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The American Dream

On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered a speech at Riverside Church in New York City in which he termed America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He was assassinated one year later, to the day, in Memphis, Tennessee. With or without the words of Dr. King – or the knowledge of his sacrifice – America is known the world over as an imperialistic force of greed and destruction. This is undeniable. And yet we seek to cover our failings with the rhetoric of “Democracy” and humanitarian aid which represents mere fractions of the dollars we spend on weapons of mass destruction. It would seem that American foreign policy is one of deception and violence. Whatever good we do is quickly undone by blatant atrocities.

Our children’s children cannot afford the consequences of our actions. And sadly, an answer or an alternative course of action is not easy to see.  In fact, no course of action has been charted.  There is no clear solution.  Those who suggest “Change” are labeled untrustworthy, untested, and unfit to lead. This leads us to the painful fact that our votes will be courted this November by promises to bring troops home – and simultaneously protect America. The coming election, having been reduced to nonsensical debates (between elites only) over whether or not to bring troops home and how to “fix” the American economy, cannot yield something new.  This talk – and these actions – cannot bring about change. We will reap what we have sown.

Nationalism which hides its violence behind tax dollars is devastatingly expensive. The costs are not merely monetary.  The numbers, sadly enough, can never account for lives – future losses – and complete dedication to the defeat of all that America stands for.  And even though it would be convenient to claim ignorance, each of us is keenly aware of the facts. And yet we choose to live in a cloud of denial: The cozy haze of consumption. The American Dream.

The alarm bells are ringing. Somewhere over the course of our history, Democracy was replaced by Capitalism.  Under no circumstances, whatsoever, could any thinking American call our nation a Democracy.  The same holds true for the Republic that once operated in Washington.  The Federal Government no longer serves consumers in a capitalist system.  It consumes them.

Posted in: Editorial | Comments(0) | April 2008

Marcel Duchamp’s Elementary Parallelism

Duchamp’s Four Dimensional Perspective

What we choose to perceive must carry much more significance than the visualization of predetermined aesthetic qualities in a work of art. We must eventually realize that the things which may be perceived at any given time in any given instance in a work of art are, indeed, infinite. Therefore, we may teach others how to look at works of art and understand in some part the concepts of line and balance, of rhythm and repetition. But arguably, there remains much more to be “seen” in and through works of art that naturally moves beyond the objects themselves and our curious fascinations with them. In other words, a critical point can be made in the historical study of art which clearly illustrates that it is perception which inherently shapes the world in which we live – and not – as it may seem, vice versa. To assume that our perception is shaped by the world and its varying conditions parallels the assumption that a tree is shaped by its own fruit. Likewise, one could argue that the seeds within an apple do indeed shape future apple trees. But this would be to defeat the purpose in this study of perception; to stop on one point and take a side against another. To this writer, to do so would certainly constitute the abuse of time and energy and destroy any future potential simply “for the sake of argument.” I am taking, therefore, an overview of time, of history, and the perception of motion through the interpretive motion studies of Marcel Duchamp – specifically focusing on his work entitled Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912 (view the work) – and relate this work to its apparent foundations in classicism, theoretical physics, and non-Euclidean geometry.

Perception is the lamp of all conceptual thought. It can be shown that perception, or the lack thereof, is what has deterred the genuine progress of civilization and the advancement of science and reasoning. We must learn to “see” the fallacies and ethnocentricities which the governing systems of societal perception have been allowed to dictate. We cannot, for example, ignore the effects of greenhouse gasses in Earth’s atmosphere and expect that the toxic chemicals in the air we breathe will not have some later ill effect upon all living creatures on earth. Again, to dismiss this thinking indicates the naive assumption that pollution is caused by the Earth – rather than the actions and perceptions of the individuals living and acting on it. This, hopefully is quite clear – as was the reference to the tree and its fruit. If humanity is to make genuine advancements, it must make basic adjustments in its collective perception. It is here that “movement” and “motion” should take on new meaning. We should begin to see that motion is, in fact, a quality of time and a result of the perception of it. It should follow that what Art has sought to do, for thousands of years, has been to identify, provide commentary, and offer solutions to the problems that humanity has brought upon itself. To take a close look at the world in which we live is to come to the realization that many of us remain in abject poverty. Yet, the massive concentration of wealth in the United States could provide for the food, clothing, and education of all persons living in this twenty-first century. But for some reason, little or no progress is made – and countless lives are lost in violent conflicts every day. And yet we continue to ask ourselves – what does this have to do with me? And we continue to call those whose perception sees through the ruin of modern materialist cultures “idealists.” As historians, we should, in fact, know better.

Artists, for the most part, have tended to wander out in front of avant-garde thought to depict for their societies the most critical new ideas of their times. Marcel Duchamp was a truly remarkable artist with an unusually long and controversial career. His thinking changed the way Art itself would be viewed, discussed, and created. His readymades introduced an idea which challenged, at its most basic level, what Art could potentially be – or become. And his work depicting motion, which appeared over a two year period early in his career from 1911 to 1913, focused primarily on the human figure. Specifically, these early pieces work in the veins of Cubism and Futurism. They have been labeled Cubo-futurist works, in fact. Interestingly enough, however, Duchamp denied any real association with either of these movements. It seemed his intent to reside somewhere outside any “movement”. Obviously, he understood that the classification and labeling of a work of art as “A” prevented it from being or ever becoming “B.” He seems very much to have intended for his work to remain in a constant state of motion – motion between styles, genres, and classifications. This focus on anti-static principles provides the fuel for whatever machinery continues to drive the significance of his work.

The significance of Duchamp’s studies of figures in motion lies in his knowledge and interpretation of the non-Euclidean geometries of Poincare and Einstein’s theories of General and Special Relativity. More specifically, these paintings move beyond mere retinal imagery into a space where Duchamp has been successful in bringing considerably accurate commentary to bear on the revolutionary scientific thought of his day. Duchamp’s ideas regarding the advancement of such knowledge and the importance of dismissing humanity from the ignorance of its past are evident in this 1915 statement:

“…New York is itself a work of art…. And I believe that your idea of demolishing old buildings, old souvenirs, is fine. It is in line with that so much misunderstood manifesto issued by the Italian Futurists which demanded in symbol only…though it was taken literally, the destruction of the museums and libraries. The dead should not be permitted to be so much stronger than the living. We must learn to forget the past, to live our own lives in our own time.” 1

He begs us to look beyond paint, canvas, gallery, and manifesto to investigate an idea: the idea that we must change our most basic methods of perception on a universal level in order to learn from and move beyond the weighted mistakes and misconceptions of the past. Understanding his motives may be a bit more difficult, but we may still assume a general longing for a more widespread understanding of a universal truth – a unification of science and philosophy, if you will.

Duchamp’s 1911 painting, Sad Young Man in a Train, (view the work) may be the most significant – and yet little known work of his career. Clearly, the piece led him in a new direction, which he would later call “elementary parallelism” by explaining that “the movement of form in time inevitably ushered us into geometry and mathematics.”2 His ideas regarding the depiction of motion seem to have gained access to his work through this piece, and to have found a place in his paintings as a result of his interest in modern French magazines depicting linear movement in multiple exposures from single photographic plates. Calvin Tomkins, in his 1996 biography of Duchamp, drew clear connections between the artists working at the time of the appearance of photographic depictions in periodicals and illustrates how these would have certainly been factors in Duchamp’s decision to work with motion:

Etienne-Jules Marey, a Parisian physiologist who knew most of the important painters and poets of his time, had invented a camera shutter in 1882 that could make multiple exposures of a moving figure on a single photographic plate. Duchamp was well aware of Marey’s chronophotographs, which appeared in La Nature as early as 1893. 3

It is clear that Duchamp enjoyed reviewing periodicals including works depicting motion as seen through the camera’s lens. He was aware of Muybridge’s The Human Figure in Motion, published for the first time in 1885. He never stated, however, that he had seen Muybridge’s pictorial illustrations of a nude woman descending a flight of stairs. While some may wish to stop at this point and make a determination as to whether or not Duchamp was re-inventing the wheel, this writer views this pursuit as a distraction. The ideas represented in his work rather than the influences upon the work itself are far more complex and intriguing. Muybridge may well have been a key influence on Duchamp, however, Duchamp chose to depict the motion of his nude in a single frame, a series of motions interconnected and locked within a single image. This varies significantly from photography. And we will leave any further argument to rest on this point. It is of great importance to note that Duchamp’s aforementioned statement regarding elementary parallelism relates directly to his views of the human figure as the source of inspiration for any studies of geometry, physics, and motion. These he has drawn directly from classicism, as will be shown in what follows.

Art historians are left without the ammunition to pursue Duchamp as a plagiarist. This would be difficult at best. And so, the question remains intact: Where has Duchamp found the influence in his thinking about motion – and his depiction of it? To discover an answer to this question we must turn our attention to the past, and uncover the source of the human fascination with movement. And, as our focus here is on Duchamp’s nudes in a four dimensional perspective, it is best to begin by looking for a working definition of the “fourth dimension.”

A common mistake in the interpretation of four dimensional perspective is to quickly assume that the fourth dimension must simply be “time.” It must be noted that simply answering “Time” in response to the question “What is the fourth dimension?” really provides no workable answer and by default defeats the purpose of the question. The idea of a journey of exploration is more critical than the answer, it would seem. And as Einstein is frequently quoted as having said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Linda Henderson, a well known art historian and theorist, states that “during the first three decades of the twentieth century, artists in nearly every major modern movement were influenced by a highly popular concept known as the “fourth dimension.” In this period, the fourth dimension signified a higher, unseen dimension of space which might hold a reality truer than that of visual perception.”4 She goes on to state that many artists and philosophers of the day believed that a fourth dimension could potentially be the storehouse of the mystical qualities sought at that time by certain theosophists and spiritualists. She does not give us her own determinations regarding these possibilities, she simply comments on them. But we have only scratched the surface of any kind of definition of the fourth dimension – and may remain further still from such unless we arrive at some kind of physical interpretation of what it may consist of. To do this, let us look at Einstein’s theories of General and Special Relativity, which were published in various forms beginning in 1905.

We must note, in any study of General or Special Relativity, that perhaps the single most important factor in Einstein’s equations is based on the idea that it is impossible to demonstrate absolute motion – meaning that two identical but separate frames of reference may produce different visual results on the same instance, where time is concerned. Poincare, it must be pointed out, provided much of the groundwork and may have influenced Einstein’s decision to publish or not to publish certain versions of his findings in June of 1905. Poincare had discussed his ideas with the Paris Congress as early as 1900, but it would be Einstein, a clerk in a Swiss Patent Office, who would reveal to the world an answer to his own questions in an equation as simple as e=mc². This now famous mathematical formula determined that light traveled at a constant speed, and that there could be no frame of reference in which that speed could be determined to be the same – or not the same – when compared with any other frame of reference. The fourth dimension, then, must be that place in which time and gravity exist – which is invisible to our eyes. Like the wind, we are certain that it exists, but cannot see it unless it acts upon matter we can see in our three dimensional world. It should be noted, but left for other pursuits, that in today’s post-modern culture, scientists have uncovered dimensions in their mathematics which support String – and Superstring Theories (each aspects of M Theory, which unifies all five aspects of String Theory) which illustrate the presence of as many as twenty six dimensions. Needless to say, any diversion into these matters must be avoided if we are to simplify an understanding and use of the fourth dimension in modern art. We must first uncover Duchamp’s motivation in motion and movement.

Why is motion important then? What does it have to do with the fourth dimension? To understand the answer, we will investigate Einstein’s famous illustration of the man on a train.5 It is also interesting to note, again, Duchamp’s 1911 work Sad Young Man in a Train in comparison. Einstein set out to illustrate relative motion by pointing out that his reader, perhaps, as a casual observer of a simultaneous lightning strike at points A and B on a segment of railway track, would absolutely perceive what (according to his experiment) was a simultaneous strike of lightning at both points. But, to the man on the train, already having passed the midpoint (M) of segment AB, these events would occur at two different intervals. In fact, if the train were moving at the speed of light, as a spacecraft is certain to eventually accomplish, the event which occurred at A would remain in the past, out of the reach of his perception – unless his vehicle were to somehow be slowed down in order for light to catch up with his frame of reference. One need not be a physicist to understand the incredible implications in these statements.

Revolutionary concepts of gravity and motion which were brought forward by men like Poincare and Einstein were successful in something not many authors or artists may have been aware of at that time. Their perception succeeded in creating a new aesthetics of motion. Motion became the secret formula in art, for example, of opening extra dimensional doorways. The viewing public may not have been acutely aware of the content behind the imagery, but it was arresting to them just the same. What could possibly have been viewed as a “mess” prior to the early 1900’s was, at that time, widely being accepted as beautiful. The Futurists were taken by movement and must have treasured the words of the French philosopher Henri Bergson:

“My body is acted upon by matter, and itself acts upon matter and must transform itself into movement. Thus it represents the actual state of becoming….The material of our existence is nothing but a system of sensations and movements occupying continually different parts of space.” 6

But the Futurists were also taken with their own rigidity and strict adherence to sets of rules which they imposed on themselves. In the end, it seems that any extra-dimensional perception which they may have illumined was overshadowed by a tremendous rigidity which was unsuitable, or at least inadaptable to changes via innovation and adaptation to new scientific information which was being published at the time. It is here that we see Duchamp, again, remaining free of any restrictions and moving freely with the figure and even the seemingly static chess pieces in his work The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes, of 1912, and the series of intricate sketches which led to the work itself. Duchamp’s other works of 1912 included The Virgin, The Passage from the Virgin to the Bride, The Bride, and a final sketch for a later monumental work which was entitled The Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors. It is this last work, which represents, not only a complete dedication to at least some sort of representation of the human figure, but perhaps more specifically, Duchamp’s keen attention to movement – both literal, and metaphorical. It is also here that we find the beginning of one of the most profound explorations of the fourth dimension to have been attempted by an artist in the twentieth century. What would later be called Duchamp’s masterwork, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923) is nothing short of a monument to the fourth dimension. What is perhaps the most gripping quality of this masterpiece, however, is the fact that the motion implied is by no means literally depicted. One is taken by the simplicity of the forms in The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare) and left with the uneasy feeling that perhaps motion is occurring, but remaining imperceptible to the eye. Duchamp uses his past, to relate to the present – and therein predicts and depicts future events in a revolutionary manner. Having seen, or at least touched on his groundbreaking treatments of the figure with respect to motion and the fourth dimension, let us now turn our attention to the characteristics of classicism and relate them to the history which will lead us into Duchamp’s two year (1911-1913) studies of the figure in its various states of motion.

In 1426, one year after the completion of his fresco The Holy Trinity, which is thought to be the first Renaissance painting employing linear perspective, Masaccio began work on a masterpiece depicting his own version of linear perspective as applied to time and the arts. The figures are dressed in traditional Greek classical attire. What is most intriguing about this work, however, is the fact that it relates an entire experience in three separate episodes within the context of a single image. In Masaccio’s 1425 work, The Tribute Money, Saint Peter is depicted in the center of the work receiving instructions from Christ to go to the water’s edge and remove a coin from the mouth of a fish in order that the group may pay their “tribute” upon entering Capernaum, as accounted in the Gospel of Matthew. On the left edge of the work, Peter is again depicted kneeling – reaching into a fish’s mouth. And again, on the right, Peter is portrayed visiting with the tax collector in front of his home. This work has been the center of attention of late as it has been determined that true linear perspective may not, indeed, have been employed – after some scientific scrutinization. To this writer, however, linear perspective is not the issue in question. The idea that a painter in the early 1400’s chose to depict the same figure in three separate instances within one image is the key. Time has been compressed and accommodated by a single frame – rather than a series of the traditional triptychs. It is apparent that the idea of interconnected states of motion is not yet plausible. The idea that time can be viewed in a compressed state, however, seems to be clearly understood. This is an important step to say the least. Duchamp, almost five hundred years later, will employ this technique again as he integrates the idea of motion not only within a single frame in his Nude Descending a Staircase, but he will tie each motion to the previous and future states via his own understanding and aesthetics of theoretical motion.

The next historical step, which is undoubtedly built upon Massacio’s foundational understanding of the dynamics and perception of space and time occurred in the year 1506, although it occurred over a period of some sixteen hundred years prior to its re-discovery. A lost sculpture, The Laocoon Group, (view the work) depicts Laocoon and his sons being devoured by snakes in response to Laocoon’s prophetic warning against bringing the Trojan Horse inside the gates of Troy. This piece was unearthed on a hillside, cleaned, and put on display in the new Vatican Museum. What is perhaps most striking about this sculpture is that it depicts motion in a manner previously unknown to artists of the Renaissance in Italy. It also illustrates that the ideas regarding the importance and aesthetics of motion existed in antiquity – and had been lost. This is an extremely important discovery in that it was heralded almost immediately as the genius of artists of an earlier time. This step proves to re-introduce the lost concepts and aesthetics of motion, and simultaneously opens the floodgates to the critics and historians of the arts and literature to fill the cultural psyche with the idea of an aesthetics of motion. It is obvious, as previously stated, that perception in this specific instance is, again, what begins to shape the world (rather than vice versa.) The rationalism, clarity, and restrained gestures that were typical of the sculpture of the classical period are here replaced by writhing movement, expressing emotional and physical anguish.7 And so we clearly see an idea in its evolution over time – becoming important, being lost, and re-surfacing as a powerful visual aesthetic in the whirlwind that was the Renaissance in Italy. Given time, and much scientific advancement, this same idea will eventually give birth to the Italian Futurists and their conceptual steps toward understanding the dynamics of the perception of motion.

A man who would become the forefather of modern criticism of the arts, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, was born in Kamenz, Germany in 1729. He would eventually distinguish the differences between the spatial and temporal aspects of art and literature. What he is credited with having done is illustrating that the visual arts are essentially spatial and simultaneous whereas literature is temporal and successive. As a result of Lessing’s Laocoön, (1766) historians have had the means with which to gauge the relative degrees of spatiality or temporality in works of art as well as literature.8 As this writer is attempting to illustrate, however, Marcel Duchamp has taken the concepts of a spatial and temporal framework as applied to both painting and writing – and combined them in his Nude Descending a Staircase. This ability, of Duchamp’s, to take and integrate all prior thought in the criticism and production in the arts will eventually bring our attention full circle to an awareness that events occurring within a space-time continuum can be represented by means of a continuation of line, shape, and color within a single frame of reference – or picture. Lessing would have appreciated Duchamp’s efforts. It is clear that both men were aware, whether of the actual work or not, of Horace’s Ars Poetica, which compared the fundamental ideas of painting and poetry. It is here that the classic doctrine of ut pictura poesis (as is painting – so is poetry) is established as a philosophical precept which will govern perception for centuries, and eventually lead each of us to believe “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Clearly, Lessing understood what it meant to draw distinctions, and interpret the meaning between the lines. As Georaldean McClain explains, his words are still quoted to this day, and are certainly significant in the research presented here.

I reason as follows: If it is true that Painting employs in its imitations entirely different means or symbols from those adopted by Poetry – i.e. the former using forms and colours in space, the latter, on the other hand, articulate sound in time – if it is admitted that these symbols must be in suitable relation to the thing symbolized, then symbols placed in juxtaposition can only express subjects of which the wholes or parts exist in juxtaposition; and consecutive symbols can only express subjects of which the wholes or parts are consecutive.

Subjects, the wholes or parts of which exist in juxtaposition, are termed bodies. Consequently bodies, with their visible properties, are the special subjects of painting.

Subjects, the wholes or parts of which are consecutive are generally termed actions. Consequently actions are the special subjects of poetry.

Yet all bodies do not exist in space only, but also in time. They continue to exist, and may, at each moment of their duration, assume a different appearance or stand in a different combination. Each of these momentary appearances and combinations is the effect of a preceding one, and may be the cause of a subsequent one, thus forming, as it were, the central point of an action….

[A painter] can only make use of a single moment in the course of an action, and must therefore choose the one which is the most suggestive and which serves most clearly to explain what has preceded and what follows. 9

Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase will arrest these issues, give them fair trial, and render judgment in pictorial form. His work will leave no question unanswered for those who have taken “time” to understand the philosophical and scientific revolutions of his day. Duchamp, in doing so, opens the gate to the future – and as it now appears, allows the future to flow into the present along with the past. He connects, once and for all, our conceptions of motion to a single image. And, as it would seem, several would be critics were appalled. His sense of humor is something to behold, indeed.

We have looked at the figures of classicism and recounted the origins of their criticism, as well as the origins of modern thought with respect to the same. It is this writer’s hope to have made clear that classicism is itself a continuum – an ongoing interpretation of the value and aesthetic qualities of the figure over time. We have examined a working definition of the fourth dimension, but are left with the idea of the representation of the figure over time. As Duchamp reduced the figure to basic geometric elements in Nude Descending a Staircase, let us look at Edwin Abbot’s interpretation in 1884 of the dialogue between geometric shapes in his novel Flatland, a Romance of Many Dimensions. Here we find, near the end of the novel, a conversation between a two-dimensional Square and a three-dimensional Sphere:

Sphere: “But where is the land of Four Dimensions?”

Square: “I know not: but doubtless my Teacher knows.”

Sphere: “Not I. There is no such land. The very idea of it is utterly inconceivable.”

Square: “Not inconceivable, my Lord, to me, and therefore still less

inconceivable to my Master. Nay, I despair not that, even here,

in this region of Three Dimensions, your Lordship’s art may make the

Fourth Dimension visible to me.” 10

The paradox revealed in this conversation is the determination and representation of the “inconceivable” in art. A two-dimensional object and a three-dimensional object are juxtaposed in a conversation regarding the very nature of their own existence. While Duchamp does not comment on the nature of existence, he does employ two and three-dimensional objects in his work. We find their juxtaposition and interconnectedness to be the dynamics of his composition representing a nude figure descending a flight of stairs. In conclusion, we will look at the sheer simplicity of this significance.

When we look up into the sky at night, we are witnessing events that happened in a far distant past, which are only, in the moment we fix our eyes on the heavens, arriving at the gateway of our perception. Light from distant stars and galaxies may take hundreds and thousands of years to reach Earth. This idea has intrigued us since it was proven that extra solar systems, indeed, other galaxies exist outside our own, and that the distances between them are great enough to require new mathematics as their representatives. The idea of looking up into darkness and seeing into the past is quite an amazing concept to behold. Duchamp’s nude comes down a flight of stairs in an instant of interconnected motion which brings us, as viewers, into the present. Anyone alive in 1912 who looked at Duchamp’s picture of his famous Nude, was witnessing history. Duchamp had digested Poincare and Einstein’s work in non-Euclidean geometry, as well as their ground breaking theories of relativity and motion, and interpreted them using the vessel which has always housed the advancement of knowledge and perception: the human figure.

Time is a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in succession. We live in a time/space environment; time is different from space, yet inseparable from it. Although time itself is invisible, it can be made perceptible in art.11 There may be no more important concept in all of Art than this. In order to understand life, we must understand the nature of time – and motion. Duchamp has taken the idealized figure which has been present in Art from antiquity and added to the list of the things it has come to represent. The classical figure has been crafted to depict aesthetic values, cultural norms, social status, political power, and a whole host of other ideas in physical forms over time via depictions of the nude human figure. Duchamp, as other great artists of history have been able to accomplish, has realized something through his work which forever alters the way art is appreciated and created. He has inscribed an addition to the list of requirements for the idealized figure, and has thereby altered classicism for all time. His Nude Descending a Staircase demonstrated to the world that in order to understand the human condition, a more finely tuned perception of motion must be sought. He adds theory to the list.

How will Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 weather the criticism of the future? Any theory must make predictions about this future – as well as remain testable and repeatable. So we must ask ourselves, then, how do objects really exist in space; how do they endure over time? Where are we, as a species? Are we moving toward greater good – or are we moving toward our own destruction? Doubtless, these are good questions. But they do not answer the original question with which we began to interpret this research. We began by looking into a four dimensional perspective on the human figure, so we must return – and finish there. Anything we choose to perceive consists of quantifiable constituent elements, and therefore exists in a state of perpetual motion. As our ideas and perceptions of both the objective and subjective aspects of our lives change over time, so changes the process of their being encoded within us – within our cultures, ideologies, and modes of thought. This type of motion steps beyond a comparative – or relativistic perception of reality and determines, of itself, the very essence of all that is. In the near future, the fourth dimension will encompass scientists and artists, men and women like Duchamp and Einstein, who will teach us that we exist on a plane which intersects the dimensions of the past, present, and future. We are the figures of classicism depicted within that great frame of reference which has been christened Eternity, and will forever transcend the barriers of perception, time, and motion.

Posted in: Art | Comments(0) | April 2008

Coleridge’s Theory of Imagination & the Burden of Unification

…the feeling that one is on the edge of many things: that there are many worlds from which we are separated by only a film; that a flick of the wrist, a turn of the body another way will bring us to a new world. – Theodore Roethke

Clearly, poets are liable to interpret their ideas as diagrammatic of the inner workings of the universe. In the words of poets, then, perhaps it is of some use searching for answers to some of the most important questions of our time – or any other time. At the end of the day, words are all that remain of any scientist or poet. That’s quite a bit, considering that while it is clear poets may simply be the recycling bins of ideas put forth by others, namely scientists and theologians, it is not immediately apparent that one or several ideas proposed by scientists and theologians were not hatched first in the meditations of a poet. This begs further investigation in that it generates some irony. Scientists seem bent to look for answers. But the case may be made that they might better spend time searching for the questions to the “answers” handed down to us in the concise terms of poetry.

In chapters 13, 14 & 15 of his Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge puts forth a theory of the Imagination. Imagination with a capital “I”. It was this idea, coupled with the thinking of the German metaphysician, Kant, that constructed a bridge of Coleridge’s terms between physical reality and ultimate reality. Coleridge’s theory of Imagination represented unification in the terms of poetry. While today’s physicists concern themselves with Unification of the four fundamental forces of the universe, Coleridge’s work stands readymade – making statements even today that outline the thinking of some of the greatest minds of this century. Coleridge does this so enigmatically, in fact, that his poem The Eolian Harp seems more prophetic than poetic at times. In this poem’s second stanza, in lines 27-30, he writes,

“O! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere…”

Coleridge has stated here, in his own striking terms, what physicists some two hundred years after him have come to understand – based on their own theories; that light – the fundamental force in the creation and animation of life, is within each thing the same and at the same time the rhythm of force behind all thoughts – all things. This is incredibly prophetic visionary language, which he continues in the third and final stanza of the poem, lines 45-9,

“And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely fram’d,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?”

Coleridge is using a language which adequately describes several fundamental principles of what is called “M” Theory. His work to unify our material reality with the vast, untouchable intellect of God stands out prominently when examined under the lens of contemporary quantum physics – which seeks a unification of very nearly the same mechanisms: the fundamental building blocks of everything in our universe.  And for our purposes here, we will leave out all that has been left out.  (in the preservation of time, of course)

It could be that Coleridge senses things in the material world as they are somehow tied into the machinery of Ultimate Reality – but is otherwise unable to understand or identify the science involved or perhaps even interpret the ideas themselves in a wholly explicable manner. Or, perhaps the poet’s mind is prone to this sense. But it is clear that science, thus far, is little more than prone to this sense either. We have not advanced our knowledge, as a race or species, much further than where Einstein left us: Light is the key. Nothing travels faster. Nothing is more important. And as far as Einstein is concerned we are not much further along today than when Newton brought us calculations concerning gravity.

Here, we will examine text from two sources: Coleridge’s The Friend, published in 1818, as well as a letter Coleridge wrote to Thomas Poole and excerpts from the poet’s notebooks. In doing so, Coleridge will appear to line up next to Einstein with respect to the fact that both men seem to have had a beef with Newton – who, while discovering Gravity – could not ever have hoped to define its mechanisms. Einstein came much later and defined these mechanisms. But before him, as I will show here, Coleridge expended great energy to refute the validity of what Newton had accomplished. Coleridge, it seems, was displeased with what he felt was Newton’s intrusion into the things of Nature with nothing more than the cold sterile eyes of science – eyes unconcerned with the beauty he found in nature through Imagination:

“Monday, March 23, 1801
The more I understand of Sir Isaac Newton’s works, the more boldly I dare utter to my own mind, and therefore to you, that I believe the souls of five hundred Sir Isaac Newtons would go to the making up of a Shakespeare or a Milton. But if it please the Almighty to grant me health, hope, and a steady mind …, before my thirtieth year I will thoroughly understand the whole of Newton’s works.

At present I must content myself with endeavouring to make myself entire master of his easier work, that on Optics. I am exceedingly delighted with the beauty and neatness of his experiments, and with the accuracy of his immediate deductions from them; but the opinions founded on these deductions, and indeed his whole [philosophical] theory is, I am persuaded, so exceedingly superficial as without impropriety to be deemed false. Newton was a mere materialist. Mind, in his system, is always passive,–a lazy Looker-on on an external world.” (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/letters/Poole_032301.html)

Today, physicists have sharpened their aim on the “rules” that govern large objects – like galaxies. They realized only recently that the rules which govern these extremely large mechanisms must be combined and integrated with the rules that govern extremely small objects – like subatomic particles. Einstein made copious notes regarding this, but not many actual steps toward a working hypothesis from his idea that one ‘unifying’ theory could be used to describe the laws of gravity and quantum physics; an equation which could be used to answer any question science asked – or was asked. This was deemed absurd in the early 1900’s. Today, what was absurd in Einstein’s time has become common ground for String Theory – now “M” Theory, in that it has been seen from five different vantage points and thought to be valid from each. It would seem that relativity is no joke. But what about tying everything together?

Since the mid-nineties, there have been several major developments where String Theory is concerned. It turns out that there are five different theories – or five component theories which include five wholly unique ways of looking at the same thing. This is called “M” Theory, and it unites the five component string theories in an overarching framework containing what appears to be eleven space-time dimensions. M Theory burdens itself with what physicists have labeled “Unification”. This to mean that all four major forces of nature; the electromagnetic force, the gravitational force, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force will one day be described and understood by means of one “simple” equation. Einstein was no cook.

Coleridge seems to have had a downright eerie perception of things transpiring in the other dimensions predicted by M Theory. His words, published in The Friend in 1818, draw sharp focus on two of the most important (and strongest) forces in the universe:

“In what shall we seek the cause of this contrast between the rapid progress of electricity and the stationary condition of magnetism? As many theories, as many hypotheses, have been advanced in the latter science as in the former. But the theories and fictions of the electricians contained an idea, and all the same idea, … On the contrary, the assumptions of the magnetists (as for instance, the hypothesis that the planet itself is one vast magnet, or that an immence magnet is concealed within it; or that of a concentric globe within the earth, revolving on its own independent axis) are but repetitions of the same fact or phænomenon looked at through a magnifying glass; the reiteration of the problem, not its solution. The naturalist, who cannot or will not see, that one fact is often worth a thousand, as including them all in itself, and that it first makes all the others facts; who has not the head to comprehend, the soul to reverence, a central experiment or observation (what the Greeks would perhaps have called a protophænomon); will never receive an auspicious answer from the oracle of nature.”
(http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/phil_theo/Friend.html#law)

Coleridge asked questions in 1818 that physicists, beginning in 1995, deemed critical to understanding the way the universe works. His concern with reverence, with his fundamental appreciation of what “drives” nature is an obvious departure from science, but this is Coleridge. He seems genuinely disgusted by the fact that science rears its head again and again over the centuries to simply rethink and regurgitate fundamental questions concerning the nature of reality. He is irritated with scientists in his time who poke their noses where he doesn’t feel they belong, and surge ahead without the slightest reverence for what he considers to be the obvious answer their questions: An Almighty Creator. Nature. Ultimate Reality.

In what seems a genuine capacity to understand something of the inner workings of the universe, Coleridge turns time and again to God – rather than science to explain what he finds. What he supplies us, then, seems nothing short of informed criticism of the future – of time itself. He understands what drives men to know. He lives in a time when many begin to look toward writers as the speakers of truth and justice. His time is not all that different that time which has passed before him. Indeed, to look closely is to see that he describes time immemorial as well as what time has yet to come:

“The first man of science was he who looked into a thing, not to learn whether it could furnish him with food, or shelter, or weapons, or tools, or ornaments, or playwiths, but who sought to know it for the gratification of knowing; while he that first sought to know in order to be was the first philosopher. I have read of two rivers passing through the same lake, yet all the way preserving their streams visibly distinct … In a far finer distinction, yet in a subtler union, such, for the contemplative mind, are the streams of knowing and being. … and up this lake the philosopher sails on the junction-line of the constituent streams, still pushing upward and sounding as he goes, towards the common fountain-head of both, the mysterious source whose being is knowledge, whose knowledge is being–the adorable I AM IN THAT I AM.”
(http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/phil_theo/Notebooks.html)

Coleridge and Einstein are kindred spirits. Both men put forward thinking which changed the way we understand the nature of time – of history itself. It was Einstein who said that “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” One can almost hear Coleridge applaud. Coleridge’s image of two rivers passing “visibly distinct” through a lake is one of the most striking reflections on the perception of extra-dimensional time in Romantic literature. In the future we may come to clearly understand how two visibly distinct universes exist side by side as we begin to grasp the vastness of Creation and the magnitude of that which we are a part. A unifying theory has yet to be put forward, however. Our best minds work at it day and night. For now the forces and laws of the universe remain separated by trembling membranes of energy, strings, vibrating at frequencies we have yet to be able to detect; the “sound-like power in light, rhythm in all thought.”

 

Posted in: Art, Faith, Science | Comments(0) | April 2008

Dogwood

Lakeshore Drive, North Little Rock, Arkansas

Posted in: Photography | Comments(0) | April 2008

loose canon

I remember the death of a goldfish,
its open mouth and goggled eyes
against the glass of the round bowl
and the summary of our misery
when the green, long-handled net
hung empty from my sister’s fingers
above the commode.

But death is sometimes friendly.

My father stands alone at the pulpit,
his strong hands on the worn, leather-bound text
delivering Psalms to a congregation.
Below him, cool closed eyes in a box,
heaping boughs of roses.

“If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.”

Sometimes death is friendly.
Things turn back on themselves:
An apple core forming in the apple seed,
a crack in double-terminal rose quartz,
The Mississippi rolling back at New Madrid,
free of the earth for a moment -
like scriptures freed from text,
loose canon floating free in the air.

Posted in: Poetry | Comments(0) | April 2008

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