Sunday, September 16, 2007

To Acquiesce--Or Not?: A. E. Housman


A.E. Housman is best known now for the poem, "To An Athlete Dying Young" and other verses from A Shropshire Lad. He was born in 1859, the year of Origin of Species, and died in 1936, after the world had indeed become modern in the best and worst of ways--to echo Dickens. Housman was a classical scholar and professor first and, in his mind at least, a poet second. Posthumously, he is a poet first and shall remain so, and it's his fault because he wrote some terrific poetry. (Apparently he was also something of a gourmand and liked French food; given English cooking, especially in his day, the preference seems reasonable.) In my view, his most remarkable poem is the following one, from "Last Poems":

The laws of God, the Laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;

Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.


I don't think the poem could be phrased any better at any point than it is. The iambic tetrameter carries the pithy philosophical argument without straining--and what an argument it is! What is one to do if one feels, as the speaker of this poem feels, that he (in this case) is a stranger in a world he never made? Does he pretend not to feel as if he is a stranger? Does he acquiesce to the laws of man and God--to the systems of society and religion? Or does he play it honestly and, like Melville's Bartleby, respond, "I prefer not to"? To my mind, the poem to some extent also foreshadows Camus's The Stranger.

The speaker here notes that he judges and condemns certain deeds of men--and of God? Or of God's alleged spokespersons? What is the source of the criteria by which he has judged and condemned these deeds? That is not clear; nonetheless, he seems to have established for himself his own way of living life and assessing behavior, but he has no desire to impose his way on others, by whom he wants to be left alone. But of course society and religion are not in the business of leaving people alone. And the speaker is not naive. "They will master," he says, "right or wrong." They have the power, and they will use it.

The lovely question the end of the poem always induces me to ponder is this: Has the speaker convinced himself to acquiesce? After all, he concludes that since he and his soul can't fly away to other planets, they're stuck with and on Earth and therefore must remain strangers in a strange land. "Keep we must," he says to his soul, "if keep we can/These foreign laws of God and man." But the poem begins by asserting,

The laws of God, the Laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;

Not I....


So if we go by the opening assertion, the advice to the soul and himself at the end seems hollow.

Although the poem certainly expresses a stance that might belong to a hermit, an outlaw, or a sociopath, the rhetoric itself is urbane and mild. I sense I'm being spoken to by someone who just so happened to have been born, grown up, and discovered that he didn't fit into or agree with most of what was going on around him. The poem doesn't celebrate this eccentric status, nor does it argue that the world should conform to the speaker's view. This is not the speech of a revolutionary, a terrorist, a megalomaniac, a drop-out, or a protester. This is not, like the oft-quoted "Invictus," a poem of pride. This is the utterance of someone who simply believes his independent view of things is correct and who desires what he knows makers and enforcers of laws--literal and figurative--will not allow: to be left alone. This is the utterance of someone who is so reasonable that he even tries to convince himself and his soul to acquiesce, given the situation. "Let's try to go along to get along," he seems to be telling himself and his soul at the end, and the end comes before we find out whether he and his soul will take the advice. Oddly enough, the poem is something of a cliffhanger, although I'm inclined to think the speaker's inclined to stick with the assertion he brought to the dance.
Often we find ourselves perplexed and befuddled but then have things cleared up, one way or another. We learn. We are formed, and we conform. Sometimes, however, we are perplexed and befuddled and stay that way because we believe there is every good reason to be so; --believe that to disagree is simply the correct response; --believe the emperor is naked; --contine to wonder, stubbornly, about things that don't add up, such as why air-force fighter-jets weren't scrambled when the planes were hijacked on 9/11. Gore Vidal, among others, keeps wondering, stubbornly, about this question. He is dismissed as a "conspiracy theorist" (I believe this is known as an ad hominem arguument), but although he expresses skepticism about what he regards as the American Empire and the Bush/Cheney "Junta" (junta is classic Vidal), he doesn't actually offer a theory, conspiratorial or otherwise, concerning the jets. He justs asks for a thorough, clear, believable answer to the question and chooses not to accept what he calls RO: Received Opinion. This poem gives voice to those who simply, independently disagree with RO, but who also probably do not reflexively embrace a theory. The poem is stubborn but well reasoned; it is firm but not enraged; it's even a little whimsical, with the reference to interplanetary travel. I picture the speaker and his soul, a bit world-weary but by no means defeated, walking off into the foggy night, rather like Louis and Rick (Raines and Bogart) at the end of Casablanca. This independent man and is independent soul, although potentially threatened with jail, gallows, and hellfire, have a beautiful friendship. . . . Here's a link to a fine article by a political scientist who connects the film Cool Hand Luke with Housman's poem:

http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/haltom22.htm






1 comment:

Wild Bill said...

I agree that the poet starts the poem with defiance, converses with his soul, and reminds his soul that it cannot escape his body yet [much as Housman's poems often long for death the redeemer, a phrase from Jeffers' "Hurt Hawks"]. Only by dying does one escape estrangement and sanctions. Until death, one cannot flee the laws of God and man. Onthe other hand, one can never be certain one will not break the laws of God and man, for God and man change the laws the second that they detect nonconformity.

I think it helps to reflect that Housman was gay at a time that British society was punishing Oscar Wilde, a far freer spirit than Housman, for acting authentically. Instead of "Speed KIlls" signs posted around Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, Housman posted "Authenticity Kills" signs about his cranium. He could be neither what he knew he was nor what society demanded that he be. Only in his dreams and in his verse could he be himself.

Perhaps Housman did not have the escape that Emily Dickinson found in "I'm Nobody." Rather than join humans in telling her name the livelong day to an admiring bog, Ms. Dickinson and her soul selected their own society inside a brick house.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.



Maybe Housman did not find his escape into scholarship to be the internal emigration that he wanted. Maybe we have his books and his poetry because, unlike Galileo, Housman published rather than mumbled.

Galileo knew the earth went around the Sun. God and man purported to know different and backed their "knowledge" with torment and tortures foolishly but strongly. That is, God and man behaved like bullies. They wielded law as a club. But Galileo knew that he was right. And Galileo was right.

But maybe A. E.Housman should be likened to survivors in the first two filmings of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Learn the pod people; ape the pod people; escape the pod people. If so, then Housman leaves mankind a souvenir: "I seemed as you wanted so that I could live as I wanted."
Society could not get Housman's mind right. His soul escaped and, like Tim Robbins toward the end of "The Shawshank Redemption" or Randall P.McMurphy throughout "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest," left a model for those courageous enough to recognize their own dreams and to pursue them surreptiously so that careless people who call their sould their own will not notice that someone did not fall asleep with a pod under his bed.