Dear Unknown Friends:
In this issue we continue our serialization of Beginning with Sentences, that remarkable, kind, learned, lively, deep, vivid 1976 lecture by Eli Siegel. He reads and comments on individual sentences in English literature that have power and beauty. He does so, he explains, because such a sentence—whatever its subject—can make for the kind of emotion that people hope to have, indeed are thirsting to have.
I’ll quote a statement he made early in this lecture. It is so different from what one meets in the literature courses of universities. Yet, in its distinction, it is also in keeping with the greatest of literary criticism, including that of Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold:
The reason for studying literature is to have our own emotions as great as possible. Success in life can be described as having the greatest emotions from life.
At this time, as at other times, people are having emotions that they don’t like—and don’t like themselves for having. I am immensely grateful to say: through study of Aesthetic Realism we can have, even in the midst of difficulties, emotions we are proud of, that strengthen us. And the surprising, logical lecture now being serialized is part of that study.
The World Itself Is There
When an emotion has size and rightness, is truly pride-giving, it is because it has what Aesthetic Realism shows all beauty has. That is: within every such emotion there is the sense that the world itself is cared for; there is a like of the world even as some things in the world can be objected to very much. This is so about the emotion in every beautiful sentence. Such a sentence, like any instance of art—like a beautiful drawing, a beautiful leap in dance, a beautiful melody—makes a one of reality’s opposites, including continuity and surprise, simplicity and complexity, immediacy and depth. The technique of all good art, and the emotion it makes for, are told of centrally by this Aesthetic Realism principle: “In reality opposites are one; art shows this.”
Sentences & Contempt
In the part of the lecture included here, Mr. Siegel looks at sentences by Joseph Addison from the early-18th–century periodical the Spectator. Commenting on the first of these, Mr. Siegel speaks about the thing in self which Aesthetic Realism shows to be humanity’s “greatest danger or temptation”: contempt—“the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it.” Contempt is so ordinary, goes on so quietly and covertly and steadily in one’s mind, and is also the beginning of every injustice, brutality, cruelty. Because humanity has not known what contempt is, has not studied contempt as Aesthetic Realism describes it, contempt has interfered with every aspect of a person’s life. Contempt has interfered with love, with learning. It has made ugly how one sees someone different from oneself. Contempt has caused various happenings that are terrifying the world now.
Since this lecture is about individual sentences, I am going to quote three by Eli Siegel himself. Last month, in TRO 2077, I said that I think he has written some of the most beautiful sentences in world culture. They are on many different subjects, and I discussed one about everydayness. I commented in that issue that all important writing, including Mr. Siegel’s,
depends on the interrelation among sentences: how deeply, gracefully, powerfully they have to do with each other. But sometimes, as he is showing in this lecture, there are individual sentences that can also live on their own—stand out as having a certain completeness.
So I’ll comment on three of those many individual sentences by Eli Siegel that are art in themselves. Two that I’ll quote are about the contempt that people need so much to understand. The third is about a different way of seeing, a different desire, which is also in people and is in a not-understood fight with contempt. That third sentence is about what we were born to be true to: the desire to see meaning in the world, including in people; the desire to be just to all that is.
I’ll say just a little about each sentence after I quote it.
1. In the preface to Self and World, there is a rich, scientific discussion of contempt, with statements related logically to each other. So I note that I have taken out of context the following surprising sentence, musical sentence, on page 3:
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.
Part of the surprise of this sentence is that people haven’t thought what Mr. Siegel describes in it is contempt at all. They’ve thought that “to see other people and things pretty much as they please[d]” was their freedom, their individuality. But Aesthetic Realism explains that there is something every person and thing deserves: to be seen truly. And to want, at least, to see it/him/her truly is our human ethical obligation. From the unspoken feeling I’ll see you however suits me, has arisen all the cruelty of history and now.
The beginning of the sentence is, with its rhythm, musically firm: “The first victory of contempt is the feeling in people.” The v and f sounds cut with a certain strength and definiteness. Yet the phrase “the feeling in people” ripples a little too, seems to express something that goes on under one’s skin.
Then, at the end of the sentence, there is that final phrase: “pretty much as they please.” It has a motion through sound that is like a delicate shrug of one’s shoulder or toss of one’s head, and the pr and pl make for a slight curling of one’s lip. We hear a casual, dismissing contempt. Yet the phrase is graceful, too.
There is a composition in this sentence that is the art composition. As a structure in sound and meaning, it is at once definitive and delicate. It surprises and is logical. The sentence teaches mightily; yet (or and) it is beautiful.
Sentences about Contempt, Art, Ourselves
2. On page 362 of Self and World there is this sentence about contempt:
It is that which distinguishes a self secretly and that which makes that self ashamed and weaker.
Do you hear how the vowels and consonants in “which distinguishes a self secretly” make for a huddled sound of self-caressing? Then, there is the falling rhythm of “which mákes that sélf ashámed and wéaker”: the inevitable droop of self, fall of self, lessening of self, because of contempt. The reason contempt always weakens and makes us ashamed is that it is against our deepest desire: to be ourselves through valuing truly what is not ourselves. That fact, explained by Aesthetic Realism, is a tremendous tribute to what the human self is.
3. On page 94 of Self and World there is a great sentence that has in it the basis of Aesthetic Realism. That basis is: the self, the self of each of us, is an aesthetic situation—we are trying to do what art does, put opposites together. Just before the sentence I’ll quote, Mr. Siegel says that “the artist, while entirely himself,…also sees an object in its completeness and precision.” Then he writes:
If it is possible, if, in fact, it is the great purpose of art, to be one’s self and yet give everything to the object—can we not find here the just purpose in life itself?
This sentence has, inextricably, the music of excitement and carefulness. It has the music of inquiry, and of victorious discovery; of traversing a landscape of thought, and reaching one’s wide, kind destination.
The sentence is a question, and the answer to it is Yes. That answer and what it means is what humanity—for our happiness and our very safety—needs to learn from Aesthetic Realism: how we are ourselves through being just to what’s different, not through having contempt!
—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education
In Sentences of Joseph Addison
By Eli Siegel
Number 10 of the Spectator—March 12, 1711—has Addison saying that the age is bad. Writers have said this at any time—it was so in the 17th century, it was so in the 16th—and they have all been right, because badness persisted. Addison says he hopes to make England better through the Spectator. He helped a little, but he didn’t get to the main thing, because contempt so far has been invincible. It’s just too secret, and too pervasive. It’s as if the whole sky and whole ocean were secret—how can you deal with something like that? It is as open as the fact that there’s space, and at the same time as secret as anything in a vault. —This is Addison about the effect he wants his Spectator papers to have on readers:
And to the end that their [the readers’] virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is fallen.
The age didn’t fall into folly—it began with it. However that may be, this is a good sentence.
There are the periodicals of the 18th century. That was the time of papers on two sides of a sheet, or sometimes of four pages. The Tatler and the Spectator did have a good effect. There were some journals that are not so well known, like the Craftsman. There was Samuel Johnson’s Rambler. He has periodicals with three lovely titles: the first was the Rambler; the second was the Idler; and there was one that he collaborated on, called the Adventurer. With those titles, you would never think he had worked hard.
There were other 18th-century papers. There was the Connoisseur, in which appeared the writing of Cowper about his mother that I quoted recently. There were others, like the Observer, and the Lounger, and the Mirror, and Olla Podrida. The Tatler was the first. The most famous is the Spectator.
The Wide World & Personal Life
Addison, in this tenth number, says that he hopes to affect people for the good, and he doesn’t think reading about what’s happening in Europe will make a reader better, while the Spectator will. So we have the large world and the personal world brought together:
I shall not be so vain as to think that where the Spectator appears the other public prints will vanish; but shall leave it to my reader’s consideration, whether is it not much better to be let into the knowledge of one’s self, than to hear what passes in Muscovy or Poland; and to amuse ourselves with such writings as tend to the wearing out of ignorance, passion, and prejudice, than such as naturally conduce to inflame hatreds and make enmities irreconcilable?
I think Addison is not complete here. There’s a way of seeing what’s happening in the world that can make oneself better. You can study what happens in Lebanon to become a better person, or what doesn’t happen in Thailand. And you can study what may happen in South Africa—because various people have plans for that country—and become a better person. Also, what may or may not happen in Bolivia, let alone what may happen in Idaho or in Nevada. (There’s going to be a primary in Nevada soon.) One can use the events of the world to cultivate the ethical home front. At any rate, that sentence is well made. It has a pretty abrupt and also languorous loveliness.
Addison says that if he gets dull, he promises people he’ll terminate the Spectator. He says, “I will promise them faithfully to give it over as soon as I grow dull.” Then he has the following sentence:
This I know will be matter of great raillery to the small wits; who will frequently put me in mind of my promise, desire me to keep my word, assure me that it is high time to give over, with many other little pleasantries of the like nature, which men of a little smart genius cannot forbear throwing out against their best friends, when they have such a handle given them of being witty.
That sentence has the real 18th-century goings ahead, twirlings about, flourishing, proceeding again, going a little back. The sentence bows and scrapes its way, with a good rhythm.
Notable, Musical, Unforgettable
There are a few sentences that, over the years, have been seen as having music. There are prose sentences that stand out: one by Raleigh about death; the sentence of Browne from Urn Burial that I put in line structure in Hail, American Development; and the sentence of Donne that ends “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”; also Milton’s sentence about the English people rousing itself, in Areopagitica. There are other sentences, notable, including some of De Quincey, and the sentences of Pater about the Mona Lisa. There are about twenty sentences that just have come to be seen as musical and unforgettable. One of those sentences is Addison’s on Westminster Abbey. It is beautiful and, put into line structure, would be poetry.
It is in number 26 of the Spectator, Friday, March 30, 1711. The essay had just been dealing with an insult to Admiral Cloudesly Shovel—Addison sees, very takingly, that his monument isn’t right for him. Then the essay ends with poetry that Addison didn’t get to in his verse generally. (He does have a hymn that is true poetry.) Sometimes this sentence is punctuated as two sentences, sometimes as one. In the collection I’ve been using it’s presented as two. Addison says:
When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind—
That is the first sentence, or the first part of the sentence. Then the conclusion has in it a crash of happy collectivism:
—when I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
The structure throughout the first part is: this is the occasion or cause; then, this is the effect. “When I look upon the tombs of the great”—that is the occasion. Then the effect: “every emotion of envy dies in me.” You can question what he is saying, but that is the structure.
“…when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out”: it’s the same structure. Yet the cause in each instance is different. In the first, it’s “the tombs of the great.” In the second, it’s “the epitaphs of the beautiful.” And the effect is different too.
Next there is something domestic: “…when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion.” Then, the same structure, but with variation again—all beauty has to do with sameness and difference: “…when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow.”
After that, we have a different arrangement of causes—a series of causes—followed by the effect:
…when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind—
That’s the first part of the sentence (sometimes printed as a complete sentence). Then the dates on the tombs are read:
—when I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
That’s been called, in a very fine phrase, “that great gettin’ up morning.”
What Seems Little
Addison frequently made fun of the little things that people gave their lives to. For instance, he has passages from the diary of a man who writes about meeting “Mr. Nisby,” what they ate for dinner, and smoking pipes. There are also ladies who have diaries. Number 323, March 11, 1712, has the title “A Young Lady’s Diary.” She sends part of her diary to the Spectator. I’ll read two sentences from it.
Sent Frank to know how my Lady Hectic rested after her monkey’s leaping out at window.
Well, that has motion in it.
Another passage from the diary. There’s a person mentioned, Mr. Froth, who seems to be the person the writer cared for at this time. And Indamora is a heroine in Dryden’s play Aureng-Zebe:
Between twelve and one: Dreamed that Mr. Froth lay at my feet, and called me Indamora.
There is a fine rhythm there.