F.H. Bradley on Matthew Arnold's Religion

I have written of that high toned vivacity which was a mark of the Victorian grand style as practiced by Arnold, Newman and in the following extract from Bradley. (Taken from Francis Herbert Bradley by T.S. Eliot)

Eliot:Here is the identical weapon of Arnold, sharpened to a razor edge and turned against Arnold. ((the following is from Bradley's Ethical Essays))

‘But the “stream” and the “tendency” having served their turn, like last week’s placards, now fall into the background, and we learn at last that “the Eternal” is not eternal at all, unless we give that name to whatever a generation sees happen, and believes both has happened and will happen — just as the habit of washing ourselves might be termed “the Eternal not ourselves that makes for cleanliness”, or “Early to bed and early to rise” the “Eternal not ourselves that makes for longevity”, and so on — that “the Eternal”, m short, is nothing in the world but a piece ofliterary clap-trap. The consequence is that all we are left with isthe assertion that “righteousness” is “ salvation” or welfare, and that there is a “law” and a “Power” which has something to do with this fact; and here again we must not be ashamed to say that we fail to understand what any one of these phrases means, and suspect ourselves once more to be on the scent of clap-trap.’

A footnote conunues the Arnold-baiting in a livelier style:(Eliot)

‘“Is there a God?” asks the reader. “Oh yes,” repkue Mr. Arnold, “and I can verify him in experience.” “And what is he then?” cries the reader. “Be virtuous, and as a rule you will be happy,” is the answer. “Well, and God?” “That is God”, says Mr. Arnold; “there is no deception, and what more do you want?” I suppose we do want a good deal more. Most of us, certainly the public which Mr. Arnold addresses, want something they can worship; and they will not find that in an hypostasized copy-book heading, which is not much more adorable than “Honesty is the best policy”, or “Handsome is that handsome does”, or various other edifying maxims, which have not yet come to an apotheosis.’

Matthew Arnold on Literature

Now, in literature,—I will limit myself to literature, for it is about literature that the question arises,—the elements with which the creative power works are ideas; the best ideas on every matter which literature touches, current at the time; at any rate we may lay it down as certain that in modern literature no manifestation of the creative power not working with these can be very important or fruitful. And I say current at the time, not merely accessible at the time; for creative literary genius does not principally show itself in discovering new ideas, that is rather the business of the philosopher; the grand work of literary genius is a work of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself in them; of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them in the most effective and attractive combinations, making beautiful works with them, in short. But it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself amidst the order of ideas, in order to work freely ; and these it is not so easy to command. This is why great creative epochs in literature are so rare; this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the productions of many men of real genius; because, for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment; the creative power has, for its happy exercise, appointed elements, and those elements are not in its own control.

(fromThe Function of Criticism (Essays Literary and Critical by Matthew Arnold))
Stimulating but is it true? In an era of bad, false, meretricious and vacant of sense ideas can there be great literature? Is there out there now some great book that floats above ‘ the filthy post-modern tide’?

Matthew Arnold in Literature and Dogma on Verification

And this is the aim of the following essay: to show that, when we come to put the right construction on the Bible, we give to the Bible a real experimental basis, and keep on this basis throughout j instead of any basis of unverifiable assumption to start with, followed by a string of other unverifiable assumptions of the like kind, such as the received theology necessitates.

Norwich demurs:

Maudlin sentimen talism," says the Dean of Norwich, "with its miserable disparagements of any definite doctrine; a nerveless religion, without the sinew and bone of doctrine."

Principles of Criticism

There is no conceivable way of demonstrating that someone who places Madame Bovary above Anna Karenina or considers The Ambassadors comparable in authority and magnitude to The Possessed is mistaken – that he has no 'ear' for certain essential tonalities. But such 'tone-deafness' can never be overcome by consequent argument (who could have persuaded Nietzsche, one of the keenest minds ever to deal with music, that he was perversely in error when he regarded Bizet as superior to Wagner?). There is, moreover, no use lamenting the 'non-demonstrability' of critical judgments..........

Let me, therefore, affirm my unrepentant conviction that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky stand foremost among novelists. They excel in comprehensiveness of vision and force of execution. Longinus would, quite properly have spoke of 'sublimity'. They possessed the power to construct through language 'realities' which are sensuous and concrete, yet pervaded by the life and mystery of the spirit. It is this power that marks Matthew Arnold's 'supreme poets of the world'.

(from Tolstoy or Dostoevsky by George Steiner)

This is what I would call critics patter, analogous in kind and intent to the prestidigitator's 'notice that my fingers never leave my hand'. In short, fatuous misdirection. A.E. Taylor in Elements of Metaphysics admits the difficulty of assessment of levels of reality but insists on the validity of the criteria of comprehensiveness and harmony.

So in our moral life we judge one man's character more individual than another's, either on the ground of the superior breadth of his interests, or of the superior consistency with which his interests are wrought into a self-consistent whole. The man of many interests has so far a truer individuality than the man of few, and again the man of steady purpose than the man whose energies are dissipated in seemingly conflicting pursuits. But the two criteria do not always, for our insight, coincide. An increase in variety and breadth of interests may be accompanied by a diminution in coherency of aim, and a gain in coherency of aim appears often to be bought by concentration upon a few special objects. And we should find it hard or impossible to decide, where the two aspects of individuality appear to fall thus apart, whether the man of many interests and relatively dissipated energies, or the man of few interests and intense concentration upon them, exhibits the higher individuality. For what looked like self-dissipation in the pursuit of disconnected objects might really be the systematic pursuit of a consistent purpose too wide to be clearly apprehended in its unity either by contemporary observers or by the actor himself, yet apparent
enough to the reflective historian reading the significance of a life by its whole effect upon society, and what seemed at the time the single object of the man of one idea might similarly be found in the light of the sequel to be the hasty combination of radically inconsistent aims.^
Such reflections, however, only show that our limited insight is insufficient to assign to every appearance with certainty its own place in the ordered system of appearances through which the single Reality expresses itself They do not touch our general position, that where comprehensiveness and harmony can be seen to go together, we are justified in using them as the measure of the individuality and therefore of the reality of the partial system in which we discover them.

“He knows, you know”. Others rely on physiological signals, 'chills', 'goosebumps', and suchlike premonitory shivers. Myself I get a warm feeling in the centre of my body towards the Hridaya chakra that I associate with coherence, order and harmony.

Behind the Tuileries, the sky took on the same colour as the slates. The trees in the gardens formed two huge masses, tinged with purple at the top. The gas-lamps were lit; and the Seine, a greenish colour as far as the eye could see, was torn into strips of silvery silk by the piles of the bridges.

(from Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert)

You don't need to be a clever Lycée boy like Steiner doing explication de texte to get that. Yes “ses raisons” but there are criteria internalised through the attentive reading of “the best which has been thought and said”. That may even apply to the last episode of Mad Men,(The Monolith) written by Erin Levy. At a first look I thought it quite good. Why is Peggy Olsen looking like Ayn Rand? Is it the State asylum haircut or is that just my projection?

Corydon Vs Thyrsis

One feels that the poems of Matthew Arnold are like the Victorian drawing room in being somewhat over furnished. There’s a nice bureau but alas the cabinet of Capodimonte, souvenirs of Oxford, and Arnold himself standing in the views, in front of Mt.Blanc, ‘there I am in Thun and ah Marguerite’. Still when it, the poem, works, the sweep is magnificent. I am always moved by The Scholar Gypsy but Thyrsis is ruined by ambivalence perhaps the one emotion that poetry retreats from. Sir Edmund Chambers (1866 - 1954) who wrote both long and short about Arnold feels that it was his greatest poem (Wirton Lecture on English Poetry 1932).

The singing match aspect of it is where the ambivalence emerges and surely Freud would have approved of the classical masking adapted from the Seventh Eclogue of Virgil in which Corydon defeated Thyrsis. Arnold attempts an uneasy recovery in line 80:
For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer’d thee.

However it seems that Clough born 1819 and four years older than Arnold was headmaster Thomas Arnold’s, Papa’s, favourite at Rugby where he was made head boy and represented the ideals of the school. Clough was a brilliant student who was reading Schleiermacher in the original at the age of 15. One need not hearken to the counsels of Vienna to see unresolved quasi-sibling rivalry. It was widely felt that Clough would have a brilliant career in whatever sphere he chose. Due to conscientious objection to the acceptance of the doctrines of the Church of England an academic career was closed to him at Oxford and that history is indicated in the Victorian web’s entry:
Clough
What then of the poetry? In my view Corydon did win.

Here’s an example of an overpopulated poem by Clough:

In a Lecture Room


Away, haunt thou me not,
Thou vain Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head,
And leave the spirit dead.
Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
While from the secret treasure-depths below,
Fed by the skyey shower,
And clouds that sink and rest on hilltops high,
Wisdom at once, and Power,
Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
Why labor at the dull mechanic oar,
When the fresh breeze is blowing,
And the strong current flowing,
Right onward to the Eternal Shore?

A little thing to be freighted with so many abstractions.



Compare:

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow;
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening-star.

(from Thyrsis l.60 - 70 )