A Defense of Ardor Read online

  Uncertainty doesn’t contradict ardor. If we are to sustain the productive tension of metaxu, uncertainty (which is not the same thing as doubt!) will never be a foreign body, since our presence here and our faith can never receive absolute and permanent sanction, however much we long for it. Irony, on the other hand, undercuts uncertainty. When it occupies the central place in someone’s thought, irony becomes a rather perverse form of certainty. Of course we can dig up dozens of uses for irony. In Zbigniew Herbert’s poetry, to take one example, irony is ordinarily directed against the person passing judgment, the seeker of truth or law (the Greek Nomos), and often takes the form of self-irony. The truth-seeker views himself skeptically—“beware however of unnecessary pride/keep looking at your own clown’s face in the mirror”—but not truth or law, as so often happens among contemporary authors, who happily cast doubt on everything but themselves.

  We should remember, though, that in troubled times a move toward “beauty” may arise from an impure conscience, morally dubious circumstances. Thus in his stern essay “Der Schriftsteller Alfred Andersch,” W. G. Sebald mocks Captain Ernst Jünger’s raptures over Paris in flames: Das brennende Paris, ein herrlicher Anblick! (Burning Paris, what a sight!). Elsewhere in the same essay Sebald writes: “In Kirschen der Freiheit [Andersch’s autobiography], discussions of the weekend flights into aesthetics that permitted the author to revel in Tiepolo’s confectionary azures reveal once again his own lost soul.”

  Flights into aesthetics! I don’t know Alfred Andersch’s work well—he was a writer who struck a bargain with the Third Reich early on—but I think that Sebald may be right. (Certainly part—but not all!—of Jünger’s own writing invites the same verdict.) Sebald doesn’t quote another of Andersch’s symptomatic pronouncements: “My answer to the totalitarian state was total introversion.”

  Anyone interested in the state of literature today should be aware that one of the paths leading to Platonic heights is the path of hypocrisy. At the same time, though, we can’t overlook other roads that may be free of false piety. And the falsity of which Sebald accuses Andersch is most likely an ailment peculiar to totalitarian systems, and is thus unknown to Australians or Eskimos—or to the British poet I mentioned earlier, Kathleen Raine. Perhaps generations growing up today will know nothing of it. Beauty in the totalitarian state is a special problem. It is both Mandelstam in Voronezh yearning for Schubert and Ariosto, and the Polish poet Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz in Podkowa Lesna, the author of marvelous poems and a complete political opportunist. It’s also the stanza of Dante in the camp at Auschwitz that Primo Levi describes. And Wat listening to Bach on the roof of the infamous Soviet Lubyanka. It seems that at least one crucial amendation is in order here: expeditions to “the heights” should be undertaken in a state of personal honesty.

  And a sense of humor? Can it coexist with ardor? E. M. Cioran notes in his posthumously published diaries that “Simone Weil has no sense of humor. But if she had, she wouldn’t have made such great strides in her spiritual life. Since a sense of humor keeps us from experiencing the absolute. Mysticism and humor are not on good terms.” The next note in Cahiers modifies this observation, though; Cioran must have suspected that his comment was only half true and set about revising it: “Let us say that holiness can coexist with moments of humor and even irony. But it cannot tolerate systematic irony if it is to survive…”

  And it’s easy enough to imagine Meister Eckhart laughing, roaring with laughter. I don’t see any fundamental contradiction between humor and mystical experience; both serve to wrench us out of our immediate, given reality. After all, our head tilts back in both a fit of laughter and a sudden influx of devotion!

  Paul Claudel has a famous and beautiful sentence in the essay on Arthur Rimbaud that was published in 1912 in La Nouvelle Revue Française: “Arthur Rimbaud was a mystic in a savage state…” It might easily be used to describe all those poets who passionately seek a hidden truth. What’s more, it works just as well for mystics. Since is it possible to imagine a domesticated mystic, a settled mystic, a mystic with a day job? A poet happy with his hunting? Sadly enough, we know firsthand how frequently one stumbles on complacent bards and self-satisfied theologians. But true quests are conducted, after all, only in a “savage state” … Claudel himself is a good example. His Cinq grandes odes hold marvelous, “wild” passages, while many of his later religious poems are marked by a far-reaching “domestication.”

  “We truly must have commited a crime that brought down curses upon us, since we’ve lost the whole poetry of the cosmos,” Simone Weil says. Someone will object at this point: “Perhaps, but we’ve also gained something, we’ve become responsive to the misfortunes that befall both ourselves and those close to us, we’ve freed ourselves from the indifference that can afflict the devotees of poetry. More than this: we’ve become careful and critical observers of social reality.” I don’t want to make light of this: a critical stance (as long as it’s free of Marx’s dogmatic metaphysics) is exceptionally important, and if I speak here of the need for a different kind of quest, I don’t want to be taken for someone who uses his religious concerns to repudiate social criticism. After all, Eastern Europe’s former dissidents will never discount the importance of honest, courageous criticism of our social world—even if their own interests have evolved over time. We’d have to be idiots to forget this …

  But what is poetry?

  Anyone who looks through the catalogues of large libraries will find a fair number of variations upon the “defense of poetry.” It’s almost a separate literary genre, with its own venerable tradition (Philip Sidney, Shelley, and Benedetto Croce are among its classics). At the same time, though, it is a desperate genre, with something panic-stricken about it. The titles themselves, which struggle to convince us of poetry’s “necessity,” vitality, indispensability, sound nonetheless suspiciously close to capitulation. If you have to insist so strenuously … Authors like Joseph Brodsky have an easier time convincing us, since they defend poetry with such passion—and at times such captivating arrogance—that with any luck they put their opponent on the defensive. (Unfortunately, the opponent ordinarily doesn’t even know that he’s on the ropes; defenses of poetry are read, of course, only by its friends.)

  Fortunately, we don’t know precisely what poetry is, and we shouldn’t try to figure it out analytically. No single definition (and there are so many) can finalize this element. And I, too, have no definitive ambitions. But there’s something tempting, nonetheless, about seeing poetry in its movement “between”—both as one of the most important vehicles bearing us upward and as a way of understanding that ardor precedes irony. Ardor: the earth’s fervent song, which we answer with our own, imperfect song.

  We need poetry just as we need beauty (although I hear there are European countries in which this last word is strictly forbidden). Beauty isn’t only for aesthetes; beauty is for anyone who seeks a serious road. It is a summons, a promise, if not of happiness, as Stendhal hoped, then of a great and endless journey.

  * * *

  “We truly must have commited a crime that brought down curses upon us, since we’ve lost the whole poetry of the cosmos.” We’ve not only lost the poetry of the cosmos (and we lose it a little more every day, which proves, logically speaking, that we still haven’t lost it completely, that we’ve been living for some time in something like a permanent state of losing, just as some governments thrive while continuously increasing their foreign debt). We’ve also experienced that peculiar bifurcation of sensibility that Thomas Mann depicts so precisely in his Magic Mountain. The poetry of the cosmos has divided—just like a cell observed by a modern scientist, a specialist in molecular biology—into Naphta’s demonic whisper and the humanitarian discourse of Settembrini.

  Thomas Mann did not invent this schism; it was rather a scrupulously observed diagnosis.

  This is the misfortune of our times: that those who never make mistakes are mistaken, while those who make mistakes
are right. Ernst Jünger in some of his observations concerning “substance,” T. S. Eliot in parts of Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, and so many other conservative authors may not be wrong “ontologically” in their analyses of man in modernity. But they’re completely immersed in the element of twentieth-century history and are blind to the phenomenal (and fragile) benefits we derive from liberal democracy. On the other hand, those who analyze our political troubles with exceptional acumen and respond to injustice are often completely at sea spiritually. Perhaps this is linked to Charles Taylor’s brilliant observation in Sources of the Self: in our age, Enlightenment values have triumphed in public institutions, at least in the West, whereas in our private lives we abandon ourselves to Romantic insatiability. We go along with rationalism whenever public, social issues are at stake, but at home, in private, we search ceaselessly for the absolute and aren’t content with the decisions we accept in the public sphere.

  The antimetaphysical but politically dependable liberal left (or perhaps rather “center”) and the potentially menacing but spiritually engaged right: one might summarize our peculiar bifurcation like this.

  Since isn’t it true that we’re still dealing with the heroes of The Magic Mountain? With the exceptionally appealing Settembrini, who makes guest appearances on our television newscasts or runs a regular column in a popular newspaper where he defends democracy and humanistic values? We listen to him with interest, read his articles, but sometimes suspect him of a certain superficiality. And the demonic Naphta, whom we don’t particularly like, doesn’t he startle us at times with his exceptional insights into the world of culture? It’s difficult to find Naphta on the television; he publishes his opinions in one of those obscure journals of which the happy majority of ordinary mortals has never heard.

  When parliamentary elections draw near, we instinctively lean toward Settembrini, since we sense that for all his dishevelment he’ll be able to direct us toward a suitable party, which may not save us (but elections aren’t about salvation!) but also won’t lead us astray, he won’t guide us toward the abyss, toward some wretched, extreme political denouement.

  However, once the electoral fever abates, when the respectable landscape of contemporary civilization is reinstated, doesn’t Settembrini bore us just a bit, don’t we begin to miss that interesting Mr. Naphta? Don’t we long to chat with Naphta about our metaphysical anxieties (after all, he’s an expert)? Won’t he fascinate us with his notions about the world’s fundamental unity? We’ll forgive his dubious sense of humor, his awkwardness, if only he’ll summon up that strange, sharp metaphysical shiver we require from time to time, which our amiable, honest Settembrini is unable to provide.

  Another example: in an anthology of German essays edited by Ludwig Rohner many years ago, I stumbled upon a sketch by Ludwig Curtius (not to be confused with E. R. Curtius, the wonderful critic and literary historian) called “A Meeting in the Presence of Apollo Belvedere” (“Begegnung beim Apollo von Belvedere”) from 1947. In the essay, Ludwig Curtius tells about his meeting (whether real or imagined) with a young German architect, a veteran who’d miraculously escaped the slaughter of the world war—as a soldier he’d been conscripted into the Wehrmacht and sent to fight on various fronts. This architect, worn by the horror of recent events, spends three evenings with the essay’s author and gives three extraordinary lectures. The point of departure is the Apollo Belvedere, which had once been admired by Winckelmann and Goethe but had later been revealed to be, like so many other sculptures, a mere Roman copy, and whose reputation had thus suffered in the eyes of many professional art historians. The young architect nonetheless remains true to the Apollo Belvedere and sees in it a rare quality, which he calls “dignity” and finds lacking in many contemporary works of art. The next day he talks about the significance of “proportion” in the evaluation, and even more important, the experiencing of works of architecture. And finally, on the third day, he speaks passionately about the “mystery” present in great artworks, hidden within them like an apple’s core.

  The lectures we hear in the abbreviated form given by Ludwig Curtius are very beautiful.

  The fourth day this brilliant, serious architect leaves—he sails to Argentina. For good. And thus the reader isn’t sure if he isn’t perhaps dealing with a figure more allegorical than actual. Since the whole essay might be read as a farewell to the metaphysical element in German culture. The essay’s author, much older and more experienced, is dazzled by his young colleague and says farewell through him to the symbolic future of the German intelligentsia.

  At the same time we hope that—if the young architect isn’t made of allegorical matter—he’s not someone who has serious reasons for wanting to hide from the postwar Allied tribunals in Argentina. (All of this, remember, takes place in Rome, which, as we know, didn’t have the best reputation in the years immediately following the war.)

  This last doubt is symptomatic—but also well-nigh automatic. Ardor, metaphysical seriousness, the risky voicing of strong opinions are all suspicious nowadays. They take the defendant’s bench immediately, there’s no need for lengthy, conscientious investigations. I have to confess, though, that in this case suspicions about the young architect’s wartime history had occurred to me too.

  The more general question comes out rather differently, though. This bifurcation of the spirit, this shifting of signs, this ongoing division between Settembrini, who loves the Enlightenment, and Naphta, who prefers the Middle Ages (or Romanticism), this split that means everyone who experiences powerful religious yearnings is almost automatically suspected of being a “right-winger”—is it simply a given? Or is this contemporary affliction curable?

  After all, not every modern writer accommodates the laws of this bifurcation. Simone Weil would certainly have nothing to fear from an exam on the binary categories of The Magic Mountain. Or take Czeslaw Milosz’s work, as rich intellectually as it is poetically. One of the hallmarks of this work is precisely its disregard for the arithmetic of easy ideological classifications. Milosz is, after all, the author of The Land of Ulro, among other things, an essay whose title is taken from Blake’s private mythology. The book accuses our age of total indifference to metaphysical issues; it sorrowfully traces the slow decay of the religious imagination. Yet Milosz could hardly be called a “reactionary” writer, a disciple of Naphta. He’s also, of course, the author of The Captive Mind, which is still fervently studied in all those countries where the intelligentsia can only dream of a rule of law (I’ve heard that Cuban intellectuals have been reading it recently). Milosz wrote both The Land of Ulro and The Captive Mind; careful readers of those very different books would surely never find a common language, they belong to two intellectual parties that aren’t on speaking terms. But Milosz nonetheless manages to reconcile his concern with liberal civilization (which has expressed itself more than once in public forums) with powerful metaphysical yearnings.

  Let’s listen:

  I keep my eyes closed. Do not rush me,

  You, fire, power, might, for it is too early.

  I have lived through many years and, as in this half-dream,

  I felt I was attaining the moving frontier

  Beyond which color and sound come true

  And the things of this earth are united.

  Do not yet force me to open my lips.

  Let me trust and believe I will attain.

  Let me linger here in Mittelbergheim.

  I know I should. They are with me,

  Autumn and wooden wheels and tobacco hung

  Under the eaves. Here and everywhere

  Is my homeland, wherever I turn

  And in whatever language I would hear

  The song of a child, the conversation of lovers.

  Happier than anyone, I am to receive

  A glance, a smile, a star, silk creased

  At the knee. Serene, beholding,

  I am to walk on hills in the soft glow of day

  Over
waters, cities, roads, human customs.

  Fire, power, might, you who hold me

  In the palm of your hand whose furrows

  Are like immense gorges combed

  By southern wind. You who grant certainty

  In the hour of fear, in the week of doubt,

  It is too early, let the wine mature,

  Let the travelers sleep in Mittelbergheim.

  (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Richard Lourie)

  This is an excerpt from the poem “Mittelbergheim,” which Milosz wrote in 1951, at a time—as we know from his own commentary—when he was tormented by the ideological and political problems of the mid-twentieth century. He’d come under ruthless attack by the émigré community when, after serving in the communist diplomatic service for several years, he’d “chosen freedom.” These attacks drove him to despair, led him to doubt poetry. Alsatian Mittelbergheim, the village, or town, to which his friends had invited him—by happy onomastic coincidence, the place’s name holds “mountain” as well as “middle” and “home”—offered him the possibility of inner rebirth. He had a spiritual experience, an experience of “something else,” something one would be hard pressed to come upon in Paris, an enormous city as saturated with ideology, in the forties and fifties especially, as a sponge is with water and soapsuds; an experience of nature, world, fire.

  The Alsatian town revealed to the poet a dimension transcending the ideological quarrels typical of the mid-twentieth century. The Alsatian town or perhaps simply the world, both archaic and contemporary, the world of mountains, vineyards, and the thick old walls of village homesteads.

  Throughout Milosz’s work, and not simply in this poem, we find a ceaseless wandering between ideas and transcendence, between the need for honesty and transparency in collective life, the need for the good, and, on the other hand, the unquenchable yearning for something more, for epiphany, for ecstasy, in which a higher sense is revealed (but never fully, and never completely clearly). Milosz’s exceptional ability to withstand great pressures, his ability to move from social territory to the domain of metaphysics, endowed him with enormous poetic energy, an energy rarely encountered today. It derives from his ability to transform the condition of metaxu into an ongoing, vivifying pilgrimage, an occupation for the long-distance artist.