Free Poem on “The Siegel Theory of Opposites” in Relation to Aesthetics

Vivent les contrariétes!—Antoine-Marie Lemierre

 

Aesthetics is the science of what is,

When that which is, is seen as opposites—

In common language, when it’s beautiful.

How black and white; and large and small; what’s warm,

What’s cool, make deepest one—that’s what, at first,

The study of aesthetics is about.

And then there are—ah, yes—the fancier things:

How urgency’s at one with calm; the way

Outline and color make a one in art;

How slowness and how speed together meet

In varied dance, and in a line of verse;

Within a chord; and oratorio.

Among the fancier things—as I have said

They were—is narrative-description in

A line of prose; or in a work—entire—

By Dickens, say, where Emily’s described

And much is told of what she said and did,

In David Copperfield. It’s well to say

(Since rest and motion are in Pickwick, too,

A fat, fat work where single sentence lives)

That humor has the opposites likewise.

The rest and motion in a Henry James

Don’t contradict them in a Remus tale.

When calm and tenseness meet a certain way,

The laughter may be mighty at this point.

The mingling of the torrent and the cube

Is deep, sharp cause of what’s ridiculous,

And also lofty loveliness in art.

Repose and force are one in poetry,

They’re one in Seurat, Delacroix, Van Gogh.

What’s shown—revealed—and what is hinted at

Are one in Dürer and in Keats. The large

And delicate are managed well by Scott

In novels by him having history.

Well, Shakespeare—he has opposites so much,

There’s gorgeous wealth and wealth in meeting them.

Othello is dynamic, keen, yet numb,

Unseeing; here akin to Laertes—

Whose lack of subtlety is placed against

His father’s overmuch of subtlety.

Velasquez’ characters resemble those

Of Shakespeare—stern and delicate; alive:

And so, at times, grotesque. The vision of

What’s here meets vision of what’s far away—

A thing reflected mingles with the here,

The seen. When Hamlet is made one with space,

It is like doings in Velasquez’ work:

Inanimate and animate are one

In picture of a boy and leaping horse;

In Macbeth looking out towards air and dark—

Which go out on all sides. What’s weak, what’s strong,

Are both in Leonardo and the play,

King Lear. Always the surface and the depth

Of things are subtly, deeply unified

In what is made by man and beautiful

As made by man. A cool contraction and

A widening are felt at once by mind

Responding to what’s pleasing by its form.

Specific is at one with general,

The playful with the grandiose; the great

With what’s ridiculous; the mighty leap

With that which glides; the sternly still and one

With that which, edgy, jumps; THE PERSONAL

WITH THE IMPERSONAL; the massive That

With skipping these—all this in painting, dance

The drama, poem; in clay, in stone, in steel,

As formed by potter, sculptor, architect.

The bronze Ghiberti used in making doors

Is dignified and lively as the lines

In sprightly poem, as motions in a dance.

That has its meaning and its vividness.

II

The opposites are surely elsewhere, too,

In more, more ways, my friends, in more, more things.

Ah, let us see them where they are—because

They make OURSELVES, they make the WORLD, that which

In honesty, we like; in pride, we are.