Of Solipsism- A Plath Poem

What an awesome read! Not only does Plath construct a poem containing wonderfully employed imagery within a gorgeous structure, but on top of this takes on a philosophical concept that many people are unaware of: solipsism.

Solipsism is the philosophical position that contends that a given individual’s mind is the only knowable reality there is (a concept that’s intimately connected to idealism). Some have gone as far as to state that there is in fact no independent, external reality; that that which we perceive to be ‘the external world’ is really nothing more than the conjecturing of ideas that exist with the individual’s mind alone … in its extreme from it asserts that the individual (whoever that may be) is not only the basis of reality, but the creator and destroyer of it.

The illusion of an objective reality is so utterly persuasive that, according to this philosophical position, we cannot but help to live as if this were so. If the illusion were to give way and I were to see clearly that reality is nothing more than the conglomerate of ideas I have pertaining to it, well, I’d be able to make things disappear or come into being at will.

Plath takes this strange philosophy and skillfully utilizes it in the poem this post pertains to. I was taken back- I had no idea that Plath was in the least familiar with philosophy (let alone solipsism). To my mind Coleridge is one of the more philosophical of the poets, and has written several with topics that are very philosophical. But Plath’s poem here … incredible. She may not be one of the more philosophical of the poets, but this poem is by far one of the most philosophical ones in circulation. Check it out.



Soliloquy of the Solipsist

I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.


I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.

I
When in good humor,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott any color and forbid any flower
To be.

I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.



Of the Poem (Notes):

I walk alone

For solipsism to be true there could only exist one individual who has the capacity to generate or dissolve reality.

The midnight street / Spins itself from under my feet

Wonderful imagery. The poet (our solipsist) is quite aware that reality is being generated by the ideas she projects (hence, with every step, the very street beneath her feet emerges).

When my eyes shut / These dreaming houses all snuff out

For the solipsist, things exist because they’re perceived to exist. If these things fell out of the range of perception they would cease to have being (they would be snuffed out, so to speak). Should the solipsist grant attention to this or that given idea, this or that given idea would manifest as an existing entity (through a whim of mine the moon hangs high).

I / Make houses shrink / And trees diminish / By going far

Again, it’s in relation to the poet’s perspective that things diminish or increase, have being or non-being … even people (lines 14 - 19).

And it’s not just perception that can affect what is and is not, but even moods can alter reality’s contents (the third stanza).

The final stanza does it for me! Just when you think the poem was constructed to specifically convey a philosophical position (which it does), and just when you think a philosophical truth is on the verge of emerging, the poet alters the voice of her pen and directs her verse to the one she, albeit chidingly, loves.

I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.

Poetry and Idealism

Toward the end of 1798 Coleridge, along with his buddy Wordsworth, took a trip that would land him in Germany for two years where he would study its language and its philosophical giants- including Kant and the transcendental idealism he espoused.

From Kant to Fichte to Schleiermacher, German philosophy was dominated by idealism- the doctrine that our cognitive faculties actively impose subjective properties upon the world it perceives, so much so that it can never know reality as it is, but only as it appears. Some have gone as far as to deny objective reality altogether.

Proponents of this philosophical movement swelled in Germany through the 18th and 19th century and heavily influenced that period's well known zeit geist ... romanticism.

That lead me to conclude that Coleridge- a contemporary of Kant- was not only cognizant of German idealism, but also swayed in one form or another by it.

According to transcendental idealism, we can never experience objective reality in its purity (Kant calls this purity of things things in-themselves, or noumenon). In order for a person (like a poet) to experience anything, there must exist, as a pre-condition to that experience, a cognitive aspect capable of organizing the sense-data.

Therefore, one’s never truly influenced by nature’s beauty directly, because nature’s beauty in its purity is only known through pre-existing cognitive filters; and these filters don't just passively receive sense-date, they aggressively mold it to correspond to its own structure. Therefore, by virtue of these filters, we lose reality in its purest form.

This has lead some idealists to concluded that what a person really perceives is not reality at all, but only an idea of it. Others, like the more radical solipsists, have concluded that all we're really perceiving is ourselves, that it is the mind ‘positing’ ideas in such a way that we believe there to be an objective reality, when in fact there's not.

Now try to imagine selling this to a poet- especially a poet of the romantic period! That Coleridge knew of these prevailing philosophies, and that he stood in modest antipathy toward them, is evident to me from a poem he wrote entitled, To Nature.


To Nature

It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be ; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice



Of the Poem (Parameters and Summary)

Parameters

The poem can be broken up in a couple ways to be better understood. It can be broken up into two quatrain and two tercets (i.e. an octave and a sestet) so that it represents something similar to an Italian sonnet- which seems to be the pattern Coleridge employed here (i.e. abba, clearly an Italian quatrain). Or we can divide the poem up so that its contents are easily seen. In that case the poem would look like this:

It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.

So let it be ; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.

So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice

Rhyme Scheme: abbacbbcefefgg
Meter: loose (revolves round, but is not, a pentameter)

Summary

Lines 1 though 5:

The poet contends that- despite the possibility of it being untrue- that nature is inherently symbolic and suggestive and beautiful in and of herself, that this beauty is self-contained. He draws "from all created things" the deepest of joys, tracing out lessons and meaning from nature as if he were reading a book.

Lines 6 through 8:

Resolute that this is so, the poet clings to his belief regardless of how the world may mock.

Lines 9 through 14:

In the remaining lines the poet concludes with imagery that depicts nature as God’s temple, and the poet himself as priest. Notice the how he also utilizes- very intentionally- religious terminology and concepts borrowed from theology (especially lines 9 through 14).

created things- line 2
inward joy- line 3
love and piety- line 5
my altar- 9
my fretted dome- 10
incense- line 12
God alone- line 13
priest- line 14
sacrifice- line 14

It’s beautiful. It’s almost as if- and I may be pushing too hard here- as if the poet not only denies the notion that the human mind constructs* reality, but posits audaciously the independent and objective reality of both God and nature in the face of idealism (e.g. line 2, created things).

What say you?


*This is actually what solipsists contend- neither Kant, nor idealism in general, hold this belief.

God in the Quad: A Knox Limerick

What’s interesting about the philosopher and bishop George Berkeley is his ontological proof for the existence of God. According to the bishop things have being only insofar as they’re perceived- that tree, this child, that can of corn … all these literally owe their existence to being perceived by one of my five senses. That screen, those letters, and presumably that cup of coffee you're holding would have absolutely no existence were it not for your perceiving them this very second. 

In fact, according to Berkeley, we can hardly validate the existence of anything without immediate reference to one or more of the senses. 

Think about it: Can you prove your neighbor across the way exists at this very moment without the use of one of these senses? Memory doesn’t count- these are images of your neighbor in the past. A quick phone call doesn’t work- your using a sense: hearing. For all accounts and purposes, your neighbor simply doesn’t exist. 

What a strange world Berkeley would have us in: things entering and exiting our perceptions (that is to say, entering and exiting existence itself, having being one moment and non-being the next). How can this be? Berkeley has a solution. 

If things owe their existence to being perceived, and cannot logically pop in and out of existence based on our perceiving them one moment and not the next, then how do we account for their existence apart from our perception of them? Berkeley’s answer is that there’s an Infinite Perceiver, namely God. 

Things exist independently from their being perceived by one another because God perceives them all from an infinite perspective. 

Therefore, and perhaps to your grief, your neighbor does exist; when you walk out of the room you can be assured that that coffee cup you set down will still be there when you return, since a Higher Perception keeps it from plunging into non-being. 

This is the approach taken by Berkeley to show how God might exist within the parameters of a logical system of 'empirical' philosophy. He means to impart to us the possibility of an ontological proof based ever so strictly on our perceptions as sentient beings (hence his partial classification as an empirical philosopher, as strange as that may be). 

With that said, this blog site is not dedicated to philosophy- it dedicates itself to poetry. Berkeley’s principle of perception, existence and God are presented here because his ideas are expressed beautifully (and philosophically) in a limerick written by Monsignor Ronald Knox : God in the Quad. 

Here's that limerick below: God in the Quad 

There was a young man who said "God 

Must find it exceedingly odd 

To think that the tree 

Should continue to be 

When there's no one about in the quad." 

 Reply: 

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; 

I am always about in the quad. 

And that's why the tree 

Will continue to be 

Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."

Of the Poem: 

 Here in our poem a quad is essentially the courtyard of a campus, or a quadrangle thereof. 

The word Limerick comes from the name of a town in Ireland, and limericks as a poetic form are said to have emerged there (but this is far from certain). What is certain is that they were made popular by Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense. 

The subject matter of limericks by tradition is usually risqué, next-to inappropriate, and commonly humorous. 

A stanza consists of five lines whose rhyme scheme is AABBA. Lines 1, 2, and 5 usually have seven to ten syllables, while lines 3 and 4 will usually have five to seven. 

One of the most popular limericks is Hickory Dickory Dock. 

About our limerick above, do you remember this question: If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? This poem, along with our bishop, contends that God always perceives the tree, and that therefore anything it does- even crashing to the ground- is being observed. Therefore yes, the tree is heard.