Standing by Words by Wendell Berry

Author:Wendell Berry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2011-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Where does this state of poetry stand us in looking at the great poets of the past? It obviously must greatly diminish their influence, since their poems—unless we count the fairly recent past—are not “autonomous” and cannot be understood on the assumption that they are. But it also makes it difficult for us to see and appreciate what it means that their poems were not meant to be “autonomous.”

I believe that at the source of our poetry is the idea that poetry must be used for something, must serve something, greater and higher than itself. It is a way to learn, know, celebrate, and remember the truth—or, as Yeats said, to “Bring the soul of man to God.”3 And Yeats was never less “silly” or eccentric than when he said that; he was speaking out of the traditional mainstream.

To Dante, The Divine Comedy is not his ambition, much less an “art object”—it is a blessing and a trial, a privilege and an obligation. By his merit as man and poet, but also necessarily by God’s will and grace, he attains a vision of the truth, which then, by virtue of his poetic merit, he is underobligation to tell, so that, as the Apostle James says to him, “you may strengthen in yourself and others the Hope which there below rightly enamors....” 4 There is no denying Dante’s ambition to be a great poet; there was, as he acknowledges, a heavy dross of pride in him. But we must be careful, for with these old poets there is always a sense in which their desire for fame is a desire, not to be “famous” as we understand that word, but to be worthy—a sense in which the desire to be a great poet follows logically from the attempt on, the gift of, a great subject. It is an ambition required by humility; what a damning presumption it would be to write less than greatly on a great subject! How blasphemous to be willing to do so!

The same understanding applies to Milton, who in “Lycidas” defines poetic ambition (desire for “fame”) in two almost opposite senses. In the first, “fame” is a good worldly reputation which, if earned and deserved, is of some value, though its value is limited and subject to chance and mortality. The other sense is absolute, and has to do not with “reputation” but with worthiness:Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to th‘world, nor in broad rumor lies,

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;

As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

Of so much fame in Heav’n expect thy meed.5

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