I’ve always loved the initial exchange between Gregory and Syme in “The Man Who Was Thursday”.
Context: Gregory is an anarchist poet, Syme is claiming to be a poet of respectability, which Gregory maintains is impossible.
....The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.”
“So it is,” said Mr. Syme.
“Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox. “Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!”
“It is you who are unpoetical,” replied the poet Syme. “If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!”
If I were riding, say, the orange line in Boston and I suddenly found myself in Times Square—or even in Alewife (the terminus of the Red line), ‘eyes like stars and soul again in Eden’ isn’t exactly how I’d put it. ‘Pretty scary’ is. If it happened to everyone in the train, it would be exceptionally scary.
I feel like they’re using rather strained analogies to talk about subjective preferences in poetry as if they were objective truths. Am I missing/misunderstanding something?
It’s Chesterton. It’s the way he writes, and as always, he is not writing about subjective preferences, but about the true and the good.
Or, as he might put it, with a little anachronism, such rhetorical exaggeration is not a flight of fancy detached from reality; on the contrary, it is exactly because it is such a flight of fancy that it is exact. It is the dull empiric carrying out the sort of work that fills the pages of Psychological Science who (as Ioannidis has shown) is, whether he knows it or not, blown on the wind of subjective folly, and the writer of fantastic stories of sitting on a beam of light who has grasped an objective truth.
I think the passage quoted here is magnificent (and my vote is on Syme’s side). I can read Chesterton for entertainment, and it’s good that he’s writing about the true and the good, whereas LessWrong recites passwords of facile cynicism as badges of rationality the moment the subject comes up. On the other hand, his method is a set of templates that can be wound up and set walking in any direction. Despite his intentions, I do not learn from him anything that he persuades me is true, but he does provide entertaining ways of looking at things.
Yet is not the whole book about man and man’s intent? Why should poetry be limited and measured by how it reflects intent (or man)?
(Also, I just thought ‘confirmation bias’ about Syme:) it would be horrible to arrive at a different station, yet it would be a crucial piece of data, since ‘the scientific method still stands’.)
I’ve always loved the initial exchange between Gregory and Syme in “The Man Who Was Thursday”.
Context: Gregory is an anarchist poet, Syme is claiming to be a poet of respectability, which Gregory maintains is impossible.
....The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.”
“So it is,” said Mr. Syme.
“Nonsense!” said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox. “Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!”
“It is you who are unpoetical,” replied the poet Syme. “If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!”
[pollid:819]
As the ancient saying goes, “just because two of you are arguing, does not mean that one of you is right.”
If I were riding, say, the orange line in Boston and I suddenly found myself in Times Square—or even in Alewife (the terminus of the Red line), ‘eyes like stars and soul again in Eden’ isn’t exactly how I’d put it. ‘Pretty scary’ is. If it happened to everyone in the train, it would be exceptionally scary.
But, one might make good poetry about the event.
The quote is easier to understand if you are familiar with Bradshaw.
I feel like they’re using rather strained analogies to talk about subjective preferences in poetry as if they were objective truths. Am I missing/misunderstanding something?
It’s Chesterton. It’s the way he writes, and as always, he is not writing about subjective preferences, but about the true and the good.
Or, as he might put it, with a little anachronism, such rhetorical exaggeration is not a flight of fancy detached from reality; on the contrary, it is exactly because it is such a flight of fancy that it is exact. It is the dull empiric carrying out the sort of work that fills the pages of Psychological Science who (as Ioannidis has shown) is, whether he knows it or not, blown on the wind of subjective folly, and the writer of fantastic stories of sitting on a beam of light who has grasped an objective truth.
I take it you’re not a fan of Chesterton? Or am I really missing something?
Chesterson is the high verbal low math failure mode.
Yes, but his failure mode is low math precisely because it is high verbal!
That’s Žižuku!
I think the passage quoted here is magnificent (and my vote is on Syme’s side). I can read Chesterton for entertainment, and it’s good that he’s writing about the true and the good, whereas LessWrong recites passwords of facile cynicism as badges of rationality the moment the subject comes up. On the other hand, his method is a set of templates that can be wound up and set walking in any direction. Despite his intentions, I do not learn from him anything that he persuades me is true, but he does provide entertaining ways of looking at things.
And this.
And what IlyaShpitser said.
Yet is not the whole book about man and man’s intent? Why should poetry be limited and measured by how it reflects intent (or man)? (Also, I just thought ‘confirmation bias’ about Syme:) it would be horrible to arrive at a different station, yet it would be a crucial piece of data, since ‘the scientific method still stands’.)