A New Philosophy of Literature: The Fundamental Theme and Unity of World Literature: the Vision of the Infinite and the Universalist Literary Tradition

A NEW PHILOSOPHY

OF LITERATURE

The Fundamental Theme and

Unity of World Literature

The Vision of the Infinite and the

Universalist Literary Tradition

First published by O-Books, 2012

O Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., The Bothy, Deershot Lodge, Park Lane, Ropley,

Hants, SO24 0BE, UK

office1@o-books.net

www.o-books.com

For distributor details and how to order please visit the ‘Ordering’ section on our website.

Text copyright Nicholas Hagger 2011

ISBN: 978 1 84694 945 6

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

The rights of Nicholas Hagger as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design: Stuart Davies

Printed in the UK by CPI Antony Rowe

Printed in the USA by Offset Paperback Mfrs, Inc

We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

A NEW PHILOSOPHY

OF LITERATURE

The Fundamental Theme and

Unity of World Literature

The Vision of the Infinite and the

Universalist Literary Tradition

Nicholas Hagger

Winchester, UK

Washington, USA

Books Published by Nicholas Hagger

The Fire and the Stones

Selected Poems

The Universe and the Light

A White Radiance

A Mystic Way

Awakening to the Light

A Spade Fresh with Mud

The Warlords

Overlord

A Smell of Leaves and Summer

The Tragedy of Prince Tudor

The One and the Many

Wheeling Bats and a Harvest Moon

The Warm Glow of the Monastery Courtyard

The Syndicate

The Secret History of the West

The Light of Civilization

Classical Odes

Overlord, one-volume edition

Collected Poems 1958 – 2005

Collected Verse Plays

Collected Stories

The Secret Founding of America

The Last Tourist in Iran

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations

The New Philosophy of Universalism

The Libyan Revolution

Armageddon

The World Government

The Secret American Dream

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge the memory of T.S. Eliot, whose thinking in his essays (such as ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’) this work carries forward; and of the (to my young me) elderly Japanese poet Junzaburo Nishiwaki who, when I asked him for a distillation of the wisdom of the East in a saké – rice-wine – bar in Tokyo in 1965, wrote out for me on a business reply card to Encounter which happened to be before us, +A + −A = 0, great nothing (see p.346) and supplied me with the dialectical method I have used in all my historical, philosophical and literary Universalist work, in which metaphysical and secular contraries are reconciled in a synthesis.

Over the years I have benefited from many discussions with writers and poets now dead: E.W.F. Tomlin, Edmund Blunden, Frank Tuohy, Anthony Powell, Angus Wilson, Ezra Pound, John Heath-Stubbs, Kathleen Raine, David Gascoyne, and others, some of whose comments inform the text. I have benefited from discussions with Colin Wilson, whose Outsider was a quester, from 1961 to the mid-1990s. I acknowledge discussions spanning more than 50 years with the leading critic of our time, Christopher Ricks, who in spite of his Neoclassical principles was good enough to agree with my view of the reconciling power of Baroque poetry at an early stage and provided many stimulating thoughts. I appreciated a correspondence with Ted Hughes, who wrote to me in 1994, I read your books with a sort of automatic assent.¹ He was extremely interested in literary Universalism and would have been very interested in this work.

I am grateful to Gillon Aitken for spurring me to distinguish two very different sensibilities, which focused my attention on the need for this book and precipitated its shape in my mind. Once again I acknowledge John Hunt, who immediately recognised the importance of stating the fundamental theme of world literature and of setting out the tradition of literary Universalism. And I am again grateful to my PA Ingrid who kept up with the brisk pace I set that, despite the enormous scope of 4,600 years of world literature, covered the ground from first research to completion in just over eight months (from 22 July 2010 to 31 March 2011).

"Come said the Muse,

Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,

Sing me the universal."

Walt Whitman, ‘Song of the Universal’, in Leaves of Grass

I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Man’s.

Blake, ‘Jerusalem’, f.10, l.20

You must teach the taste by which you wish to be relished.

Junzaburo Nishiwaki in conversation with

Nicholas Hagger on 21 December 1963

*

"In poets as true genius is but rare,

True taste as seldom is the critic’s share,

Both must alike from Heaven derive their Light,

These born to judge, as well as those to write.

Let such teach others who themselves excel,

And censure freely who have written well.

Authors are partial to their wit,* ’tis true,

But are not critics to their judgment** too?...

A perfect judge will read each work of wit,

With the same spirit that its author writ:

Survey the WHOLE, nor seek slight faults to find

Where Nature moves, and rapture warms the mind."

Pope, ‘An Essay on Criticism’, lines 11–18, 233–6

*Wit, the unexpected, quick and humorous combining or contrasting of ideas or expressions (Concise Oxford Dictionary); a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblences in things apparently unlike...The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together (Dr Johnson, Lives of the English Poets).

**Judgment, the critical faculty; discernment; an opinion or estimate; criticism (Concise Oxford Dictionary).

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.

Ezra Pound, ‘A Retrospect’

The Light and the Shadow. Image symbolizing the synthesis of Universalism: the pediment at Copped Hall, Essex, showing two contraries, Light (lumen), right, and Shadow (umbra), left, either side of a sundial and above the Latin "Me umbra regit vos lumen". See pp.9, 294, 314, 346, 351. (Photo supplied by the Trustees of the Copped Hall Trust.)

Prologue

The Fundamental Theme of World Literature

This books presents the fundamental theme of world literature. It argues that its main thrust is the revelation that the universe is ordered and permeated by an infinite Reality which human beings can know. It shows that this traditional material has been restated in the literature of every culture and age, and that the quest for an ordering Reality that is behind and within everyday life was originally stronger than secular writing.

However, in many literary works, this level of Reality is missing. Especially today, writing is secular and there is only a personal and social reality. Consequently, many contemporary works are secular and materialist in presenting life in an accidental universe of purely physical processes that are devoid of purpose or meaning. This book argues that there needs to be a revolution in thought and culture to perpetuate the traditional material in a new literary movement so that once again it co-exists with secular writing. In other words, this book calls for a revolution in Western literature.

This call to revolution is in fact a call back to tradition, and I seek to carry forward the thinking in T.S. Eliot’s essay, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919) in which Eliot urged poets to cultivate a historical sense and a feeling for the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer, and to be aware of the mind of Europe as no poet…has his complete meaning alone. In this work I evoke the literary tradition since Homer.

An investigation of the fundamental theme in world literature transports the reader into different cultures and civilizations, and focuses on all humankind. It therefore necessarily enters the uncharted territory of literary Universalism.

Universalism

Universalism’s global perspective can be found in various disciplines outside literature. Historical Universalism sees the history of all humankind as a unity, as did Toynbee in his Study of History. Political Universalism sees all humankind as one political entity, to be governed under a World State and a benevolent world government. Religious Universalism sees all religions as unified on the basis of a common experience known to all mystics in all ages and cultures: the experience of the Light, known to Christians as the Divine Light and to Catholics as the Light of Glory (lumen gloriae). Philosophical Universalism focuses on the universe as did the great philosophers of the past. Following a philosophically lean century dominated by logic and language, it sees a unified, orderly universe operating within the infinite as did the early Greek philosophers, and it too focuses on the unity of all humankind.

I have written extensive studies of historical Universalism (The Fire and the Stones, The Rise and Fall of Civilizations), religious Universalism (The Fire and the Stones, The Light of Civilization), political Universalism (The World Government, The Secret American Dream) and philosophical Universalism (The Universe and the Light, The One and the Many, The New Philosophy of Universalism).

In The New Philosophy of Universalism I set out a philosophy that focuses on the universe – indeed, an ordered cosmos – and challenged modern philosophy’s focus on language and logic. I looked back to the Greek Presocratic philosophers who offered empirical explanations for the workings of the universe at the source of Western philosophy. I considered their metaphysical view of the universe. Metaphysics, "ta meta ta phusika, were originally the [works of Aristotle] after the Physics, but their study of first principles came to be misinterpreted as meaning the science of things transcending what is physical or natural" (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). Metaphysics therefore came to mean what is beyond physics, and as "meta can be translated as behind as well as after, metaphysics has also come to mean what is behind physics: the science of things behind, and therefore transcending, what is physical or natural". Metaphysics asks what had infinite being before the Big Bang that could account for how the finite, physical, natural universe came to emerge from its fiery birth, and what has continued to be behind, and order, the physical, natural universe ever since the Big Bang. Metaphysics have not been impressed by Materialist assertions that nothing pre-existed the Big Bang and that the universe is an accident ruled by random chance and without order.

In The New Philosophy of Universalism I blended a scientific, evidential view of the universe with a scheme for its metaphysical structure: out of the One (or Nothingness) manifested Non-Being, from which emerged Being and eventually Existence. I saw unified Being as behind and within the diversity of Existence, the world of appearance. Within a new centre of the self, the universal being, humans can look beyond Existence into Being, which they can receive as the metaphysical Light, and can grasp that the universe is layered, tiered, with the invisible energy of Being operating behind the surface Existence. (See diagram of Universalism’s view of the structure of the universe, p.353.)

The faculty that perceives unity is what Coleridge called the esemplastic power of the imagination,¹ esemplastic coming from Greek words "eis en plattein, meaning moulding or shaping into one". (Coleridge in Biographia Literaria, ch.X, wrote, "I constructed it myself from the Greek words eis en plattein, to shape into one," whereas the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary derives the word from eis en plassein, moulding into unity, unifying.) All my studies of Universalism have been written from this faculty, which perceives similarities. It is very different from rational analysis, which perceives differences and makes distinctions.

Besides focusing on the universe and the universal order principle, Universalism focuses on humankind’s place in the universe, and therefore on the oneness of humankind. Universalism also probes the natural world, the universal cosmic energies which stimulate the growth of organisms and plants, and the universal being within the self where these energies or rays are received by human beings.

The unity of humankind is a theme suited to times when there are attempts to govern the whole known world: the times of the Athenian Empire, Augustus’s Roman Empire, the Crusades, the post-Renaissance European empires, and in our time the British Empire, the American Empire and globalization.

Literary Universalism

Literary Universalism reflects the Universalist approach in philosophy, history, religion and politics. In The New Philosophy of Universalism I devoted a few pages to the applications of Universalism, and spoke of literary Universalism, which received a scanty two pages. I pointed out that literary Universalism sees all literature – the literature of all countries – as one, an interconnected unity, one supra-national literature. This book extends Universalism to world literature.

I use literature in its primary meaning: literary productions as a whole, the writings of a country or period or of the world in general (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). This definition is descriptive. It describes the process of literary production, publication and circulation, and includes any works written in the ancient cultures that have survived. To this definition has accrued a further definition first used during the Romantic Age, in 1812: writings esteemed for beauty of form or emotional effect. This is a more evaluative definition, and suggests that some works are to be evaluated as literature while others do not qualify in terms of the Romantic criteria of beauty of form and emotional effect. Different movements, and ages have different criteria by which to evaluate what is and what is not literature, and a coming Universalist movement, and eventually Universalist Age, will have its own distinctive criteria.

Literary Universalism is concerned with the literary productions of the world as a whole, and focuses on works of art rather than printed matter which has no literary merit. Its criteria include whether a work of art reflects specific Universalist characteristics.

Twelve Universalist Characteristics

What are these characteristics? Within literature (and philosophy) the term Universalism incorporates universe, universal and universality. It focuses on the universe, on a universal principle of order and on humankind as a whole. It focuses on inner transformation to the universal being, the deeper self below the rational, social ego which is open to universal cosmic energies, the manifesting metaphysical Light. It focuses on universal human virtues, the standard from which writers have ridiculed the follies and vices of humankind.

In all times and ages, Universalist literature seeks confirmation that the universe is ordered by a Reality that surrounds it, which Greek Presocratic philosophers such as Anaximander of Miletus (who flourished c.570BC) described as the infinite, boundless (to apeiron). It holds that this Reality is perceived in many cultures as Light or Fire; that all humankind is one; and that there are consequently similarities between cultures and civilizations. It holds that the universal being (or spirit) can know the Reality as the Light and (according to all cultures) achieve immortality; and that there is a universal virtue which measures human behaviour.

This book is a work of literary Universalism. It sets out the long tradition of Universalist literature that reflects this view and adheres to these criteria. In fact, in all ages each particular work of Universalist literature reflects the idea of Reality found in their culture and civilization, the metaphysical aspect of the fundamental theme; and until relatively recently the outlook of the traditional material could be located within the society and rituals that nourished it. In the interests of clarity it is worth setting out the twelve characteristics by which Universalism can be recognised. Universalism, and the metaphysical aspect of the fundamental theme, focuses on:

the infinite (to apeiron) that surrounds the universe;

the metaphysical Reality perceived in all cultures as Light (or Fire, which is a universal cosmic energy);

the universal principle of order in the universe (universal in the sense that its effects are found in all aspects of Nature and its organisms);

the oneness of known humankind behind its apparent diversity;

the similarities in cultures and civilizations;

the universal being (or self) that opens to the Light behind the rational, social ego;

universal virtue, a standard by which to measure human follies, vices, blindness, corruption, hypocrisy, self-love and egotism, and on vices in relation to an implied universal virtue (when human interaction is considered from a secular perspective, as separated from its context of Reality);

the promise of immortality of the universal being or spirit;

an inner transformation or centre-shift from ego to universal being;

the quest of the purified soul to confront death, in the ancient cultures by journeying to the Underworld, and to receive the secret Light of infinite Reality;

a sensibility that approaches Reality through more than one discipline, the sensibility of a polymath; and

a new perspective of unity in key disciplines: seeing world history as a whole; seeing the common essence (the inner experience of the Light) of all world religions; seeing the One that can be revealed by philosophy and science; seeing the World State that can unify international politics; and seeing the unity of world literature.

In the ancient world, in which religion was strong, these characteristics dominated society’s rituals and were reflected in literature. Despite weakenings of this cultural activity which gave rise to periods of secularization in literature, this fundamental Universalist and literary perception of the universe can be found in all places and times. It is the archetypal literary theme that has been repeated in each generation. Each generation restates the traditional Universalist theme.

Outline of the Fundamental Theme

There are in fact two sides to the fundamental theme: the traditional metaphysical quest for Reality and, in periods of greater secularization, a more secular view of social reality that focuses on vices in relation to an implied virtue. In Part One of this book I trace the two aspects of the fundamental theme from their origins in the ancient world (ch.1) through the classical world (ch.2) to the medieval world (ch.3), the Renaissance (ch.4) and the Baroque (ch.5). I trace the conflict between the two aspects in the Neoclassical and Romantic traditions (chs.6 and 7) and their short-lived reunification in the Victorians (ch.8) and Modernists (ch.9). I examine the position in the later 20th century (ch.10) and conclude that the two aspects are still a force, despite widespread secularization.

In Part Two, drawing on the literary summaries at the end of each of the ten chapters in Part One, I outline how Universalism can reconcile and perpetuate the two aspects of the fundamental theme today (ch.1), and dwell on the reconciliation in poetry (ch.2). In the Epilogue I chart a new direction for world literature and consider the role of the Universalist tradition in the health of each civilization in which it flourishes.

The fundamental theme is the unifying principle of world literature, and through its lens world literature can be seen as a unity. I will inevitably be restricted in the number of poems, plays and novels I will be able to cite as complying with one or other of the two aspects of the fundamental theme, but the same principle (quest or vices) can be applied to texts that will not be mentioned in this work, with similar results. In this work I am concerned to establish the principle of the fundamental theme from a sample of highly respected texts rather than to analyze every existing text in world literature (an impossibly gargantuan task) to demonstrate the principle.

The title of this book, A New Philosophy of Literature, of course echoes The New Philosophy of Universalism, but it also states that this work introduces a philosophy of literature and falls under the category of philosophy of literature.

Philosophy of Literature

The philosophy of literature has been approached by analytic philosophers, who have related literary problems to aesthetics. The analytic perspective defines literature, distinguishing between oral and written literature, and discusses the identity of literary works. It addresses the nature of fiction and our emotional involvement with fictional characters. It discusses the concept of imagination and its role in the apprehension of literary works. It looks at theories of metaphor and postmodernist theory regarding the significance of authors’ intentions and the interpretation of their work. And it examines the relevance of truth and morality to literary appreciation. These questions are raised in Christopher New’s analytic Philosophy of Literature, and in an analytic anthology by Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes, also entitled Philosophy of Literature.

An analytic approach to the philosophy of literature sees a poem, a play, a novel, a short story as also being a work of literature, and the same applies to a work of oratory, an essay, philosophy or scripture. All these genre s may also be literature. However, there is also popular or light literature, mass-market fiction written for escapist entertainment, which some would say is not good enough to warrant being called literature. The analytic approach defines literature as linguistic composition that has a certain property or properties of literariness. Literariness involves figures of language such as rhyme, metre (whether ‘strict or free’), onomatopoeia, alliteration and eye rhymes.² It also deals with value theory, metaphysics (the definition of literature, theories of fiction and the ontology of literature) and the philosophies of language and mind (theories of fiction, emotional engagement, interpretation and metaphor).³

There is, however, an alternative approach to the philosophy of literature: the historical, traditional, Universalist approach. This is more pragmatic. Based on principles rather than theory, and perceiving through the creative esemplastic faculty that sees unity, it sees literature (to echo the definition on p.4) as all literary writings or works of art of the world as a whole that have ever been produced. Starting with the literature or written works produced in the ancient world, it considers the direction the fundamental tradition has taken, whether it has stuck to its course and the extent to which it has been challenged and superseded by a rival view of what literature is. This book pursues this tradition of the philosophy of literature.

Direction of the Fundamental Theme

The philosophy of history explores the direction of historical events and its interpretations of the rise and fall of civilizations, and seeks the pattern in and behind human events. Similarly the philosophy of literature explores the direction of literary events and its interpretations of movements and literary traditions, and seeks the pattern in and behind the themes of the works of the most significant authors of each age. It examines the fundamental theme of world literature in each age, and explores the direction it takes in the course of more than 4,600 years of recorded history. Literary events or works of course reflect, and often comment on, the historical events of their age.

This work falls under the category of philosophy of literature in the sense that it identifies the core literary theme of the last 4,600 years and explores the direction it has taken (while continuing to reflect the order within the universe and experience of the hidden Reality that traditionally bestows immortality). It traces the direction this fundamental literary theme has taken in recent years and draws conclusions regarding its weakening in the present time. We shall see that the quest for Reality in metaphysical periods encompasses and incorporates the second aspect of the fundamental theme: the outlook in secular periods that human vices should be exposed. The fundamental theme consists of two opposites which alternate in their periods of dominance and which are reconciled from time to time.

Until now no attempt has been made to trace the direction of the universal fundamental literary theme. This book therefore breaks new ground. It attempts something that has not happened before. However, although the tracing of the traditional theme is new as a statement, the outlook of Universalism is as old as civilization. The Universalist tradition of literature has ancient roots and has always been with us. Detailing it may be new, but there have been many Universalist writers who have reflected the twelve characteristics and criteria of Universalism. Literature has always recorded intimations of Being and humankind’s instinctive longings for order in the universe.

The quest for Reality as Light and its opposite motif within the fundamental theme, the exposure of vices, can be seen in terms of light and shadow. Light and shadow can best be approached through an image or symbol. At Copped Hall in Essex in the UK, an eighteenth-century ruin that is being restored, there is a remarkable 1890s sundial in the marble pediment above four Ionic columns. (See front cover and p.x.) Two male reapers recline on either side of the gnomon, back to back, holding scythes above reaped ears of corn. The one on the right is tousled-haired and bare-chested, and very much awake, having turned his head to look at us, gripping his scythe. The one on the left, also bare-chested, has wound his half-discarded cloak into a cowl-like hood round his head to shade him from the fierce sun and is at rest, with his eyes closed. He appears to be asleep as he his hands limply rest on his scythe, which is propped on one knee. Above them is an hourglass. The two figures could represent Work and Sleep, Day and Night. Underneath there is a Latin motto: Me umbra regit vos lumen. The sundial says, Shadow rules me [i.e. the sundial], light rules you [i.e. all mortals who look at the sundial].

I see the pediment as a symbol for the fundamental theme. One figure (lumen) represents the quest for a metaphysical Reality as Light. The other figure (umbra) represents the world, the shadows cast by the Light, the shadowy world of human vices which are measured in terms of its counterpart, virtue granted by the influx of the Light. From the secular perspective, light (in the sense of sunlight) rules us mortals as we depend on ripened grain.

We shall encounter the symbol again in Part Two. But it is now time to see how the two motifs of the fundamental theme, the metaphysical and the secular, are contrasted and conjoined within the literature of the last 4,600 years.

PART ONE

The Light and the Shadow:

The Fundamental Theme’s

Metaphysical and Secular Traditions

"Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,

Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,

That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,

Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?"

Bridges, ‘A Passer-By’