Democracy and Poetry

[Anonymous No.18333149]

Tocqueville on how poetry changed with democracy.

"Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to contemplate and dwell on the past. By contrast, democracy inspires in men a kind of instinctive distaste for all that is old. In this respect, aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry, because distance usually magnifies things and shrouds them in obscurity and thus on both counts renders them more suitable for depiction of the ideal.

Having deprived poetry of the past, equality then strips away part of the present.

In aristocratic nations, certain privileged individuals enjoy an existence that is in a sense outside the human condition, and above it. Among their seemingly exclusive prerogatives are power, wealth, glory, wit, delicacy, and distinction of every sort. The multitude never see them up close or have any detailed knowledge of what they do. It takes little effort to portray such men in a poetic way.

In the same nations, however, one also finds ignorant, humble, and subjugated classes who lend themselves to poetry by the very extremity of their coarseness and wretchedness, quite as much as the others do by virtue of their refinement and grandeur. Furthermore, the various classes that make up an aristocratic people are so distant from one another, and know so little of one another, that the imagination in representing them can always add something to or subtract something from reality.

In democratic societies, where all men are insignificant and very much alike, each person looks at himself and instantly sees everyone else. Hence poets who live in democratic centuries can never take a particular individual as the subject of their work, for a mediocre object that one sees distinctly from every possible angle can never lend itself to representation of the ideal."

[Anonymous No.18334663]

>>18333149
B

[Anonymous No.18334757]

>>18333149
It's true. I was just thinking the other day about how much better litterateur is under an aristocracy. More to the point and rational. Democratic literature always seems to resemble a periodical and appeal to the lowest common denominator through emotional rhetoric.

[Anonymous No.18334779]

>>18333149
What sort of fucking nerds read shit like this and think

>mm indeed, yes, this makes sense

[Anonymous No.18334800]

>>18334779
People way smarter than you.

[Anonymous No.18334809]

>>18334800
>im smart because i read some passage lost in the annals of history and posted it on 4chan

[Anonymous No.18334876]

>>18333149
mm indeed, yes, this makes sense

[Anonymous No.18334884]

>>18334779
idk makes sense. the perspective isnt terrible that a certain way of life leads to a certain different ways in how we conceptualize things.

[Anonymous No.18334886]

>>18333149
Impressive scrutiny, I had always known this, but never formally or definitively.

[Anonymous No.18334888]

its too simlpistic to say that art blooms under aristocracy. rather it seems to be monarchial times with high degrees of fragmentation, like the renaissance or the kingdom of prussia. in these eras society was split in countless ways and territories and hierarchies, but still under kingdoms

[Anonymous No.18334912]

>>18334757
He also says the opposite is true, that on the other side there is a bombastic tendency, which is true when looking at the democratic aspects of romanticism.

"Hence one should not expect the poetry of a democratic people to live on legends, to feed on traditions and ancient memories, to try to repopulate the universe with supernatural beings in which readers and poets themselves no longer believe, or to serve up cold personifications of virtues and vices that can be seen in their own right without such devices. It lacks all these resources, but man remains, and man is enough. Human destinies — man, taken apart from time and country and set before nature and God, with his passions, doubts, unprecedented good fortune and incomprehensible misery — will become the chief, if not the sole, subject of poetry for such peoples, as is already apparent when one considers what has been written by the greatest poets to have emerged since the world turned toward democracy.

The writers who in recent years have so admirably portrayed Childe Harold, René, and Jocelyn did not pretend to be recounting the actions of an individual; their purpose was to illuminate and magnify certain still-obscure aspects of the human heart.

Such are the poems of democracy.

Hence equality does not destroy all the subjects of poetry; it reduces their number but enlarges their scope."

[Anonymous No.18334934]

>>18334809
Tocqueville is not "lost in the annals of history" what the fuck are you doing here lmao

[Anonymous No.18334942]

>>18334912
"In democratic societies, each citizen is usually preoccupied with something quite insignificant: himself. If he lifts up his eyes, he sees only one immense image, that of society, or the even larger figure of the human race. He has either very particular and very clear ideas or very general and very vague notions; there is nothing in between.
Once drawn out of himself, therefore, he invariably expects that someone is going to set before him some prodigious thing to behold. This is the price he demands to tear himself briefly away from the myriad small concerns that keep him busy and lend charm to his existence.

This, I think, explains fairly well why men in democracies, whose affairs are generally so slight, ask their poets for works conceived on such a vast scale and portraits so extravagant in their proportions.

Writers, for their part, are hardly likely to resist these instincts, which they share. They are always pumping up their imaginations until they become so unreasonably inflated that they forsake the great for the gigantesque.

They hope in this way to attract the immediate attention of the crowd and focus it on themselves, and in this they are often successful. For the crowd, which looks to poetry only for very vast subjects, lacks the time to take the precise measure of all that are laid before it and lacks as well a sure enough taste to discern readily in what respects those subjects are disproportionate. Author and public mutually corrupt each other.

We have seen, moreover, that in democratic peoples the sources of poetry are beautiful but relatively rare. They are soon exhausted. Finding no more material for the ideal in what is real and true, poets give up on truth and reality altogether and create monsters.

I have no fear that the poetry of democratic peoples will prove timid or quite mundane. I worry, rather, that it will constantly be losing itself in the clouds and end up depicting worlds that exist only in the imagination. I fear that the works of democratic poets will often be replete with immense and incoherent images, exaggerated portraits, and bizarre composites, and that the fantastic creatures that spring from such poets’ minds may at times make one long for the real world."

[Anonymous No.18334944]

>>18333149
this is some brainlet level cope

why do you niggers shill this hack

[Anonymous No.18334970]

>>18334944
>poster count didn't go up

[Anonymous No.18334977]

>>18334942
>>18334912
Beautiful. Gotta read this,great thread thanks !

[Anonymous No.18335003]

>>18334944
He literally predicted the course poetry would take over hundreds of years. And this along with many other correct predictions.
He's the best historian of the modern period. The exact opposite of the hacks who get shilled on /lit/.

[Anonymous No.18335005]

>>18334944
it's literally one anon, who refuses to let his threads die.

[Anonymous No.18335010]

>>18335003
he didnt predict fucking anything lol

just another reactionary pseud projecting his ideologies

[Anonymous No.18335038]

>>18335005
...and thats a good thing. Tocqueville anon is the only decent poster left on this sit

[Anonymous No.18335051]

>>18335010
>reactionary pseud
Guess who
>>/lit/thread/S18259659

[Anonymous No.18335057]

>>18335038
>poster count didn't go up

[Anonymous No.18335082]

>>18333149
I can't tell if Tocqueville is in support of aristocracy or not. He's making it sound quite favorable to me over democracy if we were to take his words as near to the truth.

[Anonymous No.18335090]

>>18335082
samefagging to bump this cuck thread

[Anonymous No.18335107]

>>18333149

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD5mzUk2NLQ

[Anonymous No.18335113]

>>18335082
He was an aristocrat but he realized that it had to end so he aligned with democracy. When he was younger he even got involved in some socialist movements with an idea of sabotaging them.
Really an interesting character all around, I always get a sense of historical fatalism from him.
>>18335090
stfu fag

[Anonymous No.18335719]

>inb4 this is pointless bumped for a week

[Anonymous No.18336376]

>>18333149

[Anonymous No.18336426]

>>18335719
I can't imagine being as resistant to learning as you. Just read the Tocqueville quotes and shut up.
What? Is it getting in the way of all the '[author quote], is this the best [insert country/religion/philosophy] has to offer' threads?

[Anonymous No.18336761]

>>18336426
You obnoxiously bumping your thread with no discussion for over a week, you shamelessly samefagging and attempting to simulate conversation, you shadow-bumping because you don't want people to see the true extent of your neuroses, is why people are so resistant to you, it has nothing to do with Tocqueville.
Can't you keep it to your discord? Isn't that why you made it in the first place?

[Anonymous No.18336778]

>>18336761
Holy fuck. You're insane.

[Anonymous No.18336788]

>>18336761
Why on Earth should it even be a source of annoyance? Just scroll past it?. I genuinely cannot imagine being as cretinous as you.

[Anonymous No.18337163]

>>18336761
Don't worry, anon. There are an infinite number of topics Tocqueville discusses. Democracy in America is 900 pages.
Won't be disappearing from the board anytime soon.

[Anonymous No.18337327]

>>18333149
>Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to contemplate and dwell on the past.
Or in less flowery words: idle wealthy people have a lot of time to kill.

[Anonymous No.18337592]

>>18337327
even democracies/oligarchies we have that but on an unoffical level, you can even argue that the existence of /lit/ is because of this

[Anonymous No.18338622]

B

[Anonymous No.18338651]

>>18333149
IT'S A TOCQUEVILLE THREAD BOYS, BRACE YOURSELVES FOR THE NEXT WEEK.
Jokes aside, I actually enjoy these threads. One of my favorites: >>/lit/thread/S18025251

[Anonymous No.18339422]

>>18337327
The relationship to the past is very important, and relates to democratic conceptions of time.

[Anonymous No.18339551]

Predicted Walt Whitman

[Anonymous No.18339562]

>>18337327
thats not what hes saying

[Anonymous No.18339653]

A major factor which has affected poetry, along with the arts in general, has been destructive abstraction: the incremental sowing of confusion in the minds of readers and poets about what poetry is.
Poetry is primarily supposed to be memorable, indeed it is literally supposed to be easily memorizable - poetry was originally the way in which an oral (non-literate) culture passed on words. That is the prime directive.
So poetry must have something like regular rhythm, regular rhyme, or regular alliteration - because regularity is what make it memorizable.
But generations of school children and students have been trained to believe that poetry is anything written in short-ish lines; even when it lacks any kind of regularity of other aids to memory.

[Anonymous No.18339692]

>>18339653
What is this from and what explains the change?

[Anonymous No.18340689]

"I am astonished that ancient and modern writers on public matters have not ascribed greater influence over human affairs to the laws governing inheritance. Such laws belong, of course, to the civil order, but they should be placed first among political institutions because of their incredible influence on a people’s social state, of which the political laws are merely the expression. Furthermore, inheritance laws act on society in a sure and uniform way; in a sense, they lay hold of each generation before it is born. Through them, man is armed with an almost divine power over the future of his fellow men. Once the legislator has regulated inheritance among citizens, he can rest for centuries. Once his work has been set in motion, he can remove his hands from his creation. The machine acts under its own power and seems almost to steer itself toward a goal designated in advance. If constructed in a certain way, it collects, concentrates, and aggregates property and, before long, power as well around a single head. It causes aristocracy to spring, as it were, from the soil. If guided by other principles and launched on a different path, its effect is still more rapid; it divides, partitions, and disseminates wealth and power. In that case the rapidity of its progress is sometimes frightening; abandoning hope of halting its progress, people at least try to place difficulties and obstacles in its path. They would counteract its effects by contrary efforts, but in vain. The machinery of the law crushes or shatters anything in its way, it rises up from the earth only to hammer down again and again until nothing remains but a shifting, impalpable dust, on which democracy rests.

When the law of inheritance permits, and a fortiori when it orders, a father’s property to be divided equally among his children, its effects are of two kinds. It is important to distinguish carefully between them, even though both tend toward the same end.

By virtue of the law of inheritance, the death of any owner of property entails a revolution in ownership. Not only do goods change masters, they also change nature, so to speak. They are broken up into ever smaller portions."

[Anonymous No.18341897]

>>18334888
Monarchies can also cause great declines in art.

[Anonymous No.18343137]

B

[Anonymous No.18343511]

Test

[Anonymous No.18344787]

>>18333149
I know I am a brainlet for thinking this, but the decline in great poetry and literature is reason enough for me to think democracy should end. The political stuff is just supporting documentation for me.