Dear Unknown Friends:

We have the happiness of including here five short works by Eli Siegel, and an article by jazz musician and educator Alan Shapiro. The article arose from a paper its author presented at a seminar (pre-pandemic) titled “A Man’s Urgent Question: How Can I Be Both Critical & Kind?”

What you’ll read in this issue of TRO is a beautiful and true explanation of matters that trouble people very much. It’s an explanation of the fight within everyone—including heads of state, married couples, scholars, schoolchildren, persons in history. Because without Aesthetic Realism this battle has not been identified and understood, there has been ever so much unkindness in people’s lives. The fight is between two big desires: 1) our deepest desire, to like the world different from ourselves, see large meaning in it, be just to it; and 2) the desire for contempt—to elevate ourselves through looking down on what’s not ourselves, including our fellow humans. Contempt, Aesthetic Realism shows, is the source of every cruelty. “It is,” writes Mr. Siegel, “that which distinguishes a self secretly and that which makes that self ashamed and weaker” (Self and World, p. 362).

As a means of placing what is in this TRO, I’ll comment a little on the five short writings by Mr. Siegel.

The Poems

First, there is a poem of 1960 titled “Good Will.” As Aesthetic Realism explains it, good will is no sentimental, flimsy thing, to be mentioned in holiday greetings, but the strongest, most needed thing in human life. Unless it is had, the inter-punishment among people and nations will not end. Alan Shapiro, in his article, quotes a definition of good will by Eli Siegel, a definition in prose. This poem is a definition of it in six short free verse lines. In the musical construction of those lines, we feel, we hear, both the strictness of good will—its firm exactitude—and its nuance and tenderness.

The next poem is titled “We Lag.” It is about the first requirement in good will: the desire to know. People have wanted to love and be loved without trying to know, working happily to know, who the other person deeply is, how he or she sees and feels about everything. The poem says we lag in our desire to know a person we see ourselves as loving, to whose body we are close. And it tells of the results.

I think this poem is beautiful. It is in assonance: the same vowel sound is in the last accented syllable of every line, though the consonants are different. (Here, this last vowel is the flat a.) In the way each line, through its final sounds, is like every other and also not like, we hear a kinship and a being at odds, a closeness and an awryness; and we hear a gratingness in that repeated flat a. All this has us hear, feel, something corresponding to the difficulty between two people who are together yet lag in trying to know each other. Meanwhile, through the music as a whole in this poem, with its richness of sound and its firm penetration, we feel the good will that real love is trying to be.

The third poem, “The Breviary of Ontological Courtesy,” is a series of 11 sentences. Each has in it an aspect of the good will that every person profoundly longs to feel and express. The music is meditative, has wonder. The short statements thrust, but poignantly. They delicately poke. What people most hope for and can be untrue to is told of in this musical list with a somewhat humorous title.

The fourth poem, “Invitation and Hope,” is a haiku. It is from Eli Siegel’s second collection of poems, Hail, American Development, where it is included with six others under the title “Haikus: Some Instances.” It is about the fact that a person can want not to be known by another, because there is a power we get in hiding and fooling people. And yet—we hope someone will break through our desire to hide, and want to know us.

A Manifesto

“A Quiet Manifesto: Aesthetic Realism as to Marriage” was not written as a poem. (It is, though, musical.) Each of its ten points is about good will, and about aspects of marriage where there is usually a large deficiency of good will. The Manifesto is lively, deep, wide. It is good-natured and exciting.

I’ll conclude by saying simply: I agree completely with the opinion Alan Shapiro expresses about the good will of Eli Siegel himself.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education

Poems & a Manifesto by Eli Siegel

A Man’s Urgent Question

By Alan Shapiro

“How Can I Be Both Critical & Kind?,” the title of our seminar asks. Years ago I would have said, “How?—I can’t be!” I associated criticism with pointing out the flaws in people, and kindness with being polite, “nice,” sacrificially doing things for family and friends. Then, as I began to study Aesthetic Realism, I learned that my notions of criticism and kindness were wrong. And not only can they go together—we need to put them together. Otherwise we’ll inevitably feel that when we’re critical we’re mean, and when we’re “kind” we’re weak and insincere.

Aesthetic Realism explains that the aim of criticism is to make “a good thing look good, a bad thing look bad, and a middling thing look middling.” A true critic—whether of art, a nation, or a person—wants to see a thing exactly, with complete justice. Further, kindness isn’t the soft thing I thought it was. In Definitions, and Comment, Eli Siegel defines kindness as “that in a self which wants other things to be rightly pleased.” The word rightly is crucial. Authentic kindness always tries to be accurate: its purpose is to give a thing what it deserves, not less and not more. So true criticism and kindness are fair to the object.

Trouble on the Subject Begins Early

“Every child,” Mr. Siegel explains in Self and World,

has this debate: Shall I…see the world as magnificently and as delicately as possible; or shall I see the world as the material for victories for just me?

This is the fight between accurate criticism—wanting to see the value of things—and building oneself up through contempt, a fight that was going on in me as I was growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia. On the one hand, I liked repairing my bike, doing carpentry, developing my own black and white photographs. Most of all, I liked music, and was thrilled when my parents took my sister and me to concerts by the great pianist Arthur Rubenstein, and by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. And I loved learning to play the piano. Though I couldn’t put it in words, at these times the world seemed sensible and good; and I felt proud.

But on the other hand, I went after “victories for just me.” I saw people in terms of how important they made me, and I was very competitive. In junior high, I fell in love with ragtime. But as I had contests with one of my best friends to see who could play Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” faster, something different from justice to art was going on in me. I was unfair to the music and unkind to my friend. As I watched him play, I didn’t want to learn from him or encourage him to care for the music. I hoped he’d stumble so I could win. Further, Scott Joplin specified that his rags are not to be played too fast, but that didn’t matter to me. Those contests always made me feel agitated.

I used my family to go after “victories for just me.” My father was a doctor and violinist, my mother was a college professor, my great-grandfather had been (I was told) an important rabbi; I felt this made me more intelligent and cultured than other people. And I snobbishly used my family’s financial good fortune and our big house to feel I was superior.

At the same time, I was confused by the way my parents were warm and cool to each other. As I see it now, I used the pain in their marriage, which would end in divorce when I was 16, not to be a kind critic and try to understand what they felt, but to mock them, telling myself these two educated people were foolish and insincere. I was cementing a case against the world, and I began trying to get away from the world by using drugs and alcohol nearly every day.

Then, at the Manhattan School of Music, I learned of Aesthetic Realism from Prof. Edward Green. And soon after, at age 25, I had my first Aesthetic Realism consultation. When my consultants asked me this kind question, “What do you have most against yourself?,” I said it was my competitiveness. As an example, I told them that in listening to other jazz pianists I’d have a running commentary in my mind, relishing the shortcomings I thought I found, while resenting anything good because I felt it made me less. My consultants quoted the following principle, which is a description of contempt: “There is a disposition in every person to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world.” Then they asked, “Do you think this describes what happens when a person is wrongly competitive?” I said yes. And they continued:

But is that what music is for? Aesthetic Realism shows that music arises from a true appreciation of the structure of the world—the way it’s free and orderly, wild and exact, high and low. Music, like all art, is a making one of reality’s opposites, as felt by an individual. One’s expression comes from feeling the world truly, not from beating anybody else out. The other thing in self—and it’s the source of ugly competition—is contempt.

I was to learn that contempt is the enemy, in a person, of both kindness and true criticism—as well as being the enemy of art in us. In this first consultation, my consultants explained that the one purpose that would make me proud was good will—which Aesthetic Realism defines as “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.” They said, “Good will is the antithesis of bad competition”—it shows we’re stronger not by wanting to diminish what’s good in others, but by valuing it. I felt relieved and hopeful.

There Is Love

A field in which men make huge mistakes about criticism, and are unkind, is love. As a young man, I was looking for love. But I was also a bad critic, because my basis for critical judgment was very unsound: I was looking for someone to adore me, no questions asked. Furthermore, without wholly knowing it, I was out to prove no woman was good enough for me to respect.

In college, when I met Kara, I thought she was pretty and lively, and I was affected by her care for dance, painting, literature, and music. I wanted to know her better, but also wanted her to like me more than anything else. I flattered her and tried to impress her with what a sensitive guy I was. When she showed she approved of me, including through sex, I felt I’d had my victory, and began to feel I could take her or leave her. I wouldn’t see or call her for days. Then I’d show up at her door, penitent and apologetic. But soon I was cold to her again.

Kara was very angry and broke up with me, writing in a letter about how unkind I had been. I knew she was right: I hadn’t given a damn about her feelings. Though I tried to hide it, I was intensely ashamed. But I didn’t know what was running me, or how to change.

In the years that followed, none of my relationships with women lasted more than a few weeks. I felt more and more unsure of myself and afraid I’d never have love in my life. Then, in Aesthetic Realism consultations, I at last began to learn what had gone wrong. For example, I was asked:

Consultants. Do you think you’d like to be with a woman who would smile at you under any circumstances? A lot of men have felt, “Sure, what else is a woman’s purpose, but to soothe me!”

AS. I think that’s pretty much the way I saw it.

And there was this question: “Have you thought women were strong—worthy of your thought, your candor, and your good will?” I hadn’t.

To encourage me to know and respect the large feeling and intellect of women, my consultants asked me to read The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, and George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Adam Bede. They encouraged me to learn about Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and doing so changed me profoundly. Reading her poem “The Cry of the Children”—in which she passionately and musically expressed her anger at a way of economics that made little children work in factories and mines—I saw a woman beautifully critical and kind. I respected her tremendously—and, through her, the possibilities of all women. Then, as I learned about her coming to know the poet Robert Browning, I saw how much a woman wants a man to be both kind and critical. My consultants asked me, “Do you think a woman wants to be cared for—and also wants criticism straight? Are these two the same thing?” Increasingly, I would be seeing that they are.

When I first met Leila Rosen, I already respected her very much. She was a high school English teacher, and I had heard her describe publicly the success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in her classes. As we spoke, Leila wanted to know how I saw and felt about large matters in my life, including teaching, music, and my stepfather, who was then ill. And she was critical of a way I had of responding too quickly to questions, keeping another person at bay. I was deeply stirred and, as days went by, I kept thinking about those conversations. We talked more; my feelings grew. And soon I saw I wanted to spend my life with her. I am proud to need Leila, including her criticism of me, to be the man I want to be. I’m so happy we’re married, and continuing our study of Aesthetic Realism in thrilling, culturally grand classes taught by Ellen Reiss.

In a class some years ago, when I said that I wanted to do a better job putting together criticism of Leila and encouragement of her—that my criticism could seem too separate from my care, Ms. Reiss asked: “Do you want Leila Rosen to be as good as she can be?” “Yes,” I said. “Then why,” Ms. Reiss asked, “would you see your criticism as separate from your encouragement?” In this discussion (which included much more) I was being shown that when criticism is good will, when it’s for the purpose of having a person be all she can be, criticism is love.

How can a man be both critical and kind? The answer is: by having good will. Eli Siegel himself had the greatest good will: his desire to know, and his hope that people be as good as they can be, were unsurpassed—whether he was looking at a work of literature, events in history, or the news of the day, or talking to an individual person. In Aesthetic Realism, he has given men and women the knowledge we need to have the happy, useful, proud lives we hope for.