I remember going over to my best friend's house on a Sunday when I was young. Plates of lasagna, bread, and salad were passed around as I sat down to lunch with their family of five. Before everyone sat down though, there was a collective stir as they looked for a book. That book turned out to be a poetry anthology. It was passed around and everybody read a poem out loud for everybody else.
This memory has passed through my mind several times in the last month. Here's the funny thing about poetry: it doesn't have a point. Most people know that, but they know it in the derogatory sense. I mean it in a positive way. I see people reading huge law textbooks in Starbucks or in Barnes and Noble. That's a text that's a means to an end - they'll be able to practice law. A John Grisham book is a means to an end - its a cliffhanger and you want to know what happens. Whether for school or for relaxation, something's driving that text forward, and when you get out of it what you need, you no longer need it.
Can you think of anything you read that isn't a means to an end? Where if somebody asked you why you were reading it, you really wouldn't know what to say?
Poetry doesn't have a point. It is an end in itself. Words that are put together merely for the sake of...enjoyment? And yet of course, its not so much that poetry doesn't have a point. Its that poetry is about everything. A critic has written that he was puzzled in his first and second reading of The Iliad. For all that the story seemed to be about the rescue of Helen, the poem sure didn't spend a lot of time on it. On further readings, he realized The Iliad was not a means to an end to hear what would happen with Helen. It was about that, but it was also about anger, honor, ships and home. But even then, its not so much about those things, as it is a way to taste those things and feel their pull on you. You can't summarize something like that.
For perhaps this very reason, poetry has needed to be defended as a good pursuit from time to time. In our anxious, pragmatic, no-time-to-think age, it may be that time again. Philip Sidney wrote a book called A Defense of Poetry in the 1500s. The poetry he has in mind is primarily old myths and epics like Homer's Iliad or Virgil's Aeneid.
In one passage, Sidney compares the poet favorably to the philosopher and historian. The poet will be the better, more thorough communicator:
"The philosopher, therefore, and the historian are they which would win the goal, the one by precept, the other by example; but both, not having both, do both halt. For the philosopher, setting down with thorny arguments the bare rule, is so hard of utterance, and so misty to be conceived, that one that hath no other guide but him shall wade in him until he be old, before he shall find sufficient cause to be honest. For this knowledge standeth so upon the abstract and general, that happy is that man who may understand him, and more happy that can apply what he doth understand. On the other side the historian, wanting the precept, is so tied, not to what should be, but to what is; to the particular truth of things, and not to the general reason of things; that his example draweth no necessary consequence, and therefore a less fruitful doctrine. Now doth the peerless poet perform both; for whatsoever the philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a perfect picture of it, by some one by whom he pre-supposeth it was done, so as he coupleth the general notion with the particular example."
The philosopher is "hard of utterance" and "misty." Being the student of the philosopher is a gamble. You have to wade through it for a long time, trusting that you'll get some clarity eventually. This is because what is being explained is so "abstract" and "general." Only a few can understand what the philosopher says. Fewer still can apply it.
The historian, on the other hand, is so tied to "the particular truth of things" that the "example draweth no necessary consequence." The historian is journalistic - capturing the details and nuances of how things are actually done. But, of course, this hardly addresses the question of how things ought to be done. So the philosopher has plenty of vision, but its hard to understand and even harder to apply. The historian has very practical content, but it lacks vision.*
I recognize both of these caricatures. Perhaps any of us would. Perhaps most of us have some of the philosopher and historian duking it out within us. The 'philosopher' side of us holds to strict principles but struggles to explain them fully to anyone much less persuasively. The 'historian' side of us just does what we need to do to get by and doesn't reflect too much on what ought to be done. We try to live the best we can, and we don't try to persuade anyone of anything so much as we try to just live at peace with others and with the status quo.
So how does the poet fare? Sidney claims the poet does both. All the obscure mistiness of the philosopher becomes vivid and visible in some figure like Dido from The Aeneid or Achilles from The Iliad. And the nitty-gritty feel of reality in which the historian trades is densely interwoven with a general sense of what is virtuous and worthy of emulation or vicious and fit to be shunned. As Sidney puts it, "the peerless poet performs both."
I think this is deeply relevant for how we perceive God working in our midst and how we reflect upon our role as being his ambassadors. I came to sense God's reality very strongly during college. As I work in the ministry and yearn for heart change and deep sensitivity to God's ways to be a lively part of peoples' lives, I've reflected back on that college time - what was it? What moved me so much? The Holy Spirit, no doubt. But as I've thought beyond that, what I keep coming back to is that I found Christ in his full gracious, redeeming, putting-sin-to-death-on-his-cross glory to be quite beautiful. It was not the philosopher's obscure argument (although some of those helped later). It was not in the historian's good advice on how to be happier or better-adjusted (although I've profited much from good advice). I think what Sidney knows about poetry is what I know about beauty: it has the power to change hearts. When you find something beautiful, or noble, or delicious, or satisfying, you more or less become an evangelist for it on the spot. You don't have to talk yourself into it.
As I think back to my friend and his Sunday family ritual, I remember that he didn't remember any grand reason "why" they read poetry. They just did.
That makes more sense to me now.
*Any observations I have here are tied firmly to Sidney's descriptions and don't necessarily have anything to do with the way philosophy or history are actually done now
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