Dear Unknown Friends:

We’re proud to publish “What Is Real?,” a discussion that took place in a 1976 Aesthetic Realism class taught by Eli Siegel. The subject what is real? is huge in philosophy and art. But it’s also tremendous, ethically tremendous, in the lives of people and nations. Whether we know it or not, how we see the question what is real? is central to the choices we make, and to our happiness and sorrow, kindness and unkindness, justice and injustice.

In the class, Mr. Siegel responds to questions asked by students, and he himself asks questions. His discussion of the subject is logical, imaginative, philosophic, down-to-earth, often humorous—and groundbreaking. He answers a question about death in a way that is great in its logic and kindness.

It Matters

A big reason the question what is real? matters mightily, even desperately, is this: all cruelty begins with making another person less real than oneself. All cruelty, Aesthetic Realism explains, begins with contempt, and contempt is “the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it.” The first thing we lessen contemptuously in another person is his or her reality: we do not grant this person the fullness of feeling, the ongoing thought, the aliveness of hopes and fears, even the deep confusions that we have.

Making someone who’s different from us less real than we are is fundamental to racism. And this contempt is the filthy basis of the efforts in America now to suppress the vote. Isn’t voter suppression a saying that certain people’s possible votes must be rendered unreal—that the only real voters should be those who are like oneself?

Contempt robs things and people of their reality in other ways too. Meeting life dully, coldly, being unmoved and bored, is frequent; but it’s a making of the world’s excitement and wonder unreal. It is a wiping out of the vibrancy that is in objects and happenings, in books, music, people. It’s a making of all this livingness and meaning unreal so that oneself can feel superior—miserably superior, but superior.

About midway in the discussion, Eli Siegel refers to his definition of reality, and I’ll quote it now. In Definitions, and Comment: Being a Description of the World, he defines and comments on 134 words. The first is reality. Here is that definition, and the opening paragraph of the comment:

Reality is all that which can affect one.

As soon as one is alive, and anywhere or in any time, one is up against, surrounded by, possessed of reality. Reality is all that which all things have in common, and all the time. It is under our finger tips, and where no bird has flown, explorer has gone, or astronomer definitely peered at or into….

I consider that paragraph beautiful.

Later in his comment Mr. Siegel says “the greatest danger” in thought “is that reality be made less than it is.” He worked all his life to have the reality in people and things be honored, felt, loved. And he is the person who looked for and found what all things real—which means all things—have in common. “The world, art, and self explain each other,” he wrote: “each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.”

These Are Real

In the 1976 discussion Mr. Siegel also refers to his poem “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana.” Illustrious, fervent, exact, it won the Nation poetry prize in 1925, when he was 22. Here (on the subject of what is real) are lines 94 through 96:

That is what Aesthetic Realism, in its grandeur and enormous practicality, is about.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education

What Is Real?

From an Aesthetic Realism Class

Taught by Eli Siegel

Kate Fisher. Mr. Siegel, I’d like to ask a question about the matter of fantasy and reality.

Eli Siegel. Fantasy is reality. For instance, I once saw an edition of Poe’s stories, Tales of Mystery and Imagination—it weighed three pounds.

KF. What I want to ask is: if the fantasy doesn’t have all the attributes—for instance, if the fantasy about a person doesn’t have all the attributes of the person—then can you say it’s as real?

ES. You can say it is, yes. For example: You’re walking on the outskirts of an Alabama town; a dog comes along and starts barking. In the meantime, there’s a person in the woods whom you hear crying. Then suddenly you hear the chimes of a college nearby saying it’s noon. In the meantime, also, you find you have some food in your purse, which you start chewing. The dog is now a little more gentle, and you give some of the food to the dog. Now, I’m making this up. Are you affected by it?

KF. I’m very affected!

ES. Do you think other people are affected?

KF. Yes.

ES. It didn’t exist. It’s a sober fantasy. —Yes, Ms. Fitzgerald?

Helen Fitzgerald. I want to ask a question too. If a fantasy is real and non-fantasy is real, how would you describe the difference between fantasy and non-fantasy?

ES. The difference is in the constituents. A photograph of Radio City does not have the constituents of Radio City—the chemical constituents; and the picture doesn’t weigh as much. A sculptured bread—there can be such a thing as sculptured bread—does not have the same dough quality that baked bread has. But both are real. For instance, Mr. Boyce—you’re interested in architecture: do you think a photograph of a building, Reims Cathedral, is as real as the cathedral?

Harlow Boyce. Yes, it is.

ES. A painter might combine Reims Cathedral with, say, a supermarket on Greenwich Street. Part of it is cathedral and part is rows of things, with cans and all. It would have an effect. It would go along, in a way, with pop art.

If a person dreams of something and is very scared, and finds he’s in a sweat, would you say what affected him is real?

HB. Oh, yes.

ES. All right. But it happens that the animal that went after him in the dream didn’t weigh anything. —I’ll ask you, Mr. Málaga: do you think the history of Argentina is real?

Tomás Málaga. Yes.

ES. Is the history of Argentina in 1870 as real as Argentina now?

TM. Yes.

ES. Meanwhile, they’re different. You can’t go to the history of Argentina and walk through the hall.

TM. But a person could say that one of the two realities doesn’t seem good for him to be affected by.

ES. Well, there are various notions of “real,” and they affect one sometimes very sadly. They’re incomplete. According to Aesthetic Realism, everything is real, as real as anything else. The motto I had, at first, for “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana” was: “All existence is one hundred hundredths.” A postage stamp is as real as a heavy letter.

Bill Knabe. If you take something that is self-contradictory, like a three-sided square, would that be as real?

ES. There is a contradiction, but the phrase “three-sided square” has an effect. It’s different from any other thing—a six-sided square would have a different effect. And a three-sided square would have different effects for different people. In that sense it would be real. Take the words themselves: after all, you can spell them out. It seems to be good English, just as one can say “dry water.” There is an effect there. And if I said “an old man begging for a donation,” every person would have the old man looking different. One would be taller, one would be better dressed, one would be more tired; but there would be some picture.

Peggy McKibben. I wanted to ask: why would a person come to the feeling that certain things are more real than others?

ES. She feels that what affects her more, or seems to, or even what she’s not so much against, should be more real. We confuse the word real with other adjectives. In its history, the word has taken on the quality of something good—“a real person.” But Aesthetic Realism definitely says every possibility of mind is as real as anything that has weight: it can affect one.

For instance, when you’re affected by a melody, you’re as much affected as if somebody gave you a push. It would seem to be more “real” to be affected by a push than by a melody, but one is just as real as the other.

There Is Art—& Every Person

Tod Harzfeld. Mr. Siegel, what does the term realism mean in art?

ES. It means various things. As you may know, in literature, it has two meanings. Realism is the non-avoidance of the unpleasant—that’s one of the meanings. But if a person, for example, were to paint one of those carts that the supermarkets have, in twilight—in twilight it would look not as “real” as at noon. —I’ll ask you, Mr. Wedgwood: Do you feel you’re wholly real?

Neal Wedgwood. I’ve felt at times that I wasn’t wholly present.

ES. Do you think that’s possible? Do you think if a person is sleeping, he’s as much present as if he’s awake? Somebody says, “There’s Agnes”—she doesn’t hear it. But she’s present. Is that true?

NW. Yes, that’s true.

ES. So do you believe in a certain sense you’ve been present all the time?

NW. I guess so.

ES. What do you mean “guess so”? Do you believe you’re any more present when you’re awake than when you’re asleep? Do you weigh as much when you’re asleep?

NW. Yes, I weigh as much. I’m just as present both times.

ES. When a person says he wants to be more real, what do you think he means?

NW. He wants to feel he’s not so separate and hidden, with a secret world going on in him that’s different from what’s around him.

ES. There’s one phrase that has a great deal to do with the meaning of what is real. All of poetry brings out the reality in things, but there is one line of Tennyson: “I am a part of all that I have met.” What does that imply?

NW. That there’s a relation between oneself and the outside world.

ES. What kind of relation? The technical definition of reality as given in the Aesthetic Realism Definitions is “Reality is all that which can affect one.” When one says “affect,” that implies a relation of cause and effect. Those are two important things. It happens that everybody in this room would like to be affected somewhat differently by what meets them, including people. And when one feels that one is not affecting people—that is, being a cause in one’s own right—there is a feeling of insufficiency and sadness.

Consequently, you can ask: “Am I affected by as many things as I should be?” and “How am I affected? Is it the best way?” For example, if someone is studying art, certain things which left one blank three years ago stir one, because of what one has seen. That could go for poetry. It happens that people here have been stirred by poems which, three years ago, might have left them cold. We have a motion to be affected by more things and in a larger way, and also by fewer things and in a lesser way. You are having a debate on the subject.

NW. Yes, I am.

ES. Then the question is, what should affect us most? What should affect us most is what there is most of. That is reality. The idea of reality pure affecting one is big, but all art goes for that. Art gets to the reality that stands for the whole world, which is in every object. So, do you like the way you’re affected by people and other things?

NW. Oh, not yet; no.

ES. Also, you can find, as nearly everyone can, that at a certain time people leave you cold. And you want to be elsewhere.

NW. Yes.

ES. Nearly everyone is affected by that. It’s called the situation of the Glorious Absentee.

NW. I’ve been in that situation.

ES. But at the same time, for instance, is a book just as real when you don’t want to use it as when you did read it?

NW. Yes, it is.

ES. No matter how little interested you are in something, it’s there. You may not be interested right now in the industry of Dayton, Ohio, but it’s there.

Errors & Beauty about the Real

Kate Fisher. Mr. Siegel, I’d like to ask a question about something you discussed Saturday: infatuation. You talked about intensity in infatuation: a person can feel that because it’s so intense, they must be affected by all of that thing.

ES. That is one of the most desolating errors. If a child loses a nickel, and starts yelling and wakes up all the neighbors, it’s still a nickel. There’s such a thing as spurious emotion.

Matt Jenner. Mr. Siegel, I remember that as a child…[brushes back his hair]

ES. Do you think your adjusting your hair was real? It was swift, but was it real?

MJ. Yes, it was real. I try not to do that.

ES. If that’s the one questionable thing you’ve cultivated, you’re very lucky. Go ahead.

MJ. When I was a child, after my mother died, it took a very long time for me to believe it. I didn’t see it as real. I had dreams where I woke up screaming, with hot sweats, because I saw her dead, and then I saw her as coming back; and I couldn’t make sense of that. I didn’t accept my mother as being dead—I didn’t see it as real, yet the fact is that she was dead.

ES. I know; but still, she is real. Because you’re talking about her now.

MJ. Yes.

ES. You can’t talk about something that’s not real. You’re talking about your mother, who died, now. She is affecting you. Do you think she’s affecting other people?

MJ. Yes, I do.

ES. All right. She is real. The being able to affect a person is real. The nature of her reality has changed—just as when she was a child of six, she was as real as when she was a woman of thirty-six. The way she affected people was different, but she was just as real at six as later. Do you follow that?

MJ. Yes, I do.

ES. And she’s real now. In terms of what a thing is, or what a datum is—what Hegel would call the “given”—she’s just as real now as ever. Do you think she’s as real as Tom Jones?

MJ. The play, you mean?

ES. No, the character in Fielding’s novel. He never lived even for a while, but he’s real. The meaning of something real has to be this: anything that can be seen as affecting one. The word affecting also has to be looked on as leaving an object a little different from what it was. A person right now who hears about your mother is one who, from now on, has this information about your mother in him or her: the person is changed. —Ms. McKibben, are you a little different because you heard about Mr. Jenner’s mother?

Peggy McKibben. Oh, yes.

Matt Jenner. Mr. Siegel—this is a big question that I’ve never been able to ask, and I hope it’s respectful: how can I see my mother as more real now?

ES. Insofar as in some way she has a meaning that she didn’t have, she is more real. For instance, right now you know your mother has been talked of and thought of by various people; she has been talked of philosophically. Is that something that didn’t happen years ago?

MJ. Yes.

ES. Let’s say Mr. Harzfeld makes a sketch of her, from your description or from a photograph. Is that something that didn’t happen in just that way when she was around?

MJ. Yes.

Always Real

Eli Siegel. It’s said the reason the Egyptians mummified a person was that they wanted to have the person real, and around. Also, Indians had a way of making someone who died be felt as real. One of the early good poems of America is about that: “The Indian Burying Ground,” of Philip Freneau. There are many poems having to do with the disbelief that anyone has died. That idea is in Wordsworth’s poem “We Are Seven.” It’s a lovely poem, one of the simplest poems and one of the best. We have to ask why that poem has remained.