My Apology

Claire Nagode
300 Survey of Criticism
“Apology for Poetry/Literature”

“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things” (Percy Shelly). Shelly is where I find my support and inspiration for this Apology for Poetry, or more specifically, for being a student, writer and lover of literature. I write this paper not as a Literature Major, and not even as a English Major, but as a film major minoring in writing. Film and literature are very similar in that they both tell stories, one with words and others with images. But don't those words in the novels and poems we love so dearly paint images in our minds? If some one, not an english minded individual, looks at films and literature they see the reasonable differences; the medium, the device, the production, the consumer, but if one looks with the imaginative mind, with poetry seeing eyes if you will, they see only ways of telling a story, of reflecting the images of reality through characters, plot and words. Literature and film belong in the same boat, so to speak. They entertain, delight, and inform, even if not on the same level. No one can argue that the poetry of Wallace Steves is more “sublime” than Dumb and Dumber, but which holds more irony? And another thought to chew on is how much more sublime is Steves' poetry when compared to a film such as Hero? A film in which the very images hold their own beauty and poetry and consequently moves a person towards inspiration. But can a film really do that? Can a film “awaken and enlarge the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought.”? (Shelly). I think so, or well, I hope so.
I've always loved storytelling, whether I was the one doing the telling or whether I was the one experiencing the telling. Stories create opportunities to experience things you might not even get the chance to in real life. Take Don Quixote and his tragic/comedic/romantic/ironic adventures, he is the perfect example. In his day in age, the time of chivalrous knights and epic quests was long gone, and possibly mostly fictional to begin with. But he imitated the fictions that imitated the life of a knight errant. Take a moment and think about the last time you let go of all your social inhibitions and just pretended, played make-believe, with the staggering freedom in which Don Quixote does. Don Quixote is like a child, playing the make believe game of knights errant. However, even a child, who even though they believe with all their heart that they really are a world famous knight, saving with world from evil and injustice, in their heads, they still know it's just a game. Now Don Quixote believes that he is a knight, his is no longer merely imitating the heroic knights from his novels, he is one of those knights, no matter how mad they say he is or how confused he gets when the people he meets appear to believe him. Don Quixote is a child of imagination and imitation in a “man's” world of reality and reason. Just as we lovers of literature are somewhat blinded by the romance of it all. We chose the hazardous quest of art, beauty and storytelling over the stability of business, medicine, or law. We chose to continue the tradition of imitating the potential of the world and people around us instead of weaving the fabric of the real world we have to live in.
As lovers of literature , English majors, and even film majors ,we choose the path of something higher. When we read the works of artists past, we step out of the 21st century and into another. One that always seems to hold more poetry and beauty that our own could ever dream of. And thus the spark of the chase to catch that dream of beauty. No matter what story we tell, what poem of beautiful words we compose, we are creating something higher than ourselves. “Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the center and the circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought.” (Shelly). We strive to capture the golden inner beauty of the brazen world and chip away the outer shell that is reality. Reality is obtainable while we strive to create verbal equivalent of the unreachable divine. Poetry is the stepping ladder to the divine.
As students of language and stories we see the world differently. We see more then the face value, more even than the reality of something. We see deep inside, all the way to the potential magnificence someone or something holds. In Don Quixote, during our valiant knight's conversation with Sanson, a light reflected the heart of our literary dedication, as english majors, or minors. “ 'That is true' said Sanson, ' but it is one thing to write as a poet and another to write as a historian; the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.' ” (476). When we write a story or a poem, we aren't chained down by silly things such as realism, accuracy, or absolute truth. And we have the concept of “suspension of disbelief” to support our wandering from the path of “true”. It's interesting to me because I first heard this phrase in a film class when discussing how films and stage plays defy what the audience might consider “right', “true” or “normal” and it's the audience's participation in their suspension that makes fiction possible. I don't know of anybody who could watch a film, go to a stage play, or read a novel and become upset because the hero jumped a motorcycle off a plane, lived a life time in two hours, or traveled around mid evil Spain fighting injustice. Sure the action sequence was ridiculous and repeatedly defied gravity, but that's not the point. The story is the point. The experience reading, watching or hearing whatever is was/is that our fellow story lover has to say. The point is the experience of the imitation, not the accuracy of it's truth. Why would we take the time to travel to another world that has to follow all of the same rules as our own? The goal one has in mind when sitting down to experience a fictional story isn't one of historical accuracy, but divine escape, enlightenment, entertainment, and if nothing else to experience something new.
The truth is, no matter how much someone may resist it, we all need poetry. And I mean poetry in the sense of all fictional storytelling genres or mediums. We need an escape from our boring world and what better escape than to see the potential beauty of that world. We're here, in English 300, to carry on the tradition of the divine beauty of storytelling, in whatever form. We see more merit in pursuing the mysteries of language, of literature, storytelling, fiction, poetry and art than pursuing financial gain ( because we all know how much there is to be found in writing) or some other science. Poetry and literature encompass the entire breath of human and superhuman experience, so in essence we study and pursue all things human, and even stretch upwards towards the divine. When you write, you can go anywhere; philosophically, spiritually, emotionally , scientifically even physically. Have you ever read something that described something so well it was like someone had inputted the image straight into your mind? It's like you're really there seeing, smelling and experiencing the story being told.
Don Quixote embodies our goal as english majors/minors. He's living the impossible dream of pure fiction, that we, or at least I, aim and dream for. He sees the world at and in it's full potential, all the time. He lives it while we struggle to embody it in words, mere letters of representation. Don Quixote is that representation. He's a fictional character in a fiction about him being in a fiction where the author reflects on it's fictionalness, but one can't help but feel a little whimsical about the possible meanings behind Don Quixote imitating past fictions and taking them as reality. As a lover of stories I'm obliged to imagine the possibility that Don Quixote is in fact an actual history about a crazy old man who wandered around Spain as a knight errant. I think the funnest part of experiencing a work of fiction is imagining beyond the “letteralness” of the words and what they are saying, and play the “what-if” game. What if this was true? And why not? What is fiction if not a catalyst to think outside and far beyond the box of reality? Just look at Don Quixote. He wasn't merely content with thinking outside the box of reality by only reading the fictions about knights. No, he went as far as to become part of that world, a world of romance, adventure and glory. He kept the journey one experiences while reading a fiction alive by becoming part of that fiction himself.