Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Intoxicator-Intoxicatee
Nige draws my attention to this very sane piece on drinking by Roger Scruton. In the midst of this Roger makes a startling point - 'When we speak of an intoxicating line of poetry, we are not referring to an effect in the person who reads or remembers it, comparable to the effect of an energy pill. We are referring to a quality in the line itself.... Likewise, the intoxicating quality that we taste in wine is a quality that we taste in it and not in ourselves.' This is entirely consistent with the argument, but it's an astonishing claim. Years ago I remember somebody attacking F.R.Leavis for claiming that the values he found in great literature were, in effect, inherent in the works themselves, prior to readers. Leavis denied he was saying this, pointing out that this was like saying whisky was dead drunk in the bottle. But this is, in fact, precisely what Roger is saying about wine and poetry - it is, somehow, intoxicating in itself, independent of or prior to the drinker or reader. I suppose the point is that the long human traditions behind their production have become embodied in wine and poetry and that, therefore, their power is independent of any individual experience. But, against that, one could say there must be individual experience at some point if the word 'intoxicating' is to mean anything at all. I have no conclusion to draw. It's just one of those arguments that seems right, feels right, should be right, but, somehow, resists complete acceptance.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Scruton’s observation reminds me a little of what some philosophers say about our relationship with language – of which poetry, if not wine, is a part of course. Roughly, I think it is that language transcends us because when we learn language we learn how to participate in a pre-existing community or culture. So there is this debate about whether language speaks us as much as we speak it. If the former’s the case, then it makes sense to talk of poetry itself being intoxicating.
ReplyDeleteOr it’s perhaps like the point made by the so-called externalists in the philosophy of mind, who argue that we make a Cartesian mistake when we presume that cognition takes place inside us – as the resistance to the thought that a line or a liquor is intoxicating in itself presumes. Rather, they say, cognition takes place somewhere in between ourselves and the world: our minds are but bit parts in that play.
Thanks, Mark, more lucid than me. You're right about the parallels. Cognition and language are, however, not the same as wine and poetry - which is why the Scruton point is so troubling. For me, at least.
ReplyDeleteWell, there are plenty of people who find the intoxicating effects of poetry very resistible. And other people are drunk as skunks after half a glass of red. I suppose the most you can claim is that particular poetics and plonks are made with the potential to intoxicate a healthy human.
ReplyDeleteScruton's article is an interesting mix of rational (when bashing the puritans) and romantic (round-buying as the peak of civilisation).
'It's just one of those arguments that seems right, feels right, should be right, but, somehow, resists complete acceptance.' The best kind of argument then.
ReplyDeleteI find climbing intoxicating, the idea that one wrong move or judgment and your dead is pure addiction, same too with guns, I love being on the firing range going through the disciplines to stay safe and fire the thing in the right direction and at the right thing, that is much better than any drink.
ReplyDeleteI suppose its the same with wine, the idea that if you don't drink it properly and sensibly you fall out of your head is also addictive.
is this that old cognitive dissonance again? philosophy is the devil's work made for idle minds. the thing is, the more you read the line, the less intoxicating it is which is the complete opposite of drinking.
ReplyDelete"Language transcends us", yes, but that is not the whole truth. We also transcend language. How else would we recognise the effect of irony, if we were not understanding something that lies beyond the paraphrasable meaning of the words? As someone on another blog wrote (in an article on Leavis): words don't mean something, the humans who use them mean something.
ReplyDeleteWell in that case ian, the words were never really intoxicating in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI think what intoxicates us with words, wine, or jumping out of planes, is potential, the unknown and our chance to shape it, interpret it or just be a part of it.
As you can see, it's all a matter of susceptibility.
ReplyDeleteWhat if you substitute 'methylated spirits' for 'wine'.. the former is certainly intoxicating however not in the aesthetically appraised way of Scruton's wine. In terms of Baudrillard, wine is more than an alcoholic beverage it's a hyperreal concept that evokes a whole slew of stuff. Also the word 'intoxicating' is only actuated by consumption. the intoxifier is inert until consumed. I drink to get drunk, I think Scruton appreciates the craft of the Vintner a little too much.
ReplyDeleteAn unread line of poetry, eh? A girl unkissed and a pint unsupped. There are tragic thoughts for a wet Wednesday afternoon. And as the mad Witters asked, what colour is that blue billiard ball if you put it in your jacket pocket?
ReplyDeleteThe commonly held core of meaning in the line of poetry - the words and the cultural artfulness of their arrangment - is what is potentially intoxicating. Book or bottle open or shut, the potential is the same. It's what the words mean to us all. The words themselves do have meaning. Ask a blind man what colour is the sky.
Ho hum. Get back to work, you slackers.
That was me, BTW.
ReplyDelete