sure a class of present day children are going to read it pretty much the same way as me. There will be way too much explaining to do. Better to choose some other poem of hers.

She sounds like a dead white male.

LOL! After reading some of her verses I think you are spot on.

ennison

12-09-2013, 01:01 PM

Amongst us here are those who would have prefered her to remain a hewer of wood and dawer of water. By her assigning providential grace to her survival and escape from the worst of the disasters of this life which were her tragedy she emancipates herself and is emancipated for her soul becomes immediately the equal of any other and by doing so she reduces the oppressors (the sellers, traders, chieftains, sailors, purchasers, prosperous whites) to mere tools in the hands of a power they do not understand. There are those of us here who would prefer her to have been a downcast, miserable screecher, a drunken philanderer of words. Why? Because that is all their sensitive cynical guts can take. Not a great poet. No. But given the few opportunities that she might have expected from this life a fairly felicitous one. If she can command such irritable responses so long after her death amongst those politically correct types she must be a much better poet than I supposed and I supposed her merely effective at what she tried to do within a certain stereotypical poetry. Good for you Phillis. You would not subscribe to the idea that you were "doctrinated" but you would say converted. Good for you Phillis that you viewed your essential self as of equal importance to anyone. Good for you for causing our modern critics to be so agitated that you don't fit the miserable slave mould forever ranting and railing about obvious evils. Of which you were more than aware and had to face more than those who express superficial sympathy for you. Like you I am happy that I am not exposed to the druidic voodoo of my ancestors and their maledictive stones. Yup, Phillis, mundane as many of your lines are, they still have the power to arise the ire of the miserable, the rancour of the disdainful and the gorge of the obsessive. Good on you blone.

Frostball

12-09-2013, 01:40 PM

I don't see how she "becomes" the equal of everybody. Isn't it the idea that people should be treated equally by default, anyway? I know I'm again being anachronistic--people did not generally think this way back then. I think it's the whole aspect of her "becoming" equal because of, as you say, "providential grace" that is quite repugnant to a non-believer. You talk as if we would wish that she stay an inferior, but I would argue that she is the equally deserving of rights, privileges, and happiness whether she could read and write poetry, or whether she couldn't--and whether she was a christian, or wasn't.

By this same token of treating her and any other human being equally, we would judge any poetry she created with the same standard that we would use for any other human being. To do otherwise would be condescending, and an insult. So if she created poetry that we would, without considering her race or background, find repugnant/dull/less than satisfactory, the fact that she was a black woman and, as such, apparently a novelty, shouldn't matter.

JBI

12-09-2013, 01:43 PM

Since when was biography so important? Seriously, biography is not what I am discussing - simply put, you have your pick, you either read the poems, or you read the poet - if you read the poems then you will note they are mediocre, if you read the poet you have the conscious understanding that you are merely historicizing. Sure, she is progressive for her time, as everyone has noted, but that does not make her poems good for our time. I don't care too much about what she "may" have been then. I only discuss what is on the page, that is, the emotions and sentiments and sensation of reading the verses now. As such, they don't measure, and their thought process and progressive attitude for their time is lost on me, who neither believes in Christianity, nor personally cares if she believes herself "bettered" by being stolen into slavery.

astrum

12-09-2013, 01:44 PM

I don't see how she "becomes" the equal of everybody. Isn't it the idea that people should be treated equally by default, anyway? I know I'm again being anachronistic--people did not generally think this way back then. I think it's the whole aspect of her "becoming" equal because of, as you say, "providential grace" that is quite repugnant to a non-believer. You talk as if we would wish that she stay an inferior, but I would argue that she is the equally deserving of rights, privileges, and happiness whether she could read and write poetry, or whether she couldn't--and whether she was a christian, or wasn't.

By this same token of treating her and any other human being equally, we would judge any poetry she created with the same standard that we would use for any other human being. So if she created poetry that we would, without considering her race or background, find repugnant/dull/less than satisfactory, the fact that she was a black woman and, as such, apparently a novelty, shouldn't matter.

Frostball,

Have you read Wheatley's works?

Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley: A Native African and a Slave (http://books.google.com/books?id=W2M7AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=phillis+wheatley&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GgKmUoytItPQkQfyvICQCA&ved=0CDUQ6wEwAQ#v=onepage&q=phillis%20wheatley&f=false)

.

Frostball

12-09-2013, 01:47 PM

Just the two shown in this forum. But I don't see how any of what I said was predicated on anybody's poems. I think what I said is true of every artist. I was also in large part responding to ennison.

MorpheusSandman

12-09-2013, 03:12 PM

Remember, Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Sorry Qimi... the intention may be to chide those who underestimate the "Negros"... but I'm gonna have to wholly agree with JBI here. The lines come off suggesting that although there may be something inherently wrong or inferior in the Black race, he or she may be "refined"... purified... made right... like the white man... and join the angelic host.By and large I agree with you and JBI on this issue, but I would disagree with your reading of those final lines. Keep in mind that in the Christian doctrine ALL people are sinners and in need of "refinement," so I don't know if you can read those lines as implying that something is inherently wrong with the black race. I'd be more inclined to read it as her saying that blacks can be "saved'' and become Christians just like any white person could.

That said, I agree that the level of brainwashing shown in her poems is disturbing, and calls to mind any number of postcolonial criticisms of how colonialized people are often forced to conform to the colonizers' cultural standards (including religious beliefs), which can lead them to believe nonsense like their enslavement being a positive thing. Then again, a great many non-colonized Christians believe that everything that happens, no matter how bad, is part of "God's plan," and whether that's a preacher blaming hurricanes on God's vengeance against gay marriage, or a slave believing their enslavement was positive because it lead them becoming Christian, or someone believing that a chronic illness is there to "test/strengthen their faith" ala Job; they all amount to about the same mentality of, in Browning's phrase, "God's in his heaven; all's right with the world."

astrum

12-09-2013, 03:28 PM

You all might be interested in the following video:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/169288-1

JCamilo

12-09-2013, 03:56 PM

By and large I agree with you and JBI on this issue, but I would disagree with your reading of those final lines. Keep in mind that in the Christian doctrine ALL people are sinners and in need of "refinement," so I don't know if you can read those lines as implying that something is inherently wrong with the black race. I'd be more inclined to read it as her saying that blacks can be "saved'' and become Christians just like any white person could.

Nah, she addressed to all Christians, but did not talk about all Christians ('Listen Christians, negros", and not 'listen christians, we all") , aiming to black skinned people, not only saying "Negro" as relating to Cain, which is also a reference to black people only and was used as discrimination towards black skinned people who were "Cain" people (which Sin is not the universal Sin all christians have and you mention), included during slavery time and maybe she is making a reference to something she probally heard, since churches in all colonial world justified their exclusion of black christians on the ground of their "genetic cainite curse". We may see this as an argument to allow black christians be accepted in churches from which they were excluded. Sounds more "engaged" reading :D

MorpheusSandman

12-09-2013, 04:45 PM

In those lines she's talking about how many white Christians view black, and the specific disagreement is about whether or not the text is suggesting that there's something inherent wrong with the black race. The preceding lines read:

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."

She says "some view," not "I view," and the following exhortation for Christians to "remember" that blacks can be refined seems to contradict the mainstream notion that they couldn't be. I don't get from that where she's agreeing that there's something inherently wrong with the black race and, indeed, the way the text progresses ("some view... remember!") suggests the opposite.

stlukesguild

12-09-2013, 06:10 PM

Amongst us here are those who would have prefered her to remain a hewer of wood and dawer of water.

Oh please! Your argument is purely ignorant and you find yourself outmatched by those with a greater grasp of poetry... and perhaps simply logic... and so you turn to the race card and simply paint them all as racists because they fail to appreciate the artistic genius of a given poet? The reality is that the vast majority of all artists in every field are mediocre (at best) when compared with true artistic genius.

By her assigning providential grace to her survival and escape from the worst of the disasters of this life which were her tragedy she emancipates herself and is emancipated for her soul becomes immediately the equal of any other and by doing so she reduces the oppressors (the sellers, traders, chieftains, sailors, purchasers, prosperous whites) to mere tools in the hands of a power they do not understand.

Ah! So the "horrors" of her life... starting with being born an African woman... continuing through her experiences transported as mere cargo and made into a slave in a foreign land... all of these were but part of God's plan to raise her up and make her the equal of any other. Too bad God didn't see fit to make her a better writer as well.

There are those of us here who would prefer her to have been a downcast, miserable screecher, a drunken philanderer of words. Why? Because that is all their sensitive cynical guts can take. Not a great poet. No. But given the few opportunities that she might have expected from this life a fairly felicitous one. If she can command such irritable responses so long after her death amongst those politically correct types she must be a much better poet than I supposed and I supposed her merely effective at what she tried to do within a certain stereotypical poetry. Good for you Phillis.

"Not a great poet." Agreed. I would go further and suggest that nothing I have read convinces me she was a very good poet either. Better than the average adolescent, undoubtedly. Perhaps even better than many of our own poets here. But is that enough to make me want to spend more time with her? I think not. There are far too many better writers and there is far too little time.

You would not subscribe to the idea that you were "doctrinated" but you would say converted. Good for you Phillis that you viewed your essential self as of equal importance to anyone. Good for you for causing our modern critics to be so agitated that you don't fit the miserable slave mould forever ranting and railing about obvious evils. Of which you were more than aware and had to face more than those who express superficial sympathy for you. Like you I am happy that I am not exposed to the druidic voodoo of my ancestors and their maledictive stones. Yup, Phillis, mundane as many of your lines are, they still have the power to arise the ire of the miserable, the rancour of the disdainful and the gorge of the obsessive. Good on you blone.

:brickwall

Ecurb

12-09-2013, 08:20 PM

OrphanPip

12-09-2013, 08:38 PM

That said, I agree that the level of brainwashing shown in her poems is disturbing, and calls to mind any number of postcolonial criticisms of how colonialized people are often forced to conform to the colonizers' cultural standards (including religious beliefs), which can lead them to believe nonsense like their enslavement being a positive thing. Then again, a great many non-colonized Christians believe that everything that happens, no matter how bad, is part of "God's plan," and whether that's a preacher blaming hurricanes on God's vengeance against gay marriage, or a slave believing their enslavement was positive because it lead them becoming Christian, or someone believing that a chronic illness is there to "test/strengthen their faith" ala Job; they all amount to about the same mentality of, in Browning's phrase, "God's in his heaven; all's right with the world."

I don't think brainwashing is the appropriate word here. That eighteenth-century Puritan, American culture is as much hers as it is an external imposition. She is participating in a public discourse about race and religion, and interceding into that debate. It is far too dismissive to just denigrate what is likely a legitimate faith and sentiment given her worldview. Homi Bhabha's idea of hybridisation is important to this, because the effect of colonialism is not simply the imposition of one set of cultural beliefs onto another, subsequently erasing the legacy of the previous culture or oppressing it, but is a process of exchange after the initial imposition is completed. The colonizer and the colonized borrow from each other and the power dynamics are not always straightforward. Wheatley has had Christianity, in a sense, foisted onto her, but she is taking that Christianity and reshaping it for herself to find a place within this colonial discourse, it is a form of resistance too, and not a parroting of brainwashed ideals.

The poems are kind of meh though.

astrum

12-09-2013, 09:31 PM

The poems are kind of meh though.

Which of Wheatley's poems did you read?

JBI

12-10-2013, 12:33 AM

Stluke, you object to ennison admiring Wheatley’s poems because of details about her life – but then you argue that her poems lack literary value by offering details of other posters’ lives (“Your argument is purely ignorant and you find yourself outmatched by those with a greater grasp of poetry…”). You can’t have it both ways. If ennison’s praise of Wheatley’s poems is “ad hominem”, so is your argument against that praise. If the poems are mediocre, surely that must be determined by critiques of the poems, not by offering biographical details about Forum Members who agree with you (such as that JBI is one of the few obsessive poetry readers here).

You write, “The reality is that the vast majority of all artists in every field are mediocre (at best) when compared with true artistic genius.” That is likely. However, it also suggests that it is not the work per se that is important – but the artist. Works of art have emotional resonance, or beauty (among other qualities). They may be the product of genius (false or true, as Yeats might say). But you object to ennison’s using biography to judge the quality of a poem – and then resort to the same thing. Genius is a characteristic of a person– not a quality of a work of art.

You are confusing the form with the message. St. Lukes is engaging in the argument, not trying to justify even discuss Wheatley by that point. The actual discussion for the most part is not about how good or bad a poet she is, as with the consensus of the majority, she is not the best of poets, and with the appeal to authority (me of course) she is not a good poet, but rather the idea that because of historical value the work should be viewed as such. That St. Lukes throws in some ad hominem content is beside the point that the poetry is inferior, and that the admirer, like Wheatley's contemporaries, is reading the poet and not the poems, and holding the "novelty" of the work as its lure, namely verses in a historical context by a marginalized poet.

You cannot use biography to judge if a poem is good or bad. That just assumes that people's lives automatically hold artistic value, which is false. Many great poets lived boring lives, yet their poetry is intensely deep and profound. Examples include ones like Emily Dickinson, who barely even went outside.

JBI

12-10-2013, 12:41 AM

I don't think brainwashing is the appropriate word here. That eighteenth-century Puritan, American culture is as much hers as it is an external imposition. She is participating in a public discourse about race and religion, and interceding into that debate. It is far too dismissive to just denigrate what is likely a legitimate faith and sentiment given her worldview. Homi Bhabha's idea of hybridisation is important to this, because the effect of colonialism is not simply the imposition of one set of cultural beliefs onto another, subsequently erasing the legacy of the previous culture or oppressing it, but is a process of exchange after the initial imposition is completed. The colonizer and the colonized borrow from each other and the power dynamics are not always straightforward. Wheatley has had Christianity, in a sense, foisted onto her, but she is taking that Christianity and reshaping it for herself to find a place within this colonial discourse, it is a form of resistance too, and not a parroting of brainwashed ideals.

The poems are kind of meh though.

Homi Bhabha is a third rate critic and his idea of hybridisation is mere hogwash for conflating the understanding of power. Here, it being used, shows that she is in a sense changing the discourse, which is true, but this is more of a concern for historical reading. If you want to call this resistance, well, so be it, but then every single kind of exchange in words and letters can be called "resistance". I am of the mind that she is not exactly resisting in the sense that she is critical, but merely is playing to a white audience who enjoys a sort of novelty in its own superiority.

In that sense, she could also be read as reaffirming the colonial discourse by giving more credit to her captors, who by all means should be regarded as disgusting, and reshaping them as the messengers of god on earth, spreading the truth and love around. Sure, we could say she allows black people to be saved, but this was hardly a new idea. Slaves since the 17th century were indoctrinated into religion. Here however, we see the use of religion, which is a colonial imposition, being showcased as a saving grace bestowed on the black slaves by the benevolent white man. And though some may consider the black race beyond saving, with the right whitewashing, indoctrination, and beating, they also can be saved.

For the country priding itself on liberty and justice and freedom, such ideas are radical in their granting such colonial-slavers a special place as the godly messengers. You may say she is bending the discourse, but I would argue she merely reinforces the self-aggrandizing myth the white reader will already know. So lets pat our selves on the back because, from their perspective, they trained the monkey how to read and write, by the grace of god.

OrphanPip

12-10-2013, 01:24 AM

Homi Bhabha is a third rate critic and his idea of hybridisation is mere hogwash for conflating the understanding of power. Here, it being used, shows that she is in a sense changing the discourse, which is true, but this is more of a concern for historical reading. If you want to call this resistance, well, so be it, but then every single kind of exchange in words and letters can be called "resistance". I am of the mind that she is not exactly resisting in the sense that she is critical, but merely is playing to a white audience who enjoys a sort of novelty in its own superiority.

In that sense, she could also be read as reaffirming the colonial discourse by giving more credit to her captors, who by all means should be regarded as disgusting, and reshaping them as the messengers of god on earth, spreading the truth and love around. Sure, we could say she allows black people to be saved, but this was hardly a new idea. Slaves since the 17th century were indoctrinated into religion. Here however, we see the use of religion, which is a colonial imposition, being showcased as a saving grace bestowed on the black slaves by the benevolent white man. And though some may consider the black race beyond saving, with the right whitewashing, indoctrination, and beating, they also can be saved.

I think you are being far too reductive about what is being expressed in the poem. First, the mere act of speaking for herself is an act of resistance, by participating in the discourse it changes the dynamics radically. It shifts the focus from being not simply a debate between white people about whether or not they are "saving" those they enslave, but changes it into a dialogue between a Black Christian and a White Christian audience. And note that not everyone believed in converting slaves to Christianity, or that it was possible for Black people to become Christians, for reasons like the commonly held belief in the mark of Cain on them. Her assumption of Christian authority is itself an act of resistance in this context.

Calling her brainwashed infantilizes a person who was by all accounts exceptionally well educated not just for a Black woman, but for anyone at the time. The role of colonial powers in bringing Christianity (or Islam) to clonized people remains a controversial subject in much post-colonial literature, and that is because it is a difficult legacy to untangle. She takes a position in that poem, and it is one that addresses white critics of the legitimacy of her Christianity, and though there is an element of this that is unfortunately accepting of the legacy of slavery. There is definitely much of this that pandered to the progressive weak-abolitionist of 18th century Massachusetts, but it also challenged a more aggressive kind of outright scornful racism.

People are reading the poem out of its context, expecting Wheatley to challenge those who were her allies in that society rather than challenge what very well could have been a more pressing concern for her, the debate about her status as a Christian.

JCamilo

12-10-2013, 01:34 AM

To be honest, I think she is being ironic in that poem. Not sheepish. However, the level of her doctrination is show in how she does it, the way she writes does not express anything of african culture, but european (she has many poems with endless greek-roman references that sounds more awkward. Christianism at least was adopted by african-americans, so it is expected.But singing to the muses is way too much).

Ecurb

12-10-2013, 01:39 PM

You are confusing the form with the message. St. Lukes is engaging in the argument, not trying to justify even discuss Wheatley by that point. The actual discussion for the most part is not about how good or bad a poet she is, as with the consensus of the majority, she is not the best of poets, and with the appeal to authority (me of course) she is not a good poet, but rather the idea that because of historical value the work should be viewed as such. That St. Lukes throws in some ad hominem content is beside the point that the poetry is inferior, and that the admirer, like Wheatley's contemporaries, is reading the poet and not the poems, and holding the "novelty" of the work as its lure, namely verses in a historical context by a marginalized poet.

You cannot use biography to judge if a poem is good or bad. That just assumes that people's lives automatically hold artistic value, which is false. Many great poets lived boring lives, yet their poetry is intensely deep and profound. Examples include ones like Emily Dickinson, who barely even went outside.

This is a complicated issue. I certainly agree that Wheatley’s poems do not appeal to my taste – but that doesn’t prove her poetry is “inferior” in general. “Inferior” is a comparative term. Inferior to what? American poetry in the 18th century has not survived in the popular imagination. I can’t think of a single “superior” American poet prior to the 1800s, and before 1850 perhaps only Poe and Longfellow qualify (Whitman wrote a few poems prior to 1850, but “Leaves of Grass” came later).

If (as might be the case, but I haven’t the education to judge) Wheatley’s poems are NOT “inferior” compared to those of her American contemporaries (but are inferior compared to those of Brits or later Americans), then it’s reasonable to look at them as having not only historical value in the sense of reflecting the social and cultural issues of the time, but value in terms of art history as well. After all, we study Medieval painters who hadn’t learned modern techniques, and whose paintings seem primitive to our more modern tastes. Indeed, we have to learn to appreciate their talents, because to our eyes, used to modern perspective (as just one example), the paintings sometimes seem amateurish. Mightn’t the same be true of Wheatley? Her awkwardly formal phrasing jars our modern ears, just as the lack of perspective in medieval painting jars our modern eyes.

In addition, although some critics object to the “personal heresy”, not everyone agrees. Perhaps biographical details are irrelevant to the quality of the poem, but enjoyment of poetry often involves seeing the world through the eyes of the poet – and certainly seeing the world through the eyes of a slave might be enlightening to some readers (whether the poet was ACTUALLY a slave or not). Take a simple and famous poem like this, by Robert Herrick:

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
Oh how that glittering taketh me!

I don’t remember if Herrick was actually in love with a girl named Julia (I think he may have been), but our enjoyment of the poem consists largely of thinking, “With what excited and loving eyes the poet must have seen his Julia!” Phrases like “Then, then” and “Oh” invite us to share in and identify with this breathless excitement. So the quality of the poem is essentially “biographical” in one sense (although, of course, it would be equally good if Julia were real or if she were imaginary).

Similarly we read:

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither fought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

If there is a value to this poem, it is in its invitation to identify with a faith that sees enslavement as a mercy, because the temporary misery is balanced by enlightenment and eternal salvation. To our modern, atheist sensibilities such identification may not mean much – but it might have been more appealing to 18th century Americans. Is enlightenment worth suffering for? Wheatley thinks it is (or so the poem suggests).

By the way, if you think Emily Dickinson led a boring life, I recommend you read “Lives Like Loaded Guns”, a biography of Dickinson by Lyndall Gordon. Gordon proposes that Dickinson’s reclusive lifestyle may have resulted from her epilepsy, which Gordon thinks she had as a result of some poems, letters, and some prescriptions for (ineffective) drugs that were filled for her. Epilepsy, with its loss of control, was shameful in the 19th century, especially for women.

Gordon weighs in on the “Master” letters, erotic and masochistic fantasies. There was no actual “master” in Dickinson’s life – Gordon dismisses each possible candidate. There are no definitive answers about Dickinson’s love life – she had a deep emotional and intellectual attachment to her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, but the speculation that they were lovers is unconfirmed. Emily did have erotic attachments to several men, including, late in her life, Judge Otis Lord, to whom she wrote: “"I will not wash my arm; 'twill take your touch away." Boring?

I agree, however, that although Dickinson’s life may have influenced her poetry, the quality of her poems needs no justification through biographical detail (unlike, perhaps, the quality of Wheatley’s poems).

MorpheusSandman

12-10-2013, 02:21 PM

I don't think brainwashing is the appropriate word here... You make some good points, Pip, but are perhaps glossing over a bit just how much of these Western values were, indeed, forced upon her. Hybridization has some legitimacy when discussing a work like, say, The Wife of Bath in Brixton Market (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiyKat1QzbQ) where you have a clear mixture of traditions from the colonizers (Chaucer's Wife of Bath) and the colonized (the language). In Wheatley's work, the form is entirely that of the colonizers, and while one can argue that Wheatley is arguing against some of the more extreme views against her race (that blacks bear the mark of Cain and can't be saved, "civilized," etc.), she's still, by and large, praising the colonizers for enslaving and bringing Christianity and culture to her. The opening of that poem is nothing but praise, and the ending is only critical of the most extreme negative views. This isn't much of a power struggle, really, it's her saying "we aren't completely evil and beyond saving," while ignoring whether they were in need of saving/refining in the first place. I still say that in having Christianity forced upon her, and in coming to believe that this religion is worth being enslaved, shows signs of brainwashing. As a paraphrase of the saying goes, people who believe absurdities can justify atrocities.

astrum

12-10-2013, 03:47 PM

Bear in mind that Wheatley's situation greatly differed from that of most other black slaves. Her owners recognized her intellectual promise, and nurtured it. Perhaps that partly explains her pollyannish views toward enslavement and Europeans.

Had her bondage resembled that of most black slaves, then her writings (if they were to exist) would probably not be as disturbing to modern readers.

As an aside, Wheatley's final years were marked by tragedy, and she died at a very tender age. I also believe that her children preceded her in death.
.

stlukesguild

12-10-2013, 06:48 PM

If (as might be the case, but I haven’t the education to judge) Wheatley’s poems are NOT “inferior” compared to those of her American contemporaries (but are inferior compared to those of Brits or later Americans), then it’s reasonable to look at them as having not only historical value in the sense of reflecting the social and cultural issues of the time, but value in terms of art history as well.

That would seem to be one and the same thing... in that if a work of art has only value within the history of art... but not as an actual work of art... we are still only valuing it for its historical value. I'd be hard pushed to think of such an example... although the many mediocre copies of lost Greek masterworks such as Aphrodite Knidos or the Doryphoros of of Polykleitos.

After all, we study Medieval painters who hadn’t learned modern techniques, and whose paintings seem primitive to our more modern tastes. Indeed, we have to learn to appreciate their talents, because to our eyes, used to modern perspective (as just one example), the paintings sometimes seem amateurish. Mightn’t the same be true of Wheatley? Her awkwardly formal phrasing jars our modern ears, just as the lack of perspective in medieval painting jars our modern eyes.

That analogy is a real stretch. The art of the Medieval sculptors or painters hardly seems "amateurish" to anyone versed in Western Art History... at least not since the onset of Modernism... which challenged the long-held Post-Renaissance standards of "realism" in painting... including linear and aerial perspective. Most art demands that the audience invest some effort in coming to terms with the standards, goals, values, etc... of the period/culture in which the work of art was created. For those who have made such an effort, there is no sense that Medieval art is some amateurish precursor to the more advanced techniques of later artists in rendering the illusion of real form and space. The literary/poetic language in which Wheatley works is not something foreign to most serious readers of Western poetry. There are plenty of contemporary poets of the era that in no way strike the reader as crude or amateurish.

In addition, although some critics object to the “personal heresy”, not everyone agrees. Perhaps biographical details are irrelevant to the quality of the poem, but enjoyment of poetry often involves seeing the world through the eyes of the poet – and certainly seeing the world through the eyes of a slave might be enlightening to some readers (whether the poet was ACTUALLY a slave or not). Take a simple and famous poem like this, by Robert Herrick:

WHENAS in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
Oh how that glittering taketh me!

I don’t remember if Herrick was actually in love with a girl named Julia (I think he may have been), but our enjoyment of the poem consists largely of thinking, “With what excited and loving eyes the poet must have seen his Julia!” Phrases like “Then, then” and “Oh” invite us to share in and identify with this breathless excitement. So the quality of the poem is essentially “biographical” in one sense (although, of course, it would be equally good if Julia were real or if she were imaginary).

The question isn't whether biography is part of what we may appreciate in a work of art. But it should not impact the judgment of the aesthetic merits of a work. Richard Wagner was a true ***. Carlo Gesualdo and Caravaggio were both murderers. But they were also brilliantly innovative artists. The fact that Artist X suffered or was a nice guy/girl or created works of art championing political/social issues that we agree with should have nothing to do, initially, with our judgment of their artistic merit.

Ecurb

12-10-2013, 07:22 PM

That analogy is a real stretch. The art of the Medieval sculptors or painters hardly seems "amateurish" to anyone versed in Western Art History... .

Well -- that was my point. To anyone versed in the history of 18th century American poetry, Wheatley's poems might not seem amateurish. I wouldn't know (and I doubt many people here would know) because 18th century American poets are not widely read any more. I'll grant that Wheatley's poetry seems crude to me, but so did Medieval painting until I learned a little more about it, and accustomed my eye to looking at it.

The question isn't whether biography is part of what we may appreciate in a work of art. But it should not impact the judgment of the aesthetic merits of a work. Richard Wagner was a true ***. Carlo Gesualdo and Caravaggio were both murderers. But they were also brilliantly innovative artists. The fact that Artist X suffered or was a nice guy/girl or created works of art championing political/social issues that we agree with should have nothing to do, initially, with our judgment of their artistic merit.

Your examples don't serve to make your point (surely paintings by a murderer might be MORE interesting than those painted by a suburban housewife, if we are interested in biography, although I believe Caravaggio killed a man in a street brawl, and "murderer" might be extreme -- by modern standards manslaughter seems more appropriate). In any event, I agree IN GENERAL that the artistic merit of a work is intrinsic to the work. But it's complicated. Modern poems by suicides like Hart Crane or Sylvia Plath or Weldon Kees do stand on their own, but some of them gain poignancy from our knowledge of the fate of their authors. Auteur critics (in film) prefer to watch a lousy movie by a great director than a good one by a mediocre director -- because the brilliant director can offer "personal expression" even in a bad film, and because the bad film may offer insights into the director's other works. In a sense, this involves having a "biographical" interest in the artist. Also, when you say, "(biography) should not impact the judgment of the aesthetic merits of a work," why "should" it not? If biographical details about the author (think of some of Helen Keller's essays, for example) add to the readers' interest, what's so horrible about that? Surely anything that enhances the impact of a work of art is a good thing, isn't it?

luhsun

12-10-2013, 07:40 PM

Instead of masturbating (quoting jdi) about the importance/unimportance of biographical information vs aesthetic, look at the price the bourgeois place on the works -where both complement each other. A well crafted birkin handbag can be auctioned at astronomical price- and if you can produce authentic proof it belonged to let's say, nelson mandela, and let's imagine that it was bought for his wife the moment he was freed,then the price would be staggering.

qimissung

12-10-2013, 08:48 PM

stlukesguild

12-10-2013, 10:33 PM

To anyone versed in the history of 18th century American poetry, Wheatley's poems might not seem amateurish. I wouldn't know (and I doubt many people here would know) because 18th century American poets are not widely read any more. I'll grant that Wheatley's poetry seems crude to me, but so did Medieval painting until I learned a little more about it, and accustomed my eye to looking at it.

But why does it need to be an American poet, specifically? Again, this seems to be placing the history/biography before the art. Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Samuel Danforth are likely no better than Wheatley... and likely only survive (as names) due to their historic importance in the history of American Literature... not as Literature. I can see reading such as part of a formal study of nascent American poetry or literature... but not for pleasure as poetry... while I would not suggest the same of Herrick, Marvell, Milton, Byron, Blake, Wordsworth, Jean de La Fontaine, Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi, etc...

Your examples don't serve to make your point... surely paintings by a murderer might be MORE interesting than those painted by a suburban housewife...

Yet quite honestly some of the greatest artists led rather mundane lives. Such is surely true of most of the Impressionists, Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, etc... The "cult of personality" or obsession with biography is what leads to the fixation on figures like Van Gogh, Picasso... and more recently, Leonardo da Vinci without any real appreciation or grasp of their artistic achievements.

But it's complicated. Modern poems by suicides like Hart Crane or Sylvia Plath or Weldon Kees do stand on their own, but some of them gain poignancy from our knowledge of the fate of their authors. Auteur critics (in film) prefer to watch a lousy movie by a great director than a good one by a mediocre director -- because the brilliant director can offer "personal expression" even in a bad film, and because the bad film may offer insights into the director's other works.

The same exists in the visual arts. Museums and collectors clamor after a mediocre or even bad painting by a famous artist while often ignoring a brilliant painting by a less-well-known artist. I fully agree that academics especially may wish to know even the mediocre juvenalia by Mozart or Van Gogh in order to garner a full picture of their development... but I am not likely to judge an early Mozart symphony or early Van Gogh painting as a masterpiece or great work of art based upon the biography... let alone continue to turn to such for pleasure. This entire debate began with a question as to why Jefferson dismissed Wheatley's poetry... with the insinuation that such judgment could only be the result of racism... not simply an expression of critical judgment.

If biographical details about the author (think of some of Helen Keller's essays, for example) add to the readers' interest, what's so horrible about that? Surely anything that enhances the impact of a work of art is a good thing, isn't it?

But do these details always "enhance" the impact of the art... or result in a misinterpretation placing biography and "the cult of personality" before what is actually found in the work?

MorpheusSandman

12-10-2013, 11:55 PM

Auteur critics (in film) prefer to watch a lousy movie by a great director than a good one by a mediocre director -- because the brilliant director can offer "personal expression" even in a bad film, and because the bad film may offer insights into the director's other works. In a sense, this involves having a "biographical" interest in the artist.The first sentence here is correct and, as Lukes said, happens in other mediums as well. The second sentence, however, is wrong. When people are interested in the lesser works of artists it is often to gain an insight into their thematic or formal development and such things are very much inherent in the work itself. This isn't "biography," it's not about knowing details about the artist's life and thinking that those life details make the work more interesting, it's still putting the emphasis on what is in the work itself. So it's important to distinguish having an interest in all of an artist's works because of your interest in their life (biographical) VS having an interest in all of an artist's works because of your interest in their work.

But do these details always "enhance" the impact of the art... or result in a misinterpretation placing biography and "the cult of personality" before what is actually found in the work?The former is an entirely subjective thing. I've only ever cared about biography to the extent that it can yield insights into why a work is how it is, but I also think such insights are usually very basic and limited; knowing that Wagner had a hellacious journey on a ship at a very dramatic point in his life may help explain why he was inspired to write The Flying Dutchman, and his reading/interest in Schopenhauer did very much seem to influence the direction of his later works, but that's really just a starting point. For many, though, an interesting life DOES make every aspect of an artist's work more interesting, and I'm with Ecurb in claiming that there's nothing wrong with that. People like art for different reasons, and I don't see much cause for claiming one reason is inherently superior than another.

As for the issue of misinterpretation because of biography, that's another matter entirely (Misinterpretation being quite different than qualitative evaluation). Misinterpretation can come from pretty much any angle, though, including those that put emphasis squarely on the work itself. As much as I love the formalism of the new critics, their efforts to claim that the text itself could provide a means for perfect interpretation/understanding on its own was pretty much a failure, as every theoretical school afterwards showed how such things were always mediated by various contexts and could be easily blown apart. The way I see it, most every critical/theoretical school can potentially lend insight into a work and lead to misinterpretation, and biography is no different in that respect.

JBI

12-11-2013, 12:17 AM

And what of the paleolithic cave paintings such as those in Lascaux, France? Or the Egyptian artwork found in the pyramids? Or the 'shifting perspective' of Chinese art? While I understand some of your negative opinions on Wheatley's poetry, I still find it has value. We will never know more of Wheatley's beliefs than we do now, but I think it's worth considering that human beings cannot work or create outside of the context of their time. A few manage and these we refer to as genius.

Wheatley was, in effect, a person who became a part of a "brave new world"-not that we were so wonderful, because obviously we weren't-but it's one that she was rudely thrust into and it was what she knew. And she was among a handful of black people who struggled to create within the confines of their slavery. Within the boundaries of her background, her education, she was expressing an opinion and it wasn't positive. And honestly, so what if she honored the white people who cared for her? She was fortunate and they did care. It was a skewed relationship, and I do wonder what she thought about it all after they died and she could no longer attract the attention of a publisher. Given all of that I still like the defiance of those last two lines.

Chinese artwork has always been prized in the west, even when Chinese people themselves were not. The major problem is that most of the high quality works, outside of the painting genre, are made famous by their commitment to established forms that more or less remained rigid. If we take painting as an example, Timothy Brook is about to publish a book about how tastes in Chinese painting became cemented since the end of the Ming by a group of leading collectors (he namely studies Li Rihua) who judged by their means of deciding whether a work met their aesthetic criteria of something worth buying.

But take a look at the fake market as a sort of interesting comparison. China abounds in fakes and forgeries, but so does the west. When you find out something is fake, what generally do you do with it? And what does that mean to the art work itself.

St. Lukes is fond of mentioning how the review of Rembrandt showed people that many of the masterworks were by others, and subsequently led to them being taken off of display. Is that not pure hypocrisy? Either the art is good and deserves display, or it isn't - the actual authorship is a subsequent question.

We are all rooted in this madness of authorship obsession. But I worry that nobody is looking at the work behind the authors - namely we should be discussing the functionality of the piece in the context of a literary tradition, which, surprisingly, allows works such as Homer composed over 2500 years ago to still have an audience today.

The form, if you will, is more of a fashion than anything else. Hexameter, Pentameter, sonnets, ballads all are forms, or vehicles, for delivering the poetic experience. Though these vehicles change, the good and the bad of poetry have remained rather constant, with even the most base of critics recognizing that there is something in the manipulation of a form that creates what we call good poetry.

Now, if we want to take closed couplets as a form of discussion, and ask ourselves if Wheatley was good with them, compared to her contemporaries, so be it. Such a discussion I am sure will only suggest she wrote bad poems, which is quite reasonable, since most poets were bad, and would also explain why Jefferson hated her poems, and compared her to Pope's victims, who at their time (According to Pope) were praised above their worth. Was he racist? Of course, but that did not necessarily form his dismissal of her work, it maybe only led to his dismissal of her "achievements" in learning how to read and write, that so many of her contemporaries felt almost unimaginable.

JBI

12-11-2013, 12:21 AM

The first sentence here is correct and, as Lukes said, happens in other mediums as well. The second sentence, however, is wrong. When people are interested in the lesser works of artists it is often to gain an insight into their thematic or formal development and such things are very much inherent in the work itself. This isn't "biography," it's not about knowing details about the artist's life and thinking that those life details make the work more interesting, it's still putting the emphasis on what is in the work itself. So it's important to distinguish having an interest in all of an artist's works because of your interest in their life (biographical) VS having an interest in all of an artist's works because of your interest in their work.

The former is an entirely subjective thing. I've only ever cared about biography to the extent that it can yield insights into why a work is how it is, but I also think such insights are usually very basic and limited; knowing that Wagner had a hellacious journey on a ship at a very dramatic point in his life may help explain why he was inspired to write The Flying Dutchman, and his reading/interest in Schopenhauer did very much seem to influence the direction of his later works, but that's really just a starting point. For many, though, an interesting life DOES make every aspect of an artist's work more interesting, and I'm with Ecurb in claiming that there's nothing wrong with that. People like art for different reasons, and I don't see much cause for claiming one reason is inherently superior than another.

As for the issue of misinterpretation because of biography, that's another matter entirely (Misinterpretation being quite different than qualitative evaluation). Misinterpretation can come from pretty much any angle, though, including those that put emphasis squarely on the work itself. As much as I love the formalism of the new critics, their efforts to claim that the text itself could provide a means for perfect interpretation/understanding on its own was pretty much a failure, as every theoretical school afterwards showed how such things were always mediated by various contexts and could be easily blown apart. The way I see it, most every critical/theoretical school can potentially lend insight into a work and lead to misinterpretation, and biography is no different in that respect.

By people he means scholars, who, arguably, are not concerned with aesthetics but with either history or theory (As almost all critics fall within these two categories). An historian's job is to narrate development, or forms of historical progression (perhaps circular). This is not the common viewing pattern of a normal viewer.

The amateur, if you will, is actually the main audience, as they are the true "judges" of a work. The scholar's job is not to really enjoy things - they are paid to organize, and aesthetic judgment may not be their only criteria, and often isn't. Aesthetics are not the main preoccupation of an academy focused on history, or pseudo-philosophies.

I can think of any number of "post-colonial" books that I was forced to read that simply sucked, but were taken up for theoretical value. Anybody who has read Jamaica Kincaid will have a sense of what I mean - she is horrible, and the most loathsome of people, writing about how she hates her mom because her mom tried to do what was best for her.

MorpheusSandman

12-11-2013, 01:17 AM

JBI

12-11-2013, 02:35 AM

JBI, I was replying to two different posters, and since you've quoted my entire post I can't really figure out what part you're referring to or whom the initial "he" is referring to or even what "people" is referring to (since neither poster said "people"). Despite the confusion, I'll say that it would depend on what you mean by "scholars." People like Vendler, Levis, Ricks, and Bloom could be considered scholars, and yet they are/were very much concerned with aesthetics and value judgments. While it's true many scholars are more concerned with history or pseudo-philosophical theory, there are many who are not; and while it's also true that the "scholar's job" is not to enjoy things, most tend to focus on what things they enjoy. Some enjoy history or theory more so than art, and, to them, art then becomes merely something they incorporate into their writings on history and theory; while others enjoy art more so than history and theory, and only read history or theory to the extent it can help illuminate the art they care about.

As for Levis and Vendler, they are not so much to my understanding discussing aesthetics as engaged in debates on composition. The field of rhetoric, which is generally how I see Vendler, is very much concerned with such notions, and her audience is not specifically those who read, but those who discuss how to read, and how the text works. Leavis is a dated example but even he was not so much concerned with "aesthetics" as with his own discursive historicization (which he wrote much about) and his own theoretical preoccupations. Bloom's main research books are more scholarship and less aesthetic ranting, and he has an undercurrent of a theoretical understanding and debate of literature running up to the point where he stopped writing relevant books. If you browse for instance, Blake's Apocalypse, Shelley's Myth Making, or The Visionary Company, you will see what I mean. His other works are not really scholarship, in that they don't really produce much in terms of argument or research. He rather is assembling things for the sake of it, and his preoccupation is with organization. That's why his books have become rather irrelevant today, because the theoretical developments in literature have become ignored, and now his whole anti-theory stuff is becoming dated.

Now, the idea of aesthetics is two fold - one is the theory approach, where you ask why is something beautiful, and you use philosophy to debate it. The second is the history approach, where you ask why was something considered beautiful, etc.

Scholars are rather restricted to these models, and the trend now has been heading toward history for a while, as it gives a bit more grounding to the ideas of literature as a progression. Scholars are not as preoccupied with enjoying literature, as they are with studying it. So you will see in your library most things are catalogue-style books of debates on moon images in Shakespeare, or the depiction of music in Elizabethan theatre.

The real major works of literary studies are incredibly restricted in audience - they are usually large scale research on minute things. The English department's what we should read debates are actually rather minimal. Most of the scholarship is on exhausting the text through various theoretical and historical perspectives.

Now, when we deal with modern literature, this becomes less apparent - but it is expected sort of that a scholar of William Blake will have read his collected poems in full, despite many of them not being so good. And a Wordsworth scholar will undoubtedly be familiar with his late garbage poems, which nobody in public reads. This is what I was generally getting at - that the scholar is not looking at these works to be amazed, but rather to boost their understanding.

Virtually all major authors exist today in "selected" form to the general public, who choose the works they like only. Someone like Zola, for instance, kept almost everything he ever wrote, including a massive correspondence of thousands of letters. There are scholars who sit there reading them one after another, despite the fact that they are not the least bit interesting for the most part (one's old bills rarely are). These works are not going to be read by the public, as nobody cares.

That is what I was getting at. Scholars' main pursuit isn't the aesthetic, and ultimately never will be, despite them perhaps liking certain things.

ennison

12-11-2013, 06:30 AM

Thank you for reposting my post pal. Some here have either been unable to understand one of Wheatley's poems or unwilling to understand it. They ascribe to her things she did not say or deliberately, because of bigotry, twist things she said. As for my card playing abilities I am better at poker than brag but seldom play either. I also quite admire some of what Mr JBI says but he does say rather a lot.

JBI

12-11-2013, 07:51 AM

Ecurb

12-11-2013, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by Ecurb

Auteur critics (in film) prefer to watch a lousy movie by a great director than a good one by a mediocre director -- because the brilliant director can offer "personal expression" even in a bad film, and because the bad film may offer insights into the director's other works. In a sense, this involves having a "biographical" interest in the artist.

The first sentence here is correct and, as Lukes said, happens in other mediums as well. The second sentence, however, is wrong.....

I knew that someone would say that – which is why I wrote, “In a sense”. Clearly, the filmography of a director (or the bibliography of an author) is biographical. It’s just not the KIND of biography “anti-personal heresy” proponents are referring to. Look at what JBI writes a little later in this thread:

St. Lukes is fond of mentioning how the review of Rembrandt showed people that many of the masterworks were by others, and subsequently led to them being taken off of display. Is that not pure hypocrisy? Either the art is good and deserves display, or it isn't - the actual authorship is a subsequent question.

Again, this is clearly in opposition to the notion (proposed by Morpheus and auteur theorists) that “it's important to distinguish having an interest in all of an artist's works because of your interest in their life (biographical) VS having an interest in all of an artist's works because of your interest in their work.” Your position is reasonable, Morpheus, but so is JBI’s position. And so is the position of someone who thinks SOME biographical details may help the audience understand and appreciate a work of art. Weldon Kees (one of my favorite 20th century American poets, do you know him?) was a painter, a filmmaker and musician as well as a poet. Perhaps his films, music and paintings can help us understand his poetry.

Whether Kees preferred Raisin Bran or Cornflakes doesn’t have much impact on his art, or on our appreciation of it. But the fact that Helen Keller was blind and deaf from age one probably does have an impact on her art, and our appreciation of it. It's not unreasonable to have an interest in Wheatley's poems because of her circumstances -- nor is it unreasonable to refuse to judge the poems more charitably because of her circumstances. (How's that for a wishy-washy conclusion?)

MorpheusSandman

12-11-2013, 03:20 PM

As for Levis and Vendler, they are not so much to my understanding discussing aesthetics as engaged in debates on composition... Now, the idea of aesthetics is two fold - one is the theory approach, where you ask why is something beautiful, and you use philosophy to debate it. The second is the history approach, where you ask why was something considered beautiful, etc.

...

Now, when we deal with modern literature, this becomes less apparent - but it is expected sort of that a scholar of William Blake will have read his collected poems in full, despite many of them not being so good... This is what I was generally getting at - that the scholar is not looking at these works to be amazed, but rather to boost their understanding.

Virtually all major authors exist today in "selected" form to the general public, who choose the works they like only...

That is what I was getting at. Scholars' main pursuit isn't the aesthetic, and ultimately never will be, despite them perhaps liking certain thingsI'm not sure whether I haven't followed your logic to your conclusion, or if your logic simply doesn't follow to the conclusion, but there's a misunderstanding somewhere. It seems to me that scholars who delve into the minor works of artists in pursuit of understanding are doing so primarily because they were aesthetically attracted to those authors to begin with. I am not a scholar, but I have, indeed, read Blake's collected poems in full. Similarly, my delving into the critical literature on Blake is to, in a sense, prolong my experience with an author whom I aesthetically adored. I don't know where this idea comes from that aesthetic enjoyment and a pursuit of understanding are mutually exclusive. It's true that "the public" will only read such authors in "selected" form, but I don't think this means that "the public" is only interested in aesthetics and scholars are not.

Perhaps it would also take some clarifying on precisely what we mean by, eg, aesthetics. When I think of aesthetics I tend to think of a pseudo-philosophical argument as to why and how art works or doesn't work. Leavis was very much concerned with the qualitative evaluation of literature, and had no qualms about openly declaring which authors/works he felt were great and which he felt were bad, overrated, or undeserving. Someone like Vendler is less concerned with evaluation, but in her formal analysis of poetry she frequently argues why certain choices are more aesthetically affective than others. EG, in her book on Stevens' long poems she claims that Esthetique du Mal is (paraphrased) a mediocre and transitional piece as Stevens was not well-equipped to write about evil. She is also not shy about proclaiming which of Shakespeare's sonnets she deems masterpieces, and which are middling and of less aesthetic interest. Bloom, in being interested in the Western Canon, is similarly not shy about passing qualitative judgments on authors and works and arguing why he feels some are great and others are not.

A final thought that occurs to me is that there's nothing mutually exclusive about any of these "modes" of scholarship, be it an evaluative aesthetic approach, a pseudo-philosophical theoretical approach, a rhetorical approach, an historical approach, a minutiae "catalog" approach, etc. Indeed, I often see several of these approaches mixed by the very critics we're discussing. Leavis was certainly concerned with aesthetic value judgments, but he was also very concerned with philosophical ideas on how to approach literature, especially in his later works. Perhaps Ricks' favorite mode is to take a minute formal element, like line-breaks in Wordsworth, or parentheses in Larkin, and write an entire essay cataloging their usage, but he, also, has tackled the philosophical issues of how to read, as well as various historical elements in how writers were viewed (especially in his Milton and Keats book).

MorpheusSandman

12-11-2013, 03:29 PM

It's not unreasonable to have an interest in Wheatley's poems because of her circumstances -- nor is it unreasonable to refuse to judge the poems more charitably because of her circumstances. (How's that for a wishy-washy conclusion?)I think we're in agreement here. As I said earlier, people appreciate and judge art on a variety of standards and even though I have my own (which are more closely aligned with JBI's and Luke's that art should stand on its own aesthetically), I have learned that it's senseless to say that they are superior to those of others who do care about things I don't, like biography.

The only final point I'd make, though, is that, in that bit you quoted from JBI, he seems to be suggesting that Lukes said that certain paintings stopped being displayed because some people became more interested in lesser paintings by "big names" than great paintings by "no names." In that case there is a certain value standard being asserted which is suppressing works that those with other standards would rather see. This is quite different than in, say, film, where, because it's such a popular medium, popular films by no-name directors will always be available to be seen either in theaters or on home media. Conversely, the minor works of auteurs are often very difficult to watch as there's not a big "market" for them. In such cases, scholars usually have to travel to where there are art-house screenings. A favorite, relatively obscure auteur director of mine is Hou Hsiao-hsien, and his early masterpieces have never been officially released on DVD in the west. I've had to rely on VHS or Laserdisc-to-DVD copies to see them at all. So the situation is very different when it comes to what paintings art museums show VS what films or books get released.

BTW, I have not read much by Weldon Kees, but I certainly know of him.

JBI

12-11-2013, 09:59 PM

I'm not sure whether I haven't followed your logic to your conclusion, or if your logic simply doesn't follow to the conclusion, but there's a misunderstanding somewhere. It seems to me that scholars who delve into the minor works of artists in pursuit of understanding are doing so primarily because they were aesthetically attracted to those authors to begin with. I am not a scholar, but I have, indeed, read Blake's collected poems in full. Similarly, my delving into the critical literature on Blake is to, in a sense, prolong my experience with an author whom I aesthetically adored. I don't know where this idea comes from that aesthetic enjoyment and a pursuit of understanding are mutually exclusive. It's true that "the public" will only read such authors in "selected" form, but I don't think this means that "the public" is only interested in aesthetics and scholars are not.

Perhaps it would also take some clarifying on precisely what we mean by, eg, aesthetics. When I think of aesthetics I tend to think of a pseudo-philosophical argument as to why and how art works or doesn't work. Leavis was very much concerned with the qualitative evaluation of literature, and had no qualms about openly declaring which authors/works he felt were great and which he felt were bad, overrated, or undeserving. Someone like Vendler is less concerned with evaluation, but in her formal analysis of poetry she frequently argues why certain choices are more aesthetically affective than others. EG, in her book on Stevens' long poems she claims that Esthetique du Mal is (paraphrased) a mediocre and transitional piece as Stevens was not well-equipped to write about evil. She is also not shy about proclaiming which of Shakespeare's sonnets she deems masterpieces, and which are middling and of less aesthetic interest. Bloom, in being interested in the Western Canon, is similarly not shy about passing qualitative judgments on authors and works and arguing why he feels some are great and others are not.

A final thought that occurs to me is that there's nothing mutually exclusive about any of these "modes" of scholarship, be it an evaluative aesthetic approach, a pseudo-philosophical theoretical approach, a rhetorical approach, an historical approach, a minutiae "catalog" approach, etc. Indeed, I often see several of these approaches mixed by the very critics we're discussing. Leavis was certainly concerned with aesthetic value judgments, but he was also very concerned with philosophical ideas on how to approach literature, especially in his later works. Perhaps Ricks' favorite mode is to take a minute formal element, like line-breaks in Wordsworth, or parentheses in Larkin, and write an entire essay cataloging their usage, but he, also, has tackled the philosophical issues of how to read, as well as various historical elements in how writers were viewed (especially in his Milton and Keats book).

You miss the difference between discussing "how does this work" and studying form, and aesthetic approach in the "how to enjoy". they are quite different. None of these critics, except maybe Bloom is writing about exactly "how to enjoy" poetry, and the choices you picked are rather fringe to begin with anyway. How to close read and how to enjoy are two different ideas. Vendler perhaps overlaps on it, but her main focus is on how the poem effectively communicates, and how it develops arguments. That's why she is somewhat better with rhetorical and meditative poetry than she is with more lyrical and emotive poetry.

That one is drawn to any subject is not necessarily as simple as liking their work. A biographer, for instance, may like the subject but care less about the work. Or, perhaps, may research the subject without any aesthetic liking for it - for instance the number of researchers of the Holocaust do not exactly enjoy their subject matter, though perhaps studying it gives them a sense of accomplishment, aesthetic pursuit is ultimately not their goal. People don't read Mein Kamph for the jokes.

Likewise, the vast majority of literary studies are not enjoyable to read, and are far more practical in their approach - analyzing the minute details, or examining texts. There are those who highlight key passages, and publish "selected works" of specific poets, but the vast majority are concerned with other endeavors. Do they like their work? perhaps, it's hard to say why people do anything. I don't think people read Flaubert's minor novels to enjoy them, merely to try and draw attention to specific notions in Madame Bovary, the novel that everyone cares about.

MorpheusSandman

12-12-2013, 03:53 PM

You miss the difference between discussing "how does this work" and studying form, and aesthetic approach in the "how to enjoy". they are quite different.Undoubtedly different; the former puts the emphasis on objective elements in the text, the latter on our subjective reaction to it. However, there is overlap. IA Richards' Practical Criticism was about trying to understand how the former influenced the latter, eg, and I think most of those critics I listed do that, even if, like Vendler, they spend the majority of their time discussing the "how it works." However, I'm still not entirely convinced that you can boil aesthetics down to "how to enjoy," as I can't think of any critics past or present that solely wrote on how to enjoy without reference to how literature worked. Perhaps you could offer some examples of "how to enjoy" critics/books?

That's why she is somewhat better with rhetorical and meditative poetry than she is with more lyrical and emotive poetry.Hmmm, I'd never thought about this... I'd probably need some examples of the distinction you're trying to make here. Someone like Yeats strikes me as rhetorical, meditative, lyrical, AND emotive, and Vendler wrote superbly on him.

That one is drawn to any subject is not necessarily as simple as liking their work.Ah, I get what you're saying now, and, yes, you're very right that those with an interest in, eg, history may not care about the art they write about as being a part of history. Those people would be putting history ahead of aesthetics indeed.

Likewise, the vast majority of literary studies are not enjoyable to read, and are far more practical in their approach - analyzing the minute details, or examining texts.Again, I don't think practicality, or the examining of minute details, makes such studies "not enjoyable to read." Doesn't it depend on one's level of interest in the subject? When it comes to works/artists I love, I can get really engrossed in "minute analytical" studies, while reading such things for, say, The Lord of the Rings sounds like torture.