Can we write history from poetry? - An Essay

Last year, I submitted an essay for the History Essay Competition at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. I was pleased to receive a commendation and an invitation to visit the college for my piece in response to the question: 'Can history be written through poetry?' Does poetry lack historical significance, is its subjectivity a hindrance to objective chronicling, and what anthropological role does poetry even play?

'Clio' - The Muse of History - by Pierre Mignard, oil on canvas, 1689

Can we write history from poetry?

- By Denis Morine

From the advent of recorded literature, poetry has maintained a symbiotic relationship with history, as the primeval standard for chronicling the past. Considering that much of the poetic corpus is ‘historical’ in its nature, it makes us question the extent to which history can be similarly qualified as ‘poetic’. Despite the criticism that poetry prioritises prosody over the ‘truth’ that history proffers, perhaps these ideas are not so isolated and unreconcilable as they may initially appear. To acknowledge poetry’s importance to history, ‘history’ itself must be defined. John H. Arnold paints history as the documentation of the objective and subjective qualities of human activity through analysing written, artistic, and artefactual evidence. Within this definition, poetry is a decisive historical source simply because it is a form of literature: a written and artistic work. Poetry must be considered relevant, if not necessary, when writing human history.

Despite poetry’s potentiality as a historical ‘record’, Plato, alongside Carte and Hume, would defend history from being coupled with such an interpretative subject. Notwithstanding, poetry possesses the ability to elicit the values of cultures. According to Ellis, historians neglect such details, the ‘state of society, and the progress of arts and manners’, whereas these features ‘form the principal materials of the poet’. In this fashion, poetry supersedes any historical source with regard to psychocultural detail. While the historian concerns himself with a chronology of events, the poet’s ‘business’ is ‘minute and particular description’ of the ‘arts and learning of the day’. Thus, from Ellis’ perspective, the philosophers are starkly incorrect to claim poetry’s lack of historical integrity, considering that ‘objective’ histories themselves disregard details concerning culture and the arts, of which poetry is rich in detail. Works of history are insufficient alone when illustrating the past – notably that of humanity, in which culture and emotion play a substantial role. In Arnold’s definition: although histories provide the objective quality of past events, poetry is necessarily required to fulfil the historical subjective quality – the acknowledgement of human psychology, learning, aesthetics, and ideas. As such, history ultimately necessitates the use of poetry in writing the subjective historical narrative; poetry not only can write history, but requires us to do so.

In opposition to this concept of employing poetry to write history, Plato framed the criticism that the poet prioritises entertainment over historicity. In the words of Greene, Plato believed poets to be ‘imitators and deceivers, and their art is concerned with the world of appearance, not reality.’ Within this depiction, poetry only relates to aesthetics and the ideal, not with truth or reality ‒ truth: the aspired keystone of history. Plato claims poetry is an idealised art removed from the pragmatic world – ahistorical, as such. In the Republic Book X, Plato’s Socrates asserts ‘we must not take such poetry seriously as a serious thing’, arguing that poetry provides no foundation for historical insight and cannot bestow ‘serious’ knowledge. Plato’s iconoclastic approach to ideas suggests that poetry cannot be a valid source of historical knowledge as the poet creates a histrionic distortion of reality; the poet, according to Plato, ranks emotional appeal, moralistic elements, and theatrical merit above historicity. He claims poetry cannot viably be recognised as either dependable history itself, or a source with which we may create history.

Plato’s proposition that poetry is an unreliable historical source is flawed. By discrediting poetry, he seems to assume ‘prosaic’ histories are always truthful. Plato suffers from the implicit value judgement that, since history is an act considered to strive for truth, it is therefore truthful – an unsound argument. History, whether prosaic or poetic, is unavoidably imperfect, given that humans suffer from deficient hindsight; we are not omniscient observers which can create an exact chronology. Thus, poetry finds genuine relevance; it is a serious thing. Poetry cannot be reduced to mere ‘theatre’. Considering its universal presence within human society, it is more reasonable to concur with the Aristotelian conclusion that poetry provides a form of ‘catharsis’ (κάθαρσις), understood as a purging of emotion. By absolving the soul of ‘excessive passions’, humans obtain greater wisdom. Perhaps poetry is not so aesthetic as it is medical. In Plotinus’ view, poetry is a principle of order and beauty and relates to existence. By conversing with poetry, we more closely appreciate the human experience. Gaining this intimacy with our humanity speaks to poetry’s collective attraction, both as writer and reader; it is a subject that concerns humanity’s very core. Poetry is, therefore, fundamentally serious to humanity, and should be acknowledged as a critical source when documenting human ideas, thus documenting social history.

Conversely, Thomas Carte criticised this position, claiming the instructive facts of history were written ‘not with the pomp of sounding words […] of a poet, which history rejects as unworthy of her dignity’. Carte asserts poetry as an ‘improper language to come out of the mouth of truth.’ He conflates prosaic history with this ‘mouth of truth’, an idea echoed from Plato, a fallacious parallel, seeing as history inevitably suffers from untruth to some degree. David Hume similarly proposed that contemplation of the subjective themes of poetry has the potential to promote immorality when likened to history. Hume argues that poets ‘address themselves entirely to the passions, [and] often become advocates for vice’. This resonates Plato’s belief that the poet is a trivial entertainer, not reflecting reality.

Hume and Carte fall prey to the pitfalls of antiquated criticism, apprising literary works based on extrinsic values, such as the poet themself, their agenda, and their intent. In this modern age of greater literary understanding, the rise in New Criticism calls for the abandonment of this critical dependency upon literature’s ‘meta-aesthetics’ – the nature of the author’s person, intent, and context. In opposition to Hume and Carte’s method, we should recognise poetry by its intrinsic values and ‘aesthetic unity as an autonomous object’. The argument for New Criticism contends the poem as an externalisation of the human ‘soul or personality’, allowing the poem itself to be considered ‘detached from the author’ and ‘an object of public knowledge’. By rightfully treating poetry as a ‘self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object’ we can begin to appreciate the historical insight embedded within the poetic form.

Just as Plotinus referred to poetry by its principle of order, Samuel Coleridge defined poetry as the ‘best words in the best order’. Poetry is implicitly ingrained with the idea of chronology, a fact that allows us to substantiate poetry’s pragmatic utility in writing history – and in writing history well. Stewart developed this idea of a literary historical narrative, declaring that, though poetry fails to consistently impart ‘the ordinary chronicling of actual historical events’, it can produce a ‘social history’ recording ‘customs of the past rather than the narration of causes and effects in a sequence of facts.’ Stewart refers to this form of history as ‘conjectural’, concerned with poetically communicated ideas: shifting habits, customs, and cultural values instead of statistics, people, and events in absolute narrative. By creating a record of human morals and psychocultural values through poetry in lieu of sequential events, poetry can fulfil the prerequisite subjective quality of history outlined by Arnold. In Emerson’s affirmative view, the occupations of the historian and poet ought to unite. Just as the historian records events in time, the poet records human thought in time. When both their objective and conjectural histories unite, a greater anthropological narrative can be composed, informed by both fact and human ideas. Though poetry may not provide the empirical precision offered by dates and events, history may still be written from it in the form of the conjectural.

A pertinent example of how poetry can evoke cultural insight rather than factual history is posed by the war poets of the 20th century. These poets did not seek to deliver a historical narrative, instead attempting to voice the absolute horrors of their experience. Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ inspires hopelessness and terror. Neither moralistic nor romanticised, the poem exposes a fragment of the true bloodshed of war, not from an omniscient perspective of the objective event or fact, but from the viewpoint of the individual’s psychology:

‘My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.’

- ‘Dulce et decorum est’ – Wilfred Owen (1921)

These lines elicit the anti-war sentiment directly through the evocative and disturbing imagery of a soldier’s death. The final refrain is further disparaging of war, taking the epitomical poetic quotation from Horace: ‘Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori’ – it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country – and deeming it ‘The old Lie’, a particular instance demonstrating a formidable shift, a progression, in human sentiment over time from an advocation of the patriotic death to absolute nihilism. The war poems, such as Owen’s, may not inform us of the events of the war, they expose the idea that there was a collective cognitive development toward the pointlessness of conflict. These poetic episodes act as a microcosm for the mark of a new human sentiment, that the First World War fostered a culture of disillusionment. The poets did not intend to be historical at all. They simply transcribed their emotional experiences as an act of catharsis. While these poems may themselves not be ‘history’, the sentiments they signify elicit the very nature of human thought in time. As a vehicle for human ideas and emotions, poetry is historical.

Similarly, we can regard the conjectural method with concern to the Iliad. The epic’s overarching themes of war, vengeance, nobility, and brutality can reasonably be considered to bear historical insight into the nature of the Mycenaean period before the Bronze Age collapse. The very first words of the Iliad already pronounce the violent nature of the tale through the echo of ‘anger’: ‘Anger – sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus’. The imperative ‘sing’, directed toward Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, suggests the desire – or even need – for not just a simple narration of a history, but an embellished ballad; through the dramatized nature of epic poetry, it lends itself to impassioned ‘song’. The epic’s hyperfocus upon the thematic dogmas of κλέος (glory achieved from battle) and νόστος (homecoming), alongside the Zeus-fearing ξενία (hospitality) underline the cultural importance of particular aspects of Hellenic society in the Bronze Age. This is equally relevant in the case of the Romans. The Roman values such as adoration and celebration of martial prowess, conquest, fulfilling vengeance, and ‘pietas’, are all exposed through Virgil’s legendary Aeneid, by way of Aeneas. Virgil constructed a poem, that is essentially mythological, with the primordial purpose of Augustan propaganda, and the intent of appealing to emotion, performance, and entertainment rather than historicity. The Aeneid, notwithstanding, is a formidable source of conjectural evidence for determining the values of Roman culture.

Much in the same way as the Romans, the Romantics of the late 18th to 19th centuries delineated their own values through their hyperfocus upon Arcadian, pastoral idylls, posing a contrast against the backdrop of industrialisation. An epitome of this bucolic ideal is exuded by Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Speak of the North! A Lonely Moor’, where images of pure, celestial nature – ‘A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies, / And one star, large and soft and lone’ – argue the folly of industrialisation. Poems such as Brontë’s, through their idealistic meditations on nature, elicit historical significance through showcasing the formidable criticism of the late millennium’s industrial side. The Romantic poems are indicative of the anti-industrial sentiment, appealing for intense emotion over, what they consider to be, a nihilistic development to an irrational end. They are pivotal evidence of the collective human mindset during the Age of Enlightenment.

In his essay The Poet, Emerson referenced how poetry is, as such, reflective of its time – not isolated as is the New Criticism ideal: ‘O poet! A new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures, and not in castles, or by the sword-blade, any longer.’ Emerson illustrates how poetry, as the idealised art, portrays the values of the corresponding historic period in which it was composed. In the Roman and Mediaeval ages, chivalry and militaristic dominance of the kingdom had become the aspired ideal. Within Emerson’s lifetime, however, cultural focus had since shifted to a desire for greater communion with the bucolic. It is through these poetic focuses, that we can trace historical periods and suggest how human values have developed over time. By extrapolating from the projected thoughts of the poet, we can write conjectural history. This subjective chronicle operates in tandem with more factual histories to form an encompassing anthropological narrative.

Whilst Plato heavily criticises poetry as historical, we find in his pupil, Aristotle, an exaltation of poetry as a narrative in touch with humanity. Aristotle claims that ‘poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements. The universal truths concern what befits a person of a certain kind’. A concept echoed by Stewart and Emerson, objective history may produce a chronology of events, but poetry can act as a chronology of humanity itself. While poetry cannot definitively instruct our chronicle of sequential events, history is defined by human activity – and significance upon such activity. Arguably giving better insight into one’s own mind, emotions, and livelihood than an impartial textbook, poetry thus reveals the hidden mystery of human activity and, perhaps, even, the human experience. I propose that poetry is, without doubt, a rightful historical authority, a ‘historical archive’, from which human history may be written. Poetry offers the subjective, emotionally-authentic quality of humanity, lacking within objective histories. Poetry works to portray a humanity-centred narrative, encompassing both the objective and conjectural, factual and cultural – that which is otherwise ineffable. Thus, one might argue, that poetry not only can write history, but should.

Bibliography

Allan, H. Pasco (2004). ‘Literature as Historical Archive’. New Literary History Aristotle. (c. BCE 335). Poetics

Arnold, J.H. (2000). History: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press

Beardsley, M. C. and William, K.; Wimsatt, Jr. (1946). The Intentional Fallacy. The Norton Anthology: Theory and Criticism. 3rd Edition

Carte, T. (1747). General History of England. London: J. Hodges.

Coleridge, H.N. (1835). Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ellis, G. (1811). Specimens of the Early English Poets. 4th Edition

Emerson, R.W. (1844) ‘The Poet’. Virginia Commonwealth University. Available at https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/poet.html (Accessed 31 Dec. 2022).

Greene, W.C. (1918) ‘Plato’s View of Poetry’. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Available at https://doi.org/10.2307/310558. (Accessed 31 Dec. 2022).

Homer. (c. 8th century BCE). Iliad. Translated by Rieu, E.V. (1950)

Hume, D. (1741). Of The Study of History

Lucas, F.L. (1927). Tragedy in Relation to Aristotle’s Poetics

Plato. (c. BCE 375). Republic. Book 10. Available at http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0059.tlg030.perseus-eng1:10 (Accessed 31 Dec. 2022).

Plotinus. (c. AD 270). The Six Enneads

Ranson, J.C. (1941). The New Criticism

Stewart, K. (1958). ‘Ancient Poetry as History in the 18th Century’. Journal of the History of Ideas. Available at https://doi.org/10.2307/2708039 (Accessed 31 Dec. 2022)