Land of the Rude, Home of the Jerk
There must be some reason or reasons, why the Jerk has become the archetypal American character. Without going too deep into themysteries of social history, here is a little experiment that might stand in for several hundred pages of tedious social history. Herewith a little theoretical foundation for my continuing study of Jerkus americanus.
Try to think of a world populated by non-Jerks, the sort of people American novelists used to describe in the early 20th century, nice people, who could take it for granted that other people in their little corner of America would also be nice, considerate, and kind—or at least act that way. Think, for example, of the characters in The Magnificent Ambersons. Apart from the hero, Georgie Minafer, they treat each other with courtesy and respect. Of course each of them has his (or her) problems, but—again, apart from Georgie—but they do not deliberately offend their friends or even the servants or put themselves constantly on stage as the center of attention.
One characteristic of such people is that they do not cheat or take advantage of each other, because they know that in their little corner, whether a town of a few thousand or in a neighborhood or social niche in a large city, the cheater, whether in business, marriage, or poker, gets a bad reputation.
To hold your own or get ahead in such a society, you have to play by the rules, because otherwise, people—and people in little tribes and villages have long memories—will hold your peccadilloes against you. I spent several years in a South Carolina village of about 500 inhabitants, most of whom were related at least to the degree of second cousin. They never forgot a blessed thing, and people went to their graves knowing that everyone else still remembered the dark secrets of their past or the stupid things they had done in their teens.
Sometimes the treasured anecdote had to do with something serious, like the story—told breathlessly in secret on three separate occasions by someone who claimed to be the only one who knew the facts—that rich old Mr. Johnson, who had recently returned after an absence of nearly 50 years, was really the illegitimate son of a pillar of the Episcopal Church.
More often, the secret was something silly. When a new family moved in about 1960, their precocious and pretentious son went into Mr. Bob's grocery store and asked for "5 cents worth of your best bubblegum." If the poor fellow had not had the wisdom to leave town once he graduated from college, he would have gone to his grave not as Chatsworth Osbourne Jr., but only as Bubblegume—no last name.[i]
As principal of the local academy, I was soon privy to much of the town's gossip, but I could still be taken by surprise. One day, when I was taking the English teacher's class, I was explaining that part of Macbeth's problem was his excessive passion for his wife. "You all understand?" "Oh yes," said one of the girls, "Just like Jennie's mama and my uncle." Jennie turned red, got up and slapped the other girl—her first cousin, by the way--and I had to give up on Macbeth. Everyone knew the story, because Jennie's parents had left the village ten years earlier to escape the gossip.
Poor Jennie's mother should have known better than to carry on even a flirtation in a small town whose moral rules were determined by four institutions: The Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches. For all their doctrinal differences, mainline Protestant churches (in the South at least) were uniformly and adamantly opposed to adultery. If Jennie's mother had merely got a divorce and remarried, there would have been some difference of opinion, especially if the village had had a significant Catholic population. In some Muslim cultures, the mother might have been stoned to death for adultery, while her lover, by contrast, could take several wives and cheat on all of them.
In each case, custom sets the rules, and, as Pascal so wisely observed, "custom should be followed only because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just."[ii] If men and women only followed laws and customs they believed to be just, the result would be perpetual chaos and revolution. The moral customs of the village were, for the most part, Christian and Protestant, and, while they might have offended any Muslim who came to live there (none did), they provided a pattern of expectation for everyone. Those who played by the rules or did not get caught violating them, could get along; those who were caught cheating would suffer.
According to Robert Axelrod's Theory of Cooperation, most people can be expected to play life's little games by the rules, so long as they count on interacting in the future with the same people. But, if you are leaving town—or have even thought about leaving town—the incentives to cheat rise quickly. You can bounce a check, defraud a partner, abandon a wife and escape at least the social consequences by skipping off to greater Los Angeles.
Jerks are not tolerated in small-scale societies: they are talked about or driven into exile or sent to Coventry. But imagine if you constructed a city of 10 million people, most of them from out of town, who spend a good part of each day in the company of total strangers they will never see again. This city would not operate according to a single moral code, because it would include large numbers of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims, atheists and skeptics. There might be some common agreement against murder and theft but not on such large social issues as marriage, divorce, and abortion, much less on public drunkenness, proper behavior in public places, and the tone and volume of conversations in a restaurant.
Imagine that you jammed hundreds of thousands of diverse into crowded subway cars. The result? The New York subway system, which has to be experienced to be believed. (I welcome anecdotes that I can rip off.)
Diversity breeds moral confusion, which is aggravated by the high population density that encourages a comfortable sense of anonymity. Anyone who has lived 50 or 60 years in North America can understand what has happened. As a student I used to go to various uninhabited barrier islands off the coast of South Carolina. My friends and I could bill a fire, set up tents or a lean-to, fish and swim and drink until we could not stand. At two o'clock in the morning, we would be bellowing out songs and urinating into the surf. A few years later, we would run into other parties, and one had to be a bit more careful about noise and exposure. But, despite differences of class and age, everyone shared a common sense of what was expected, and frictions were minimalized.
A decade later, when the island had been made a public beach run by the state, swimmers, fishermen, and boaters had to follow an elaborate code of rules to prevent them from interfering in each others' activities. The differing ethnic, religious, and social groups created frictions. Roistering college students came into conflict with church picnics, and Latinos, blacks, whites, and Asians soon discovered that other groups had different assumptions about public hygiene and behavior. Natural anarchy had given way to an informal community that, in the end, became so diverse and overpopulated that it required laws and armed policemen to enforce the laws.
People who live in border towns or have experience (from either side) of military occupations have often found cultural diversity confusing. American soldiers stationed in Europe in the 1950's have told me that when they got into a vituperative quarrel with young Frenchmen, the Americans would eventually throw a punch, much to the astonishment of the poor locals who thought they were engaged only in a war of words.
Jerks have always been with us, but one of several reasons why they are the dominant character in American society is precisely the density and diversity that has resulted from immigration, and every time a fight breaks out in Denny's, Burger King (just this week in Panama City Beach), or Chuck E Cheese (a fresh incident in Chicago yesterday), it means more laws, more cops. Here is the formula, for those of you who like nonmathematical subjects presented mathematically: Diversity + Density = Despotism.
[i] The real name is even stuffier than the name of the Warren Beatty character on the 1950s sitcom Dobie Gillis I have borrowed.
[ii] Pascal, Pensées, Sect. 5. 325.
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I am not surprised that none of my fellow New Yorkers have chimed in with any subway anecdotes. I could give youse guys a hatful, but would probably soon join that Staten Island yout (h intentionally, and justifiably dropped) up on charges of felonious and hateful de-scarfing.
I ask you, how is a budding young jerk to get a firm purchase on a pig-tail when the goyl's got a rag on her head?
Speaking of foul-mouthed jerks, my son and I went out for a nice dinner on Tuesday evening at a restaurant in a very nice yuppy burb. Several empty tables away from us were a couple (late 40s; early 50s) and two young kids (between 8-10). They saw a man walk in whom they evident knew very well, as he immediately approached their table to strike up a long, loud conversation (no, he didn’t seem intoxicated). In the midst of this conversation, this man spewed the “F” word in almost every response. The parents (or even grandparents for that matter) smiled away as if this was “normal” behavior and the kids just continued to eat without looking up once.
My son and I were appalled and speechless. Not once did this man (or the couple at the table) look around to see if others were taking notice of their suburb-trash behavior, which means they really do think this is normal.
I should have stayed home and cooked.
@52 Michael:
Oh yes. I heard about the famous fight that broke out over the woman eating her pasta dinner on the subway.
To Mssrs. Robert and Greg Jinkerson: I buy most of my old, out-of-print books from Amazon, after first checking on low prices at a range of other services through Add-ALL used and out-of-print book search, which any search engine should find for you. You can delimit searches to U.S. only or include a range of services in Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia, as well. When you find a good price, remember to find out the shipping charges. Almost invariably the rates from out of the U.S. are significantly higher--except from Amazon, which charges $3.99 for every book, regardless of the seller's location. I've also found that what is posted as the lowest price from Amazon by Add-ALL is not necessarily the lowest price that one can actually find on Amazon. As for what Add-ALL posts as the lowest price from Abe, Alibris, and Biblio, at least--those really are those services' lowest prices.
As for Mr. Toddard's report of Dr. Putnam's findings: they explain why I run across fewer Jerks than respondents here do. That is, apart from the last two, about happiness and TV-watching, they fit me quite well. Oh, and I'm not to be found in protest marches, since I don't like asking to be bored.
I think Vonnegut belongs to a more specialized type than the jerk: The cynical curmudgeon, usually an agnostic or atheist, who is also a self-appointed truth-teller to the nation. Others who have characteristics of this type would include Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken, and an entire tribe of stand-up comedians such as Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and more recently Bill Maher. (Reading that list reminds me of Henry Adams's joke about the presidents from Washington to Grant disproving the theory of evolution. The earlier ones were not necessarily jerks, but it is a type closely allied to the jerk.)
I was a bit confused by the Ralph Abernathy story: Did the redneck demand that Abernathy finish Abernathy's own Coke (which would seem a reasonable thing for Abernathy to do anyway, although it was hardly anyone else's business) or that Abernathy's finish the redneck's Coke (a more obviously degrading request)?
The point of this exercise is to circle around I ever narrowing rings around the Jerk. The uneducated boot and Confederate deserter Sam Clemmons was undoubtedly one of our best writers, but intellectually he was a typical Jerk, an ignorant poseur who, unlike Vonnegut and Maher, also had talent and insight. Many great men--perhaps most--have been Jerks. We'll get to the definition next week, but in simple terms, the village atheist who without serious study thinks he can debunk religion and tradition is an intellectual lout. Think Chris Hitchens. I may have previously cited Pascal to this effect, but he quite wisely despised Philosophes who rejected God without taking the trouble to study the question, all that matters to such people is me, and that is the essence of the Jerk.
The reading list would be helpful. It might help us to not waste our time finding out that the book we just bought wasn't worth it. I've been burnt before, more than once.
On a side note, something else which would be helpful would be recommendations of which translations of classics like the Iliad, the Odyssey, etc. you would recommend, and which to avoid.
#55 Vonnegut grew up in a left-wing household with 2 atheist parents. IRC, he didn't start writing his "truth-telling" novels until after the counter-culture had seized control - circa 1968. Had he published "Slaughter-house five" in 1960 he would've been a brave "truth-teller", but after 1968, he was just following the money.
I also object to labeling Twain as a 'truth teller'since his "Cynical" views were kept private until well after his death. And while I understand you didn't mean to equate them, simply including Ambrose Bierce and H.L. Mencken (not really a cynic) with dullards like Lenny Bruce and Maher in the same post causes me pain.
Having read many Literary biographies it almost impossible to find a great 19th or 20th century writer who wasn't a jerk in many ways. This seems to be true of all great artists of whatever field. Perhaps Dr. Fleming has an explanation.
I wonder if you think Poe could be considered among our American jerk writers? Although he at times he wrote biting satire, I am not sure he fits the jerkiness mold.
I too wonder if Dr. Fleming considers Poe one of our American jerk writers.
By "truth-teller" I meant their own self-perception, not necessarily (indeed, usually not) reality. And maybe I put it across poorly, but I did mean to indicate a decline in the type over the years. Christopher Hitchens is another good example that slipped my mind.
Poe was not a Jerk. He was an unfortunate genius who spent most of his life in near poverty. His literary attacks were fully provoked assaults on the arrogant and pretentious. See his essays like "Boston and the Bostonians," "Brook Farm," and "The Literati of New York."
I wonder if some of our discussion is starting to confuse the Jerk with an even more numerous and offensive American type---the pseudo-intellectual. Or are they the same thing?
Poe was decidedly not a Jerk. He was the opposite, which is to say a gentleman. A man may be stupid, wrong, and a pseudo-intellectual yet not a Jerk unless he delights in hurting others "for their own goof."
Contrary to the false legend cooked up to justify writers of the past three centuries, most great writers have been kind and good. Let me throw out a few names of people about whom we know enough: Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Vergil, Dante, Racine, Walter Scott, WG Simms, Booth Tarkington. Many modern writers have been disturbed by the times and taken to drink or drugs or women, but I have known womanizing drunks who did their best to be decent. Two of the nicest men I have ever known were George Garret and Walker Percy. It always amused me that George never acted or dressed the part of the writer. He dressed like the Princeton man he was and had the personality that used to be described as clubable.
Jerks have very little music in their soul and hardly any of them can write real verse. Even a Jerk who may be suffering from the long term effects of unrequited love or love that went wrong can appreciate the following melody in this vale of tears. Or at least I would hope that it remains so. Critics of Poe should not attempt great thoughts, just read the poem. I think the California band, The Eagles, took one of hs poems and made something of a top tune out of it by am not for sure. I confess to be an amateur or lover of poetry and I hope it is not my pseudo-intellect that appeals to others to read some of it --- even the kind that ryhmes and modernists love to debunk as childish ---- like the Kingdom of Heaven!
Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
For those who wish to heed Dr. Wilson's recommendation, here is Poe's "Boston and the Bostonians" online (Google Books):
http://books.google.com/books?id=Um1KAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=%E2%80%9Cour+friends+in+the+Southern+and+Western+country%E2%80%9D&hl=en&ei=dduVTZD0Fciy0QHOkI3lCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cour%20friends%20in%20the%20Southern%20and%20Western%20country%E2%80%9D&f=false
Poe's "Brook Farm":
http://books.google.com/books?id=Um1KAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA27&dq=%E2%80%9CBrook+Farm%22+poe&hl=en&ei=09uVTZr1NeHw0gGS8t2xBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CBrook%20Farm%22%20poe&f=false
Poe's "Literati of New York":
http://books.google.com/books?id=VG1KAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=%E2%80%9CThe+Literati+of+New+York%22+poe&hl=en&ei=CdyVTZH-K8-J0QGmwan4Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CThe%20Literati%20of%20New%20York%22%20poe&f=false
Sorry for the length of the links - I had trouble finding them online.
Dr. Fleming, I tried to get you to update the Autodidact's Reading List a while ago by pointing out that some works that you recently described as essential were not on it. You know where my vote is, and thank you in advance, and for the Abe Books tip, too. I also vote for Dr. Wilson to contribute. The only problem that I foresee is that I'll have even more books that I want to read without the time to read them. Perhaps I'll live long enough to retire in a couple of years with enough savings (and the mental capacity) to be able to catch up on my reading. [In addition to books on great literature, please include some on the arts (i.e., painting, sculpture, music, etc.).]
Robert @65: Are you refering to Chesterton's poem?
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/42405/
MD @31: I bought all of the tools and taught my self how to do preventive and corrective maintenance on my car when I was in my 20s. Now, however, the necessary tools to work on computer-based automobiles are too expensive. I still have my dwell-tach, timing light, etc stored away, just in case I ever have a grandson (or granddaughter) who wants to restore a 60s muscle car like the one I owned in my mis-spent youth.
I also installed our hardwood floors and turned half of our basement into a suite for my younger daughter who has a disability that prevents her from supporting herself. I did everthing myself, except for the plumbing, the tile in the bathroom, and the mudwork on the drywall. (As Dirty Harry says, "A man's got to know his limitations.")
Much to my wife's disappointment, however, I would much rather read a good book than exercise my hard-learned skills. It took her over five years of pestering to get me to finish the mantle over the familyroom fireplace and I still haven't done the trim work for the area that separates the hearth from the now almost-needs-to-be-replaced/refinished flooring.
I meant to add in my last comment that MD has convinced me to get some pointers from my wife so I can wash by bike clothes without ruining them.
Mr. Van Sant, I identify with you. For years I painfully taught (largely by trial and error) myself and laboured less than competently at carpentry, plumbing, electricity, car maintenance, etc. When I retired, I vowed to emancipate myself and never to touch a tool again, and have kept my vow. That goes for yard work too.
Dr. Wilson, I, and many others here, are very happy that you gave up the handyman's life and instead exercised your abundant talents as a professor, writer, and commentator on this site. May God grant you many more years.
The largest gathering of jerks in the Detroit Metro area occured last night at the Fox Theater. The main jerk(Charlie Sheen) suckered a bunch of minor jerks(major depending on your perspective), into paying up to $150 a seat to hear him mindlessly ramble about stuff. They booed him off the stage then complained about how they got ripped off. What did they expect? An aging screen star that has drug, whore,and wife beating problems to be funny? The sad thing about this is when being interviewd for the local papers, many people were expecting him to "crash". How pathetic, to want to see someone destroy himself for everyone to see on stage, trhen complain about getting ripped off when it wasn't funny.
Imagine that you jammed hundreds of thousands of diverse into crowded subway cars. The result? The New York subway system, which has to be experienced to be believed. (I welcome anecdotes that I can rip off.)
None from the NYC Subway system, which has never given me any problems. I am sure, however, that this is because I am used to public transit and have only spent a grand total of two weeks in New York City.
However, I have five such stories from the similarly eery (and yet the scary part is that the ordinary eeriness doesn't bother me) Paris métro; if you wish to use them, you may:
- On Sunday, November 25, 2007, Anne-Lorraine Schmitt, a kind and intelligent 23-year-old intern at the French right-wing journal Valeurs actuelles was on the RER (suburban commuter) line D intending to join her family to attend Mass. A recidivist murderer caught up to her on the train and attempted to rape her. She defended herself but nevertheless was fatally wounded by her assailant's knife, though she managed to turn the table and injure him at least one (that's how he ultimately got caught).
- The morning I moved to Paris was December 30, 2007--a Sunday morning. I deposited my luggage at a cheap but clean and new hotel in the 17th district and got on the métro to go to the 10:30 AM Mass at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in the 5th district across the river. I changed at Réaumur-Sébastopol and as I proceeded like a zombie (running as I was on three hours of sleep and the worst jet lag of my entire life, from any international flight before or after) through the corridors, I was hit by the foulest combination of indole, skatole, thiols and hydrogen sulphide from a neighboring tunnel. Further down, I saw a young man dressed like a bum duck into a corner and against the wall of the station (there are small, run-off channels on the sides of the walls in the Paris métro, apparently just for this purpose) relieve his irritated innards. "Welcome to your new home," was all I could think.
- Every few weeks, one looks up at the screens to see the anouncement: "Due to a serious accident involving a passenger on the tracks, all traffic is halted on line X in direction Y." This is taken to indicate a suicide has taken place.
- One is not supposed to bring an uncaged animal into the train. Nevertheless people do. In May or June 2003, I saw a young boy, aged 13 or 14, on line 3 had his pretty golden retriever on a leash, lying down lazily on the floor. It was morning rush hour, the train was very crowded and passengers were struggling to avoid the dog. Twice a woman asked the boy (in French), "Could you please make the dog sit up? He's taking up too much space!" The boy just looked up with dumb eyes. Actually, I don't believe he understood French. That gets back to exactly the sort of diversity problem Dr. Fleming was talked about--and moreover illustrates the fact that it is not confined to the United States.
- Just as the strikes were calming down last October (those due to retire soon were reacting violently to the news that the national retirement eligibility age would soon pass from 60 to 62), things were not so calm on line 9. The métro is always packed at 9:30 AM, but this morning there was one train in three and it was wall to wall. Everyone was tense. People who needed to push through the crowds to get off at the appropriate stop simply could not--and this in a city where people generally get off momentarily to let people off before getting back on. « C'est chacun pour soi-même ! » ("Everyone for himself!") explained one woman to a bewildered man who had just boarded. Everyone was tense on a level that blows even the Paris average out of proportion.
- The brother of a close friend of mine heard his iPhone rang just as he stepped into a métro train earlier this year. He reached down and picked it up to answer it. Suddenly, a delinquant standing right beside the quai reached into the train and grabbed the phone--just as the doors were closing. Nothing you can do at that point.
Another anecdote, not related to the métro:
I am friends with a Catholic convert family who moved to Poitou from rural northern England about 13 or 14 years ago. One of the perks, they told me, at the time, was the lower crime in rural France as compared with rural England. That is no longer the case, neither statistically nor in their practical lives. Their daughter, who lives in a small city (close enough to the countryside for all practical intents and purposes in a country such as France where heavy centralization ensures that the only real city is Paris) nearby for her studies, suffers from respiratory problems that retard her physical mobility. Her neighbors offered to help her with some housework. They took her wallet, her checkbook, her passport and a few other documents (cell phone?).
One more anecdote, this one from Miami...
Picture the first 17 miles of Interstate 95, from its origins as an offshoot of U.S. 1 (South Dixie Highway, ironically) in downtown Miami right up to the border of Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. This stretch of the highway is a nightmare; to attempt to drive it is an extreme sport. The rush hour traffic and the backup are unbelievable for an urban area this size. Outside of rush hour, you should be prepared to go at least 15 or 20 miles per hour over the speed limit--or risk getting run over. (I must admit that that part is actually fun.) Around Overtown and the North Miami area, the highway is enclosed by massive cement walls to prevent the riffraff from jumping over and banging in the windows of stranded cars with baseball bats. Unfortunately, even these measures was not sufficient to protect the unfortunate victim of this story.
My neighbor's friend was driving north on Interstate 95 on this deadly stretch in Miami-Dade County. She wiped out and was thrown from her vehicle; after tumbling she found herself lying stretched out on her back on the road as cars whizzed past. Suddenly she heard the screeching of tires coming to a halt just up ahead. She heard the car door open and a pair of high heels step out of the car and start to approach her. "Thank God!" she thought. "Someone's stopped to help."
Alas. The woman (or, knowing Miami, possibly drag queen) walked over to the victim and stripped off her watch, her rings, her necklaces and every other piece of jewelry or metal on her body. The victim heard the "click-clack-click-clack" of the high heels walking away, then the car door shutting, the engine turning back on and the car speeding away.
Mr. Van ZAnt,
Dr. Wilson, I, and many others here, are very happy that you gave up the handyman’s life and instead exercised your abundant talents as a professor, writer, and commentator on this site. May God grant you many more years."
I am one of the many others. I always thought if I were a politician in North or South Carolina and the crowd noise heated up to remove some famous Southerner's name from a park or road etc., I would concur immediately and then have it renamed after Professor Clyde Wilson as the only viable alternative.
Robert: totally blank verse is cheating, if you ask me. There has to be some phonetic pattern to a good verse of English.
NGPM<
Here is one to my liking from a contemporary. It still can be done.
CONTEMPTUS MUNDI
How great the joys of heaven are
that need no April to recover
or surprise, no lilacs nor
the pumkins of October!
There they need no sun and rain-
bows are of emerald.
Why must we burn in heart and brain
by flaming fickleness enthralled?
Two ways to make contemptible
the world: the first is not to look;
the second, and more sensible,
to read it like a book,
to learn the grammar and the word,
loving not the less but more,
contemning it as music heard
supercedes the score.
Beautiful, Robert, and really touches me at a mentally difficult moment in my life, actually, I have to say. I could just see the emeraldic luster filling the room as I read it. Many thanks.
Before departing from this conversation, I should point out that blank verse is simply the misnamed iambic pentamer without rhyme. It is the verse of much of Shakespeare's plays and, of course, Paradise Lost. On the subject of contemporary verse, I found this little cheerer-upper the other day. It is a sonnet entitled Light Verse. Despite the depressing sentiments, the writer is a Christian.
Say what you like but grant one thing to death--
Not that there are not many bigger plusses--
That once you have sucked in your final breath
And let it out again, then all your fusses
Over the "who" you were supposed to be
Are whistl'd away and gone. It's the last touch
To polish off your true identity.
The obits, which do not amount to much,
Are buried, after the perfunctory tears,
Away in drawers where all dead things belong,
Forgotten within ten or twenty years
Along with everything you ever said
And that is when you know you're really dead.
Dr. Fleming,
Blank verse as you describe is not a dead thing but a dieing thing. Most of what passes today for blank verse is prose without that poetic form.
Poets, at their best, seem to echoe one another. Here is an early echoe of the good poem you posted:
Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “all is vanity!”
You are thinking not of blank verse but of free verse, which also has to be distinguished from the vers libre that spawned it. In the vers libre of, for example, Jules LaForgue, the rhythms and lines are basically traditional but they are fractured--a bit as if they were heard in snatches on the street. This is what Eliot borrowed and, to some extent, Pound. On principle, I think vers libre is quite wrong, but I can still hear the rhythms of English verse in it. Postwar free verse, on the other hand, tends at its best to be carefully written prose with a decent sense of prose rhythm. One can admire the sentiments or the rhetorical elegance but one hardly ever can remember the exact words.
Ah, thank you. I am indeed thinking free verse and not blank verse. This is my pennance for not entering the iambic pentameter contests at the annual summer schools. Always the Master teacher, you.