Interested in
Reginald Shepherd's recent blogposts, including
this one on "Personal Preference and Aesthetic Judgment." I don't think it's possible so neatly to consign the aesthetic purely to the object and the personal to one's response to said object. Another way of saying this: I don't think it's possible to separate completely the aesthetic from the personal, ever. Kant's injunction to adopt a disinterested perspective can only be obeyed once one has already sorted out the elementary distinction between one's investment in subject matter and one's concern for the formal qualities of the object. This is, of course, no simple matter. I may initially be drawn to a poem because, as Reginald points out, I am drawn to its subject matter. I think
Jordan gave us a good example of this phenomenon yesterday in his mention of
this Bela Lugosi poem. One reveres Bela Lugosi (naturally), and thus one wishes to embrace the poetic tribute. But the very resistance Jordan struggles with is evidence that liking the subject matter is not the same as liking the poem--or, if one's love for the subject tricks one into thinking one likes the poem, it is exactly that, a trick. This is what Kant is cautioning against, I think: the state of aesthetic unconsciousness in which one abandons one's critical sensibility out of sentiment for the subject matter (one could also insert "author" or "genre" and so forth in place of "subject matter"). In this state of delusion, one experiences a sensation that one mistakes for liking the poem, when in reality, what one likes is the external set of associations evoked by the poem.
Now, one could object that it is not possible to be mistaken about what one likes or doesn't like. If I read a poem and come away with an approving attitude, how on earth can anyone tell me that I am wrong in thinking that I like it? But a simple analogy should show that this objection doesn't fly. Suppose I like Cynthia, a woman I have spoken with by telephone on numerous occasions, but have never met in person. My liking of Cynthia is a substantial affection, based on my experience of sharing confidences with her, learning of her history, her beliefs, quirks, etc. Assume for argument's sake that everything I learn about her in the course of our conversations is true and accurate information. Now, suppose that one day Cynthia and I arrange to meet in person at a nearby coffee shop. At the last minute, however, Cynthia gets nervous and decides to send a friend in her place. The friend pretends that she is Cynthia, when in actuality she is, say, Daphne. Suppose that Daphne is nothing like Cynthia in real life, and that although I initially have no reason to doubt her, over the course of the conversation it becomes increasingly apparent that many of the qualities I value in Cynthia are nowhere in evidence. Where Cynthia is empathetic and delicate, for example, Daphne is callous and coarse. Nevertheless, because I am primed to like this woman, I struggle throughout our conversation to perceive those qualities I want to perceive, and through various processes of rationalization and self-deception, I manage to convince myself from time to time that I do in fact perceive them. I come away from our meeting a bit confused perhaps, but manage to sustain the sense that I like Cynthia, and--more to the point--that I like the woman with whom I have just been conversing, since I have reason to believe that she is Cynthia.
Let's try to map this situation onto an experience involving poetry. Say there is a poem, "The Cute Little Bears," by a poet, let's call him Andrew Mister. Say that I happen to have a great fondness for cute little bears. Say too that I am familiar with Mr. Mister's work, and that I hold it generally in high regard. My initial reaction upon learning of the existence of this poem, one could imagine, would be one of delight and anticipation. Let's suppose that the qualities I am prepared to encounter in the poem are qualities such as linguistic wit, saucy irreverence, the refined application of enjambment, and, above all perhaps, a vivid evocation of the irresistible cuteness of little bears. Now let's suppose that the actual poem is lacking on all these counts: it is dully prosaic, it evinces no rakish vigor to speak of, the lines are woodenly end-stopped, and its depiction of adorable cubs relies on every stale cliche in the book. Two responses are possible on my part: I may respond with disappointment, or I may attempt to adjust my response to fit my expectations. In the first instance, the problem disappears: I like cute little bears, I like a good deal of Mister's work, but I do not like this poem. Case closed. In the second, things are a little more complicated: I like bears, Mister, etc., and on the basis of this predisposition, I manage to blind myself to the poem's defects. Is it then accurate to say that I like the poem? I would argue that my sense of liking the poem in this instance parallels my sense that I like Cynthia when I am engaged in conversation with Daphne, and my projection of that liking onto Daphne. It is still the idea, and not the object, that I like, and the idea is not the actual woman/poem.
(I'm aware that this line of thought leads, perhaps, to inexorably formalist conclusions. I'm comfortable with that. I've always been a formalist. For me, it is always to some extent a poem's engagement with formal dynamics that makes or breaks it, even if that engagement is mediated and/or ironized on multiple levels, so that, for example, it exploits the concept of formlessness in order to achieve its effects.)
Reginald does, however, raise an important point by reversing the question: what about poems in which one admires formal qualities but dislikes the subject matter? He mentions Frost and Milton as examples of cases in which he recognizes the poet's achievement on a technical level, but rejects the thematic content. My answer, however, follows directly from what I've argued above: whatever reservations one may have about content, to the extent that one responds positively to the poet's execution on the level of material composition, one likes the poem. If one feels it necessary to distinguish between poems that one likes in this sense, and poems that one both likes and responds to favorably on the level of content, that's fine. Maybe those are poems that one loves, or as Woody Allen would say,
lurves.
One can of course imagine--and for that matter attest to--the existence of an entire category of readers for whom thematic interestedness and formal appreciation are indistinguishable, or, more accurately, for whom the latter is negligible. The question then is whether their response to poetry can legitimately be termed "aesthetic" at all. Can the "personal" response, defined as a myopic concern with subject matter to the exclusion of every other consideration, be considered an aesthetic in itself? I won't rule this out, but there is a difference between, on the one hand, thus characterizing a readerly tendency in the abstract and, on the other hand, imagining a conscious, individual set of principles upon which artistic judgment may be formulated. "Aesthetic" would mean two very different things in these two cases, and only the second one is very interesting or useful from the point of view of evaluative criticism as it may be applied to individual poems.
Looking back over Reginald's post, I sense that on most counts we agree much more than we disagree, and much of what I've written could be dismissed as a quibble on the definitions of "like" and "poem," what the definition of "is" is, etc. My main reservation, I guess, is with his attempt to make a neat distinction between personal preference and aesthetic judgment by saying:
Aesthetic value is a quality of the artistic object. Personal preference is a matter of individual response to the artistic object, of an individual’s relation to and experience of that object.
Aesthetic value is a quality of the artistic object in the sense that, when all is said and done, one may point to specific aspects of construction and execution and say, this is well done, or this is poorly managed. But it should be fairly clear that such judgments must themselves inevitably be referred back to personal preferences and experiences, and that, accordingly, such preferences and experiences are always shaped by external aesthetic principles that one has internalized. Thus to hold the opinion that Frost's "Home Burial" is "powerful," regardless of whether one "likes" narrative poetry, is necessarily an expression of one's own personal affective preference at the same time that it is a rehearsal of a cultural aesthetic.
In the end, despite my declaration above of allegiance to formalist principles, I'm deeply skeptical about any set of absolute criteria for determining a "good" vs. a "bad" poem. Reginald's "personal"/"aesthetic" distinction serves the convenient purpose of settling this question without confronting the more radically difficult question underlying it: the question of whether "good" and "bad" can ever be more than articles of aesthetic faith that one uses as much to situate oneself socially and ideologically as to perform any act of "objective" evaluation.
