In politics I’m a liberal, in poetics a conservative. In practice, I find all labels libelous and laborious. “Define your terms” is an invitation to tedium. Yet to track one’s coordinate points on the ocean of notions definitions can’t be foregone. Oh to be an entertainer, not an explainer. (This paragraph is giving me hives.)
Political liberalism reveres “private property, market economies, individual rights (including human rights and civil rights), liberal democracy, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.” (Thanks, Wiki, for the assist.) The America envisioned by our Founders has been history’s most audacious experiment in political liberalism.
In poetics conservative does not mean dotard, fogy, fusspot, old fart, geezer, granny, or stick-in-the-mud (bless you, Sanctus Thesaurus). It means conserve as in raspberry or plum conserve (be still, my heart), distilling and conveying summer’s sweetness into killing winter. It means remembering “the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically” (thrice bless you, Matthew Arnold). It means – for me – obeisance to Shakespeare, Montaigne, Thoreau, Dr. Johnson, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Henry James, T. S. Eliot and my swarm of seraphim in preference to most fashionable fatuists. (I said “most” – you and your favorites are of course excepted. And no, fatuist isn’t yet an acknowledged occupation, but surely the manufacture of fatuities is the commonest of contemporary callings.)
Do political liberalism and poetical conservatism clash?
A friend urges on me a faddish new fiction. “Instead of Shakespeare?” I snarkily snarl. Commerce depends on the elevation of fresh geniuses, like hula-hoops and Rubik Cubes, to keep cash registers jingling (hula-hoops? Rubik cubes? Cash registers? – how old is this guy!). One cannot spend the same hour twice – and with so much delish Netflix one’s store of reading hours dwindles! So which is it to be, King Lear or (blank)? (Name withheld for self-protection.)
Ours is a history-hostile epoch, too consumed by consuming to consider. Our ancestors were rough drafts of our present perfection. Novelty swaggers; tradition shudders.
Accuracy of expression is derided as fuddy-duddy. Only the comatose concern themselves with commas. Emojis and gotchas KO thought. Roars and beeps preclude the quiet cerebration requires.
Pining for yesteryear’s a vapid waste of zest. Born a century ago I’d be dead by my age, which I wouldn’t prefer. I quake, though, at the consequences of today’s arrogance. The cost of obdurate obtuseness is noxious ignorance. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” sighed George Santayana, on whose modest grave I’ve laid flowers thrice.
We see this in our politics particularly, where we persist in repeating blatant mistakes. History proves that without truth, probity, sobriety there can be no tomorrow, and reckonings don’t take long. Many have witnessed the collapse of their insuperable castles. This story has been told and told again – but who reads, ponders, pauses? We the people seem to be hurtling headlong to our perdition without discussion. I’m hoarse with hollering. Yet many of my nation deem my dread a joke.
Political liberalism and poetical conservatism must be allies not antagonists in the endless war to save us from ourselves. Only language can locate us and steer us right. Illiteracy is a tyrant’s truncheon. Watch Trump wield it (who mistakes truncheon for luncheon).
The good news about this bad news is… there is none. So heigh-ho, let’s do what we can, and enjoy the day.