"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
-Thomas Carlyle

by Paul Lytle

Listen:

Plato was wrong when he said that poetry is merely an imitation of what we feel and not an imitation of the divine. The very fact that lovers revel in love poems proves otherwise. Would we be so moved by a simple inventory of what we already know? No, poetry moves us because in it we see where we are going, not where we have been.

And listen to this:

Those people who say that words have no meaning have probably not heard words used correctly. To speak of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets as fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter is not to speak of Shakespeare at all, but of the English language and the structure of formal poetry. We cannot understand Tennyson by simply giving the definitions of the words he chooses. For a man to believe that words are only hollow terms given to our surroundings suggests only that this man has read only hollow authors.

Modernism and Postmodernism have proven to be the natural evolution of the entire history of literary theory, but they are results in a mistake we made at the very beginning, and it is very rarely helpful to follow a wrong turn to its end. They shun words like “wrong,” but in that they have shown their own lack of understanding.

Since Plato, our view of art has gotten smaller and smaller with each new school of thought, simply because Plato and Aristotle were thinking too large (and in many ways, not large enough), and mistook the truth about Art.

Let me explain.

Four Visions and One Blindness

The question was raised very long ago: What is the purpose of Art? A history of Literary Theory is critical here, but I will try to make it as brief and simple as possible.

I assert, and will prove in this essay, that of the five points above, the first four are mostly right, even if they seem to have differing views of Art, and that the fifth is absolutely wrong.

Words Have Meaning

The first thing that must be proven is that words have meaning. Luckily, this is rather simple to prove. The very fact that you know you are reading an essay about literary theory is sufficient.

If words have no meaning, then why do we think that they have meaning? How can you convince someone, using only tools without meaning and purpose, that something has meaning?

To prove the point, try to convince someone that gibberish is a real language, but use only gibberish to do so. Not only that, but convince him of an utterly made up religion and philosophy of life, still using only gibberish.

This is actually possible, but only because we have a language to begin with. You could eventually convince a man that “bleh-ba-ba” means “to think,” but only because the man knows what “to think” means, and therefore it is merely a matter of translation. Postmodernism does not have that luxury. When we try to convince someone that gibberish has meaning, we are starting with something (English) that does have meaning. Postmodernism must start with nothing.

Modernists have similar problems. They claim that we invented the meanings in words, but how?

To convince someone that something has meaning, we must first begin with something that has meaning. We must have that common touchstone, or else we will get nowhere. Therefore the very fact that we believe there is meaning, and that most of us have a common view of that meaning, proves that there is such a thing as meaning.

There is an often-used analogy that goes like this: We know when a line is crooked only because we know what a straight line looks like. So it is with Truth. We are not always right (sometimes a crooked line looks straight to us), but that understanding of Truth must be present before we can even conceive of something else being true or false, just as we must know what a straight line is before we can declare another line straight or crooked.

Reading proves it again. I have written an essay here, and it has meaning to me. People will see this essay and read it, and careful readers will not be confused as to its meaning (or perhaps they will be confused in places, but if so, that is only my weaknesses as a writer, not weaknesses in the language).

How is it that Shakespeare has remained so popular for so long a time? If language is meaningless, or if it only has meaning in a certain culture, then how can The Iliad and The Odyssey be explained? Instead of trying to make some farfetched statement about similar cultures and mentalities between Ancient Greece and modern America (for if meaning stretched two thousand years, then there is hardly any point in saying that meaning comes from culture), would it not be a more probable explanation that these works are simply good?

Even those philosophers who claim there is no meaning rely on the inherent meaning of words to make their point. No one truly assumes no meaning. How can man come to that conclusion? By his own thoughts? They are supposed to be meaningless, and therefore cannot come to that conclusion. The very statement, “There is no Truth,” is self-defeating, because it states a theory of absolute and objective Truth.

How could the perception of meaning have appeared if everything is meaningless or if we have invested meaning into language? If we began with nothing, how is it that a language is in place now that is understood clearly by millions? You must, at the least, begin with a common mentality between people to allow them to develop the first languages. There must be a commonality, a Truth, at the beginning.

The Postmodernist will likely get frustrated with this essay, perhaps thinking that I am uneducated or simple minded, but that also assumes Truth. They cannot claim that I am Wrong without implying that there is something Right, which proves my point. If you punched a Postmodernist in the nose, he would probably be get angry. If you took his property, he would likely call the police. In essence, he accepts certain ideas as True and Good, even when he denies them with his mouth.

Truth Begets Truth

To accept one thing as Truth will lead us to accept Truth in all things. Let us say that there is a young strong man who, utterly without provocation, strangles an old woman. Let us take all matter of motive out of it — he simply wants to kill someone, and he sees this old woman standing there.

We can all agree that he has done an Evil thing. Some of us may want him executed, some of us may want him locked up, and some of us may want him to get psychological help, but we will agree that the action itself was Wrong.

We have accepted a Truth here, that the action was Wrong, and we believe that the Truth is absolute. But why is it wrong? What standard of Truth is there that makes this action wrong?

There are two answers we can use, and either will suffice, because it will lead us to the conclusion that there is Truth in all things. We will find that, even in Art, which is supposedly completely subjective, there is Right and Wrong, Good and Bad.

The first answer is religious: God has declared murder wrong. “Bad,” therefore, we define as whatever displeases God, and “Good” as whatever pleases Him. May we also say that the hymn “Amazing Grace” pleases Him (we are assuming a Christian God here, but we can substitute other hymns and songs for other religions)? May we say that there are songs that displease Him? The Bible encourages us to sing in many places, and to praise God with song, and so we must say that there are certain songs with certain lyrics that please God. We have unwittingly accepted Truth in Art, for those works that please God must be Good, and the ones that displease Him must be bad.

The second approach is logical. Murder violates the Natural Rights of man, or perhaps it depletes the workforce, or makes it harder to collect taxes. Whatever reason you accept is fine for this discussion, so long as we accept it as good Logic (we may argue here where the touchstone of Logic came from, but that is a debate for another time). We are, of course, assuming perfect Logic here, which is a shakier foundation than God, but we can say that good Logic will lead us away from murder.

Now, can we apply this to Art? We can analyze the structure of a poem, the rhythms and rhymes, the influences, the metaphors, and the philosophy on a logical level. We can even look at the emotions from a logical position. Certain topics in certain arrangements elicit a greater reaction from the audience. The forms of story and rules of storytelling do just this, and they work. How long has the work of Art endured? That is one of the best measures as to its value. Is there a degree of Truth to the Art; does it reflect those Forms that Plato discussed? Do certain war films make people more patriotic citizens; do certain novels point out flaws in the society? Put together, we can almost make a mathematical formula as to the effectiveness of a work of Art, and by that judge its worth on an absolute scale.

What Should Art Be?

We have seen what people in the past have thought about Art, and we have seen that there is an objective measure of the worth of Art, but what then is the purpose of Art, and how should that purpose be achieved?

First of all, if Art is to have any true value, it must be more than simply pretty. It must teach us something. It cannot teach mathematics or science, because the very nature of Art is to lean toward something else. What it can teach is Truth and philosophy. It can teach us the Forms of Plato by reflecting them from another perspective.

Let me say it this way: why is it better to look at an Artist’s interpretation of a tree rather than to look at the tree itself? Can a physical eye, linked to a physical brain, reveal something of the divine, something of the forms? Yes, but the reason is because man is not completely physical! He is made up of body and soul, mortal and immortal, vulgar and divine. Therefore, when an artist sees a tree and filters it through his immortal soul, he brings a hint of that spiritual world into his work, and makes the tree more like the Form of The Tree.

Of course, it will still be part of this fallen world. It will be tainted, but less so than the original tree, which had nothing of that divine aspect within it.

So the Mimetic aspect of Art is renewed, but it is still rather dull. After all, the old purpose of Art is to teach and entertain, but if Art is only a reflection of the universe, how are we entertaining? For that matter, how are we teaching, because we can only teach if someone wants to learn?

Here we finally have our answer as to why people kept shrinking their vision of Art. Man was not rejecting the Classical definition of the Artist, but instead was adding to it, only so enthusiastically that he forgot his original intent. People have been discovering new parts of Art, that it can be used in other ways. Those people who saw it as Mimesis suddenly realized that people were enjoying Art, and so they shifted their focus.

We were like scientists, discovering the workings of the body. We were fascinated by the heart, and then the brain, and the lungs, but in doing so, we forgot about the whole human body, without which each part is meaningless.

So we have already seen that Art is to be filtered through the Soul of the Artist, and it is therefore Expressive, and cannot be separated from the person who created it. But is must also entertain, and so we must also think Pragmatically. Lastly, the audience must see what is really there. If the Artist paints a tree, but each audience member sees something different, then we are not teaching the Forms or Truth, but something else. Therefore Art must make intrinsic and logical sense, so that a man with good logic and good taste might look at it and understand what is meant without the Artist explaining it to him. So Art is Objective.

By combining all of these, we create something that is accessible (Objective), personal (Expressive), meaningful (Mimetic) entertainment (Pragmatic).

In essence, Art is everything that people have claimed it to be before Modernism, and it must be all of it at once, otherwise it cannot work as it should.

And so I have called this belief Premodernism, not because it is an answer to Modernism and Postmodernism, but because it is something that came before, and more ingrained in the world than are current fads.

* These terms and definitions were adapted from The Mirror and the Lamp by M. H. Abrams.

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