Winging it

A gainful holiday found me
balancing a sequence of
readings in the high con-
fidence of our constructed
heritage, and the bracing
correctives of enigma, in
contemporary poetry. This
wouldn't bear mention but
for an impression, which
I expect to cause no of-
fense, that the intellec-
tual plague of our time
is false fluency; so that
even the deepest senti-
mental attachment to un-
doubted brilliance can
cripple the navigations
of a present of no pre-
tension to interest in a
a past, whether it illum-
inates our predicaments
or not. We dismiss shal-
lows of our literacy to
our detriment. I began my
readings in a depiction
of a mentality of whom
the speakers of this lan-
guage have agreed to say,
If you seek his monument,
look about you. 

     Now Wren's interest in architecture

     turned upon two clearly separable

     issues. In the first place he was a

     man of science, anxious and able to

     place the whole of building technique

     on a new plane, opening out the sub-

     ject to correspond with the broad

     scientific theories which were estab-

     lished in his mind. In the second

     place, he was a classical scholar with

     all the glowing enthusiasm for the log-

     ic and fitness of the Latin syntax

     which the 17th Century, more than any

     other, was able to enjoy. If we wish

     to understand Wren's early works (and

     without doing so we cannot properly

     understand any of them) we must keep

     these two aspects constantly in mind.

But the society of e-mail

brought me swiftly to the

door of a learnèd contem-

porary who, steeped as he

may be in classicism for

decades, is a poet of the

severest science, that of

enigma, who volunteered a

genial reminder that choice

is still the act of adopt-

ing any course we follow.

And here, to my embarrass-

ment, I had allowed an ab-

solutist defect to take up

lodging in my frame of ref-

erence -- a recurring reli-

ance upon pleasing patterns

of choice.

I come from a time when 

it was not unusual, in 

Scott Fitzgerald's way 

of putting it, to hold 

two inconsistent values 

in mind at once. This

is not hypocrisy (which

is holding nothing), but

agnosticism. We've entered

another of our recurring

times, when such poise is

quite hotly rejected. Be

that as it may, it is the

narrative, if not the syn-

tax, of classicism, a sys-

tem of representation of

such radiant precision,

we can ill dispense with

it for the choices with

which it's associated.

I greatly treasure the

text I cited on Wren,

and have done for many

years. It cost all of  

$1.85 new, and I have-

n't begun to exhaust its

stimulations. My friend

in poetry is like any of

your own of that discip-

line, an extraordinary

exertion to fathom as

much as to seduce, and

because of this, unap-

roachably beyond price.

I think of that little

book with an affection

which feels almost fa-

cile, and is not, next

to an incomparable re-

source of the strain I

would make my choice.

He allows me to see

where this inclination

comes from, by naming

the domain of present

distress. Of all the

outrages exuberantly

promised us now, by

this tsunami from the

shallows, by all means

the gravest is a kind

of post partem ripping

of us from where we

live. And who is our

Conservative?

                             He speaks

                             to himself,

                             uses a name

                             used only

                             by his father

                             no one else

                             called him

                             this, how else

               

                             do you replace

                             a part

                             a still moving

                             part of you

                             move what's

                             past into

                             the present,

                             the present

                             into what is

                             both, keep

                             the sound of

                             a voice alive.

Sir John Summerson

Heavenly Mansions

  and other essays on

  architecture

  The Mind of Wren

W.W. Norton & Co., 1963©

Denis Bold

Hinge

  Poems

  Names

2015

op. cit.

ii  Philip Johnson

    New Canaan

    1949