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Shelley, slightly more analytical than Emerson, makes the argument that poetry helps society because poetry enlarges the imagination, and an enlarged imagination helps society. I partially agree with this...
Shelley says, "Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food."
Now it is true that you NEED to have a somewhat sophisticated imagination in order to "be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively...put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own."
(both quotes from page 700)
Because to help society, you NEED empathy. To have empathy, you NEED the cognitive requirements of thinking outside yourself, and imagination CAN help this, and poetry CAN help the imagination.
So yes, poetry can help society.
Let's get back to a deliciously ironic quote: "Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food."
What are your first thoughts when you think of poetry? Mine are an adolescent locking herself in her room, painting her nails black, listening to As I Lay Dying (maybe even reading As I Lay Daying), and writing freeverse about emptiness and being stripped bare and disappearing. The last thing she will do is think, "hey, maybe the guy who broke my heart isn't so bad after all," or "I wonder how I could make myself a better person." At least while she's writing the poem.
Even before the emo subculture, poets like Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson did anything but inspire philanthropic thoughts. One could argue against Shelley, in fact, and state that poetry has only caused society to degenerate into self-absorption, pain-obsession, and emotional masochism. Poems like "Lady Lazarus," and any pining, sobby, Petrarchian sonnet only encourage me to saturate myself in the pain of the speaker, and afterwords, in my own writing, and after that, in my real life.
What is unarguable, is that poetry, like art, is powerful. Poetry has influence over people. And it certainly, certainly can help society. But even though there are kinds of poetry that do not improve the soul, this does not mean that poetry must be done away with. Use its power, wield it, and let it take you where it will. Just because something doesn't help society, does that mean we still should not explore and use it?
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2 comments:
Maybe you are conflating the content of the imagination with the activity of the imagination here. Shelley goes to some lengths, doesn't he, to address the question of the putative immorality of poetry. By enlarging the capacities of our imagination--regardless of the specific content of what that imagination is exercised upon--we are enabled in a general sense to behave more ethically toward others. Is this true? Hard to say. It is certainly one of the primary justifications for a lot of things we do day to day in English. Why read literature, it will help you understand others.
When I was reading this post all I could think back to was the snippet of Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" where he said that: "it is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked y particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting...Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion."
I think when a poet (emo teen or otherwise) focus's on producing cathartic word vomit they are not really utilizing their imagination as Shelley might want them to. I think when a poet uses his (or her) work to focus on something/someone outside of themselves--I think that is when imagination is utilized and society-helping poetry is created.
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