A Response to Lyle Daggett's Political Poetry

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"The more the opinions of the author remain hidden, the better for the work of art." On first reading this phrase, we might be tempted to attribute it to T.S. Eliot in his famous essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," as part of his 'impersonal' theory of poetry or one of the many distorted repetitions of it which have been making the rounds for the past eighty-odd years. At any rate, the position expressed does not seem to be compatible with what we would normally call political poetry. Yet the above quote was uttered not by some reactionary critic or artist, but by Friedrich Engels(i). Now, of course we do not have to agree with such an opinion, especially taken out of context and set up as a sort of maxim for all good art. In fact it would be simple to find examples of excellent poems, novels or short stories which contradict Engels' point of view here. Engels himself stated elsewhere that he had nothing against programmatic poetry, it was just that he didn't think it was always and absolutely necessary to write overtly political literature.

My intention here is not to throw some statement by a left-wing "authority" in Mr. Daggett's face as if we were two Pentecostals arguing over signs of the end times and say, "Aha, here you are in error because in first Corinthians, chapter four it says. . ." or some such thing. But after reading his piece entitled Political Poetry in Pemmican, I was spurred to jot down a few of my own opinions on the subject. At times I strongly agree with the point of view expressed by Daggett and think that he has said things that should be said more often, especially to those who criticize and dismiss a priori all political poetry. Other times I disagree, just as strongly, with his point of view. Of course it is natural and just that people should disagree at times, especially in political matters. In this response I would like to explain, as far as is possible for me, why I agree or disagree with certain positions taken by Daggett in his essay, and add anything that appears relevant to the topic. The opening quotation, therefore, is not offered as proof of Daggett's incorrectness or what have you. It is intended rather as an illustration of the subtlety and diversity of opinions and ideas which are to be found within the many different traditions usually included under the banner of leftist politics.

The explicit expression of a political point of view possesses a long tradition in poetry; we could say that it is found from the very beginnings of poetry as it has come down to us. As Daggett points out, in Homer there is definitely a political point of view expressed. In the Bhagavad Gita also. The Greek playwrights were much more explicitly political, and much more partisan. Most of Solon's poetry, and we must not forget that he was also a major political figure in classical Athens, is political and polemical. Virgil's Aeneid is, on one level, an expression of the Roman empire as well as a justification of its foundation and Augustus' role as emperor. The troubadours not only "lived in a time of constant upheaval and displacement and continuously shifting political alliances," but wrote overtly political verses such as the sirventese or the tornada ending of the canzone form, which was traditionally designated for references to current events and political figures, etc.

Dante is the classic example of the politically engaged poet, and therefore he remains an inspiration to the poet of today-even the poet who does not agree with Dante's theology and politics (and how can we agree with Dante's politics and theology when they are more than 700 years old and represent a form of social structure which no longer exists?). Our current struggle was not Dante's, obviously, but nonetheless we remain impressed by a major poet and intellect for whom political struggle was a central activity, a poet for whom the fight for a just society (even though his idea of a just society is not our idea of a just society) was just as important and integral an aspect of being a full human being as any other aspect of life. Dante was exiled for his political and moral commitment, and refused to compromise his political ideals in order to return home and live a comfortable life. From this derives the "orientation of his life after exile, the addressing of his literary and scholarly work towards civic and ethical intention, towards the good of the humana civiltas." (ii)

A particularly dramatic example of Dante's political and ethical intention can be found at the beginning of the third canto of the Inferno. Here, at the literal gate of hell, we find a group of sinners who remain eternally outside of every circle, and even outside of the Limbo where pagans such as Virgil and Aristotle stay. These souls were too cowardly to take sides, people without the courage to do either good or evil. They are the lowest and vilest creatures, envying every other destiny, even that of the ninth circle, and all human dignity and even recognition has been denied them (which is definitely not true of many sinners in the rest of the canticle). Here also are those angels who did not rebel with Satan, but who nonetheless were not faithful to God. Dante shows a particular scorn for these souls who would not take sides, who were without moral or political conviction and therefore chose neither good nor evil. I can think of no harsher or more moving representation of the political imperative in literature.

In the English language tradition we have the great example of the radical heretic Milton (and maybe more left-wing poets should ask themselves why Milton was particularly despised by the right-leaning exponents of trans-Atlantic modernism). Milton and Dante resemble each other in several ways: both were at the center of current political debate, both were direct participants in the political events of their times, both suffered for their political views and wrote overtly political verses. And Milton, more than Dante, was on the radical side of politics in his time, from his early polemical tracts attacking episcopacy to his arguments in favor of the execution of tyrannical kings whose power, he says, derives exclusively from the people. Milton, like Dante, should be understood in his precise historical context, and we must avoid confounding his political struggle with current ones. Nonetheless it is difficult not to admire someone who was saying, already in 1649, that each one of us is "born to command and not to obey"(iii) (not to mention his participation in the revolutionary movement), even as we recognize the obvious limits of his ideology. What's more, both poets saw politics as an ethical and moral system and not simply as a game of power; for them politics was a central human activity, one which permeates one's entire life and work.

It is correct to stress the historical continuum of political poetry, especially in the face of those who would like to pretend that it is some sort of anomaly, or that it is limited to minor composers of verse doggerel. Daggett also makes an excellent point when he refutes the argument which claims that there is much badly written political poetry and therefore political content is unsuited to poetry. This seems to be one of the most common criticisms against political poetry, and yet it is so logically unsound that it falls apart upon an even cursory examination. Daggett points out that there is so much badly written poetry on every type of subject that this argument, if taken literally, would mean that no subject matter is suited to poetry, which is obviously ridiculous. Also, we would need just one successful love poem, for example, to prove that love is a suitable subject matter for poetry. Any further successful love poems would not make love a more suitable subject matter, just as any further badly written love poems would not make love a less suitable subject. If suitability were quantifiable in such a way, we could simply count the number of good poems versus the number of bad poems written on every conceivable subject, starting from ancient Egypt and India and moving up to the present in order to discover the most suitable subject matter for poetry. Each new poem written could be added to the list and thus a running tally could be kept on poetic suitability. This position's absurdity soon becomes clear. The fact is that the existence of even one good political poem demonstrates the suitability of the subject matter. Another fact is that there are many poems which deal explicitly with political subject matter and which are good, or excellent, by any standard.

What's more, a glance at the list of poets in Daggett's article shows that not only is political poetry possible, but for a good many poets it has been, and continues to be important. This is something that even Dante would agree with-of course he would put Brecht and Mayakovsky in hell, but they would retain the dignity of those who chose a side and lived it. The list of currents and tendencies is also interesting because it stresses the diversity of approaches. However, there doesn't seem to be a point in limiting this list to poetry of the political Left. In fact, the list appears to be fairly inclusive of most 20th century poetic tendencies, including those poets who don't take a definite political stance, and even those such as Yeats, Pound and Eliot, whose political views were undeniably right-wing. Since these stylistic tendencies are not limited to left-wing political poetry, it does not appear that there are any particular correspondences between these tendencies and the political views of the poets.

In a note entitled "Art and the struggle for a new civilization," written while in prison under Mussolini's fascist government, Antonio Gramsci wondered how it is possible that two writers can represent the same socio-historical moment, expressing the same political point of view, and yet one is obviously an artist while the other is nothing but a versifier, a poetaster, an insignificant scribbler. (iv) Gramsci asked himself, from a Marxist point of view, why this should be so, and the question is valid. We could also pose the same question in different guise if we asked why two poems by the same poet can both express the same socio-historical moment, and even treat the same subject from the same point of view, yet we recognize one as a good or even excellent poem and one as a bad poem, even though we agree equally with the political point of view of both poems. This question is important because if the two express the same politico-cultural point of view, or if these two poems were written by the same poet from the same point of view, yet the quality is obviously different, then we can only assume that there is some aspect unaccounted for by ideology. Gramsci's answer here is simple: we can describe the socio-political view expressed in the two writers' work, but that doesn't begin to touch the artistic problem. Such criticism is doubtless useful and necessary, but "it is not criticism and history of Art, and cannot be presented as such." (v) It follows from this that there are artistic problems which are different from the political questions found in a work of art. Bertolt Brecht seconded this point of view in a journal entry from 1940: "Art is an autonomous sphere, though by no means an autarchic one." (vi) Political criticism of poetry is necessary, but so is artistic criticism, and the judgments made in each sphere are autonomous (but maybe the word "judgment," with its buried legalistic metaphor, is not the exact word I am looking for here). Gramsci maintained that both types of criticism are indispensable, and he specifically warned against confusing the two because it would lead to a backward stagnation with only negative effects on the cultural struggle.

An entirely different opinion was expressed by Lenin in an article entitled "Party Organization and Party Literature" from 1905:
     "Literature must become Party literature. .. Down with
      un-partisan littérateurs!      Literature must become a part of the      general cause of the proletariat. . . a      mechanism set in motion      by the entire conscious vanguard of the whole working      class.      Literature must become an integral part of the organized,      methodical, and unified labours of the social-democratic Party."      (vii)

Here there is no distinction whatsoever between art and politics. Art is subordinated to the absolute will of the Party, and becomes nothing more than a means to a political end. What Gramsci called the artistic question (easily demonstrable by his example of the two writers) has no meaning whatsoever here. Indeed it is hardly possible to formulate the question from this point of view, let alone answer it in a satisfactory manner, because artistic judgment and political judgment are the same thing, the only standards being the level of partisanship displayed in the poem. This is the line which eventually lead to Zhdanovism and Stalinist-era socialist realism (not to mention the exile and/or murder of those who did not toe the line), then on to the so-called Left in today's academia, political correctness, etc., the results of which have lead directly to the type of stagnation of the cultural struggle alluded to by Gramsci. Lenin, being a strict authoritarian, believed that the Party held all truth, and that everything, even the proletariat itself, should be subordinate to the Party elites. This seems to be much the same point of view as that professed by politically correct members of the academic so-called Left (among others): the idea that one has special access to the truth (even as they deny its existence!), the quest for ideological purity in an institutional setting, the subsequent hounding and uncritical censure of any point of view or simple formulation which is considered "incorrect" by those who decide such matters.

By this I do not want to imply that Daggett is a Leninist (he may or may not be for all I know, and it is hardly relevant here). Nevertheless there seem to be some connections between his point of view and the line which has grown out of Lenin's article. If we say that "to write poetry with political content that is left-wing, working-class, populist, or of a similar nature, is the right thing to do," it seems to imply that writing poetry without this content is somehow the wrong thing to do. At this point I begin to ask myself a series of questions: What about, for example, the dedicated activist who simply prefers writing poetry on other subjects? What about the poet who normally writes only political poetry and one day finds him or herself inspired to write poetry with some other sort of content? What about the person who simply is not interested in politics in any form? If I should decide, after writing a hundred left-wing poems, to follow a whim and write a love poem or a poem about some small, personal incident in my life, am I to be chastised because this is not the right thing to do? And just as important, if not more so, is the question of who has the authority to do the chastising.

There is no doubt that the examples cited in Daggett's article demonstrate the strength and quality of politically engaged poetry. Yet Daggett would appear to believe that this quality is a direct result of its political content: "The fact is that left-wing political poetry, taken as a whole, is better poetry than poetry in which the poet has tried to leave politics out of it, or in which the poet has deliberately written from a right-wing perspective." The implication here appears to be that content is a measure of quality, and therefore a poem which expresses a left-wing political view is better than one which does not do so. Here I must express my disagreement with Daggett's opinion because such a standard would mean that left-wing political subject matter is inherently better than other subject matter, and this leads us logically back to the same argument that was used against political poetry in the first place. Those who dislike political poetry claim that it lacks quality because other subject matter is more suited to poetry, and therefore produces better results. Those who dislike apolitical poetry claim that it lacks quality because left-wing political subjects are more suited to poetry: "We reject 'literary' standards that preclude politics as acceptable or essential subject matter" (italics mine). Politics is essential subject matter, therefore: no politics, no poetry. If the argument is unfounded when used by opponents of political poetry, then it is no less so when used by opponents of apolitical poetry.

My point is not to oppose political poetry as such, but rather to oppose a tendency, sometimes found on the Left, which would seek to impose ideological constraints on artistic questions. As the great 19th century radical Shelley put it: "Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it." (viii) If poetic quality or value is determined by ideological content, then that same content is the measure of quality. This is the esthetics proposed by Lenin and accepted by orthodox Marxism. But the problems posed by Gramsci's hypothesis are highly relevant because they unambiguously point out the fact of artistic quality and its relationship with, and autonomy from, the political and social qualities of the work. I repeat: the orthodox position is incapable of even formulating the question in its own terms, let alone answering it. Daggett's essay would appear to imply that the mere presence of left-wing political content elevates a poem to artistic eminence. It seems that this is so because writing such poetry is the right thing to do. Yet even the Left is not always politically right or "correct." In fact, the Left may be at times, and has been, politically wrong, even murderously so. The Stalinist purges for example, or Mao's Cultural Revolution, not to mention the shameful slaughter of the workers that put an end to the Kronstadt rebellion and the treacherous double-dealing of the Communists against the workers in the Spanish Civil War.

At this point I would like to return to the entry from Bertolt Brecht's Arbeitsjournal cited earlier. This note was written in August of 1940, seven years after Brecht's flight from Nazi Germany. He had been reading a volume of Wordsworth's poems when he "came upon 'She was a phantom of delight' and reflected on this now remote work and on the dangers involved in laying down the law. Even such labels as 'petty-bourgeois idyll' are hazardous." For Brecht, the application of political judgments to aesthetic matters, "laying down the law," is dangerous precisely because it does not recognize that "Art is an autonomous sphere," because it simplifies and confuses both the politics and the poetry and reduces one to a mere function of the other. "There are indeed some petty-bourgeois tendencies which are directed towards the perpetuation and consolidation of the petty-bourgeoisie as a class, but within the petty-bourgeoisie there are also other kinds of tendencies that conflict with those." Even from a strictly political point of view, Brecht recognizes that ideological judgments are not as simple as some would like them to be and tend to reduce and restrict the complexity of our life; he recognizes, once again from a political point of view, the human value of art as an "autonomous sphere," that "it is just in dehumanized situations like these [Europe in 1940] that 'A lovely Apparition, sent/ To be a moment's ornament' helps to conjure up other situations less unworthy of the human race." (ix) Brecht here implies that just because we can label a poem as a "petty-bourgeois idyll" does not mean that we, as readers of poetry, are not called to appreciate the larger human and poetical qualities of the work, even as we recognize in it certain tendencies with which we do not agree, or even to which we are opposed.

Brecht then notes a "possible criterion for a work of art: does it enrich the individual's capacity for experience?" The "individual's capacity for experience" is not primarily a political consideration, although Brecht leaves open the possibility that this enrichment may lead to a political commitment: "An individual, perhaps, who goes ahead and is then overtaken by the masses" (where the qualifying "perhaps" carries the weight of the phrase). Art may also "enrich the capacity for expression, which is not the same as the capacity for experience but more like a capacity for communicating." This second criterion acknowledges the formal, or aesthetic dimension expressed in Gramsci's hypothesis of the two writers, but, like Gramsci, without ruling out the political possibilities: "Perhaps the question is to what extent the How is linked to the What, and the What bound up with specific classes" (once again qualified by "perhaps," and the unanswered question implied in "to what extent"). For Brecht then, "poetry is never mere expression," but rather an active participation in the world. As his comments on Wordsworth show, he is not willing to limit himself to simplistic ideological criticism, because "writing poetry has to be viewed as a human activity, a social function of a wholly contradictory and alterable kind, conditioned by history and in turn conditioning it. It is the difference between 'mirroring' and 'holding up a mirror'." (x)

Any idea of "human activity" implies a theory, stated or not, of human nature: that is, if we speak of human activity, we are distinguishing such activity from other types of activity, such as plant activity, dog activity, rabbit activity, and so on. Many people on the so-called left would like to deny the existence of human nature, because of its tainted historical associations with right-wing political ideologies in the past. Social Darwinism, Eugenics, sexism and racism have all been justified by appeals to human nature. Although the idea of human nature has been used to discredit theories and desires for social change aimed at improving human conditions, we can nonetheless say with Noam Chomsky that
     There is no inconsistency in the notion that the restrictive      attributes of mind underlie a historically evolving human nature      that develops within the limits that they set; or that these      attributes of mind provide the possibility for self-perfection; or      that, by providing the consciousness of freedom, these essential      attributes of human nature give man the opportunity to create      social conditions and social forms to maximize the possibilities      for freedom, diversity, and individual self-realization. (xi)

Chomsky also speculates that
     . . . related aspects of human nature lie at the core of the      continuing human search for freedom from authoritarian rule,      from external restriction, from repressive structures, what might      be called an instinct for freedom. It is conceivable that such an      instinct for freedom exists and is deeply rooted in human nature      and is related somehow, in ways that we don't know, to the      elements that we can already discover in studying some aspects      of human nature, such as human cognitive achievements. (xii)

It is human nature that allows us to engage in "human activity," thus an activity which can be defined as specifically "human" will have its foundations in human nature. Poetry is the art of language and language is an innate aspect of the human mind, therefore we could say that the essential aspects of poetry derive from human nature, since poetry has its roots in human nature. I assume, also following Chomsky, that libertarian socialism, being a historical tendency rather than a fixed ideology, most clearly and decently appeals to the basic needs determined by our human nature. Indeed I would go so far as to say that its very mutability, the simple fact that it allows for "no doctrine of social change fixed for the present and future, nor even, necessarily, a specific and unchanging concept of the goals toward which social change should tend," (xiii) makes libertarian socialism tend to be more consonant with the needs defined by human nature than doctrinal forms of ideology.

Brecht recognizes that poetry is a "social function of a wholly contradictory and alterable kind." This contrasts directly with the obsessive search for coherency among the ranks of orthodox doctrinaires. Indeed, any ideology that demands absolute coherency and permanence will likely find the above quotation intolerable, precisely because it reserves for literature an autonomy which is unthinkable within the doctrinal system. According to the radical poet Kenneth Rexroth, "the poet, by the very nature of his art, has been an enemy of society, that is, of the privileged and the powerful." (xiv) The key here lies in the phrase "by the very nature of his art," because it is poetry's basis in human nature, and therefore "the very nature" of poetry itself, that aligns it with those critical historical tendencies which do not entail "a fixed, self-enclosed social system, but rather a definite trend in the historical development of mankind, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions, strives for the free, unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life." (xv) The authoritarian nature of Marxist-Leninist doctrine naturally extends itself to the artistic sphere in its attempt to control every aspect of the citizen's life. But Brecht, like libertarian socialists, rejects the totalizing claims of ideology in favor of a freedom which is both "contradictory" and "alterable."

The genius of Brecht's intuition is exemplified in his final reference to "the difference between 'mirroring' and 'holding up a mirror.'" Here he arrives at the kernel of Hamlet's advice to the players from Act III scene ii, a text which would have been particularly meaningful for Brecht the dramatic theorist. As Hamlet is giving the players advice on how to act their parts, he says that the end of playing "both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." The difference between 'mirroring' and 'holding up a mirror' is important for understanding the role and function of art. If I say that art mirrors the world, or that the purpose of art is to mirror the world, I am implying that art is but a surface upon which the images of the world, or of history, or of the economic base, are reflected in an entirely passive manner: it implies that art is the mirror in which the world sees itself. To say on the other hand that the purpose of art is "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature," implies rather that art is the hand which holds the mirror and not the mirror itself, that art is an active agent in the world. The two metaphors, though superficially similar, express profoundly different views of art.

By now it should be obvious that I am not arguing for one type of poetry against another, but rather for the absolute freedom of poetry to be what it is: "a human activity , a social function of a wholly contradictory and alterable kind." The freedom from authoritarian strictures is necessary for poetry because it is rooted in human nature, and most specifically in the language faculty and in the human need for creative work and self-realization. Ideological limits on poetry, "laying down the law" as Brecht put it, lie outside the artistic question, they are "not criticism and history of Art, and cannot be presented as such," in Gramsci's words. Once again, the argument is not against political poetry: to attribute such a position to Brecht would be absurd. His point is that the question is much more complex and subtle than orthodox dogmatism would like to pretend. The orthodox point of view makes criticism easy: all one has to do is know the author's political views and look at the subject matter of the poem. But we cannot limit such a "contradictory" and "alterable" "human activity" to the simple expression of a particular ideological point of view, nor can we reduce it to a question of one type of subject matter versus another. My personal intuition, though I cannot demonstrate or prove it in a satisfactory way, is that the political aspect of literary work might possibly be of a more profound nature than is usually recognized, that it most likely lies in, as Rexroth said, "the very nature" of poetry, that is, poetry's -all poetry's- actual structure and mode of functioning represent its most profound revolutionary paradigm.

I realize that what I have written leaves many questions unanswered and does not deal with every important aspect of the subject, but the limited nature of a personal response prevents exhaustive treatment. Thinking only of the more substantial lacunae, we have the question of what exactly is the nature of poetry, what one means by the term political Left (and this becomes undeniably a value judgment), questions about human nature and society, about the relationship between subjective and objective aspects of literary judgment, among many others. Adequate treatment of these subjects would require a far more extensive effort than what I have attempted here, possibly more extensive than I am capable of. In ending this response I would especially like to thank Lyle Daggett for his piece on political poetry which, although I do not agree with all of his opinions, forced me to think about the subject in ways that I had not previously done and led me to explore the question from angles I might not otherwise have seen. It is not everyday that one encounters an article that truly makes one think; it is rarer still for one to find a piece which helps to clarify one's thought on some subject and bring vague intuitions into focus. And despite the difference in opinion, I think that those people who are honest and truthful, who are truly concerned with bringing about a decent society, will agree with William Blake that poetic freedom is necessary because "Poetry Fetter'd, Fetters the Human Race."

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(i) For a discussion of this quotation and its significance for later Marxist literary criticism, see the essay "Marxism and the Literary Critic," by George Steiner, in his book Language & Silence, Yale University Press. 1998, pp. 305-324.

(ii) Anna Maria Chiavacci Leopardi, in Dante Alighieri, Commedia. Mondadori, 1991, p. 451.

(iii) John Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649.

(iv) Antonio Gramsci, Opere vol. 5, Quaderni di Carcere, Letteratura e Vita Nazionale. Einaudi, p.6.

(v) Ibid.

(vi) Bertolt Brecht. Poems 1913-1956. Routledge, 1987, p. 483.
Cited in George Steiner, Language & Silence. Yale University Press, 1998, p. 306

(vii) Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry, section 18, first published 1840.

(ix) All quotations come from the above-mentioned volume: Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913-1956. Routledge, 1987, pp. 482-483.

(x) Ibid.

(xi) Noam Chomsky, Language and Freedom, lecture given at the University Freedom and the Human Sciences Symposium, Loyola University, Chicago, January 8-9, 1970. Reprinted in The Chomsky Reader, Pantheon Books, 1987, p. 146.

(xii) Noam Chomsky, from an interview with Hanna Reime in Pisa, Italy, on Jun. 7, 1979, cited in C.P. Otero's Introduction to Chomsky's Social Theory, in Chomsky, Radical Priorities, AK Press, third edition 2003, p. 39.

(xiii) Noam Chomsky, Introduction to Daniel Guérin's Anarchism, Monthly Review Press, 1970, p. viii.

(xiv) Kenneth Rexroth, The Function of Poetry and the Place of the Poet in Society, a speech given at the Conference of Western Writers (San Francisco, November 1936. Published in World Outside the Window: Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth, New Directions, 1987.

(xv) Rudolph Rocker, Anarcho-sydicalism, London, 1938. Cited in the above-mentioned Introduction to Daniel Guérin's Anarchism, p. vii.