The Spirit is the Conscious Ear.
We actually Hear
When We inspect — that’s audible —
That is admitted — Here —

For other Services — as Sound —
There hangs a smaller Ear
Outside the Castle — that Contain —
The other — only — Hear —

Comment:

This is a strange poem, but one expects no less of Dickinson. First stanza brings spirit and mind together. These are not necessarily the same thing: spirit can have more to do with heart, courage, drive, will. But the central idea of the first stanza is “we actually hear when we inspect.” This examination is the “Spirit,” as it most certainly is a “Conscious Ear.” “That’s audible / That is admitted” – “that” could be the results of inspection, things heard. It could be the inspection itself. That these two possibilities are present points me this direction: “that’s audible / that is admitted” is the self-consciousness of spirit. Dickinson could have said “what is audible / what is admitted,” but she chose “that.” “That” and “here” in the first stanza point to an immediacy for the speaker. Something is being engaged right now, at this moment.

There is a problem. The last time you thought about something – say, solved the “Jumble” in the paper – did you feel the spirit being the “conscious ear?” Did a deeper awareness of self emerge? Did you find yourself rethinking what was audible, the possibilities of what you allow yourself to hear? No? Huh. That’s weird.

I think what one has to do with the first stanza is place especial emphasis on “actually hear” and “inspect.” There is almost no passivity in the first stanza. There is only working at being as conscious of oneself as one can be in the present. “Audible” and “admitted” indicate just how much “inspect” is about knowing how we are hearing, knowing what we are admitting and perhaps not admitting into our consciousness.

Still, Dickinson’s first stanza engages some rather large themes. It seems far too grand to make sense. The second stanza tells us about “other Services.” Why other services are needed when there are moments we “actually hear” is very strange, but the first stanza had nothing to do with actually hearing sound. “Sound” required another service to be heard.

The second stanza says that for other services, like gathering sound, a smaller ear hangs outside a castle. This image seems to come out of nowhere. In truth, a “castle” was presupposed in the first stanza. The “audible” was noticed first, then it was “admitted,” then it was “here.” The first stanza quietly described something getting into a fortress, being admitted through inspection. The implication is that “the spirit is the conscious ear” is a declaration of something perhaps true and definitely problematic.

What is problematic about the first stanza is “We.” “We actually hear” and “We inspect:” but wait, that means “we” are all united, all of one mind. Our faculty in this case makes us one. If we make spirit the same as a form of mind, the result is that our will is our intellect and man is the rational animal for very, very specific reasons.

But the truth is that spirit divides us. That we compete or may have courage in battle are great examples of this, but we also know differently too. Any spirit/mind unity, no matter how beautiful they sound or seem together, is contingent on what is bodily. Those other services, like the castle itself, contain something, perhaps an “other.” Those other services are very much bodily and yet can also be thought of as using a smaller ear while containing something separate and fortified. The thing which contains is separate from that which serves. It goes without saying the self is split, that the other is within us and yet apart from us.

And yet the other is beyond us and the ear is picking up on that. We are a disunity at the same point we are a unity. I suspect that is the ultimate significance of “the spirit is the conscious ear.” One might be tempted to say that the spirit is a conscious ear only on an intellectual level. That will yield the first stanza, with the problem of the first stanza. It is not clear when we inspect anything well with respect to ourselves. That doesn’t mean the possibility of the spirit being the conscious ear cannot be achieved. It does mean we need to go to the second stanza and see how our regular, everyday lives effect the truth of the proposition. The smaller ear is the conscious ear, too. It, in only hearing, is picking up the consciousness of another. It isn’t clear what we ourselves contain, only that we have fortifications of all sorts around.

Death has a life
of its own. See
how its album
has grown in
a year and how
the sharp blot of it
has softened
till those could
almost be shadows
behind the
cherry blossoms
in this shot.
In fact you
couldn’t prove
they’re not.

Comment:

How does death have a life of its own?

It certainly seems to have an album that grows with time. The speaker is specific about the time: a “year.” By saying “year,” she has implied all four seasons. This album does not just catalog the dead, it catalogs the cycle of our lives. We go through the years and leave moments behind, moments that have parallels with other moments but are always unique in themselves.

You would say that’s not quite death: we need the specific pictures of those we’ve lost. We would need their names, to account for what exactly has been lost. So she moves to “the sharp blot of it.” There’s the album and now also the “sharp blot.” Right away, one thinks “ink blot,” like death is written or spilled. That “sharp blot” is an oxymoron helps this reading, as writing is a likely candidate for something that could be smudgy but still legible. Newspaper obituaries can “soften.”

And yet that metaphor can’t be quite right, either. The album, at least, has the courtesy to grow, be a collection of our losses. The “sharp blot” that softens, on the other hand, sounds like us forgetting not just the sting but even what those we lost said to us and what we said to ourselves about them. How can these two things be reconciled? There’s more than a tension between them; at this point, they flatly contradict.

The two metaphors end up getting jammed together. The shadows are “almost” the softened blots, the writings in memory of another. Those shadows are “behind the cherry blossoms,” one picture in an album. It tempting to think the cherry blossoms, to speak in metaphor, are a combination of shadows and album, words and seasons. The shadows and album frame a vague space in which an image appears. This sounds too beautiful to be true and it is. Cherry blossoms are symbolic of the ephemeral as they so quickly blossom and wither. If those shadows are indeed what we thought about another, then what is most scary is how the picture of cherry blossoms contains nothing but our forgetfulness. Remembrance is really trying to remember, finding something that may or may not be the person we loved. “You couldn’t prove they’re not:” we can never say for certain that what we think we remember is wrong, so we cannot be right about them either.

Ryan’s poem prevents that dark a cynicism. Death does not have a life of its own because we forget as time goes on, losing even our memory of those we loved. The cherry blossoms were natural and are not now an image: we have what we think is an image of them. Death has a life of its own because, somehow, we eventually come to terms with it. I am speaking almost glibly, with no real way to convey the pain involved in these things. We recognize the natural as greater than our attempts to grasp it. Those who are lost are unique and irreplaceable, like those blossoms. We know nature is not final, hoping its incomprehensibility justifies the hope of rebirth.

the way
the blue room
(remembered)
lights up

as you turn to
  be held
and to hold me

your
  beholder

Comment:

Loving the artistry of this little poem. We go through our blue period, as if our mental image is that of a Picasso painting and only a Picasso painting. That’s how I’m playing with “the way / the blue room / (remembered)” – the memories are something we’re reconstructing and making blue as we do it. This is our way and it feels, for a second, like we don’t have control. Still, it is essential to think of an actual blue room given how terse the poem is.

That room “lights up.” Our mind’s disappointment was always expectation. Is this an illusion about to occur? A mental trick?

Hollo sets off “be held” and “beholder” to emphasize the parallel. The key that something amazing happened here doesn’t quite start with the beloved willingly being held and holding the speaker. I think it has to be the turn, the humanity that memory so easily washes over. That turn is itself being held and holding the beholder, it is its purpose. We want to know in what way the “you” is present: this is just a memory, right?

Yes, but. It’s a memory where the speaker wants to see. The beloved is there inasmuch she isn’t there. There isn’t a single detail describing her in this poem – there’s more about the room and its color and light. The beloved is literally absent, at most a likeness. The key to the absence is that the speaker does see what he wants, himself as accepted beholder. Her turn to him is exactly reciprocal.

This is a realization about love, I think. This is a rejection of the “thrill of the chase I can get anyone I want” or “I prayed every day for so-and-so” type of love. It is seeing, in something incredibly romantic, something just and equal and feasible. To have one’s love accepted is the dream, just that. To remember that is to stay grounded – held – as fantasies fly overhead, making the sky a darker shade of blue.

The questions that arise are of identity, being and education. Regarding the last, is there something about the character of knowing that has changed from ancient philosophy to modern philosophy? I like to say that the whole issue of Socrates is this: in dying, he was as good as his word. There’s something about knowledge which necessitates self-knowledge and perhaps vice versa. It informs the being one is, the nature one has. I think that’s the context you need for the passage below. Descartes, of course, is an example of “modern” philosophy:

Seth [Benardete]: This is connected, I think, with the whole issue of experience and teaching.

Michael [Davis]: How do you mean?

Seth: The character of teaching, à la Descartes, is to speed up the process of understanding or to give the impression that you can speed it up.

Robert [Berman]: You can leapfrog.

Seth: Somebody forms himself on the basis of the life he has lived, then he transmits it. But the life is not transmitted, only the rubrics, not grounded -

Robert: – in the experience that gave way to them to begin with.

Seth: Right.

Rather than knowing, the passage is concerned with teaching. Teaching leads back to a contention about knowledge. “The process of understanding” can be sped up or be made to look like it can be sped up. The problem with the fantastic promise of method is that experience seems to be essential to our knowledge. All of us know that to memorize a fact for school feels arbitrary and forced until one sees that fact play out on the news or in the real world. And that’s knowledge as didactic.

If we start talking about the character of understanding as it relates to discovering for oneself, then things get much weirder. Benardete speaks of somebody forming himself “on the basis of the life he has lived.” This is moral knowledge resulting in guidelines, advice, propositions. One can challenge whether this is knowledge strictly. I think what’s interesting is hearing from people who have made scientific discoveries and had “eureka” moments. I can’t imagine there is some strict reason/passion separation at work, where the achievement of knowledge is completely separable from the feelings one has about it or a number of other propositions one has related to the way one thinks. To sit and solve a problem of some magnitude requires clearing up one’s own thought, one’s own mental cobwebs, and discovering how best to think for oneself.

That “how best to think,” along with the certainty of scientific knowledge, has led some to think that mind is universal, so much so it is beyond mankind, beyond all mere physical phenomena. I’m not so sure: I’m (obviously) thinking more that real discovery is going to involve some degree of self-discovery. That doesn’t mean there’s some optimal way to think or not think, but rather indicates that some sort of striving is essential to knowledge, a striving that isn’t quite brute calculation. A body of knowledge, on this thought, only makes sense if there are knowers.

This all might seem obvious, but any time one wants to propose something about how we know or who we are there are bound to be complications. Later in the discussion Benardete is asked how he is so sure the issue is experience. Benardete relates an anecdote about Leo Strauss, how Strauss met a Polish woman and remarked how she had a depth American women her age didn’t have. For a second, I thought the issue was “sure, someone who watched their country and the people around them get obliterated twice by the Germans and Russians in a matter of few years would display a certain depth.” But it may be possible to go through the horrors of war, the trauma of living under bad or failed ideologies, see one’s tradition and identity challenged to the point of being annihilated and learn absolutely nothing.

The issue is experience because having experience isn’t the be all-and-end all for knowledge. The question is closer to how you want your experience to be a guide, a thing of value. Even that isn’t putting it quite right, because I remember being preached to recently by this 18 year old who had found God who I really wanted to shut up. The Polish woman, assuming she’s been through a lot, probably displayed a moral maturity by being less concerned with acquisition and achievement and more concerned with something else. I’m tempted to say that is something like “how things are valuable,” but I’m not sure. I will say this: a passage from Heidegger’s “What is Metaphysics?” has stayed with me, the one where he speaks of great anxiety and the beings around us receding as a consequence. I’m not sold on the metaphor (I don’t know that it is a metaphor, but that’s another story), but I wonder about having almost nothing left. If one were lucky, would she be guessing at the value of the smallest things in slow, deliberate ways to see if the world made a lick of sense?

References

Benardete, Seth. Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete. ed. Ronna Burger. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the human condition is how one has to distance oneself from humanity in order to understand and appreciate it. The activity of reading can be emblematic of this distancing when it does not serve as its catalyst.

Kertész’s photographic essay seems to have this as its starting point. We seem to read for different reasons and we certainly do read under different circumstances. And yet, there’s some kind of convergence between those just looking at a book or relaxing, those studying or immersed, those struggling to read like their life depended on it and those who have nothing to do but read.

I can’t help but think that one of the first images of his collection presents the problem symbolically. Newtown, Connecticut, October 17, 1959: a beautiful, sunny fall day. The sunlight is vigorous and our view squarely faces a window with that light, with a small table in front of us and book upon it. Next to the book, also on the table, is a small sculpture of a bird in a basket. The window has a delicate, sheer curtain covering it almost entirely. The sun combines the tree branches behind the window and the shadows and highlights which fall upon the curtain to create a thick but beautiful weave. We’re left to wonder if our gaze outside the window will only be caught by a web; a bird is inside, after all, next to the book. Do we need books to represent a beautiful but inaccessible nature? To see anything outside?

That might be considered an over-the-top formulation, especially as Kertész purposely placed his camera to capture a certain design only. But then – and this is pretty much as far as I am in his book – consider his photos of schoolchildren, placed one after the other in the essay. Esztergom, Hungary, 1915 – 3 poor boys, barefoot and in torn clothes are huddled over 1 book, like as if they’re trying to get everything they can out of each page. This is followed immediately by Paris, 1929 – the schoolgirls all have neat shoes and stockings and coats, and each one is wrapped up in their book. There is no need to look at their faces.

Finally, beyond desperation and plenty, the proximity of boredom and wonder. New York City, April 23, 1969: the kid lounging, relaxed and immersed in his book while the other students look like they’d be anywhere else – my hero.

There are other photographs in this collection. The ones of the elderly struggling to see the text while life moves on around them are particularly heartbreaking. It is tempting to say that reading encompasses too much of a diversity – it’s the only way to do justice to those alone, with nothing to do but read, and those with the luxury of using books to not talk to anyone else. Kertész’s very scope, however, does not allow us that answer. We are continually watching them read. Whether they know it or not, all of them are looking for the same thing we are.

References

Kertész, André. On Reading. New York: Grossman, 1975

It is your birthday.
I want to bark
at the moon.
I want the excitement
of innocence,
the dawning awareness
your presence
beckons.

On the other hand, I need to get a routine in place so some of the nerves subside. Taking suggestions. I think a deep breath and saying to myself “start slowly” might work well. I don’t need to say the first thing and dominate a conversation, proving a theory of the cosmos. I just need to get that conversation started and make it enjoyable for all involved.

I moved my chair into sun
I sat in the sun
the way hunger is moved when called fasting.

Comment:

“Hunger,” a natural need, is repositioned by us for the sake of something spiritual. We take something we would ordinarily satisfy and turn it into a devotion. We take a weakness and try to make it a strength.

What is strange is how the last line of the poem – all the above – makes any sense. How do we immediately understand such a complicated convention as fasting?

The first two lines, by contrast, are much more difficult because of the all-too-simple image. “I moved my chair into sun” becomes “I sat in the sun.” “Moved” becomes “sat;” motion terminates in rest. “Chair,” an instrument, disappears in action. “Sun” is revealed as “the sun:” parts become whole, distinctions are made, through experience.

The spiritual is realized. Motion and instrumentality fade away. Knowledge takes on an aspect of the whole and isn’t quite knowledge as a result. What’s interesting is how the need (hunger) and the sacrifice (fasting) are parallel with what might seem hedonism – taking one’s fill of warmth and light on a relaxed, sunny day. I don’t even know this is a mere parallel. The way is the same.

Things of note:

• Jeremy Scahill, “Inside America’s Dirty Wars” – the most important thing you’ll read and a call for immediate reform. We haven’t just killed U.S. citizens who’ve declared themselves terrorists with drones. We’ve killed U.S. citizens, period.
• Gawker: “This Personal Essay Will Get You Into Columbia”
• “Apparently some four-fifths of NFL players are insolvent within a decade of retirement. This is the peril of ever being exceptionally good at something: It can convince you that you’ll be good at whatever you try.”
• “George W. Bush is smarter than you” – on another note, I’m not thrilled with the present Syria/chemical weapons rhetoric: “one President got us into a war where there were no WMD’s, now Obama is actually dealing with WMD’s.” It’s a cheap partisan point that doesn’t have any proper accounting for just how dangerous a world where these sorts of things are floating around are. I’m not saying we should go war everywhere at the least sign of a threat. But it’s easy to talk about not panicking and acting really, really carefully when we’re a distance from a threat.
• Yes, I read that sorority girl rant e-mail. Yes, I loved it. No, I am not linking to it [extremely NSFW, esp. the awesome commentary it has spawned. The Internet has found a spouse.]. Instead, have some sacred music by Mendelssohn.

Can ancient thought guide current political practice? There are several complications at the start of the inquiry. For example, illiberal aspects of the past: slavery was commonplace in Classical Greece and Rome. Further, our world is so, so different that it is hard to see how two thousand year old theories could be applicable. The use of an iphone can invalidate a restaurant review made 5 minutes earlier. Doesn’t politics require some sense of stability? A continual flux of information and opinion seems overwhelming for concepts made for a world where people would lose all hope in the midst of battle because of an eclipse.

So why not leave the ancient city behind? Well, it emphasizes aspects of political life we tend to neglect. Unity is one of those. Modern democracy nowadays tends to place greater emphasis on a libertine freedom centered around the individual. There are good reasons for this, of course, but older thought may prove useful for finding a way to unity and pride in that unity which involves respect for the rights of all. Aristotle talks about a city working together for an end, for the sake of the good. Our political life doesn’t really allow for reflection on what it means to live well. Rather, it seems to emphasize simply living.

The contrast brings us to the more specific concerns of the ancient city. Family looms large in the Republic, though it is treated somewhat ironically there. Laws are a more fundamental concern for ancient thought generally, as they point to the development of virtues which shape citizens a particular way. The city has a “wholeness and rootedness” that takes man’s sociability seriously; not all law points to mechanism or artifice, creating incentives or disincentives for behavior. However, an overemphasis on law or family can make conventionality in the guise of tradition seem like it only speaks to the higher aspects of humanity. It might become hard to guard against a certain nostalgia for generations past.

Still, there are more “realistic” dimensions of the ancient city, ones that remind of modern concerns such as security. The prime example: the ancient city takes conflict seriously. Conflict is not just one city going to war with different cities, but the problem of many seeking the good within the city itself. Various associations form within the city, i.e. families, where people seek the good for themselves and their allies. Aristotle speaks of an “equal exchange of evils” where various associations and communities composing the city continually demonstrate the harshness of civic life. Hierarchy, force exerted from the more authoritative part of the city, is not just a basic necessity but perhaps even integral to whatever freedom is enjoyed in everyday life.

These more realistic dimensions, when considered in the context of what seem to be idealistic notions, raise fundamental questions. What does it mean to live in common? To have a shared life? What could any of this have to do with force?

It helps to treat ancient political philosophy as somewhat practical, as continuous with problems raised in ancient history that Plato and Aristotle were very familiar with. Herodotus gives us story after story about different peoples with different customs. His “inquiry” – the word we translate as history – focuses on them as they are all about to be conquered by the Persians. It seems some notion of Greek freedom and prudence is opposed to this imperialism. Thucydides, however, starts from the problem of Greek empire. People are far less important in his account than the destruction of war and fatal acts.

Thus, we can see flux and conflict as an “intellectual frame” for the ancient city. For example, consider the first book of the Republic: religion, foreigners, sophists, tyranny and force are all brought up to open a book that will give us an ideal city of sorts. The dialogue Charmides has Socrates back from service at the siege at Potidea, dealing with half-baked notions of philosophy from Critias and Charmides, who are associates of his and wannabe tyrants. Aristotle tells us in the Politics that without law and justice, man becomes the worst of the animals. He must have virtue.

Now Aristotle gives us a distinctively political basis for virtue. He lays heavy emphasis on reciprocity, as evidenced by the discussion of “the equal exchange of evils” above and the famous “ruling and being ruled in turn” of the opening of the Politics. But he also talks about the need to exchange goods for community, the fullness and full implications of “a common way of life.”

This brings us to an “ancient realism,” where themes of flux and force and also community reside. One has to wonder about what true community could be in the face of so much conflict. The “architectonic power” of ancient community sees freedom as stemming from authority. The “closed” society, local and strictly moral as opposed to universal and tolerant, is where law shapes mores and gives a way of life. Law requires reverence and piety.

But the establishment of a pious authority obviously does not make anyone free on its own. Ancient realism wonders how the city encompasses community, family, friends; the question of nature, however, emerges as one moves back to the individual and asks about the ends of the city. A diversity of political communities are comprehended by law. In the city, more natural communities are united by law; friendship matters at least as much as having an armed camp. Aristotle at times speaks of philosophy in the same breath as gambling and exercise. It seems like as one gets a friendlier, better city united by law, philosophy is more susceptible to being attacked by it. Why does anyone need knowledge?

Philosophy doesn’t despair. The activity of philosophy is what enabled the more natural basis for the city to be brought forth. The freedom that is philosophy stays somewhat hidden, but is ever present. As long as people can see conflict and disagreement as natural and work with it politically, they can see the higher possibility philosophy represents – that something positive or meaningful about our nature might be understood.