Dear Unknown Friends:

Here is part 6 of Eli Siegel’s definitive and immensely kind 1972 lecture We Approach Poetry Variously. And with it is an article by Aesthetic Realism consultant Ernest DeFilippis, part of a paper he presented in March at the public seminar titled “True Strength in a Man—What Is It?” What he and his colleagues explained at that seminar is something men and women have thirsted to know these many centuries.

Opposites in Ourselves & Poetry

In the lecture we are serializing, Mr. Siegel uses as text Laurence Perrine’s Sound and Sense. It is a book he valued, even as he did not see Perrine as being clear about a question Aesthetic Realism considers vitally important: what is the difference between a true poem and something that may look like poetry but is not that? Eli Siegel is the critic who has answered this question—really, solidly, and grandly answered it. And the answer is to be found in the principle on which Aesthetic Realism is based: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

In the present section, we’re in the midst of his discussion of calm and tumult, and that form of those opposites which is quiet and noise. He has been commenting on a statement by Perrine: “Its [poetry’s] purpose is not to soothe and relax, but to arouse and awake, to shock one into life.” And Mr. Siegel has been showing that that is not so: a true poem is always simultaneously calming and stirring. Real poetry has, together, both quiet and auditory thrust. While one opposite may be accented, both are there, felt and heard at once. He has been reading poems that accent stillness, and here, two of the poems he reads are his own.

So let us look a little at quiet and noise in human life. These opposites are troubling people now. There can be a deep, sometimes fierce, desire to get away from the sounds of one’s fellow humans, from all their utterances—a seeing of these as an interference with oneself. People have gone after silence tremendously. They’ve gone after it as part of contempt, as a means of being unimpinged on by things not me.

Also a person can be too loud, without understanding why. The reasons are various. One reason (largely unconscious) is: to have power over those around us by making ourselves loom through sound, dominate auditorily. Another reason is: a person, having a big desire to sink within oneself, can unknowingly be afraid of that desire—and can try to combat it by coming forth unmistakably, and disproportionately.

The trouble about these opposites is multitudinous. An angry couple can yell at each other—and also give each other the silent treatment.

Yet stillness and dynamic sound can both be beautiful. They are one in all good music, as in all good poetry.

Both Were Loved

Since the two poems of his own that Eli Siegel reads in this lecture are about quiet, I want to make it clear that he also loved sound that’s loud, including very loud. For example, he relished, and read greatly, the loud passages of Vachel Lindsay’s “Santa Fé Trail.” As early as the 1960s he praised the loudness of rock ’n’ roll and said he’d be glad if it were even louder. He said the loudest poem in the English language is Tennyson’s “The Revenge” and to hear Mr. Siegel read those intense, crashingly loud passages of it was an experience of a lifetime. His own poetic work has both beautiful quiet and beautiful intensity that is often loudness. So as a means of placing the poems of his that you’ll soon read, which honor quiet, I’ll quote the first two lines of a poem about something else. His “Noise Is of All, The World” begins:

I cannot now, due to limitations of space, comment much on the two quiet poems by Eli Siegel that are here. They are different from each other. “Quiet, and Waters Lapping” tells of a particular form of quiet: that mentioned in the title. “To Begin With” describes an utterness of quiet: it has quiet taking in everything. Yet in both poems, we feel a sizzle in the quietude; delicate tumults, thrustings, grandeurs. The poems show: if you look at stillness—even utter, all-inclusive stillness—and try to be accurate about it, there will be a sense of agogness.

Art, Aesthetic Realism shows, makes opposites one, as we thirst to have them one in us. That is because the artist has, with a vibrant fullness, the purpose we need to have: to be ourselves by seeing what’s not ourselves truly, justly, lovingly, as it is.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education

About Quiet, continued

By Eli Siegel

There is quiet in poetry. There’s a great deal of it, and it is in all languages. A great example of quiet poetry is a song from Tennyson’s The Princess, which I have discussed before. It soothes. And if it doesn’t stir, as you look at it you’ll find yourself being stirred more and more. It is important to see that a human being can find calm and also activity, motion, agogness at once. This is the song or poem:

That is quiet. It’s also about love, and has a great deal to do with sex. But the thing is that it is honest, and a line like “Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost”—that stirs. What is a milk-white peacock drooping like a ghost? Then the line “Now folds the lily all her sweetness up”: that also stirs.

A Poem of 1927

There is a poem I wrote in 1927, which I knew was about quietness. It goes after quiet and loneliness. At this moment the waves of the Atlantic are going against Scotland. They’re going against the Hebrides. They’re going against much of Europe. They have been, atom bombs or no. The waves simply go to the coast of Scotland, to the coast of France, the coast of Norway. That part of Europe which is northern Scotland has the waves. And it’s gone on. Samuel Johnson mentioned them somewhat in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. And they were there all through the times of Mary Stuart, and Macbeth,* and the rest. At this moment they are quietly energetic. They were in 1927. So this poem is about quiet. (One can see that quiet has been a big subject with me. For instance, the first word of “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana” is “quiet.” And there is the poem “Quiet, Tears, Babies.”) When you say “quiet” you may be going for the presence of at least some soothingness. Well, this is “Quiet, and Waters Lapping,” of February 1927:

Most of reality is quiet now. And quiet should be seen honestly. —It should be noted that there can be a feeling of serenity, space, and kindness in early morning.

A Force in Reality

There’s another poem of mine that I’ll also read. It is about quiet as a force in reality. This is of 1934. “To Begin With,” it’s called:

One should ask, What is the place of quiet in music, the place of quiet in reality? You don’t have to wait for death to see a lot of it. You go far enough into the air, and you have it. You go far enough within the ocean, you have it. And you also go wide enough, and you have it.

A Man’s Strength—What Is It?

By Ernest DeFilippis

It was 6:30 on a cold winter morning when I got to the beach at Coney Island. I tightened the weights on my boots, did a little stretching, looked out into the distance, and began to run, determined to make it to the other end of the beach, some 2½ miles away. The baseball season was approaching and I wanted to be in top physical shape.

I didn’t know there were two desires fighting in me, which had in them two notions of strength: my deepest desire, to like the world, versus my desire to have contempt. I wanted my mind and body to be strong, have the stamina and keenness to respond with speed and agility on the ballfield: make that running catch, hit that fastball! The headwind and the shifting sand under my feet, making it difficult to run, asked more of me and I loved it. But I couldn’t distinguish between being strong through welcoming the world, seeing it as a friendly opponent, and being strong by triumphing over it, feeling I was tougher than it was.

When I made it to the end, I was thrilled—“I did it!” But instead of using my workout to see the world as a source of strength, a friend to be known, I used it to have contempt, to bolster my ego. I sat on the boardwalk, looked at the wide expanse of the ocean, pulled out a pack of Camels, and lit a cigarette. Now, I didn’t smoke, but I felt a cigarette added to the macho picture of myself. I felt mighty as I thought of my teammates who couldn’t hack it—that is, who preferred sleeping comfortably in their beds to joining me in my struggle on the beach. But as I basked in my conquest of Coney Island, I felt painfully separate from the world before me. Despite all my energy, I felt encased in myself, unable to break out. I didn’t know my contempt was stifling what would really make me strong: my desire to have good will, which Eli Siegel described as “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.”

The study, through Aesthetic Realism, of good will and how to have it has revolutionized my life. It has given me something I thought I’d never feel: a joy and self-respect that takes in my whole self, both mind and body.

Strength & How We See the World

As I’ve illustrated, to a large degree I saw the world as an enemy to be defeated and felt that to be strong was to have power over it. That could be, for example, by my beating an opponent on the ballfield, or catching a girl’s eye as I strolled down the street with the sleeves of my tee shirt rolled up, or cutting a person down in my mind—“He may have bigger biceps but I’m more handsome.” I felt to be strong was to act sure of myself. To show any uncertainty, or show I wasn’t up to something, was a sign of weakness. But what I felt inside was very different from how I acted.

I was often ill at ease around people. Sometimes I didn’t know what to say, especially when a person was talking about him- or herself, or about something I hadn’t been aware of or didn’t understand. I’d try to get to ease by cracking a joke or changing the subject, coldly dismissing what the person was saying. But doing this did not bring me ease; instead, it made me ashamed.

In Self and World, Eli Siegel writes: “The first victory of contempt is the feeling in people that they have the right to see other people and things pretty much as they please.” That sentence explains why I disliked myself. I didn’t have the courage and strength to try to meet a person squarely, to see that person, be affected and changed by who they were and by the richness of the world they represented. And feeling “strong” through wanting to see a person any way I pleased made love impossible.

What Do We Appeal to in a Woman?

Like many men, I felt strong having a woman succumb to me, see me as the most important thing in her life. If she didn’t, I’d get hurt and angry. For example, when I first set eyes on Julie Harper, I was swept: “Wow! What a doll!” I was captivated by her beautiful eyes and how adoringly they looked at me. Julie was studying acting, which I thought was pretty cool. I was heading to Florida to pursue my baseball career and she was going to Georgia to work in summer stock. We planned to meet in the fall. I wrote to her about how much I missed her, but I don’t remember asking her one question about the thing she loved, acting—what play she was in; what part she was playing. Shortly before the time set for our rendezvous, she told me she had a chance to be in another production and couldn’t meet me. I was devastated. Yes, it was nice to be an actress, have some interesting intellectual pursuits; but to prefer them to me—that, I just couldn’t comprehend!

In a class some years later, Eli Siegel asked me this kind question: “Do you like the way you see women?” I answered no, and said, “I don’t feel good when I meet a woman who is critical.” At the time, I was trying to get the approval of Laura O’Day, who, I told myself, was playing hard to get. Mr. Siegel wanted me to see Ms. O’Day as real, as having depths and hopes, as wanting to be strengthened in her desire to know—which was what she most valued in herself. He asked, “Are you capable of being resplendently just to Ms. O’Day?”

I said, “I would like to be.” And some of the questions Mr. Siegel asked me were: “Do you have a great desire to see what the obstacles are?” “What are you more interested in: comfort or love?” “Which do you appeal to, the strength of women or their weakness?”

EDeF. I think I can appeal to their weakness.

ES. Do you give mind to a woman? Can you feel a woman who cares for you will accept the limits you hand down?

Mr. Siegel was encouraging my true strength: the desire to welcome and add to the strength in another person. He said, “There are certain questions you don’t ask Ms. O’Day that she would see as mentally useful. There is no limit to how much a person wants her mind stirred.”

I love Eli Siegel for criticizing my contempt and enabling me to change, and keep changing. The happy life I have now—including my marriage to the woman I love, Maureen Butler—I owe to his good will.

I value Maureen’s energetic, critical mind, and I like learning from her. Our grappling with and interpenetration of ideas, the inter-criticism as we talk and study together how to see things and people truly, is a wonderful, stirring, and very romantic experience. Having good will is cherishing a person’s desire to like the world and wanting it to flourish. That’s what I want for Maureen in my quest to be “resplendently just” to her. And let me tell you, it makes for powerful feeling and self-respect.