30/1001 - Fryeday and catching up!

 

"...the more consistently one conceives of criticism as the pursuit of values [i.e., value-judgements], the more firmly one becomes attached to that great sect of anti-intellectualism. At present it seems to be fashionable to take an aggressive stand in the undergraduate classroom, and demand to know what, after all, we are really trying to teach. It appears that we are concerned, as teachers, with the uniqueness of human beings, or with the fullness of humanity, or with the freedom to be aware, or with life itself, or with the committed ironies of consciousness, or with learning to be at home in the world, or in fact with anything at all, so long as it sounds vaguely impressive and is not reducible to treating literature as something to be taught and studied like anything else. Seek ye first the shadow, we are urged, and the mere substance will be added unto you, if for some reason you should want it. It seems to be in literature that the teacher is most strongly tempted to co-operate with the student's innate resistance to the learning process, make himself into an opaque substitute for his subject instead of a transparent medium of it, and thereby develop his charisma, which is Greek for ham."

Value-judgements, Frye says, have their places. But they are not in the classroom. 

Or when they come up, they are not what is being taught. Knowledge ought to be taught.

Professor Frye, have you met my friend Charlotte Mason?

Short Stories: in the last 3 days, I've only read one short story - The Tell-Tale Heart by E.A. Poe. I had forgotten how good the story was! There is something that reminds me of Dostoyevsky with the attention to the detail of the poor old man's "vulture eye" and how it drives the narrator mad.

Essays: This is the reason I didn't read any short stories - I've been binging on essays!

I dove head first into Frye and Charlotte Mason, trying to document recent cross overs. They are many. So I read for several hours (off and on, as a mom must do) from Philosophy of Ed, School Ed, and Ourselves (Mason) and then On Education and The Stubborn Structure by Frye. 

On Friday I read the first essay in a collection on Language called "Language, and Enquiry into its Meaning and Function." The essay was called Language as an Idea by Ruth Nanda Ashen. This quote stood out:

"...man is that being on earth who does not have Language. Man *is* Language.

"It is by virtue of the procreation power of language, which grasps, shakes, transforms, that man is man. For nothing really human can be so without this meaning, whether the language be uttered or silent. In this way, language as the power of universal is given to man in order that he might transcend his environment, in order that he might have a world. It is the law of language to create the world, and it is therefore futile to search for the origin of language as it is to search for the origin of reason. Both are given with man; both are part of his essential, ontologival reality.

"Words themselves are ideas - although not all words. This means that man does not create ideas. He assembl3s them. In this way he is thrust into a state of universal mobility since he attaches the swift and restless force of his individual existence to the retarded and more massive power of his language. And for this there is only one source of help -- Spirit. If words issued from an origin other than Spirit, from one's native land, one's country, for example, they would be born and they would die with it. Thus we would be deceived, tricked into an illusion. It is fortunate that the reasons whereby it is generally proved that language cannot have been invented by men are irrefutable. With the infallibility of the intuitive faculty and with the implacability of logic we must concede that if language does not come from empiric man, it must come from Spirit or God. For God created language even as He created man. And it may further be added that man can no more do without language than he can order or direct it. He can only bestow on it his faith, accord it his confidence, endeavoring by all the spiritual and moral means at his disposal and by the depths and seriousness of his individual experience not to violate it. And thus it might be said that in this very law of our thought is contained the proof of the existence of God."

"Language and "word" are not synonymous. ... Words, it can then be said, are the Incarnation of ideas, the mysterious and magic nexus between the ideal and the real. And language thus becomes the revelation of being, even as it is the intermediary between man and his work. ...he who abandons the idea of making the word and instrument of knowledge is ready to accept, out of the depths of despair, and antirationalistic theory of language. Life is not above and below language, as some, especially empiricistic, deterministic thinkers, have believed. The universal value of reason and language must be recognized. For finally man, uprooted and alone, is able to achieve identity and definition not in relation to the earth but in relation to language. A man must *be*. Being is synonymous with stability and objectivity... Language creates the world just as language enriches the world because of its symbolic function."

It reminded me of this Radiolab episode. Go listen to it. It is fascinating.

https://radiolab.org/podcast/91725-words

I also read this by Neil Postman - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1989/12/learning-by-story/667930/

I agree with a lot of what he says, though not all.

Poems: Buckle up. I'm a few days behind.

Arrowhead Hunting

by A.E. Stallings

The land is full of what was lost. What's hidden

Rises to the surface after rain

In new-ploughed fields, and fields stubbled again:

The clay shards, foot and lip, that heaped the midden,

And here and there a blade or flakes of blade,

A patient art, knapped from a core of flint,

Most broken, few as coins new from the mint,

Perfect, shot through time as through a glade.

You cannot help but think how they were lost:

The quarry, fletched shaft in its flank, the blood

Whose trail soon vanished in the antlered wood,

Not just the meat, but what the weapon cost—

O hapless hunter, though your aim was true—

The wounded hart, spooked, fleeting in its fear—

And the sharpness honed with longing, year by year

Buried deeper, found someday, but not by you

The Manor Farm

by Edward Thomas

 

The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills

Ran and sparkled down each side of the road

Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.

But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;

Nor did I value that thin glilding beam

More than a pretty February thing

Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,

And church and yew-tree opposite, in age

Its equals and in size. The church and yew

And farmhouse slept slept in a Sunday silentness.

The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof,

With tiles duskily glowing, entertained

The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof

White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one.

Three cart-horses were looking over a gate

Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails

Against a fly, a solitary fly.

The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained

Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught

And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter—

Rather a season of bliss unchangeable

Awakened from farm and church where it had lain

Safe under tile and thatch for ages since

This England, Old already, was called Merry.

The Scribe

by Walter de la Mare

What lovely things

Thy hand hath made:

The smooth-plumed bird

In its emerald shade,

The seed of the grass,

The speck of the stone

Which the wayfaring ant

Stirs -- and hastes on!

Though I should sit

By some tarn in thy hills,

Using its ink

As the spirit wills

To write of Earth's wonders,

Its live, willed things,

Flit would the ages

On soundless wings

Ere unto Z

My pen drew nigh

Leviathan told,

And the honey-fly:

And still would remain

My wit to try --

My worn reeds broken,

The dark tarn dry,

All words forgotten --

Thou, Lord, and I.