Dear Unknown Friends:

Here is the final section of The Renaissance Shows Self, a lecture that Eli Siegel gave in 1970. Using the anthology English Renaissance Poetry, edited by John Williams, Mr. Siegel discusses poems that could be seen as far off in time, by writers whose lives could seem different from our own. Yet he has us feel the living self within each of those poems, and has us know better, and more proudly, the self that is our particular own.

To accompany the final installment of this remarkable, rich, kind talk, we preface it with fourteen maxims from Eli Siegel’s book Damned Welcome: Aesthetic Realism Maxims. From one point of view, every maxim in Damned Welcome is about the self or about the self’s opposite, the world; or about both. But the ones gathered here are among those that, I think, tell of what the self is with a certain pointedness.

What a Maxim Has

One reason for joining those fourteen maxims with the conclusion of The Renaissance Shows Self is this: the nature of that literary form which is the maxim is so different from that of the poems Mr. Siegel discusses here. A maxim is a rather short prose statement in which an idea is conveyed with succinctness, playfulness, charm, often a snap. Eli Siegel, as philosopher, explained what the human self is, and he did so in his Self and World and other books, in essays, in poems, in the lectures he gave. But he could also show what the self is and is concerned with, in a pithy, sometimes humorous, yet deep and compassionate and musical maxim. I’ll comment first on three of the maxims, as a means of presenting Aesthetic Realism principles about the self. Then, these will also be included among eleven others in our maxim-prologue to the conclusion of The Renaissance Shows Self.

Let’s take this maxim, from part one of Damned Welcome:

When you care for something truly, pat yourself on the back.

That sentence, with its rapidity and neatness, its wonder and also its congratulatory rhythm: what is behind it? The self of anyone, at any time, in any place, has an opposite. This opposite is the world, the whole world which is not oneself. Aesthetic Realism explains that the fundamental and largest need of the human self is to take care of itself and at the same time value truly what the self is not—the world of people and facts and knowledge and happenings. However, there is that in everyone which feels we care for ourselves not by valuing other persons and things but by looking down on them, managing them, seeing them as unimportant or as ever so much less important than we are. This way of seeing, this way of self, is contempt. It’s in a constant fight with our deepest desire: to like the world through knowing it. Contempt in us says: valuing, respecting, seeing meaning in what’s not us is a humiliation, a lessening of ourselves.

And so we come to the maxim I quoted: “When you care for something truly, pat yourself on the back.” In its no-nonsense yet treasuring manner, it tells us that caring for what’s not us is an achievement, a cause for self-congratulation. It tells us this without fuss, and with a music of neat, factual pride.

Why the Self May Dislike Itself

One of the most popular maxims in Damned Welcome is:

If you like yourself for the wrong reason, you will dislike yourself for the right reason.

The wrong reason for liking ourselves is essentially contempt: liking ourselves not because we’re trying to be just, to see something truly, but because we consider ourselves to be apart and superior. However—there is the second half of the maxim: the self, our self, has that in it which inevitably objects to our injustice! We have what Eli Siegel called the “ethical unconscious.” It makes us be ashamed, be uncomfortable under our own skin: it says, If you’re unjust, I, the very center of yourself, won’t let you be at ease.

All this is in the maxim. With its jaunty verbal play of sameness and difference, it is also a musical oneness of thoughtfulness and speed, ethics and grace.

Then, there is the following maxim, one of the shortest:

His life was more his than life.

If we want to limit how much our self has to do with—if we don’t feel that while our life is ours it also belongs to the wide world—we are deadening our life, taking the true liveliness out of it. That is what many people do day after day: “own” themselves by making other things seem flat, dull, inimical. This maxim, in seven monosyllabic words, tells about a human tragedy. Yet it has humor, and a lift in its rhythm.

Here, then, are fourteen maxims, three of which I commented on a little. The final maxim of the following fourteen is one of the great sentences of English prose. It is also one of the kindest sentences, and one of the greatest honorings of the self of everyone.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education

Fourteen Maxims about the Self

By Eli Siegel

1. Every object is politely and persistently looking for your accurate attention.

2. A pessimist is a person who finds an oyster in a pearl.

3. When you care for something truly, pat yourself on the back.

4. We are original when we can see originality in others.

5. People have died not knowing where they disagreed with themselves.

6. The self should be a tradition and a trumpet call.

7. Her better self was a poor relative much too often.

8. If you like yourself for the wrong reason, you will dislike yourself for the right reason.

9. When you use the word Me, see what the boys in the back room will have.

10. Making the world less than it is, is unfair to ourselves; its magnitude is our well being.

11. His life was more his than life.

12. Any object met becomes forever part of the self which meets it.

13. In any instance of knowing, the self becomes more.

14. The self can slink; the self can crawl; the self can cower; but a self can also say it doesn’t like it; the fact that a self can criticize what it is, is its resplendent justification.

A Diversity in Self

By Eli Siegel

There is a poem in this book that begins with a line telling oneself to do well, telling the self to believe in itself. It’s one of the most famous lines in English literature. The poem is by Edward Dyer, who lived from 1543 to 1607. It’s been pointed out that the rest of the poem’s lines don’t go along with the magnificence of that first one—

Well, that’s a very fine line. A self wrote it. And it can be seen, in terms of its structure, as having in it such a diversity in self, such lows and highs and arounds. You can say the self is a kingdom because of its diversity and because there’s a changing architecture. Also, there’s some architecture that remains.

There is also John Skelton (1460-1529). In a poem called “Woefully Arrayed,” he has Christ speak. This is part of that poem:

A question was whether Christ had a self. He had a character. The relation of character to self and personality is one of those questions that are still ever so fresh. But books have been written on the character of Christ. Also, if Christ was incarnated, he had a body, and as soon as body is alive, a self results.

Is the Self Ethical?

Another poem in this collection is by Sir Thomas Wyatt, a poem of ethics. A thing that is said again and again, and it’s said in the Greek, is that you’re punished for thinking too well of yourself, or being arrogant or insolent with the gods: that is, for having hubris. That word is around, and soon may appear even without the italics because it’s so popular.

Many poems in Elizabethan and Tudor times are overtly moral. There is a series that is important, with writing by various authors: Mirror for Magistrates, which deals with the fall of princes.¹ A title of John Lydgate, who is 15th-century, is The Fall of Princes. Arrogance was looked on as very prevalent. Earlier, Chaucer had a good deal about it. —This is the first stanza of Wyatt’s poem “If Thou Wilt Mighty Be”:

This stanza and the others in the poem counsel one against bad ways. Money was seen with suspicion. Money and love are the two things which—in terms of our attitude to them—have been looked on with the most important organic doubt.

“If thy desire have over thee the power, / Subject then art thou and no governoúr.” There is the old comparison: if passion controlleth thee, thou art a wretch, while if thou canst control passion, thou art a man—perturbed, perhaps, but still a man. That was the old reasoning. When we say someone’s in a passion, there’s a feeling that the passion is running the show, while if you have an intention, you’re still somewhat with your oar in the boat of yourself. This is what is meant in “If thy desire have over thee the power, / Subject then art thou and no governoúr.”

In the final stanza, Wyatt says that if you have gold and Indian jewels you can still feel disturbed—which one has a tendency to agree with.

The Self Can Complain

We also find, in this book, complaints about a person’s trickiness. They are in plays and in poems a great deal. The self has a great readiness to feel that other people are trying to deceive it. And very often that’s correct. But once the self has a power of feeling deceived, it had better be careful, because you can deceive yourself as to how you’re deceived—even as to whether.

A poem of Thomas, Lord Vaux, included here is “He Renounceth All the Effects of Love.” Lord Vaux says in it that women are very much in favor of deception. Three of the lines are:

These are not the best lines of Lord Vaux, but they represent suspicion. That was present in the relation of Essex and Elizabeth. There did seem to be a wonderful case of mutual mistrust between them. Essex mistrusted Elizabeth, and he was right; Elizabeth distrusted Essex, and she was right. And that’s how history was made.

In a stanza about death in Lord Vaux’s best poem, “The Aged Lover Renounceth Love,” there is something of the feeling that comes to people intermittently, frequently, insistently—that one might as well not have been born:

This feeling, that things will come to an end, so one might as well not have been born—also the wish that one had never been born—we find in many places. That seems to be all through the centuries. And the human self is the only thing that can say that, because no pebble ever complains, and no lamb ever complains, no gazelle or armadillo.

A Self Can Judge Wrongly

Next I’ll read an editorial note by John Williams. It’s about Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17-1547), and I said earlier that I disagreed with it:

Modern taste has almost refused to read Surrey at all. He certainly is not so fine a poet as Wyatt, and the things for which he is “historically important”—the blank verse translation of a part of the Aeneid, the close imitations of Italian and French sonnets—are almost worthless as pieces of art.

The answer to that is Says what? Says who? It’s not so at all. Surrey is as good a poet as Wyatt, and knew a little more. His translation of a section of the Aeneid is valuable.

Then we have this statement of Williams: “But here and there one will find startlingly direct and clear lines, and a few of his poems are very fine.” That is not a complete taking back, but it’s the beginning of one.

In a sonnet of Surrey included here we have this interesting line: “The swift swallow pursueth the fliës smale”—which is lovely.

And I’ll read two stanzas from “When Youth Had Led.” They’re good. They are intimate. They are constructed well—I think with more subtlety and depth than most of Wyatt, if not all. In this stanza there is a going out and a coming back; and there are words that are solid and words of space:

That is magisterial. It’s tidy; it’s surprising. And it stands up well under careful looking. —Then, this last stanza of the poem:

The stanza is cunning. It’s prudent, but it has a certain beauty in it of darkness and shiningness.

Wyatt has, still, some goodness. He and Surrey have been mentioned together for centuries. The pair, I think, by now can never be dissevered—of Wyatt and Surrey. They have to be together.

Travel, Turbulence, & Quiet

There are other poems here that could be commented on. I cannot read them all. But I’m going to read a poem, hardly known, of Barnabe Googe. It is simply, deeply, profoundly likable: “Coming Homeward Out of Spain.”

This has rage and quiet.

The self travels. Other beings, other things, go about and move; only a self can travel—that is, only a self knows travel agents. There is a comment about travel in this poem.

“O raging seas and mighty Neptune’s reign / In monstrous hills that throwest thyself so high.” The grammar seems doubtful, with thyself for a plural thing. But these lines say that the raging seas throw themselves up into monstrous hills. And we have this line, with its continuity and beat: “That with thy floods dost beat the shores of Spain.” —Then there is the second stanza:

This is a going for quiet. Yet the poem has such a seeing of the world as stormy and turbulent. And in this poem turbulence and quiet make for some of the best combinations of any century. Since everyone wants to combine turbulence and quiet, Barnabe Googe wants to help; so I introduce him to all of you as I close this talk.