Poetry and the Ethics of Influence

Intention

Ambit

Senses of ethics

Ethics of Influence Scale

Aggregate Effects

Sensibilities

Neutral Effects

Justification

Probabilities of Intention

Dynamic Standards

Section Two:

Quotations

Appendix

Poetry and the Ethics of Influence

Antecedent to literature there is intention, and afterwards, in its public, its effect.

Intention and effect are necessarily related via the medium of its communication, theme, format and style.

The relation between intention and effect, as undeniable as it is, may not be clearly interpretable, may have degrees of transparency, be confusing, obfuscated, or even denied by its originator when queried.

Intention in the first instance consists of the aware motivation in the mind of the originator that gives rise to the work and its specific content and form. Intention obviously has a spectrum of contributory and ancilliary aspects, which revolve mainly around the originator’s place in space and time. A poet’s or author’s geographical, social and political milieu all modulate the motivational mindset at the time of creation.

The ambit of this essay is however not to delve analytically into these ancillary motivational triggers. Contrasting a writer’s association and identification with such triggers in comparison to those of another from a vastly different circumstance would be conducive to a priori value judgements that could compromise objectivity within the sense of the existence of a supposed absolute reference framework, or set of evaluation standards. It is also not the purpose here. Instead it would take a look at the conscious motivational disposition of an author with the specific question in mind: "What are the ethical parameters of intention as resulting in content and form when they are considered in the broad compass of influence and effects on an intended, or incidental public?

As individual (or group, tribal, national) senses of ethics so obviously vary within a broad band of personal acceptability no absolute reference standard could be derived but we will work within the widest sense of good and bad. Both intention and effect may be perceived to have an attendant degree of deliberateness or incendentality that are subject to contextual interpretation. Further, intention can be motivated from within an ambit ranging from the desire for pure self-expression, through the need to communicate and influence, to the aware need to alter or transform a reader’s mindset or gestalt

As a rough scale for our measurement of intentional or perceived effect we could postulate two polar extremes, let them be:

Minus three: severe traumatic contrast to the perceiver’s values, sensibilities or state of mind

Plus three: Exhilaration and a sense of enrapturement on the perceiver’s part

Where degrees of severity of effect are roughly cast as: 3 = intense, 2 = moderate, 1 = low

Purely for the purposes of discussion let us call this scale the EOI scale (Ethics Of Influence) and note that there are two instances of this scale to be considered: the EOI within the intention of the originator and the EOI as resultant effect on the part of the perceiver. For example, an intended +1 might result in a –3 or for that matter, an intended –3 in a perceived +2. Attaching such an estimate to any one intentional or effectual attribute is of course a subjective exercise – it must be realised that measurement with respect to absolute reference thresholds is not possible nor the aim. This does not eliminate the possibility of any one originator, or any one percipient, assessing a degree of severity as attendant to an intended or perceived effect.

Hatred
Anger
Fear and anxiety
Diminution of self
Exploitation
Disgust
Abhorrence
Slight
Sentimentality
Introspection
Contentment
Joy
Enrichment
Sense of enlightenment
Exaltation

Furthermore, such resulting impressions, feelings, sentiments, can result not only from the overall, aggregate effect of a literary work but can of course be perceived at different points and phases within the body of a work. As such they may well have been exploited in a contrasting sense for the very purpose of illuminating, or emphasising the thematic subject treated.

Can we generate anything, irrespective of theme, content and form? Should it always be considered acceptable subject to the oft-encountered suggestion, "If you don’t like it, don’t access it."? It may indeed be an answer, but it has within it a certain coarseness that could well skip across some essence of human nature that is not accounted for.

For those with little sensitivity to other’s sensibilities it would obviously be an answer. Those of us more sensitive to the probability of causing perceived injury may well consider referring to some personal scale of EOI and using strong contrast only when it we feel it to be honestly justified.

It is mostly in topics that easily lend themselves to major contention such as politics, sexuality and religion, that values and sensibilities can be perceived to undergo unacceptable contrasts and treatment. In a large body of work however, mostly neutral EOI effects may be perceived – this has no reflection on whether the subject work is good, bad or beautiful in other ways.

Whether a work sprang from purely self-expression, or the aware conviction of the need to transform a set of values, an intended degree of effect on the EOI scale must find within its originator a high degree of justification. In this the originator must recognise a sense of responsibility and accountability that is consciously tolerant of, and willing to accept the consequences of content and form.

This is not in itself an admonition to avoid contentious issues or to avoid possibly contentious treatments of a normally innocuous thematic subject – it is an implicit suggestion to measure as objectively as possible, the intended and probably perceived degrees of EOI within one’s work. This may be done irrespective of whether the work is an ab initio conception, or created as a reaction to existing material.

If the originator finds full justification in the use of thematic material and a particular treatment that is so strong in its probable contrast to known existing values and sensibilities as to imply a high negative degree of EOI effect, the motivation for this intention might well be questioned.

Sometimes the answers cannot be learned by inspection, in other instances however, syntax and context make clear high probabilities, among others, of the following possible motivational triggers:

Desperate appeal
Strong, honest conviction
Intentional sarcasm
Constructive or destructive transformation or re-translation
Intentionally strong constructive or destructive contrast
Intended obfuscation
Traumatic recapitulation
Retaliation
Envy or jealousy
Uncontrolled intolerance
A need to manipulate
A need to injure
A need to be cruel
Unbridled contempt
Expression of disturbed personality
A (disguised or undisguised) need to destroy

Of one aspect of motivation and intention there is not much doubt: with or without a little introspection it is an aware condition within the sane originator’s mind, that is capable of ethical self-measurement; with one primary premise: honesty. Then of course there are those who would ask the questions: do ethics even apply in this field; or are standards and thresholds of conduct themselves perhaps subject to dynamic transformation and evolution?

What could one say about the perception of an intended –3 effect? That it is contemptible? And an unintended or incidental or misinterpreted –3 effect? That it is regrettable? I will allow you to advise yourself of an answer and a guideline.

As long as there is divergent view, stance and inclination on the planet, there will be perceived slight and injury. As long as there is valid new discovery, new insight and perspective, there will be its expression – to bear celebrated fruit or to be condemned for a foreign taste. In the ironing out of major or minor wrinkles some heat and pressure are not only useful means, but also unavoidable by-products.

Motivation, intent and purpose are inextricably intra-convoluted, and may even be regarded as having synonymous meaning.

Enquiring into the purpose of poetry and literature is much like enquiring into the purpose of life.

As such, literature and also reactive critique thereto, characterise the lives we live, the lives we wish we could, or wish we had not, lived, the lives we think we should have lived, the lives we can still live.

Quotations

Some quotations that I feel have a bearing on the subject. These are not in random order, but one of loose association, arranged in column, then row sequence:

William Wordsworth	Thomas Woodrow Wilson	Thomas Huxley
Lord Byron	Alexander the Great	Confucius
Jean Cocteau	Alexander Pope	Mandell Creighton
Samuel Taylor Coleridge	Samuel Butler	Voltaire
John Keats	Robert Frost	Lord Byron
Ernest Hemingway	James Anthony Froude	Herbert George Well
Anatole France	William Blake	Roy Campbell
Oscar Wilde	Otto von Bismarck	Francis Bacon
Publius Terence	Alphonse Karr	Lord Alfred Milner
William Thackeray	Cicero	Ralph Waldo Emerson
Francis Bacon	Jonathan Swift	George Santayana
Cicero	Percy Bysshe Shelley	Samuel Johnson
John Selden	Franklin Roosevelt	Frederick Langbridge

"Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished." (Letter to Lady Beaumont)

"I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind." (Preface to the Lyrical Ballads)

"The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood." (Le Rappel a L’Ordre)

"Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or at the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics." (Lecture on Shakespeare and Milton)

"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance." (Letter to John Taylor, 1818)

"I am ambitious of doing the world some good. If I should be spared, that may be the work of maturer years – in the interval I will assay to reach as high a summit in Poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer." (Letter to Richard Woodhouse)

"It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot." (Revolt of the Angels)

"Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels." (The soul of man under socialism)

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike."

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility." (The Importance of Being Earnest)

"On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure." (The Importance of Being Earnest)

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."

"Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess." (A Woman of No Importance)

"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write."
(Henry Esmond 2,15)

"If a man begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." (Advancement of Learning, 1)

"They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. (Advancement of Learning, 2)

"There is not anything in the world so much abused as this sentence, Salus populi suprema lex esto." (Let public safety be the supreme law) (From Table Talk)

"There is a price too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect." (Speech, Feb. 1916)

"I assure you I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion." (Lives, Plutarch)

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.
(Imitations of Horace, prologue)

The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.
(ib: Pastorals, Summer)

"Scholars get theirs (knowledge) with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields." (The Figure a Poem Makes)

"Every man has three characters: that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has." (Attrib.)

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." (Thoughts on Various Subjects)

"To stand on the ramparts and die for our principles is heroic, but to sally forth to battle and win for our principles is something more than heroic." (Speech, 1928)

"…the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all violence, and to respect others as himself." (Evolution and Ethics)

"History warns us that that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions." (Science and Culture)

"For one word a man is often deemed to be wise, and for one word he is often deemed to be foolish. We should be careful indeed what we say." (Analects)

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." (Attrib.)

He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebelled.
(Child Harold)

….the madmen who have made men mad
By their contagion; Conquerors and Kings,
Founders of sects and systems. (Ib.)

You praise the firm restraint with which they write –
I’m with you there of course:
They use the snaffle and the curb allright,
But where’s the bloody horse?

But it is not the lie that passeth through the Mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt. (Essays 1, Of Truth)

"If we believe something to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to try to prevent it and damn the consequences." (Speech, 1909)

"Artists must be sacrifices to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give." (Letters and Social Aims. Inspiration)

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." (Life of Reason, 1)

"Nothing is so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject."

"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure." (Johnsonian Miscellanies)

"I dogmatise and am contradicted and in this conflict of opinions and sentiments I find delight." (Ib.)

Ethic 1,n. a system of ethics 2. Adj. Ethical adj. Dealing with ethics, an ethical theory || relating to morality of behaviour, ethical standards || conforming with an accepted standard of good behaviour, e.g. in a profession or trade. Ethically adv. In an ethical way || so far as ethics is concerned. Ethics n. moral philosophy or moral science, i.e. that branch of philosophy which studies the principles of right or wrong in human conduct || a treatise on this science || the moral principles which determine the rightness or wrongness of particular acts or activities. [fr. L. ethicus fr. Gk. Ethikos, customary fr. Ethos, customary behaviour, morals]

INDEX

Section One:
Poetry and the Ethics of Influence

Section Two:
Quotations

Appendix

Poetry and the Ethics of Influence

Quotations

INDEX

Section One: Poetry and the Ethics of Influence

Section Two: Quotations

Appendix

Poetry and the Ethics of Influence

Quotations

Section One:
Poetry and the Ethics of Influence

Section Two:
Quotations