William Blake on Social Justice

Blake is not always right, but in the end, I think he is the greatest philosopher that England has produced.

He does it in gnomic phrases.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

So much for "social justice warriors."

Churchill and Truth

William Blake's vision of Cerberus, the black dog that guards the entrance of Hades.

Churchill once said “most people, if they happen to stumble upon the truth, quickly pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and walk away.”

Churchill, we know, suffered his entire life from what we now call bipolar disorder type II—depression interspersed with periods of mild euphoria. He himself credited his “black dog” with the insight to see and comprehend the danger of Adolf Hitler, when no one else in authority in Europe did, nor would listen when he did. Later, it allowed him to be the one to first raise the alarm about the postwar Soviet Union and the “iron curtain falling over Europe.” It was, in effect, a gift of prophecy.

William Blake, also a known sufferer from depression, had the same gift. Prophecy, he said, was simply the ability of some men to see with special clarity the forces at work, and therefore to see where they were heading.

It seems that the experience of repeated abuse, and/or the resultant depression, gives some people this ability. It gives them a special spiritual insight. Recent studies show, for example, that the depressed are better than the rest of us at empathy. Nothing occult about this: it is largely a commitment to truth, a question of recognizing true evil or true suffering when you see it (and phony suffering when you see that, too). But it explains why the depressed or melancholic or “mentally ill” were once fully employed by their societies as shamans, or as prophets, and why we might do very well to employ them for this purpose once again.

I have noted in this blog before the near-universal tendency among us to deny the very existence of evil. In the 1930s, nobody wanted to believe for a moment that Hitler was evil. No, poor chap, it must be all a misunderstanding. I'm sure that, if we can just look each other in the eye around the table in Munich, we can work something out. Hitler is a man we can do business with.

The abused at least have been disabused of that pollyanish superstition. They have known evil, and they know it to be real. They can smell it when they again encounter it. They are the natural authorities. They have a special expertise, which a wise society ought to exploit for its own protection. They can predict what it will do next, and they can predict how things are likely to end.

In the same way, having known true suffering, the abused and depressed can recognize it in others. They are less likely to pass by the wounded man on the road, pretending that they did not see. They can also better recognize when suffering is faked, when it is simply a case of the princess and the pea, the squeak of a selfish wheel. A caring society ought to exploit this talent as well.

Keep calm and carry on.

George Orwell gives a clear account of childhood abuse in his essay “Such, Such Were the Joys,” held back to be published only posthumously. This may have given him what he himself considered his special talent as a writer: to look the truth, however unpleasant, resolutely in the eye and not flinch in telling it. Animal Farm, 1984, and his expose of the villainy of Stalinism, despite being himself a socialist, were the results. 1984, in particular, can be taken as a detailed analysis of social evil in itself. The dynamics he examines there could be applied just as well to an abusive family as to an abusive government.

We can have little doubt from the historical record that Abraham Lincoln also suffered from major depression. He was far from the only person to see the evil of slavery in his day, and far from its strongest opponent. But his experience of depression, and presumably abuse, may have steeled him to the awful necessity of civil war to end it. William Tecumseh Sherman reacted similarly. When the war began, he was struck with a fit of depression that struck others as madness; it may, on the other hand, simply have been a realistic appraisal of what this war would involve. He himself says it was brought on by an understanding of the terrible prospect before him. Because the US was a democracy, in order to end the war, it would no longer be enough, as in European wars of the past, to defeat the opposing army in the field. Any defeat would have to be far more decisive, a destruction of the South's ability to support itself in independence: the first total war. Without this, it would be war without end.

Nobody else saw this; most in the North foresaw a victory by blockade, with little blood shed. Most in the South foresaw a victory by a short display of military valour and determination, convincing the European powers to recognize them. Sherman saw his march through Georgia, burning everything as he went. Sherman was right.

William Tecumseh Sherman.

The abused and the “depressed” apparently have a more intimate relationship with truth than do the rest of us. The rest of us are usually hiding from truth and from the moral good, imagining or pretending that we are free to believe and do whatever seems convenient for us to believe and do. The depressed and abused, on the other hand, whether this is cause or effect of their abuse, or both, uniquely have the strength to insist on truth, accept the truth, and to act accordingly.

This, I think, fully justifies their special citation by Jesus in the Beatitudes as “the blessed.”

The Best English Poets

For my money, the best poet in the English language is W. B. Yeats. I think I have read all of his published poems, and most of his prose. He is not read or celebrated nearly as much as he should be because his politics and religion are so foreign to so many. But I think Yeats in the end made it pretty clear that he was a poet above all, and both his politics and his religion were simply what seemed useful at the time to his poetry. The great thing about Yeats is his versatility. He can do it elaborate or simple, romantic or hard-edged, traditional or experimental, and be the best each time.

The best living poet is Leonard Cohen. He might be the second-best of all time. Like Yeats, his politics and his religion seem rather arbitrary, although in this I think he has tended, unlike Yeats, to mature over time. Like Yeats, and unlike most poets, his writing has remained vital into old age. Poetry is more often a young man’s game. But in this, he and Yeats have had an advantage over most poets: a steady income that allowed them to pursue poetry even after they had family responsibilities. The most wonderful thing about Cohen is his minimalism. He can write a poem so simple it is flawless. This is a quality rarely seen since the very beginnings of English poetry.

William Blake has been very important to me, but not so much as a poet: as a thinker. For Yeats and Cohen, the poetry came first; for Blake, the philosophy came first, and the poetry had to bow to fit it. In this, Blake was right and Yeats and Cohen wrong, but the result is that his poetry is not as good, as poetry. Blake’s greatest contribution is his feeling for symbol.

T.S. Eliot is a towering figure. But he is, like Blake, greater as a thinker than as a poet. He had modernism cold before it even began: he invented it, then solved the problem it presented, before anyone else got to the starting gate. Like Blake, he was a great literary critic. His poems lack beauty in the classical sense, which in the end keep them from being the very best poems written. But there is a reason for this. For Eliot, truth came before beauty, and that is to his credit.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge has a numinous quality in his best writing that almost nobody else can match. His prose is also outstanding. The problem is that he wrote so little.

John Donne was the best before the Romantics. Quite breathtaking.

These guys form a club, a school, a tradition. Yeats is very largely responsible for Blake’s reputation today; he promoted him aggressively. Eliot is largely responsible for Donne’s current reputation. Cohen cites Yeats as, after Lorca, his strongest influence. Eliot declared Yeats the best poet who ever lived.

There are other very good poets, but this is the first string. No mean accomplishment to be here: of all man's creations, nothing is as difficult as language. It is almost coterminous with conscious thought itself. In language, writing is the most difficult skill. And in writing, the poem is the most difficult form.