Donna L. Potts I. "The Mind's Eye Lit the Sun": Imagination as the Agent of Reality

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,--not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.

As Thoreau approached the end of his stay at Walden Pond, he spoke with certainty of a "living earth" whose very shape mirrored the human form. Seldom in modern poetry has the sense of a "living earth" been more fully illuminated than in the poetry of Howard Nemerov. And while Nemerov certainly believed that this passage in Walden comprised Thoreau's most enlightening theme, it is essential to see the particular way in which the notion of a "living earth" develops and unfolds in Nemerov's own poetry.

To do so, one must turn not only to Thoreau but also to a rather group of writers, artists, scientists, and philosophers, all of nonetheless, share this insight into the world: chief among them are Coleridge, Hopkins, Proust, Brueghel, Magritte, Escher, Lewis Thomas, Herman Weyl, Kenneth Burke, and Owen Barfield. Of all these, Barfield presents the most complete synthesis of the ideas to which Nemerov was continually drawn. Barfield's theory of perception is shaped around the notion of a "living earth"; indeed, a willingness to accept Thoreau's observation is perhaps the first stage in understanding both Barfield’s philosophy and Nemerov’s poetic expression of it.

In his Saving the Appearances (1957) and Worlds Apart (1963), Barfield's central contention is that humans are not merely passive observers of reality, but active participants in it. "Nature," which has in recent times referred only to the world "outside" of us, is for Barfield the living expression of human nature. The only way to account for consciousness in humans, Barfield insists, is to accept that consciousness--qualities that are not subject to passive sensation alone--had to be present in nature from the beginning of time. Evidence of this consciousness--or "mindfulness," as Nemerov prefers to call it--can still be found in nature.[1]

Barfield contends that in prehistory, humans had a participatory relationship with a living earth, yet they did not have the self-awareness that allowed them to recognize that relationship as such. In his Poetic Diction and History in English Words, Barfield asserts that the most obvious proof of this relationship lies in the history of language itself; writers like Pope and Tennyson, for example, use the word "nature" to refer both to the world "outside" and to what is now exclusively referred to as "human nature."

However, the language reveals that humanity's growing knowledge of the outer world, gained through centuries of exploration and experimentation, led them to form a distinction between that world which was the object of their study, and the "self" that perceived it. The inevitable result of this distinction was the alienation of the "self" from that which it perceived, and finally, the assumption that the inner world, because it could not be directly perceived in the same manner as the outer world, was merely a product of that outer world.

In History in English Words, Barfield traces this historical change:

Plato had deduced the sense-world from what we would have called the inner world, and, while he had worked out an elaborate and wise knowledge of this inner world, with its moral impulses and aspirations, his philosophy had remained admittedly bankrupt as far as detailed knowledge of the mechanism of the outer world was concerned. Nineteenth century science, on the other hand, deduced the inner from the outer. . .  but it was well-nigh bankrupt as far as the inner world was concerned.

The result has been that humanity placed itself "in a material environment which appeared to bear no relation whatever to {its} inner feelings and moral impulses."[2] The increasing sense of alienation of mind from the material world has brought about a significant change in perspective: people have grown accustomed to perceiving themselves not as active participants in the "outer" world, but as passive observers who have no control over or relation to it.

Only through the artist, Barfield insists, can we hope to rediscover this original relationship with the world. Howard Nemerov's enthusiastic response to Barfield's books, evident in his introduction to the first American edition of Barfield's Poetic Diction and his favorable review of Worlds Apart, indicates that he was receptive to Barfield's theory of "original participation." Clearly, he was also intrigued by Barfield's way of defining this participation, judging from the copious notes prompted by Barfield's statement in Worlds Apart: "Nature is man's unconscious being displayed objectively before him." Moreover, Barfield's contention that the evidence for "original participation" can be gleaned from a study of the history of language is reflected throughout Nemerov's poetry and criticism.

Furthermore, Nemerov obviously has sought to fulfill the role of the artist that Barfield sets forth in Poetic Diction. Nemerov's Reflexions on Poetry and Poetics uses Menelaus's encounter with Proteus in The Odyssey as the analogy for the role of the artist: "The grasping and hanging on to the powerful and refractory spirit in its slippery transformations of a single force flowing through clock, day, violet, greying hair, trees dropping their leaves, the harvest in which by a peculiarly ceremonial transmutation the grain by which we live is seen without contradiction as the corpse we come to."[3] His emphasis on the spirit within these forces in the natural world allows him to depict the unity between events and objects that had since the Scientific Revolution been regarded as random and separate.

Nemerov's description of the artist's confrontation with this "powerful and refractory spirit" more closely resembles Barfield's delineation of the ancient conception of the artist. While the ancient world saw the artist or religious person as possessed by supernatural forces, the modern world sees the artist as possessing, drawing on inner resources to express the world outside. In Poetic Diction, Barfield discusses the world's changing view of the artist:

First, the poet was conceived of as being definitely "possessed" by some foreign being, a god or angel, who gave utterance through his mouth, and gave it only as and when it chose. Then the divine power was said to be "breathed in" to the poet, by beings such as the Muses, at special times and places, over which he had some measure of control, in that he could go himself to the places and "invoke" the Muse. Finally this "breathing in" or inspiration took on the more metaphorical sense which it has today--definitely retaining, however, the original suggestion of a diminished self-consciousness. 

Barfield observes that the common assumption about modern poetry is that the poet "finds the material of his metaphorical creation" in his own consciousness.[4] 

Nemerov's poem "Brainstorm" indicates his propensity for the ancient view of the poet's role: this seemingly simple poem about a man who witnesses a rainstorm can also be read as an analogy for the poetic process. In the course of the poem, the rainstorm outside the man's window gradually becomes the "brainstorm" within the poet's head. In the opening lines, the man sits in an upstairs room, listening to the creaks and groans produced throughout his house by the rising wind.

As the wind grows stronger, the man begins to hear the crows, whose horny feet "scratched on the slate" of the roof of his house, incorporating a pun that suggests an allusion to writing, which could also be described as "scratching on slate." Ronald Palumbo, in a note on "Brainstorm," observes that the arrival of the crows, scavengers by nature and traditionally emblems of death, "suggests the process of dissolution and decay that is inevitably part of the cycle of nature." Their arrival on the roof of his house thus signifies a concurrent arrival of the poet's awareness of his own mortality. Palumbo asserts that the poem's final line, "Inside his head he heard the stormy crows," suggests that the poem's theme can therefore be interpreted as "the reflective power of the mind in the act of apprehending the possibility of its own dissolution."[5]  However, a more comprehensive reading of the line would indicate that the poem also illustrates the way in which the individual's mind draws on the "mindfulness" in nature to form ideas about the world.

The poet's "brainstorm" indeed involves the sudden recognition of the ultimate inseparability of external and internal natures: "The secret might be out:/ Houses are only trees stretched on the rack./ And once the crows knew, all nature would know." As the poem progresses, the poet actually perceives himself as the house, witnessing the same incursion of nature that his house had undergone: "He might be dead,/ It seemed, and all the noises underneath/ Be but the cooling of the sinews, veins,/ Juices, and sodden sacks suddenly let go." He then imagines his own "ruins of wiring, his burst mains," indicating that the dissolution of poet and house are inseparable processes.

Finally, although he had become accustomed to viewing himself as the product of civilization rather than of nature, he now envisions himself as a full participant in the processes of nature:

The rainy wind had been set free to blow

Until the green uprising and mob rule

That ran the world had taken over him,

Split him like seed, and set him in the school

Where any crutch can learn to be a limb.

Thus, by the end of the poem, a quite different "mob rule," that of nature, and not of society, controls him.

Rain and wind are both traditional symbols of poetic inspiration. Here, the poet's brainstorm is not merely the product of the skill of the individual poet acting in isolation from the world, but rather, the inspiration overtakes and shapes him, rendering him a fit instrument for conveying the essence of nature. The poem suggests that poetry does not originate in the individual consciousness alone; rather, the artist simultaneously shapes and is shaped by the world through his poetic rendering of it. Both Nemerov and Barfield would contend that human consciousness is inseparably linked with the consciousness that is inherent in Nature.

Nemerov strives to depict the inseparability of these two kinds of consciousness; the individual poet's mind can never be separated from the mindfulness in things, nor, obviously, can their inherent mindfulness be recognized but for the poet whose mind mirrors them. The mutual inexclusiveness of these elements is illustrated in the final few lines of "The Blue Swallows": "The poem is not the point, finding again the world,/ that is the point, where loveliness adorns intelligible things,/ because the mind's eye lit the sun." While it is commonly accepted that the light from the sun made human life possible, Nemerov reverses the terms to suggest that our origins are mental to the same extent that they are physical.

Nemerov often refers to the poem as a model for the mind: ". . .  a poem is not so much a thought as it is a mind: talk with it, and it will talk back, telling you many things that you might have thought for yourself but somehow didn't until it brought them together. Doubtless a poem is a much simplified model for the mind."[6] When Nemerov refers to the poem as a model for mind, he does not merely refer to the individual mind of the artist--but to "mind" in a larger, more comprehensive sense. For example, in "The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar's House," Nemerov emphasizes that the painter does not merely express that which is in his own mind; he also reflects the "mind" that surrounds him: "He is the painter of the human mind/ Finding and faithfully reflecting the mindfulness/ That is in things, and not the things themselves."

Recognition that nature is qualitative as well as quantitative accompanies an awareness of the mindfulness in nature. For example, if one thinks of colors simply as series of waves or vibrations, one overlooks the actual experience of color--the emotions and ideas that are associated with various colors. Nemerov's many depictions of the landscape, although they are drawn with a scientific exactitude, emphasize qualities in the natural world that are more often associated with activities that are conventionally regarded as purely "mental" or "abstract," such as writing or music or mathematics. He speaks of the landscape's rhythms, measures and pauses, as though nature were a piece of music or a poem waiting to be heard. As he describes the writing process in a poem simply entitled "Writing," he exclaims, "It is as though the world/ were a great writing."

Moreover, in "Painting a Mountain Stream," he advises the artist to "paint this rhythm, not this thing," a reminder that representing the physical world demands more of the artist than merely capturing its physical appearance: "In the confluence of the wrist/ things and ideas ripple together." The physical gesture in "the confluence of the wrist" is inseparable from the idea that is expressed as a result of that gesture. The artist must present not only his message to the world, but its message to him, which is conveyed through its endless patterns and rhythms.

The artist therefore simultaneously depicts his own nature and the nature of which he is a reflection. This interplay between the two modes of nature in turn implies an intimate and dynamic relationship between the perceiver and the perceived. A passage that Nemerov had underlined in his copy of Saving the Appearances neatly summarizes his own view of the world: "The essence of original participation is that there stands behind the phenomena, and on the other side of them from me, a represented which is of the same nature as me."[7]

Throughout Nemerov's poetry, the concepts of original participation and of the interrelationship between nature and human nature, are demonstrated in a number of ways. "The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar's House," in addition to defining the artist's role (thereby offering insight into the poet's role), also attests to the "mindfulness" within the phenomena that partakes in the mind of the artist. The poem, written in memory of the painters Paul Klee and Paul Terrence Feeley, begins by describing the way in which the painter draws on "mental things," the abstract elements of language, for example, to make the visible appear. The painter's role is not simply to depict the physical details of the world, but to render it in all of its complexity: "The painter's eye follows relation out./ His work is not to paint the visible,/ He says, but to render visible." The essence of the world, therefore, is revealed not only through the eye, but also through the mind.

 Following these lines is a description of the artist as one who actually creates the world through his rendering of it, and can thus be defined as both creature and creator, in the same way that humanity's development of language to describe the world is tantamount to creating the world:

                              It is because

Language first rises from the speechless world

That the painterly intelligence

Can say correctly that he makes his world,

Not imitates the one before his eyes. 

The work of art likewise "rises from" "the painterly intelligence"; significantly, Nemerov does not merely suggest that the painter alone is responsible, but "the painterly intelligence," a quality that transcends the mind of any individual artist. One intelligence reflects the other, and the process cannot be described as mere replication of that which the eye is capable of beholding.

Barfield refers to this dynamic relationship between mind and matter as "polarity." In What Coleridge Thought, he alludes to the dual meaning of "polarity": in a literal sense, polarity refers to the physical magnetism between the two poles of the earth, but in a metaphorical sense, it describes a "quality or property analogous to that of magnetism."

Barfield continues:

Polarity is dynamic, not abstract. It is not "a mere balance or compromise," but "a living and generative interpenetration." Where logical opposites are contradictory, polar opposites are generative of each other--and together generative of a new product. Polar opposites exist by virtue of each other as well as at the expense of each other; each is that which it is called, relatively, by predominance of the one character or quality, not by the absolute exclusion of the other." Moreover each quality or character is present in the other. We can and must distinguish, but there is no possibility of dividing them.[8]

In both "To a Scholar Among the Stacks" and "The Swaying Form," Nemerov is also interested in portraying the changing concept of the artist's relation to his subject: the artist who was once believed to be "possessed" by his material is now burdened with the responsibility of "possessing" it. Nemerov represents this contrast by denying his scholar any kind of outside assistance through the maze; while Theseus had relied on the help of Ariadne's jeweled thread to find his way through the maze, Nemerov's scholar is depicted "holding the thread that has no other end,/ Speaking her name whom [he] abandoned long ago." Although the scholar/poet has ostensibly abandoned his muse, he can never entirely disassociate himself from the poet's ancient role as catalyst for reality.

These lines also allude to another transition that was contemporaneous with the changing concept of the poet: the denial of first causes and absolutes resulted in a denial of faith itself, effectively eroding the foundations of both poetry and religion. Nemerov suggests that the modern scholar must continually seek a balance, or necessary tension, between knowledge and faith.

In "The Swaying Form: A Problem in Poetry," Nemerov concludes that the relation between poetry and religion "is both intimate and antithetical, for poetry exists only by a continuing revelation in a world always incarnate of word and flesh indissolubly, a world simultaneously solid and transpicuous."[9] Despite the scholar's abandonment of traditional faith, Nemerov suggests that the poet still maintains a faith that is far beyond that of most of the people in his society:

. . . the poet, if he has not attained to a belief in the existence of God, has at any rate got so far as to believe in the existence of the world; and that this, sadly but truly, puts him, in the art of believing, well out in front of many of his fellow-citizens, who sometimes look as if they believed the existence of the world to be pretty well encompassed in the sensations they experience when they read a copy of Time.[10]

In other words, most people have complacently accepted second-hand knowledge as an adequate substitute for the kind of direct participation with reality that once characterized human life.

The final stanza of "To a Scholar in the Stacks" portrays the dynamic relationship between the perceiver and the perceived:

Then out of this what revelation comes?

Sometimes in darkness and in deep despair

You will remember, Theseus, that you were

The Minotaur, the Labyrinth and the thread

Yourself; even you were that ingener

That fled the maze and flew--so long ago--

Over the sunlit sea to Sicily.

This relationship is particularly striking in Nemerov's descriptions of nature, where the landscape has as many "human," or mental qualities as it has "natural," or physical qualities. Again, the modern distinction between "nature" and "human nature" does not apply here. "Deep Woods" is characterized by intricate word play that intimates its theme: within Nemerov's seemingly straightforward description of the woods "too still for history" lies a theory about the way the language actually creates the world that we see. Again, the combination of the physical details of the natural world with diction referring to an activity that ostensibly is purely mental, reinforces the sense of the "mindfulness" in nature:

Fresh weaving of vines, rooting of outer branches,

Beginning again, in spaces still more cramped,

A wandering calligraphy which seems

Enthralled to a magic constantly misspelled.

In addition to the use of self-referential language--language about language--evident in Nemerov's use of "calligraphy" and "misspelled," is the use of personification: the weaving of vines, and the calligraphy that is "enthralled to a magic constantly misspelled," suggest that nature is abundant with qualities that are typically regarded as human. Thus, even when one ventures beyond history, before the development of art, myth and legend, the "mindfulness" in nature is still apparent, suggesting that it is just as real and as ancient as the physical elements necessary for evolution to occur.

After leading his reader backwards through centuries of woodland lore, including legends of knights and dragons, wizards and tigers, Nemerov arrives at the pivotal myth of Western civilization:

. . .  Even the Fall of Man

Is waiting, here, for someone to grow apples;

And the snake, speckled as sunlight on the rock

In the deep woods, still sleeps with a whole head

And has not begun to grow a manly smile.

In short, Nemerov depicts a Nature that is rife with human qualities, implying that the so-called "objective reality" posited by Newton and his followers is ultimately as dependent on the perceiver who is intent on participating in it as the "subjective" reality of poets and painters.

Although Barfield attests to the need to rediscover the "original participation" with reality that made these myths possible, he nonetheless believes that humanity's abandonment of it was a necessary stage in what he refers to as "the evolution of consciousness." Barfield maintains that in order for humans to discover their own minds, they seemingly had to disanimate the world; by divesting the world of its human qualities, they began to perceive themselves as alienated from it.

In Worlds Apart, Barfield describes this second stage:

. . . the thinking of which we are fully conscious is now focused or centred in the brain in a way which does cut us off from nature and enables us to feel ourselves, at any rate, as definitely not a part of nature.[11]

According to Barfield, as the world began to be regarded as mindless, and thus distinct from its inhabitants, a parallel distinction between mind and body began to develop. Mind was said to have proceeded from body; consequently, it was accepted that perception could simply be analyzed into primary sensations, with no remainder. Because the scientific method depended on sense perception, mind gradually began to be regarded as subservient to body.

Barfield and Nemerov generally refer to this world view as "positivism," or "scientific materialism." The term positivism originated from the theory that all knowledge regarding matters of fact is based upon the "positive" data of experience. By advocating strict adherence to the testimony of observation and physical experience, positivism repudiates metaphysics. While Nemerov and Barfield agree that direct observation of phenomena is always essential to understanding, they emphasize that true comprehension of the world requires the kind of participation with phenomena that prehistoric peoples had once experienced.

As early as his first volume of poetry, The Image and the Law, Nemerov had relied on the "mirror image" to describe the positivist tendency merely to look at the natural world, without ever seeing through the appearances to discover the underlying essence of reality. He establishes the connection between seeing and thinking in an essay entitled, "Speculation Turning on Itself": "In one way, seeing is the model for thought. To say `I see' is immediately to mean `I understand.' It is a naive proverb, a proverb of the eye, and the mind very often refuses to believe it; nonetheless, it keeps coming back."[12] Thus, Nemerov's references to eyesight often prove to be carefully wrought metaphors for perception.

"Angel and Stone" involves the same interplay between the spiritual and the physical. The poem questions the human tendency to presume that there is a pattern in life, a specific destiny for each individual, even while one is fully aware of the billions of other people who are equally committed to fulfilling their own private destinies, and with whom one's goals must inevitably clash. While the angel represents the theological world view, in which all matter is imbued with spirit and purpose, the stone symbolizes positivism, which denies any kind of pattern or purpose in the universe other than that which is physically discernible. Searching for an analogy, Nemerov describes the pleasing pattern produced by tossing a stone, or even two, into the water, but notes that when a person throws a handful of sand, the pattern appears to be destroyed:

                                                                it is confusion,

Not because the same laws have ceased to obtain, but only because

The limits of your vision in time and number forbid you to discriminate

Such fine, quick, myriad events as angels and archangels, thrones

And dominations, principalities and powers, are delegated to witness

And declare the glory of before the Lord of everything that is.

Although the positivist world view denies any sort of unifying force, Nemerov insists that there is a pattern in the natural world that will, if we allow it, ultimately reveal something about both its nature and our nature. However, the pattern cannot be discerned until credence in metaphysics is restored.

Nemerov traces the historical inclination away from metaphysics in "The Companions," in which the poem's speaker emphasizes its impact on his own personal history: "There used to be gods . . . but now they've gone." He continues by describing the gods he had seen, in "a green-gray stone," and another "in the branch of an elm that hung across the road. . . ." The second stanza suggests that these gods in the natural world had been trying to enter his thoughts and speak his language. Furthermore, they had once had a place within him, which they continually seek to regain. After their departure, the narrator speculates on their purpose in his life:

Maybe he wanted help, maybe they all cried out

As they could, or stared helpless to enter into thought

With "read me," "answer me,"  or "teach me how to be

Whatever I am, and in return for teaching me

I'll tell you what I was in you, how greater far 

Than I are seeking you in fountain, sun, and star."

The speaker dismisses these musings: "That's but interpretation, the deep folly of man/ To think that things can squeak at him more than things can." Finally, in the last stanza, the speaker abandons faith and metaphysics, denying mindfulness in nature and thus committing himself to the positivist position:

I must have done, I guess, to have grown so abstract

That all the lovely summer night's become but fact,

That when the cricket signals I no longer listen,

Nor read the glowworms' constellations when they glisten.

Although the speaker maintains his positivist position by regarding matter as "mindless," the poet clearly suggests that such an assumption is merely an abstraction. Furthermore, the poem indicates the difference between knowing something, that is, partaking in its essence, and merely knowing what it is, the latter of which is based on an abstraction.

Barfield demonstrates in Worlds Apart that these two ways of knowing are continually revealed in language, maintaining that the history of language is a key to the history of the world. Worlds Apart commences with a gathering of a small group of men from a variety of disciplines, including theology, physics, biology and linguistics. The character who organizes the gathering, and who best represents Barfield's own philosophical position, is Burgeon, who contends that, "Language, and especially in its early stage, is full of words which refer both to an object or event in the sense-world and to a content that is inner or mental. . . . All, or practically all, the words in our own language that now refer to inner experience can be traced back to a time when they had an external reference as well--spirit, understand, right, wrong, sadness."[13] In other words, literal and metaphorical meanings of words are actually inseparable. Finally, Barfield suggests, we must recognize that the distinction that we have since made between the two is itself an abstraction. Clearly, at one time there was no such distinction between ideas and things, or between words and the things they represented.

In Poetic Diction, Barfield claims that this "splitting up" of meaning accompanies "the natural decline of language into abstraction." The word "ruin," for example, which now has purely material connotations, would once have had immediate poetic resonance and spiritual significance. He refers to the evidence that language provides about the history of the world as "the footsteps of nature." He writes,

Men do not invent those mysterious relations between separate external objects, and between objects and feelings or ideas, which it is the function of poetry to reveal. These relations exist independently, not indeed of Thought, but of any individual thinker. And according to whether the footsteps are echoed in primitive language or, later on, in the made metaphors of poets, we hear them after a different fashion, and for different reasons. The language of primitive men reports them as direct perceptual experience. The speaker has observed a unity, and is not therefore himself conscious of relation. But we, in the development of consciousness, have lost the power to see this one as one.[14]

Secondly, language provides evidence that the modern notion of the self depends on the false distinction between "inner" and "outer" worlds. In History in English Words, Barfield observes that about the time of the Scientific Revolution, people began to incorporate "self" as a prefix in a number of words, even as their self-awareness began to grow. He writes:

It is a curious remark that the erection within men's imaginations of this severely mechanical framework for themselves was accompanied by, and may have been partly responsible for, an increase in their sense of self-consciousness. The more automatic the cosmos, apparently, the more the vital ego must needs feel itself detached. At any rate, we find upwards of forty words hyphened with self created in the nineteenth century. . . .[15]

Nemerov is similarly unfavorable toward this tendency to distinguish between the knowledge that is attained through individual perception, and that which is assumed to be "objectively verifiable." In Figures of Thought, he writes:

I call to your attention as significant that whole populations which had formerly been able to express their thoughts without resort to the words subjective and objective. . .  now, less than two centuries after their entrance into the language, can scarcely get through a classroom hour without leaning heavily on them . . . though Coleridge introduced the words into philosophizing in English, he was far indeed from denigrating thought, feeling or belief by calling them "merely" subjective. In fact . . . he does just the opposite and refers to the natural world as "all that is merely objective."

 He continues: "We are much too concerned to turn our experience into a result, something tangible, and in the course of doing this we forget what the experience felt like in the first place, and, still more important, how through all our studies we remain related to time in two ways, biographical and historical."[16]

Nemerov's insistence that language be valued for its capacity to express the intangible aspects of experience is diametrically opposed to the positivist view that words originated merely as signs for external objects, from which their metaphorical meanings were later derived, as a kind of afterthought.

In Worlds Apart, Barfield points out that, "It is no accident that what people now like to call `linguistic analysis' was fathered by `logical positivism'; because it grows out of ordinary positivism as naturally as ever a chicken grew out of an egg." While Barfield dismisses positivism itself as "not much of a system," which "amounts to little more than the uncritical acceptance of the hypotheses of nineteenth-century science," he nonetheless is greatly disturbed by the implications of its proposition that mind originated from a mindless universe.[17]

Stating his opposition to the theory of language as a mere sign-system, Barfield suggests that language is instead a rich storehouse of symbols. In Worlds Apart, Burgeon contends that, "The essence of a true symbol is its multivalence, its quality of meaning a number of different things at the same time. You even get a coincidence of opposite meanings. . . ." As support for this theory, he cites Greek myths, which have been interpreted both as "highly figurative language about the weather," and as statements about the unconscious mind. Burgeon concludes, "Obviously they were both and neither."

Burgeon then hypothesizes that if language is now quite clearly multivalent, it must have always been thus. If words had only originated as referents to physical objects and events, they could never have been used to represent anything beyond the physical realm. He then summarizes his objections to structuralist linguistic theories: "I don't see how you can get away from the conclusion that two physical objects and events could not effectively symbolize each other, unless they were both symbols of some original or archetype which is not physical" {earlier he had specified that he means "physical" in the sense that the word is used today}.[18]

Nemerov's own critiques of positivism most often focus on two specific areas: the positivist view of language, and its equally pervasive view of science. In dealing with the latter area, Nemerov often describes the products of technology, since they are the most visible manifestations of Newtonian science, as well as a ready source for satire. In all instances, his purpose is to reveal a more complete way of looking at the world, a perspective that can only be gained through imagination.

Nemerov's satiric portraiture in "Elegy for a Nature Poet" again incorporates certain positivist assumptions about the nature of art and language. The poet in the poem, who has spent his life idealizing Nature, discovers that, "Nature,/ Whom he'd done so much for, had finally turned/ Against her creature"; in short, he dies of a catarrh caught during one of his walks in the woods. Nemerov provides a mocking description of the nature poet's technique:

His gift was daily his delight, he peeled

The landscape back to show it was a story;

Any old bird or burning bush revealed 

At his hands just another allegory.

The poet's trivialization of the natural world is shown through his "peeling" the landscape back, as if the relation between mind and the world were easily distinguished. Nemerov suggests that the poet's downfall, and, analogously, that of most modern poets, is his obsession with allegory--a simple system of signs which are incapable of conveying the complexity of reality. Coleridge's distinction between allegory and symbol is most pertinent here:

Now an Allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into a picture-language, which is itself nothing but an abstraction from objects of the senses. . . . On the other hand a Symbol . . .  is characterized by a translucence of the Special in the Individual or of the General. Above all by the translucence of the Eternal through and in the Temporal. It always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that Unity, of which it is the representative.[19]

Ignoring any comprehensive concept of mind, the nature poet presumes that he alone is capable of imbuing the natural world with meaning, that without him, nature would revert to chaos:

And now, poor man, he's gone. Without his name

The field reverts to wilderness again,

The rocks are silent, woods don't seem the same;

Demoralized small birds will fly insane.

Implicit in this dramatized view is the positivist assumption that the only "mind" in the universe is human, a view which is incompatible with the polar relationship between mind and world. Also evident in the poem is an implicit criticism of the artist who wishes to create by possessing the world, rather than allowing himself to be possessed by it.

Furthermore, "Elegy" reveals the way in which the premises of positivism have infiltrated even the arts. In Reflexions on Poetry and Poetics, Nemerov observes that modern poetry and criticism,

either disregard entirely the question raised about the imagination, or else seem to assume implicitly, without saying much, some positivist or behaviourist or mechanist resolution of it, and one result in particular is apparent: a poetry enthralled by the false realism of the reason, spellbound to the merely picturesque, imposed upon, Blake would have said, by the phantasy of the angel whose works are only Analytics, and so prevented, in spite of all its claims and manifestoes, from dreaming deeply or other than the common dream.[20]

In a series of lectures entitled "What Was Modern Poetry?" Nemerov begins by listing the major tenets of modernism, one of which is "that . . . the assertive relationship of image and meaning (e.g., Shakespeare sonnets) can be avoided and must at all costs be avoided."

He cites as one consequence of imagism, that "modernism in writing is chiefly about seeing," which often prompts the modern poet to neglect thinking in favor of seeing.

This affirmation of the eye at the mind's expense is an operation carried out and a decision taken by the mind, not by the eye. Nevertheless, this aspect of the Modern seems to be present about equally in the program of the Imagists, in Eliot's "objective correlative," in Joyce's "epiphany" and in Hemingway's insistence on "the way it was."

As an example of the failure of Imagism, Nemerov cites Pound's best known poem, "In a Station of the Metro," which had represented, at least for Pound and his followers, the triumph of Imagism. Nemerov observes that, ironically, the poem "isn't an imagist poem at all--but a metaphor." Furthermore, Nemerov observes that the decision of modernism to do away with metaphysics is itself "a metaphysical decision."

He concludes that a far more suitable model for modern poetry is Gerard Manley Hopkins. Although Hopkins is often included among the moderns because of his belated introduction to the literary canon and his innovative style, he departs sharply from the tenets of modernism, primarily through his ready acknowledgement of the Christian faith, and, more generally, his acceptance of the kind of participation with reality described by Barfield and Nemerov.

In the second lecture in the series, "Poetry and History," Nemerov writes, "Hopkins, whose visionary contemplation of divinity both in and behind nature proceeded by an `instress' in the self that corresponded with an `inscape' in the object, made an appealing slogan for this procedure: `What you look hard at seems to look hard at you.'"

However, Nemerov goes on to explain that modern poets are rarely capable of Hopkins' vision, largely because the positivist method--"direct treatment of the thing"--has become so prevalent in poetry. Later in the same essay in which Hopkins is discussed, Nemerov mentions both "the amazing growth of the scientific way of viewing the world" and "the corresponding growth of the technological way of changing the world that went along with it" as detrimental to modern poetry. He continues:

Most plainly, the poets have never been happy under the reign of Newtonian mechanics and Kantian criticism. . . . For it was the effect of Newton to remove mind from the cosmos except as a passive recording instrument, and the effect of the dominance of Kant's philosophy to remove from remaining mind any access whatever to ultimate reality. Whereas poetic thought can proceed beyond the minimal affirmation of parlor verse only upon the supposition that the world is equally and simultaneously perceivable as real and transpicuous, or sacramental, and that no percept is divorced entirely from concept.[21]

The shortcomings of the Newtonian world view become particularly obvious when one examines the effects of technology on society. In one of Nemerov's early short stories, "A Secret Society," the main character, Judson Paley (whose name perhaps recalls the theologian, William Paley, who defended the existence of God by using the analogy of a watch: both world and watch presuppose a maker. Paley's assumption, that the evidence of the Infinite must be gained solely through direct observation of the finite realm, is grounded in mechanism and positivism) chews on his Novacained lip following a visit to the dentist--feeling no pain, of course, but nonetheless doing damage to himself.

Paley's action is emblematic of the large-scale numbing effect of many of the modern conveniences made possible by technology. We measure satisfaction in terms of our access to the immediate gratification of our physical needs, all the while neglecting gnawing spiritual needs. In the course of the story, Judson Paley consults a retinue of waitresses, barbers, dentists and bankers, all of whom are ostensibly eager to meet his every need, yet by the end of the story, he has attempted suicide.

Furthermore, he clearly is captivated by the writings of the biologist, Lewis Thomas, whose close and sensitive observations of nature are the subject of an essay in his New and Selected Essays, entitled "Lewis Thomas, Montaigne and Human Happiness." Although Thomas never claims to share Nemerov's interest in metaphysics, his observations of nature attest to the interconnectedness of all living things, and even imply that "mind" is the real unifying force at work in the universe.

Thomas observes that even the fairly simple organisms have remarkably complex systems of communication, many forms of which have nothing to do with physical needs for food or protection, quite inadvertently supporting Nemerov's sense that mind is actually the basis of the universe. While Thomas is merely interested in the close observation of natural phenomena for its own sake, Nemerov recognizes the possible metaphysical ramifications of such observations.

Thomas, like Nemerov, views the work of art as a model for the mind:

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind. The Art of the Fugue is not a special pattern of thinking, it is not thinking about any particular thing. The spelling out of Bach's name in the great, unfinished layers of fugue at the end is no more than a transient notion, something flashed across the mind. The whole piece is not about thinking about something, it is about thinking.[22]

In an essay entitled "Exceptions and Rules," Nemerov observes that both the poet and the scientist share a fascination with "exceptions that prove rules." This fascination is certainly reflected in his theories of perception and language:

Common sense tells you to neglect the exceptional and live within the known world. But art and science are for a moment one in the injunction, even the commandment, to look first, only, always at the exception, at what doesn't fit: because, one says, it will turn into the universal while you look; because, says the other, it will show you the way to a universal not yet known.[23]