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FOR ART OF MEMORY Shakespeare and Michael Drayton, in order to write in a relatively short period of time hundreds of perfect sonnets, must have had a mental scheme they had already learned where, upon picking a particular element for writing a sonnet – a word, a thought, a vague impression – then using the sonnet form itself to fully systematize that thought “in small” to start it. Therefore, simply upon starting the sonnet, it essentially wrote itself. The sonnet is set up as a kind of dialectical syllogism that moves from one proposition or thesis (the unsubstantial plumes, or angels, descending to find a real place for existence) to a counter proposition or synthesis (crude matter that laughs at their insubstantial pretension to reality) coming up with a compromise proposition or synthesis (matter ascends corrupting the heavens) and conclusion (the spark of divinity in humanity is an ambiguous blessing considering the viciousness of the gods/demons/angels and that men created them). The rhymes can fudge on the rules if the rhymes are not incongruous with the line of thought - in other words, you pick the rhyme for its meaning, not just because it fits. The use of strange syntax is permitted if it amplifies the thought’s intent. But, to be able to do this for hundreds of sonnets, especially of the quality of Shakespeare or Drayton, it would seem the authors had to learn a definite schematic for projecting the whole general form of a specific sonnet. Since the sonnet is formed as a logical argument, this in essence reflects on the nature of the projection of the linguistic field that becomes the human grammatical mind. There must be automatic chains of thoughts and words set up from such a cue. Does anyone know of such a process of memory association learned by English poets in the Renaissance? It would have to be specifically English because it is a much more difficult language to design rhyme schemes than in Latin based languages (German?). Der teufel ist schist! -- Martin Luther The plumes, in purple majesty, sail mad, Through air descend untouched by any grace To seek the muddy earth without a place To be, in frantic living fever, clad. These weightless things can make no printed stamp On beings proud of their ability To speak with angels, blind with enmity, Denied the forcing substance they would steal. Yet out of darkness excrement protrudes Unwanted fumes’ ascent, familiar sway That cracks apart façade’s intent array By generating sin through carrion’s moods. So do not sit and smile within the shade; The gods touch earth, touch you, and you are made. U / U / U / U/ U / The plumes, in purple majesty, sail mad, 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / Through air descend untouched by any grace 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / To seek the muddy earth without a place 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / To be, in frantic living fever, clad. 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / These weightless things can make no printed stamp 5 feet, strong near rhyme U / U / U / U / U/ On beings proud of their ability 5 feet, weak ‘feminine’ end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / To speak with angels, blind with enmity, 5 feet, weak ‘feminine’ end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / Denied the forcing substance they would steal. 5 feet, strong near rhyme U / U / U / U / U / Yet out of darkness excrement protrudes 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / Unwanted fumes ascent, familiar sway 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / That cracks apart façade’s intent array 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U (u) / By generating sin through carrion’s moods. 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / So do not sit and smile within the shade; 5 feet, strong end rhyme U / U / U / U / U / The gods touch earth touch you, and you are made. 5 feet, strong end rhyme. It is incredibly easy to deceive oneself in this business. “Almost good enough” becomes “perfect” with the greatest of ease. I have to work very hard even to come up with something as poor as this. I just caught some blunders once again, and I am sure still more are there. There is some French Symbolism mixed in. Verlaine and Rimbaud wrote sonnets and I have always liked Charles Baudelaire. The point is scansion and rhyme does not come easily at all to me or much to anyone else either. However, English Renaissance poetry is the epiphany of English literature, and this is not reflected at all in modern American poetry. The Russians seem to have maintained something of an authentic poetic tradition because it emphasizes public recitation above all else. I heard Joseph Brodsky recite in Russian then in English translation. The Russian sounded vibrant, of course, and the English flat. But Robert Burton could make English poetry just as passionate, and Sylvia Path could carve stone when she recited her later poetry. These, however, are exceptions. The question here is, How could Shakespeare and Milton write so extremely well in such tremendously complicated forms, and write so much? Almost all sonnets written in English in the 19th and 20th centuries show a decline in quality to the point now that if someone does something in fourteen lines, without scansion, without rhyme, without syllogistic or dialectical structure, they call it a sonnet. The form of the sonnet takes the original thought you give it and utterly transforms it upon its own to fit the purpose already set in the poetic form. There is no firm starting point, NOW, established from which you can proceed with confidence – unless there is a prearranged projection available. The purpose of writing an acceptably accurate sonnet overrides good sense because one has to struggle so hard just to get a mere draft. OR you bend the rules for easy success and actually make something that is A) good, but no longer really a sonnet, or B) totally wretched. Using Shakespeare as a model, he bends the strictest rules often. However, it is done with purpose. The ‘incorrect’ words convey a message of their own, and therefore by that message make the poem cohere into a pleasurable unity. In other words, he bends the rules to achieve a specific purpose, but not to get oneself to accept half-measures of achievement. So here I have tried to keep all the rhymes with a strong accent at the end of the line, no fully weak ‘feminine’ rhymes where there is no strong accent at all. I still find “ability” and “enmity” to work well because A) “-lity” and “-mity” have a middling strong accent or scud as Vladimar Nabokov would call it. The accentualization of the words changes according to the initial intent leading the accentualization of the line, so that instead of U / u u a-bil-it-y you have U / U (/) a-bil-it-y . As Nabokov showed, scudding is a necessity to relieve the iambic line of monotony. Richard Burton can recite iambics and the beats change to the mood he is imposing upon the poem. But the scansion is still there, and still drives the listener to expect, and enjoy, poetic closure. This is an Italian sonnet, not Shakespearean, and maybe lines five and eight should rhyme with lines one and four. But Jud Evans accurately noted the awkwardness of the rhymes earlier employed, and this change does follow the course of a chain of thought: mad, grace, place, clad, stamp, ability, enmity, steal, protrudes, sway, array, moods, shade, made. They speak of mutual intrusions of concepts out of their ‘proper’ sphere, the spiritual wanting material reality and angry it cannot get it, matter defiant of mere words, concepts, images, the corruption of these intermixed modes in envious and defiant conflict, and the mischief of divinized thinking in mortal matters. Background: A) The rebellion of Satan and his angels: Christopher Walken does a great job in the movie PROPHECY of portraying the archangel Gabriel’s utter loathing for the ‘monkeys’ God has put in the ascendant over the angels and his complete disregard of ethical behavior towards such worthless creatures. B) The angel visiting earth in Mark Twain’s story “The Mysterious Stranger” is mystified by the narrator’s horror when he gratuitously kills created human beings without regard or remorse. C) The gods in the ILIAD who regard anything mortal as worthless precisely because it is mortal. This is a schema of unquestioned power and privilege where “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Here I am trying to create a psychology of divinity which is a projection of the human mind considering how he would think and act if he were divine. It is not a complementary picture. However, whenever any of these gods, demons, or angels desire to act effectively, they can only do so on earth and with mankind. On Thomas Hobbes strikes directly on this point in LEVIATHAN, chapter XXXIV, para. 24-25: To men that understand the signification of these words, substance and incorporeal, as incorporeal is taken, not for subtle body, but for not body, they imply a contradiction, insomuch as to say “an angel or spirit is . . . an incorporeal substance” is to say in effect “there is no angel nor spirit at all” . . . angels were nothing but supernatural apparitions of the fancy, raised by the special and extraordinary operation of God . . . But the many places of the New Testament . . . . have extorted from my feeble reason an acknowledgment and belief that there be also angels substantial and permanent. But to believe they be in no place (that is to say, nowhere, that is to say, nothing), as they (though indirectly) say that will have them incorporeal, cannot by Scripture be evinced. [25] On the signification of the word spirit dependeth that of the word Inspiration, which must either be taken properly (and then it is nothing but the blowing into a man some thin and subtle air or wind, in such a manner as a man filleth a bladder with his breath) or if spirits be not incorporeal, but have their existence only in the fancy, then it is nothing but the blowing of a phantasm (which is improper to say, and impossible; for phantasms are not, but only seem to be somewhat). That word, therefore, is used in the Scripture metaphorically only . . . And where it is said . . . “all Scripture is given by inspiration from God” . . . it is an easy metaphor to signify that God inclined the spirit or mind of those writers to write that which would be useful in teaching, reproving, correcting, and instructing men in the way of righteous living . . . we are not to understand it in the proper sense, as if this Spirit were like water, subject to effusion or infusion; but as if God had promised to give them prophetical dreams and visions. For the proper use of the word infused, in speaking of the Graces of God, is an abuse of it; for these graces are virtues, not bodies to be carried hither and thither, and to be poured into men as into barrels. The point may seem obvious at first. But let us see exactly what Hume is doing. He is attacking the whole history and concept of “inspiration”, while seeming to be a believer – a legal necessity at the time - as a fact that literally happens and gives justification for action. It also attacks the idea of any supernatural ‘entity’ that acts to have an effect because then the actor must have place, and having place it must have material finitude with which to actually cause an effect. When Hobbes uses the word “proper” he means “literal”. Hobbes is questing for literality in vague notions and finding them wanting. The whole ground of “supernatural being” is blown out for the same reason the Deity in Hume is reduced to a beautiful human tool of a finite mind because man can effect God, can project the idea of God or its equivalent ‘the infinite universe’ (neither one literally conceivable but it opens an intellectual space in which you can place things in relation to each other) - but God, who cannot possess place, can effect nothing in human affairs even if he existed because it is a logical contradiction that an infinite and eternal being can act in a specific place and time. God would then become relatively trivial, as Hume argued, compared to the traditional concept, or a helpless voyeur of all human degradation and horror. God could not have even created the universe outside the human mind that would require a specific place, a material fulcrum by which to move the universe into existence. So therefore even the argument by design falls apart. Hume uses the very same argument to question the existence of personal identity, a soul, a self, an ego, for if it exists it must be in a specific place – and it must be unchanging. But there is plenty of experience of total change in human personality. And such total change also –relevant to THE ART OF MEMORY completely reinterprets all memories either where they passively reside or when they are actively brought forward. So there is no real continuity at all between the ‘self’ you were as a child and the ‘self’ you are as an old man. And, if you take into consideration Hume’s definition of the self as “a bundle of sense impressions”, then you can see how you are a different self from day to day which automatically effects the recall and interpretation of memory. Anything without material position is metaphorical as Hobbes says. And the whole of this then comes to attack the reality of abstractions that do not have position. You can imagine relations between one placed object and another placed object but, just as Hume’s argument about the truth of causation, one object ‘having relations’ with another object is absurd. “Relations” only apply to human psychology with language. This can only be done with intent, judgment, identification of an object as separate from its background, and language. Relations of any sort are an imaginary projection of intent to plot an action. This is way the values implicit in thinking are moral values needing politeness and honesty to open the field of mutual relations and communication. Yes, there are always ready-at-hand inherent prejudices, but these are things that always hinder even the most selfish thought. “Prejudice” puts your thinking literally into the hands of other people as “tradition” (re: Heidegger). Politeness opens an intellectual field for honest relations which is the fundamental structure of the human mind. Hume’s consideration of morality and politeness is always based on honest selfishness which recognizes the ONLY enduring reward in life is communication with other people. In this regard, remember Dr. Hannibal Lector’s forms of and demands for politeness. And, as Ian Ker quotes John Henry Newman, His aim is to ‘speak for himself’ only, on the ground that in ‘a metaphysical work egotism is the truest modesty.’ The nature of “contemplation”, then, is put in question. You cannot just view an object because you ‘effect’ it with an identity which, as inorganic object, it cannot have. You project your own sense of identity to identify objects and their qualities in relation to your purposeful acts. So, in essence, any kind of divinity is dependant on earthly mortals for their real kicks. Whereas truly earthy humanity, when they decline modeling themselves on such vacuous ideals that would necessarily desire, though despise, what mortals have as mortals, must learn the values of mortality which, if self consistent, can have nothing to do with ‘superior’, i.e., ‘supernatural’ abstractions that are in any way ‘above’ mortal grime. The value of such a divinized abstraction as “life” collapses, even as your ‘life’. DIGRESSION: “The Life of an Oyster”Hume: THN Appendix Hume: ESY Unpub. E. 2 Para. 4/8 mp. 580 gp. 407 (“Of Suicide”, Liberty Fund edition pp. 582-3 . . . The lives of men depend upon the same laws as the lives of all other animals; and these are subjected to the general laws of matter and motion. The fall of a tower, or the infusion of a poison, will destroy a man equally with the meanest creature; an inundation sweeps away every thing without distinction that comes within the reach of its fury. Since therefore the lives of men are for ever dependant on the general laws of matter and motion, is a man's disposing of his life criminal, because in every case it is criminal to encroach upon these laws, or disturb their operation? But this seems absurd; all animals are entrusted to their own prudence and skill for their conduct in the world, and have full authority, as far as their power extends, to alter all the operations of nature. Without the exercise of this authority they could not subsist a moment; every action, every motion of a man, innovates on the order of some parts of matter, and diverts from their ordinary course the general laws of motion. Putting together, therefore, these conclusions, we find that human life depends upon the general laws of matter and motion, and that it is no encroachment on the office of providence to disturb or alter these general laws: Has not every one, of consequence, the free disposal of his own life? And may he not lawfully employ that power with which nature has endowed him? In order to destroy the evidence of this conclusion, we must shew a reason, why this particular case is excepted; is it because human life is of so great importance, that 'tis a presumption for human prudence to dispose of it? But the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. In the factual world, your identity is your body which other bodies conceptualize in relations with themselves. A body has position and can move through positions. “Free will” becomes another nonsense abstraction here because you do not “decide” to do an act. “Decision” is a fiction. What is real is either you do the act or do not do the act. “Decision” does not make it happen as is demonstrated when decision is interrupted. The decision has been made but the act never comes. It is like my ‘sincerely’ derived from Sartre’s thinking. What you do is what you do. In itself, literally, it cannot be ‘sincere’ or ‘insincere’. It just is, as in “is real”, “is there”, “is perceived”, a specific physical relation. The act presents itself exactly as it is. It cannot deliver to you an interpretation of itself. Interpretation can only exist in a context of relations, a field of intellect, an individual mind. Sartre says, “A man is what he does.” In that regard, he is absolutely the same as every other animal. Action per se has no criteria. It just is. It is interpretation that makes it good or bad or intelligent or instinctual. The quest for literality is what Hume hones down to the fine edge of radical skepticism where all motivation to initiate action is undermined. You must believe in “free will”, you must believe in “decision” insofar as an animal does, as an ‘ability’, no, rather as an open space into which an act can occur whereupon one sometimes is surprised one cannot act and sometimes must dream up external confines, causes, if none are really obviously at hand. This is essentially the message of Francois Rabelais and Mikail Bakhtin, i.e., that because you are mortal, you should damn well enjoy it to the utter disregard of moral abstractions that will never do you any good in your short lifetime. And that the ‘shortness’ of a lifetime is not merely a meaningless measure of a certain amount of allotted time, but rather means precisely that there is no allotted time, its only ‘measure’ is pure chance, and you should use it while you got it while you still have an open space in which to act. Death in this simple scheme (and why should it be complicated?) is as normal as eating, pissing, and shitting, both for yourself and anyone else. This is why Martin Luther called the devil “shit.” He was fighting the overwhelming tide of skepticism and downright atheism that came from what he saw as the total hypocrisy of the Church in The very doctrine of the temporal process of the formation of Christian doctrine in Newman is grounded on the relative worthlessness of what Luther wanted to fall back to, scripture, because no rational coherence could be found in the literal scriptures, therefore a meaningful Christian belief had to develop out of the scriptures, filling it out with meaningful and systematic relationships. The peasant culture Rabelais portrays (and he is a Franciscan monk and priest with ‘wife’ and three children) is whole heartedly atheistic and rebellious which Bakhtin converts into a riotous Super-Communism of his own, not only property and women in common but life and death as well, that the CPSU of his day would have been horrified of if they had read his works literally for what they actually said instead of as mere “literary criticism”. Bakhtin loved the worst and most useless class of people in the Marxist scheme of things, the lumpenproletariat. All this has been recently reinforced by my reading lately of Christopher Hill about the English Civil War, or as he calls it “the English Revolution” (1640 instead of the more common attribution to the events of 1688). He portrays it as a time when the lowest person on the social scale could have their say and act. In the name of ‘true Protestantism’, the private conscience and personal interpretation of scripture, they pull the lynchpins out of every Christian doctrine out one by one till all that is left is human mortality. He describes John Milton as participating in this very earthy process of thinking gladfully and willfully, though not going all the way. But he portrays him as going much further in that direction that anyone as been willing to say before (1978), although all the clues are plainly present. When Luther destroyed the external authority of the Church to legally determine proper belief, he essentially “privatized” and “capitalized” all belief. This was not really what he wanted. He wanted a mid-point on which to establish socially structured belief. And that mid-point could now only be the secular state using religion, like Henry VIII, for his own private purposes. Luther was horrified by the ‘excesses’ of Thomas Munzer and the Anabaptists and the peasant rebels of south Germany like Florian Geyer who changed the religious reformation into a political one. When you take out the lynchpin of external conforming authority and only have “personal interpretation”, then there are no bounds to action. We have here huge structures of religious language here, the only intellectual language people knew until they learned about the structures of classical Greek and Roman philosophy (as they actually thought it), constructed during the time of the “English Revolution”, in the name of private inspiration of personal interpretation of the BIBLE, where each person determined on their own what they wanted to believe and not believe. Thus it becomes a “Revolution” positively for what the lowest but most populous class of people already believe in, materialism, and most violently and negatively against all imposed laws of religion, morality, and church structure (the Anglican and Archbishop Laud got his head chopped off for instituting more and more religious ceremonies in the Anglican church that too many people thought smelled of Roman Catholicism, Milton amongst them) with its attendant courts, bribes, and taxes imposed over and above the government’s revenue. This is still with the subject, the common thread being the bottommost level disturbing, corrupting, destroying ‘higher’ values and ‘greater’ persons of ‘quality’. Also, the establishment of the human intellect through a projected linguistic field of relationships called the mind. Therefore, this relates directly to the ability to formulate a sonnet correctly by projecting a positioned thought with very strict and defining boundaries. Now, with the memory scheme of Shakespeare, if one literally takes into account what he actually said in his plays and poetry and not account it mere art and character portrayal, but rather regard nihilistic speeches, monologues, like Macbeth’s or Hamlet’s or whoever (there are a number of them) as unrebutted – which is usually disregarded because they are monologues and specific to the character. But that is not what actually happens. The monologue puts its words deliberately between the speaker and the reader/hearer as to one alone, as the only possible ‘other’ to the monologue. It is a proposal then, a proposition put before the reader/hearer primarily to be considered on its own merits. It is like an act, the words are just there, not trying to impose their meaning on you. Each sonnet of Shakespeare’s can actually be read as a kind of philosophical argument in logical form, though again disregarded as mere literature. No one simply reads what’s there. They are not incident specific and could very well not be person specific, for when Shakespeare in his sonnets seems to be talking of a specific person, it is in ideas, and as ideas they have general application to everyone, and always say fundamental things about mortal human life. Therefore I would propose, that if there is such a marvelous scheme the English Renaissance poets learned so they could produce reams of sonnets, or whatever kind of stanza, that it was a scheme relating to very earthly things, a code of mortality in a world legally obliged to believe in immortality and supernatural beings. Neither plays nor sonnets go well with theology. You need mortal human relations to make them exist. A play presents thoughts bare-assed, without conviction, without persuasion. The thoughts are just ‘there’ in the words to be picked up and taken with you or left behind. A sonnet is one of the closest things to making a thought an image, and shares much with the qualities of Plato’s elemental geometric figures in the TIMAEUS. What, then, is the projected intellectual figure of the sonnet built up from interconnected memory units that, like an abstract form of a grammatical sentence with blanks instead of words, can be filled in systematically, like one would ‘decide’ to speak a proper sentence, with the correct words true to the sonnet’s form?
‘Sincerely’ Gary C. Moore | ||||
