Guest Blogger -- Maggie Howell: "The Profound"

In search of Wit these lose their common Sense,
And then turn Criticks in their own Defence.

-- Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism

Creating an atmosphere of discord and confusion is of obvious appeal to anyone desperate to maintain power; a style that does so proudly might be of particular interest to the Bush administration. Reckless and selfish visibility at the expense of respectability is the spirit of The Art of Sinking in Poetry (Peri Bathous), Alexander Pope’s faux treatise detailing the craft of bad poetry, which, “(thank our stars), tho it is somewhat muddy, flows in much greater abundance” than its truthful counterpart. The destination here is the Bathos, or the “profund”: “the Bottom, the End, the Central Point, the non plus ultra of Modern Poesie!” It’s difficult to imagine any of the Bush rhetoricians prioritizing Neoclassical criticism; nonetheless, the prevalence of "bathetic" elements in American political discourse gives our situation the appearance of having been artfully plunged into an epic mess.

Amplification – thoughts so inclusive they’re devoid of substance – is one of the major techniques Pope, anticipating Orwell, describes in outlining the “Study of the Abuse of Speech.” Improper use of figures of speech aim to help the author “to say nothing in the usual way, but (if possible) in the direct contrary.” The main types are the Variegating/Confusing, The Magnifying (which will never occur “without clouding it at the same time”), and The Diminishing. None of this is outrageous in the Bathos, because subject matter is formulated under the assumption that the masses – the audience – are idiots, and, frankly, are comfortable being lackeys:

We see the unprejudiced Minds of Children delight only in such Productions, and in such Images, as our true modern Writers set before them. I have observ’d how fast the general Taste is returning to this first Simplicity and Innocence; and if the Intent of all Poetry be to divert and instruct, certainly that Kind which diverts and instructs the greatest Number, is to be preferr’d.

Today, the climate of disinterest seems to affirm the success of this. Consequently, an infantile public policy has been adopted to “produce tranquility of mind,” precisely as Pope instructs. As children, after all, we prefer those “emollients and opiates” that remind us of the golden days before terrorism, of safe commutes and peace of mind – luxuries we can expect to rediscover upon “victory.” This administration is aware of its “happy and antinatural way of thinking;” but, recognizing the political problems here, prefers to go about degrading things under the more heroic guise of sublimity, the opposite of profundity.

It isn’t quite convincing. Longinus, in his On Sublimity (Peri Hupsous), the inspiration for Pope’s work, suggests that the truly sublime is spectacular precisely because it is met during an overwhelmingly powerful encounter with reality. Awe and terror affect us most profoundly in proximity, as witnessed events that “show up above the figures, and overshadow and eclipse their artifice.” This is not the kind of hazard we face day-to-day, though we’re told to expect it. Pope writes that the Genius of the Profund “must studiously avoid, detest, and turn his Head from all the Ideas, Ways, and Workings of that pestilent Foe to Wit and Destroyer of fine Figures, which is known by the Name of Common Sense.” Pope knows the power at the bottom can’t be reached by bothering with intelligent representations. Nature is boring; it is “obvious, therefore not astonishing or peculiar.” Instead, the public is barraged with mere sketches of enemies and promises of threats, taught to fear virtually everything, resulting in an insulting amount of apocalyptic reminders that

the war is not over -- and it will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious. If we do not defeat these enemies now, we will leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons. We are in a war that will set the course for this new century -- and determine the destiny of millions across the world.

Granted, to most this doesn’t sound pleasant. What does sound pretty good is what happens if we cooperate. Once the entire world sees the light and agrees to be “with us” rather than “against us,” there will, presumably, be victory and euphoria. On that day, Bush tells us, “the clouds of war will part.” Compared to the only other possible outcome – “a radical Islamic empire where women are prisoners in their homes, men are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilized nations” – this is indeed a pleasant vision.

Needless to say, in the Bathos, details aren’t important. Evidently, a paradise without terrorism is perfectly feasible. Presidential speeches don’t require plans and don’t bother with pesky specifics. Metaphors are conveniently obscure and sound nice, too. All we need to know is that, someday, if we just trust the administration, the Middle East will “leave the desert of despotism for the fertile gardens of liberty.” Pope notes this same follow-the-leader strategy, in which the poet

is to mingle Bits of the most various or discordant kinds, Landscape, History, Portraits, Animals and connect them with a great deal of Flourishing, by Heads or Tails, as it shall please his Imagination, and contribute to his principal End, which is to glare by strong Oppositions of Colours, and surprize by Contrariety of Images…His Design ought to be like a Labyrinth, out of which nobody can get you clear but himself.

That “Contrariety of Images” is at its best when the contrast is most extreme, so Pope’s image of the nadir is a state of fear created by utterly unrecognizable elements. The author descends, indiscriminately collecting and maiming any objects out of their natural state and beyond all recognition, into “clouds” of nonsense and vulgarity. Hyperbole skews observation, and authors simply “take things in a lump, without stopping at minute Considerations.” All the public really knows is limited to press releases, radio addresses or exclusive interviews, and usually only amounts to a reminder that this alleged “evil” is

thrown into panic at the sight of an old man pulling the election lever, girls enrolling in schools, or families worshiping God in their own traditions. They know that given a choice, people will choose freedom over their extremist ideology. So their answer is to deny people this choice by raging against the forces of freedom and moderation.

Anything is game for bastardization. A few televised speeches can effectively link Islam and fascism in the American collective conscious. One of the only forms of imitation allowed for in the Bathos is one that is achieved “when we force to our own Purposes the Thoughts of others.” An inverted (and probably even more effective) example of this is when Bush takes it upon himself to assign the Middle East a dialogue, forcing to his own purposes what are perhaps not the thoughts of others:

From Kabul to Baghdad to Beirut, there are brave men and women risking their lives each day for the same freedoms that we enjoy. And they have one question for us: Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?

Invention is vital for the profund. Sustaining the rhetoric of the so-called War on Terror, “the Author’s Pencil, like the Wand of Circe, turns all into Monsters at a Stroke.” The terrorist “enemy” – existing in forms human, technological, chemical, biological, national, racial; or any combination thereof – is made to be so incapacitating, so frightening, that even if we were somehow allowed to, we would be incapable of identifying, much less understanding it. No details are given that would flesh out its purported immensity. Instead, there is an effort to “mix Truth and Fiction, in order to join the Credible with the Surprizing.”

This isn’t to say reality doesn’t matter; indeed, it’s too powerful to allow. True imitation would be too revealing. To the ecstasy of incumbent politico-poets, arriving at the Bathos actually relies on discouraging public feedback. The political trend in 2006, similar to the poetic trend of 1727, is to avoid clarity, “for Obscurity bestows a Cast of the Wonderful, and throws an oracular Dignity upon a Piece which hath no meaning.” The amount of rhetorical waste we have to sort through makes criticism challenging. If the image of an adversary is not extreme, we can examine it, and it would not be politically useful – a serious blow to the end aim of the profund poets: “Profit or Gain.” As a result, particulars of the “conflicts” facing America are usually glazed over in favor of grotesque immensities and absolutisms. Everything is a target and all remains on the table for suspicions, “For Choice and Distinction are not only a Curb to the Spirit, and limit the Descriptive Faculty, but also lessen the Book, which is frequently of the worst consequence of all to our Author.” Self-interest explains why the poets in Washington, “unassisted with an habitual, nay laborious Peculiarity of thinking, could arrive at Images so wonderfully low and unaccountable.” Faced with fantastic threats, as Longinus observes, “our natural instinct is, in all such cases, to attend to the stronger influence, so that we are diverted from the demonstration to the astonishment caused by visualization, which by its very brilliance conceals the factual aspect.” The abuse to actuality intensifies, and even the methods by which we are misinformed become tools to “facilitate and enforce our Descent” into Pope’s Bathos:

forasmuch as it is sometimes needful to excite the Passions of our Antagonist in the Polemic way, the true Students in the Low have constantly taken their Methods from Low-Life, where they observ’d, that to move Anger, use is made of Scolding and railing; to move Love, of Bawdry; to beget Favour and Friendship, of gross Flattery; and to produce Fear, by calumniating an Adversary with Crimes obnoxious to the State. As for Shame, it is a silly Passion, of which as our Authors are incapable themselves, so they would not produce it in others.

Because the profund is a conglomerate of “Monsters,” any empathic instinct in the audience is effectively killed. Separation and alienation are the only outcomes we can look forward to at this level. Longinus notes the important difference that in the presence of sublimity we would ideally

ask ourselves whether any particular example does not give a show of grandeur which, for all its accidental trappings, will, when dissected, prove vain and hollow, the kind of thing which it does a man more honour to despise than to admire.

For all its grandeur, the sublime always “contains much food for reflection,” and is connected to reality, to its audience, to history and the future. The authors aspiring to please with the sublime will consult the works of their predescessors in order to create “the reproduction of good character,” and habitually reconsider and edit the verses intended for the public. The profund poet will “read Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, for the contrary End, to bury their Gold in his own Dunghil.” The ultimate consideration of the sublime is “the further thought: ‘How will posterity take what I am writing?’” Those seeking the Bathos prefer to be disconnected from anything that isn’t an immediate obstacle to their success, therefore the idea of posterity is “chimerical.” The sublime “depends on elevation, whereas amplification involves extension; sublimity exists often in a single thought, amplification cannot exist without a certain quantity and superfluity.”

The current state of profundity promotes distance, ignorance and lack of analysis, and the reigning poets continue to write stanzas accordingly.

-- Maggie Howell, Boston University