What I Carry With Me: Six Lousy Questions

Transcript: 5.06 What I Carry With Me

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Key Terms:

• Ethos
• Interpretative Vertigo

 

5.07 What I Carry With Me

 

Packing for the Trip

I’ve many times gone backpack hiking, day trips and a few deep woods, carrying my tent and other overnight gear to explore. And whether by misfortune or merely my amateur status, I cannot now recall a single time where a trip has gone flawlessly. Boots that blister, forgotten or lost supplies, creepy nighttime visitors, insect attacks, altitude sickness, whatever it was, the stories are fairly numerous. Or maybe it’s only the trips which included some suffering that I remember.

I also knew this: if I carried too little, I risked not being prepared for that chance encounter. If I carried too much, I’d risk not being able to carry it all the full distance to the next stop. 

You and I are leaving “To His Coy Mistress” behind now, starting an exploration of what is out there past it. It’s true that the literary and cultural space out there is a criss-cross of possible trails: we could encounter just about anything. And here begins the “nomadic” part of this podcast. Having spent some time with Andrew Marvell, we see where our ideas and questions lead us next. We want to be ready for the journey, so we need to carry a few key tools and ideas with us; and, due to the capacity of our own brains and ears, we must selectively leave some behind, maybe regretting that choice later, but practical is practical, after all.

What we’ll use and won’t even I don’t know, just yet. That’s the nature of exploring, isn’t it? But let’s take a few moments to think about what we’ve learned from Marvell’s metaphysical poem and decide what is most important to each of us. 

I’m going to play some music for you now–you may recognize it–and that will give you about 35 seconds or so to choose your ideas. (Of course, if you’re a cheater, you could just hit the Pause button and jot a few things down.) And after that, I’ll tell you what I’ve chosen to pack and why.

Theme

This is Literary Nomads, where we wander through literature and language, near and far.

I’m Steve Chisnell, and as we start our way down some new trails, you have about 10 seconds left to make your choices. 

Trails and Tools

Now I don’t want you to imagine this is going to be a life-threatening venture. But if you’ve never really explored anyplace unknown before, you may have spent your past moments imagining the more harrowing of hiking movies out there: my favorites are Into the Wild, 127 Hours, and of course, Man vs. Bigfoot.

And, even more fortunately for us, our trip isn’t physical, anyway– at least, not yet. We’re exploring literature and our own thinking. Arguably, that’s even more dangerous for most of us, which is all the more reason why we wish to be prepared. The tools and trails we choose are not without consequence.

First, notice how many trails lead from this place we stand, here at the place where we camped out on Andrew Marvell’s work. From here are routes which take us to other poems and polemics of his, routes forwards and backwards to works which he built upon to those which respond to him. But the literary routes don’t have to be even this clear. We could move from here to other works which touch upon the same topics or themes: works of seduction, works which wrestle with time, works that have problematic narrators, works which address epicureanism, works which wrangle with mythology or with our ideas of virtuous behavior. 

But the trails ahead don’t only lead in these many directions. Crossing all of these are historical trails (the English Civil War, Cromwell, Germany, the 30 Years War, STDs, plague years), literary eras (cavalier contemporaries, romanticism, the pastorale, the metaphysical poets), the arts and philosophy (existentialismA broad name for a wide range of philosophies. Emphasis is o... More, epicureanism, hedonism, Mannerism and the Baroque, ), religions (polytheistic sin, Christian faith, the rise of Protestantism), psychology and sociology (patriarchy and oppression, empathy, the marginalized, power politics, queerness and heteronormativity, the role of silence), the nature of metaphor, literary tropes and figures, the dominance of Western canonCanon means "center," and a literary canon is a set of works... More, and cross-cultural responses. Each of these, too, has dozens of choices.

We simply cannot address it all, cannot prepare to meet it all. Our ears and minds grow overwhelmed. So we must choose. As literary nomads, we recognize the breadth of choices, but prepare for what we imagine we will meet along the trails we select. 

I’ll be the guide on this podcast’s trails, since I’ve already surveyed ahead a bit, and I’ve walked paths similar to these before. Along the way, I’ll point out others we could take, and I’ll encourage you to explore some on your own as your own interest and time allow.

But today I want to make sure we’ve packed well. We have some important tools:

1. IronyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More, especially dramatic ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More, that we have a basic grasp of, that of characters with a more limited perception than others have
2. Narrative distanceWhere the author distances herself from the speaker or narra... More - A specific kind of dramatic ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More where we see our speaker or narrator as a separate (though connected) character from the author
3. Ambiguity - That parts of a work may not have clear “answers” to their meaning.
4. PolysemyWhen many simultaneous interpretations of a work of literatu... More - The idea that an image or work will, in fact, speak many ideas at one time. 
5. Discomfiture - That literature like this makes us sometimes ill-at-ease with its ambiguities, and that this is, by itself, nothing to fear. 
6. AccountabilityAccountability is a claim on our actions, but it is external... More - An ethic for readers to hold ourselves and others responsible for our choices and readings. 
7. And also a few terms like sfumatoI refer to this metaphorically in a verbal context: an uncer... More, iambic meter, and fallacy that we’ve touched upon but not explored at any real length, yet.

Notice that these by themselves, these tools, have nothing specifically to do with Marvell’s poem, but they are tools for reading and meaning-making, tools that will help us with other works later. 

These are good enough for now, and we’ll use each again. So I want to turn, instead, to some bigger issues, the things I’m carrying.

I gave you about 30-odd seconds earlier to choose the ideas you want to carry with you. Now, I’ve been nice and I’ve delayed offering mine to give you a few more minutes. But the time has come. What do you have? . . . I’m listening. 

Hmmph. My girlfriend just reminded me that podcasts don’t really work that way. 

Um, okay. . . . well. Time to punt. Here’s what we’re going to do. I really am interested in what your takeaways from Andrew Marvell are: your ideas, your questions, the topics you’re wrestling with, the things which give you discomfiture, whatever. 

And this is as good a time as ever to let you know about the Literary Nomads Mailbag. You can send me comments and questions–written, or even better in audio form–and I will respond to them throughout our next many episodes. If they connect to anything we’re talking about, I’ll do it in an episode directly. If they’re other sorts of comments or more personal ideas, I’ll keep them between us and respond to you by email. Truly. Really. 

All you have to do is go to the Show Notes and click the link for Literary Nomads Mailbag, and drop in your question or upload an audio file. This will be an ongoing link, too, so if you don’t have something right now, try it tomorrow, or next Wednesday. It all works! But I want to help you with your literary questions and projects, in making sense of any of the ideas we’ve been talking about or something of your own. 

The good news is that I already have several questions sent to me by subscribers to the Waywords Newsletter, a bi-weekly email of all the projects I’m working on, not just the podcast. I’ll talk more about that in another episode, but the link to Subscribe is also in the Show Notes. It’s absolutely and forever free!

Six Lousy Questions

So you have your questions, and you are hopefully busy sending them to me right now (or at least keeping them in mind). I have some, too. I’ve spent a lot of time with this poem and this Andrew Marvell guy, and I’m not entirely happy with what he has me thinking about. 

For me, I find the best way to capture a tricky idea in literature is to frame it as a question, one that can’t be answered with a quick Yes or No, one that isn’t a factual response but instead one that sits somewhere else, not entirely a matter of opinion but a matter of reasoning and intuiting and investigating my way to answers. I’ve got six that I’ve settled in on, and they’re a real problem. And I blame Andy Marvell. 

1. What should I do about my own mortality? 

“But at my back I always hear / Times winged chariot hurrying near.” 

Marvell and his friends are right. Outside of some fantasy or horror scenarios out there, we are all going to die. “Time” as we understand it, will run out. 

This is probably one of the grand-daddy of questions, isn’t it? How do we respond to this moment, the ultimate existential question? I suspect that means I should consider existentialismA broad name for a wide range of philosophies. Emphasis is o... More as a philosophy, but also other ways that people have responded to it. I’m not all into the approach by Marvell’s hedonistic speaker: using death as an excuse for sensual spontaneity, mostly because it doesn’t really answer the question.

Implicit in the question, though, are others: does the question ask more of how I spend my life presently or how I account for it in some after-life? Is the question about personal happiness or is it about some significance I create, some measurable and memorable mark in life? Some approach this through the answer of children—I left them to mark my existence and carry on blood, family fortune, family name, family tradition, etc.—but laying it out that way is simply a matter of biology, of natural procreation (and the manipulation of estate tax laws, perhaps). Do I, this me, not the generations which follow me who will have to account for themselves–have something more significant to do than pro-create? Even Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 12:

      And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
      Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. 

This is a question of Legacy, yes, though that word is itself problematic. The carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More thing is staring right at me, of course, but if it’s the one in Marvell’s speaker’s hands, I don’t trust it at all. And it’s possible I have the question wrong altogether: Maybe I don’t need to do anything about it all, but this–for me right now–seems to dodge the significance of the question.

2. What should I do with the Now?

I kept this as a separate question, but it is certainly almost the same as the one I just asked, isn’t it?  Here, though, I think I’m asking how I should be spending my time, regardless of how or even if I ask the question of mortality.  

Caught up in this question is that accountabilityAccountability is a claim on our actions, but it is external... More word. Does it matter to anyone (even myself) what I do? So what if I go around accosting young women for sex? Or parading my wealth over those less fortunate? To whom or what should/will I be held accountable? 

It’s not enough to answer “the law,” here, not for me. Our legal systems across history have had their fair share of injustices and wrong-headedness. Marvell’s ironic speaker gives the finger to Christian mores, it seems, these ideas of “quaint virtue” and sin. What does he care? But Christianity didn’t invent morals; these notions of virtue and sin, of moral measure apart from divine judgment, exist in other discourses, other literature, other ways of thinking. I can and should consider how ideas of faith and spiritualism work their way through literature, but I also have to wonder why these dominate the narratives. 

Maybe the answer, for instance, has something to do with a kind of presentism, this self-care virtue I hear so much about, that we need to live in the moment, find peace in the now, meditate, make myself content, and like a good Buddhist, perhaps, forego the outside world that pollutes my thinking. And maybe I set aside the arguments that make me anything but a beast. After all, animals don’t seem particularly bothered by either of these first two questions. Speaking of things which distinguish for animals, 

3. What is the relationship between rhetoric and Reason?

Once again, our “To His Coy Mistress” speaker uses false reasoning to exploit others. His lack of logic and dastardly imagery form a narrative against most of the questions I’m raising above. 

But how do I distinguish between these two, reasoning and merely the illusion of it, when each employ the same tools, rhetoric and language? Now, some of us may have learned that rhetoric is pretty much a synonym for “style,” that it’s the fluff on top of language to make it prettier, but has no real value; by its very nature it’s insincere. I’m not one of these. I’m going here back to an earlier definition, a more substantive one, which suggests rhetoric to be the art of persuasion. 

More, my thinking about rhetoric–which we’ll have to explore another time at length–is that most all of our language is used to persuade others. When we tell stories, when we explain how the world works, of course when we argue an opinion, when we forecast a likelihood, when we assuage others, we seek to persuade them to our own thinking of the world. Certainly Marvell’s speaker uses rhetorical argument; but so too does Marvell’s poem for us form a kind poetical rhetoric, one convincing us of the villainy of its speaker. 

So at the heart of my question after reading this poem is the question of what I can understand or trust about the arguments I hear. Which are arguments of Reason, perhaps the method I must use to distinguish myself from beast and address the first two questions? And which are arguments merely used to turn me down false paths, led into the rhetorical traps placed by canny predators? 

It seems to me, at first glance, that another important term, ethos, lies beneath these questions. Ethos is the classical Greek term for our sense of character, that idea of Virtue which moves in spaces broader than the Christian definition. This is something Socrates addresses, but we’ll save for another time. In any event, our Marvell speaker wants nothing to do with Virtue, it seems; but does Marvell? 

4. Why this impetus towards reproduction, anyway?

This is as much a sociological question, and it is tied up with the ones I’ve just talked about. We can recognize, at least in the industrialized world, that childbirth numbers are currently on the decline. Is this because of an abandonment of the biological imperative, a replacement of this motivation with something else, or some general ennui which has set in with human civilization?

Inside this question, too, are those legacy questions I already asked, along with questions of philosophy of purpose, what we may call a teleological question: what is our Purpose, if not to perpetuate the species? If merely to procreate, then the objectification and manipulation of the woman in Marvell’s poem is justified, marking us back at the level of animal.

But if there is a new downturn in that behavior, this is because we have collectively complicated the question, replaced the question, or abandoned it. And, I suppose, biologically speaking, it’s possible that the question has abandoned us. Technology, too, offers us other means to manipulate the natural motive to create.

And not only this, but psychologically, how much of our behavior in legacy-making might be understood to be a metaphor for this biological process? When I write a poem, am I actually creating a replacement for this natural act?

More on the literary side of all this, 

5. How much do writers shed accountabilityAccountability is a claim on our actions, but it is external... More for their ideas through this ironic narrative distanceWhere the author distances herself from the speaker or narra... More? 

On the heels of the previous question, if parents are responsible for their children, must writers, too, be held accountable for the impact their works make upon the world? Or is the act of moving from writer to author–of performing the act of writing to letting one’s work loose upon the world–one which frees them of consequence?

I understand–and we’ve already discussed–why writers might do this. Ambiguity is sometimes a necessary strategy, a way in for an unpopular idea or one of compromise instead of one which is absolute. Our writer chooses an ironic narrator in order to position themselves differently, in order to shift the location where a meaning or theme is placed. Not in the limited narrator, but outside of him, against that narrator. 

But this also begs the question: Why can’t a good writer simply take a principled, forthright stand on a topic they believe in? If Marvell hated the cavalier attitudes and traditions of his day, why didn’t he just write a poem which says so? One without ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More or ambiguity? We could talk about what makes art art for a minute, but I want to suggest that this narrative, ironic space opens for more readers. Think for a minute of all the opinionated posts we scroll through on social media: if you run into one you disagree with, how open are you to its ideas? How fast do you scroll past? Or worse, how often do you post an equally abrasive reply? 

As a writer, how do I make a decision what to post with some degree of ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More and what to write more openly, speaking on straightforward principles?

Now, I already know part of the answer to this question, I think. It doesn’t matter, at one level, how distant a writer believes herself to be from the words on the page–our culture will hold her accountable if it wants to. Worse, that consequential response will happen whether or not the work is critically–that is, thoughtfully–read. I can list, unfortunately, several teachers who have chosen never to teach Marvell simply because the topic is sexual in nature, not offering even lip service to any other meaning therein, an absolute position impervious to dialogue. 

But apart from these readings and misreadings, is that narrative distanceWhere the author distances herself from the speaker or narra... More even completely possible? Yes, I can create a villain in my book and have him speak all kinds of vile and contemptible ideas; but in the end weren’t those ideas somewhere in me as a writer, ready to be made more credible on the page? Now I’m not at all suggesting that the writer is secretly a psycho killer –nothing so absolute and obvious as that—but that within us, all the time, are these contrary and conflicting ideas which turn about and shuffle upon themselves, create for us contradictions and hypocrisy.

Marvell’s speaker is a villain, but is Marvell? If I cannot name Marvell absolutely as a villain, can I even name myself with confidence? What complex notions do I have in my head which might cause me to behave without virtue, perhaps even surprising myself? Remember: we are neither the Ideal Us nor the Static Us: these are each statues–one imagined and one momentary—and we are human, uncertain and changeable.

Yes, this question of accountabilityAccountability is a claim on our actions, but it is external... More bothers me, still, so I imagine we’ll run across it again in more complicated ways. 

6. Finally, if I’m carrying so much from just one poem, how will I get anything read and understood?

Yes. This is the consequence for thinking and reading critically. We can be slowed down by the ideas. Good. The world could do with some more careful and thoughtful decision making. 

But otherwise, the question is difficult to work with. Slowing down is good, but paralysis is not; defeatism is not. All this, all these questions, all these overlapping issues, can cause a kind of “interpretative vertigo,” a term I think first coined by Stanley Fish. We get dizzy from all the possible interpretations. It’s a very real phenomenon for readers. There are just too many meanings to think about! But this is so much a better condition than reading the Sporknotes which tell us that Marvell writes on the themes of “Sex” and “Time,” as if this covers the topic. 

But, despite our discomfort and uncertainty, we move forward, anyway. We take what we can gather, stuff it in our packs, and explore. 

And then we suddenly are compelled to new choices: In the mortal time allowed us, what literature do we make spaces for and what do we set aside; who are we reading? Why choose? Why do our choices of what to read, what to question, matter?

Keeping Marvell and his questions in our pack means having long and difficult talks about what he is up to and what it means for us, but also about a misogynistic assault inside the traditions of poetry, from the Cavaliers and earlier … and later. Better to just let him fade? To actively erase him?

And you know, it’s already too late. For me and each of you listening, Andrew Marvell’s questions are in us. They’ve all formed there, and they will work around inside and settle themselves where our minds let them, scooting one idea over for more bench space, throwing another off the bus. And to bring the original metaphor back, he’s in our pack. 

So I’ve got these questions. Maybe yours are different. 

And it is with these questions, and our few literary tools, that we set forth on our first journey, our first nomadic exploration, looking for answers and examining more literature. 

My path forward is over this way, into places of Uncertainty. In the next few episodes we’ll address that feeling more directly, talking about how to find ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More lurking just about everywhere, discovering a few new texts to play with, and talking more about those “difficult conversations” and why they’re more important than ever, about critical literacy as a place of privilege and power and what that means in terms of accountabilityAccountability is a claim on our actions, but it is external... More.  

Like I said, I suspect we’ll all survive. But we have to take some lessons from that cinema masterpiece, Man vs. Bigfoot. No path is without its dangers. And there are questions perhaps larger than Marvell’s anxieties over death and time, those which have to do with how we think and live.

Mailbag Question:

This question was posted and the asker requested that her name not be used (but hah, since I said it was a woman, I’ve just narrowed it down to 53% of the population): 

How do you keep all of this stuff straight?

I don’t! 

Part of this is what I talked about earlier, that interpretative vertigo. It’s a kind of dizziness, isn’t it, where all these ideas whirl around and some of them fly off and land under the couch, and others drop into the wrong pants pocket. 

Let me try it this way: This urge to “keep everything straight” is a bit of mental OCD. It’s related to that idea of closure, of tidying everything up into a package so we can put it on the shelf and not think about it until, you know, “later,” the same later that never arrives for anything else we put there.  But at least the boxes are labeled. 

Now, I’m not going to tell you that I don’t have spreadsheets of ideas and links going on in the background of this podcast, but even these are no match for all the ideas I’m thinking about. And just when I think I’m about to have a conclusion to something, I remember something I had mislaid.

For instance, I was thinking as I put my questions together for this episode that AHA! Marvell has a bit of this power privilege going for him, he has the freedom and liberty to play with the lives of others and not have to worry overmuch about consequence. And then I remembered that he was utterly dependent upon the patronage of others for much of his adult life, and then precariously in his minister position as political power shifted. No, he was definitely a man sensitive to the consequences of his decisions, not oblivious to them.

But I certainly believe–absolutely–that this state of disorder, this interpretative vertigo, this dizziness we feel at all the possibilities, is absolutely the healthiest place we can be in reading. It’s the certainty, the closing down of meaning, that is scary (and too often, oversimplified). Beware the rhetoric of the meme and bumper sticker. If we don’t know how to hold it all together, that means that we have already discovered more than we’ve considered before. 

The trick, as I suggested earlier today, is to not let it paralyze us. In a way, it’s Marvell’s argument, isn’t it? If we had world enough and time to consider all the ideas of a poem, we would, but we don’t, so choose your metaphor: pick up a thread, choose a trail, pack a bag, and move forward with what we have. Grab a friend to steady us on the way. Two can carry more ideas than one; three or four can do better still. Now you have a book club. 

Don’t forget that Literary Nomads Mailbox option–would love to hear your thoughts and questions–and after you get done posting to that, go read something.